Warrior and Dark Knight tips?

Tanking isn't my main thing, but I'm trying to level DRK and WAR just because, yet I feel like I'm messing something up.

For all the talk of Paladin being simple, I strangely am able to pick up that job a lot easier than these two.

For Dark Knight, MP management is an issue. I pop Blood Price when I can, yet I rarely end up using most of it (mostly Unleash spam), but when I start trying to use Dark Arts, I end up almost starving myself. Also, I just got Plunge: do I need to pull with that instead of Unmend when it's up? I'm a bit confused how it's used other than extra damage.

For Warrior, I've gotten a bit better since I've hit 50, but I still feel like there's too much that needs my attention at once with managing the Infuriated abilities.

Sure, for both I'm more than capable of just spamming the enmity combo over and over again, but I feel like I should be doing more DPS-wise. Yet when I try the DPS tend to catch up in hate.

For what it's worth, I've never been yelled at or insulted or anything as a tank.

Paladin is simply absurdly easy.... No one should be catching up in hate. on WAR 35bonus points should be strength. Unchained is gonna give you an emnity boost and do more damage but lose the inner beast, fell cleave,steel cyclone or decimate that are also possible. In a dungeon pick groups of mobs up with flash and then steel cyclone them , add overpower every few combos. Make SURE you rotate in the Storm's Eye combo in and maim up at all times that is 20% dmg for maim and 10%slashing for the entire group....... You have berserk too but never should need it for aggro, You gotta get use to being able to swap to deliverance too (not in regular dungeons) cause Fell Cleave just does alot of damage.. and so does Decimate to groups of adds. i don't know if you are talking about just dungeons or primals or raids.

For both tanks: Use your goddamn defensive cooldowns during trash pulls. Just do it.
For DRK:
You should pull with Unmend because you could proc a free Unleash off of it.
But I pull with Plunge when it's off CD it because it's cool.
Don't use Dark Arts on Power Slash. Ever. It changes the enmity modifier from 5.5x to 6.5x. Not worth the loss of a DA Souleater or DA'd Carve and Spit.
Trash pull specific advice:
Don't use Dark Arts during trash pulls unless you intentionally want to make your life harder, or are tanking 5+ enemies. You need about half your MP bar to do a decent pull. Save it for boss battles.
4 uses of unleashed will keep you from having to use the power slash combo more than once with similarly geared DF DPS. This is important because Power Slash is your weakest potency combo: you want to use it as little as possible.
Pop Blood Price at the beginning of the pull, preferably in the middle of your Unleash spamming.

For WAR:
Keep Maim up at all times.
Don't feel bad about using the Butcher's Block combo because it actually is WAR's highest potency combo.
Pop berserk at the beginning of trash pulls.
During boss pulls, couple it with Unchained.
Basic boss pull rotation:
(Tomahawk > Infuriate > Unchained > Berserk > BB Combo or Storm's Eye combo > BB Combo > IB > Fracture > Heavy Swing if you have the SS for a 9 hit berserk)
For wrath stacks useage:
Use IB versus single target (300 Potency) , Steel Cyclone versus 2+ (200 potency per target).
Same applies as off tank with fell cleave(500 potency)/decimate(280 potency per target).

I guess I should clarify, I'm mostly spamming dungeons (all tanks at 54), so while I realize there's not an intense pressure to do well, it's just my personal goal to do what I can to help things along.

Misha did a great job covering most of warrior, but I disagree with a few little things. KEEP MAIM UP AT ALL TIMES I definitely agree with though.

If you're only 54 you don't have decimate yet. In large packs I like to try to build up a few stacks manually, pop vengeance and berserk to get 5 stacks, and then swap into deliverance, double decimate and OP spam. You can start practicing this by replacing the double decimate with double steel cyclone and go into deliverance AFTER for OP spam. If stuff is still alive after this and you don't have equilibrium, just swap back to defiance and let your tp start recovering while the dps polish off the scraps, thought you might want to refresh maim at the end of a pull so you have it up at the start of the next one.

I would never ever recommend popping zerk at the start of a pull. Always wait until you have maim up. You might be close to losing aggro while you set up maim, but once you go to AoE town with zerk + maim up it'll be on lock.

blood bath and berserk both share the same cooldown timer. They're pretty much your bread and butter. Use them together. love them. going deliverance while they are up will actually make you more tankey than being in defiance, so long as you are aoe spamming large packs.

Start practicing stance dancing and using fell cleave on bosses BUT MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND HOW TO CYCLE COOLDOWNS FIRST so your healer isn't overwhelmed. If this all sounds complicated....it is. But that's how you take warrior to the next level. Good luck, and happy slaying!

edit: also gotta say though, try to pull with overpower instead of tomahawk whenever possible. overpower has nice range, better aggro, and is AoE, for only 10 more tp. Tomohawk should almost never be used tbh.

i dont use berserk at the beginning of trash pulls, I save it for when I have 5 wrath stacks if its large trash steel cyclone it and you can use blood bath with this... infuriate and steel cyclone it again .. nothing is moving anywhere aggrowise, do a combo and you'll get pacified... by the time the pacification isover you should be close to 5 stacks.. again; if you are taking a beating during this use vengeance (30% cooldown) or inner beast (20% 6 seconds) or both, or Equilibrium with berserk up since that huge self heal is Strength based it will add 50%....... I mean in the 2 expert roulette dungeons you can swap to deliverance after establishing aggro and Fell Cleave ,maybe use Vengeance first and then swap , berserk and double fell cleave. There are alot of things you can do.


Holmgang is your survive any attack ability use it on a single enemy (A boss generally a primal or raid) to bind you [ you cannot be moved] and you will never go below 1hp; while this is happening you can do that berserk equilibrium combination, cross class Internal Release too for berserk. I crit Equilibrium now for around 12,000HP with berserk up. Generally Inner beast is a cooldown it does alot of damage, absorbs the HP and is20% cooldown for 6 seconds

Cooldowns are Inner Beast 20%
Vengeance 30%
Raw Intuition 20% from front (this is dangerous without awareness unless there is only one boss sitting in front of you)
Thrill of battle and convalescence can be used during or before massive damage in conjunction with Equilibrium
storm's path debuffs the target reduces all outgoing damage by 10%too

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ninster

For Dark Knight, MP management is an issue. I pop Blood Price when I can, yet I rarely end up using most of it (mostly Unleash spam), but when I start trying to use Dark Arts, I end up almost starving myself. Also, I just got Plunge: do I need to pull with that instead of Unmend when it's up? I'm a bit confused how it's used other than extra damage.

---

Count off dark arts in terms of syphon strikes. It takes two syphon strikes to get one dark arts back, so you should be monitoring how many syphon strikes you need so you don't blow through MP too quickly--in some cases it's kind of unavoidable, like if you're trying to burn something quickly and need a bunch of DA souleaters.

If you're running out of MP on trash pulls, you're probably using blood price too early in the pull. Pre-casting blood price does you no good, because it's not a defensive and you want to get hit literally as often as possible while it's up. Also, DRK is probably the best tank for trash pulls because their threat generation comes from unleash/dark passenger spam, and blood price makes those abilities free. It's so limiting going back to PLD and having to actually worry about MP after drowning in it as a DRK.

Also, yeah, you're gonna be using Unmend for pulling, forever. Plunge has its moments of use, but they're super niche and I can't really come up with an example of a time you'd want to save it for anything besides extra off-GCD damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fm_fenrir

Plunge has its moments of use, but they're super niche and I can't really come up with an example of a time you'd want to save it for anything besides extra off-GCD damage.

---

It's not really a thing in savage, but in stuff like the last boss of library and Rav ex and hopefully future fights you can use plunge as a gap closer, which makes its edps more valuable than its face potency, and further closes the gap between drk and war in actual fight parses.

edit: also Bismarcks back. so plenty of good uses outside savage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

It's not really a thing in savage

---

https://youtu.be/1l70m9UpaOQ?t=77

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ArdorGrey

If you're only 54 you don't have decimate yet. In large packs I like to try to build up a few stacks manually, pop vengeance and berserk to get 5 stacks, and then swap into deliverance, double decimate and OP spam.

---

The only time you should use Decimate is if you have Infuriate or have 5 stacks left over from the previous pull. Manually building 5 stacks by using single target GCDs isn't worth the potency loss of not spamming OP for every single one of them.

Infuriate -> HS -> Maim (as you're pulling) -> Veng + Bloodbath -> OP -> IR + Berserk -> OP -> Deliverance -> OP spam until something is dangerously close to being too low to get the full effect of Decimate -> Decimate -> whatever else you feel like doing, it's really situational beyond this point

You either want to use your 5 stacks on Unchained or hold them for Decimate, since if you use Decimate early you just lose the crit chance from the 5 Abandon stacks. If you use Decimate too late, however, you'll lose it's full potency which you would've had if you used it early. It's pretty delicate but pretty easy to get used to.

Also putting up Maim while everything is already stacked together isn't worth it, as that's 2 GCDs that could've been OP and the damage increase won't outweigh that afaik.

Thanks guys, I'll try some of this out.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

https://youtu.be/1l70m9UpaOQ?t=77
snip

---

If you maim during pull it's only one more gcd. I typically path the most problematic "big trash" since they tend to have aoes that are problematic as well as having at least slightly more hp than standard trash. after you have the pull lined up turn, drop zerk, vengeance and raw intuition, and nuke. Though i do agree you'd be better served holding onto the infuriate stacks for a few gcds rather than dumping them as well.

trying to lock in the hard math on which one is more optimal overall is a bit tricky, but 560 potency in 2 gcds is worth almost 5 overpowers by themselves, and without the 650 tp pricetag. in a bubble where all dps aren't ninjas and are performing optimally this might seem like an excessive amount of force, but in practice i tend to parse higher than most dps and finish roulette runs in under 20 minutes. i can definitely agree you want to be stingier with your stacks and cooldowns in a2, let alone savage, but unless everything is going to be dead in your berserk window pushing out 2 decimates during that time seems pretty big.

Thanks for pointing out the AS3 jump though, good catch!

Lol all these Drks and no one mentions Abyssal Drain?
This is how you prioritize which move to pull with: Are you grabbing 6+ adds? Use unleash as you run by the groups, pop blood price, put salted earth down, and start spamming abyssal drain (does more dmg than unleash and can be DA'd for self heals). Mix in SB combo to further your self heals.
Are you pulling a small mob of 3-4 adds? Unmend, unleash x2, PB combo each add, use other moves as you can.
Are you pulling a boss? If you need to position the boss, abyssal drain pull and fall into your usual combo ruitine. If you dont need to position the boss right at pull, start with plunge (otherwise use plunge as a dps filler or a gap closer from knockbacks).
The rest of how you play Drk comes down to your ability to manage your mp while DA'ing your moves in between your combos.

Don't use DA for trash? So... don't use the Drk mechanic on what is a huge part of every dungeon....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RocheKat

Don't use DA for trash? So... don't use the Drk mechanic on what is a huge part of every dungeon....

---

to be fair, unless you're fighting quite a few enemies at once and you're using Abyssal drain (which slightly ups the number of enemies that have to be attacking), or if Blood Price is on cooldown, you can't really use Dark Arts without mana-starving yourself after the first three or so. And MP is our MOST valuable resource in trash pulls, especially once BP wears off.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RocheKat

Don't use DA for trash? So... don't use the Drk mechanic on what is a huge part of every dungeon....

---

The problem is if your MP dips under 50% and doesn't regen past that before the next trash pull, you might not have enough MP for unleashes and have to struggle with aggro for the rest of the pull.
It's not worth the minor increase in DPS to suffer like that.
However, if you are tanking 5+ enemies MP ceases to be an issue.
If you actually read my post, you will notice I mentioned this already.

Lol all this Drk advice with mp management and no one mentions Sole Survivor?
I'll only talk about Sole Survivor as it applies to Boss fights. Save DF dungeon bosses (so...EX and Raids), every boss fight has adds of some sort that you can place SS on. Even in Ifrit EX, you can SS the nails (theres a slight delay after a nail is down and when Another Victim actually goes off).
Soul Survivor gives you about 3.5k hp and about 1.2k mp. If it "dies", you can SS it.

Also! Once you have aggro (boss, adds, w/e), you can drop Grit, pop Blood Weapon, and use your SB combo plus your offensive CDs to get mp back very quickly.
Drk is a very tough tank class to master as most of its toolkit is very situational and requires you to really know the timing of mechanics to make the most of said toolkit.

Thanks guys, I've gotten a lot more comfortable with Warrior for sure now that I've got cooldowns sorted out. It's definitely more fun for me than it was when I first hit lvl 50 with it back in 2.4 or so.

DRK is still throwing curveballs at me, but I'm hoping most groups are patient enough to let me figure things out. I'm leveling right now, and just hitting 56 with all 3, so I'm having to adjust how I use my skills. Abyssal Drain is a little baffling for me, although I've had only two dungeon runs trying it out.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ninster

I guess I should clarify, I'm mostly spamming dungeons (all tanks at 54), so while I realize there's not an intense pressure to do well, it's just my personal goal to do what I can to help things along.

---

Number 1 tip: Use your defensive Cooldowns on Trash.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ralvenom

Number 1 tip: Use your defensive Cooldowns on Trash.

---

Funny you mentioned this, one run of the Aery I got ripped into by the SCH when I, as PLD, blanked on one of the pulls and apparently went in with nothing and he/she couldn't keep me up.

Yet I was fairly consistent about using defensive cooldowns the rest of the run, IMO.