Tanking, Dark Arts, and Souleater?

I've recently been leveling my DRK, hit 45, and have a few questions on my rotation.

Currently, I Unmend to pull, Unleash a few times to grab hate, then go with my standard enmity combo and rotate through mobs as needed. I use Blood Price to restore MP, and drop Grit to use Blood Weapon when we're down to just one monster left (If mobs are being AoEd, I just hope I don't need extra MP and try to weave in Syphon Strike here and there). On boss monsters it's much the same, except I usually do a dark arts powered heavy slash combo to start with, then drop Grit and use Blood Weapon whenever it's up.

Thing is though, I feel like I'm not living up to the potential that DRK has. Souleater is just something I fire off after Syphon Strike as a marginally better option than just swapping back to my higher damage enmity combo. Dark Arts largely goes unused due to the MP cost, as I don't need the bonus enmity once hate is established, and using it to power up Souleater, while it does seem like it might do more damage, also would take more MP than Syphon Strike restores, which is against the point of why I tend to use Syphon Strike in the first place.

Should I be risking my MP pool to swap to the Souleater combo with Dark Arts? Maintain my combo as-is? Or is there some more useful way to use these skills I've overlooked?

Dark arts is good to use when you know you won't really be hurting for MP. It's particularly useful, in my opinion (drk 51 on my alt), for Dark Passenger as it adds a blind effect on top of more potency for the straight line AoE. Also there's a later AoE ability that absorbs 100% of the dealt damage as HP, so i can see that being useful for big pulls n such.

Dark Arts + Carve and Spit hnnnng. ♥♥♥♥

Don't use Dark Arts on Power Slash. I think it takes it from 5.5x to 6.5x enmity.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Don't use Dark Arts on Power Slash. I think it takes it from 5.5x to 6.5x enmity.

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This.

Dark Arts combo'd-Souleater is the most GDC you get, don't sniff at it. Honestly once you gain access to Souleater you should just replace the Power Slash combo with it and move the Power Slash combo to elsewhere on your hotbar; you don't need the bonus emnity to hold aggro if you're keeping Darkside up and the DPS aren't outgearing you by ludicrous amounts, so unless you for some reason die and need to re-assert your emnity dominance pronto you can just smash the monster's face while claiming essentially free MP and HP.

Once you get Delirium the math starts to look more attractive, but the ratio to keep in mind always is that it takes two Syphon Strikes to make up the cost of one Dark Arts. Blood Price and Blood Weapon are better looked at as tools to maintain Darkside while Syphon Strike pays for the bulk of your Dark Arts spam, at least in most cases since you probably aren't going to get beaten on by more than three or four guys at a time before you reach the Aery/Vault.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

I've recently been leveling my DRK, hit 45, and have a few questions on my rotation.

Currently, I Unmend to pull, Unleash a few times to grab hate, then go with my standard enmity combo and rotate through mobs as needed. I use Blood Price to restore MP, and drop Grit to use Blood Weapon when we're down to just one monster left (If mobs are being AoEd, I just hope I don't need extra MP and try to weave in Syphon Strike here and there). On boss monsters it's much the same, except I usually do a dark arts powered heavy slash combo to start with, then drop Grit and use Blood Weapon whenever it's up.

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The only time I've ever felt any need to use Dart Arts with Power Slash has been on Alexander Savage 3. This is mostly due to my WHM DPS/Healing at the same time. The only reason I would even consider using DA Power Slash there is simply because I'm popping Blood Price and Blood Weapon shortly after which gives me a MP surplus. Generally in most normal circumstances you want to avoid DA Power Slash because as others have already stated... it takes Power Slash from a 5.5 threat modifier to 6.5. Hardly worth it.

Also, you don't have all of your skills yet. When you start mass pulling at level 60 you'll have access to skills like Abyssal Drain which you can pair with Blood Price. In level 60 dungeons I can easily pull 2500+ DPS on AOE packs (in a good group they'll die before you run out of MP). So judging your rotation pre-60 isn't really a fair thing to do. It sounds like you're doing the right thing just drop the DA Power Slashes, they're unnecessary. Keep in mind that Soul Eater also heals you while you have Grit turned on, which helps your healer do more DPS.

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Thing is though, I feel like I'm not living up to the potential that DRK has. Souleater is just something I fire off after Syphon Strike as a marginally better option than just swapping back to my higher damage enmity combo. Dark Arts largely goes unused due to the MP cost, as I don't need the bonus enmity once hate is established, and using it to power up Souleater, while it does seem like it might do more damage, also would take more MP than Syphon Strike restores, which is against the point of why I tend to use Syphon Strike in the first place.

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Using a regular Soul Eater combo without DA will always net you more over all damage than going for a Power Slash combo. The potency difference is a small 10 in favor of Power Slash. You lose out on the MP regeneration that the Soul Eater combo gives you, which will let you use DA more often. The rule of thumb for Dark Knight is to use Power Slash as little as you possibly can, even if it means people trail you in threat.

While you are right that DA takes more MP than what Syphon Strike gives you, it's not a reason to worry about the MP cost. The only time the MP cost will come into consideration is when you have Dark Passenger available to you. Dark Passenger is more damage per point of MP than a DA Soul Eater is... especially when you have more than 1 target. However, once you get Carve and Spit, your options will change.

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Should I be risking my MP pool to swap to the Souleater combo with Dark Arts? Maintain my combo as-is? Or is there some more useful way to use these skills I've overlooked?

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ALWAYS ALWAYS DA Soul Eater on a single target when Dark Passenger and CaS are not available. When you get Delirium Blade, you will use that combo when you don't have enough MP for DA. Use Power Slash as little as you possibly can.

One thing I noticed in your post is that you didn't mention Scourge at all. On single target fights, keep it up as much as possible, assuming you get the full DoT duration.

Basically, only use your power slash combo to generate initial hate on a boss or pull extra aggro if your group out-gears you significantly. Otherwise, you will be using dark arts on the souleater combo when you have mp or using delirium when you don't (which you will get soon). The idea of DRK is to balance your mp drain to maximize your damage/mitigation. You should never have full mp, in fact you should generally try to hover around the 25-50% range of mp in fights.

Use dark arts on souleater whenever you have the mp to spare, otherwise spam delirium once you get it (power slash for now). Blood price should be giving you enough mp to use dark arts and/or unleash fairly often, especially in trash pulls. Other than for souleater, using dark arts is very situational. I would only recommend using it on dark passenger if you are tanking a large trash pull and have blood price on cooldown, otherwise you lose mp. At your level, dark mind is the only other consideration, and that should only be when you know you will be taking a lot of magic damage.

TL;DR: Spam dark arts on souleater whenever your mp allows, and try to balance your mp so that you hover in the 25-50% range (this way you are using your mp when available, but not putting yourself in danger of dropping out of darkside).

As long as you've established a comfortable aggro lead, delirium blade is up(or unavailable in your case), and you have a comfortable amount of mp and won't be using DA'd dark mind for anything, you should be DAing souleater, yes.

Keep in mind that most jobs dont really fully come together until at least 50. Most of the new jobs were more designed with 60 in mind. right now you aren't mastering the full rotation, just the basic tools so you understand how to use them in the full rotation at 60. Soul eater is basically your bread and butter.

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

Use dark arts on souleater whenever you have the mp to spare, otherwise spam delirium once you get it (power slash for now)

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As gangaloo stated, it's better to use the soul eater combo (with or without DA) than to use power slash when you don't need to worry about threat. The reason being that more MP means more DA + Soul eater.

Compare 2 power slash combos:

(150 + 220 + 300) x 2 = 1340

vs. 2 SE combos:

(150 + 250 + 240) x 2 = 1280

however, doing the SE combo twice regens exactly enough MP to use DA once. Power slash gives you no MP. So by using siphon twice, you now have enough MP to use DA + SE for that second combo. This brings 2 SE combos to:

150 + 250 + 240 + 150 + 250 + 400 = 1440.

which makes it the clear winner.

Anyhow, basically:

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Originally Posted by Gangaloo

ALWAYS ALWAYS DA Soul Eater on a single target when Dark Passenger and CaS are not available. When you get Delirium Blade, you will use that combo when you don't have enough MP for DA. Use Power Slash as little as you possibly can.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

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That's fair enough, I was thinking more about potency than mp gain (plus I'm so used to spamming delirium and DA souleater). The main point remains that dark arts should be applied to souleater whenever possible, which is the main takeaway here.

Thanks for pointing that out though, nice to actually have a civil conversation on these forums for once.

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Originally Posted by Litegrace

That's fair enough, I was thinking more about potency than mp gain (plus I'm so used to spamming delirium and DA souleater). The main point remains that dark arts should be applied to souleater whenever possible, which is the main takeaway here.

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Yea, it's really easy to forget the MP gain. It comes up a lot when other jobs point out how strong the potency of the power slash combo is without considering the damage lost because you didn't regen MP during that time.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

As gangaloo stated, it's better to use the soul eater combo (with or without DA) than to use power slash when you don't need to worry about threat. The reason being that more MP means more DA + Soul eater.

Compare 2 power slash combos:

(150 + 220 + 300) x 2 = 1340

vs. 2 SE combos:

(150 + 250 + 240) x 2 = 1280

however, doing the SE combo twice regens exactly enough MP to use DA once. Power slash gives you no MP. So by using siphon twice, you now have enough MP to use DA + SE for that second combo. This brings 2 SE combos to:

150 + 250 + 240 + 150 + 250 + 400 = 1440.

which makes it the clear winner.

Anyhow, basically:

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http://xivdb.com/?skill/3632/Souleater

Soul Eater is 260 combo potency without DA, not 240.

It's 1340 vs 1320.

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Originally Posted by Gangaloo

http://xivdb.com/?skill/3632/Souleater

Soul Eater is 260 combo potency without DA, not 240.

It's 1340 vs 1320.

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Correct, and in addition you should be doing Delerium, not Soul Eater, if you're not planning on using the Dark Arts on the Soul Eater, which is 280 potency. This actually makes it 1340 vs 1360 with two deleriums or 1340 vs 1480 with 1 delerium and one empowered soul eater.

Minor point of course, but still!

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Correct, and in addition you should be doing Delerium, not Soul Eater, if you're not planning on using the Dark Arts on the Soul Eater, which is 280 potency. This actually makes it 1340 vs 1360 with two deleriums or 1340 vs 1480 with 1 delerium and one empowered soul eater.

Minor point of course, but still!

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Correct. We were just pointing out to a pre-50 DRK that he should use his Soul Eater combo over Power Slash. He doesn't have Delirium yet.

I personally find Dark Arts + Carve and spit to be such a waste. It rarely ever crits when I do it and overall you're probably going to get more overall damage out of Dark Arts Souleater spamming.

The only time I even bother trying with DA + Carve and Spit now is if a DRG pops Battle Litany. Otherwise its a waste of 1800 MP for an attack that will most likely hit for the same damage as a DA Souleater without returning any HP or MP with a long cooldown timer.

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Originally Posted by Gangaloo

Soul Eater is 260 combo potency without DA, not 240.

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Sorry, looked too quickly and read the wrong number, the tooltip for that is goofy :P

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Originally Posted by KeluBehemoth

I personally find Dark Arts + Carve and spit to be such a waste. It rarely ever crits when I do it and overall you're probably going to get more overall damage out of Dark Arts Souleater spamming.

The only time I even bother trying with DA + Carve and Spit now is if a DRG pops Battle Litany. Otherwise its a waste of 1800 MP for an attack that will most likely hit for the same damage as a DA Souleater without returning any HP or MP with a long cooldown timer.

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You're looking at it wrong. You're spending 1800 MP to add 350 potency to your 100 potency C&S attack. You lose out on the 900 MP that you'd get if you used C&S on its own. Or, you can spend 1800 MP to add 140 potency to one of your soul eater attacks.

Given a 2 minute period, if you used DA + C&S, you would have added 700 potency to your C&S attacks.

If you did not do that, you should have saved 2 DA (not using them on C&S) and you'll have recovered an extra 1 DA's worth of MP since you used C&S by itself. This will allow you to do 3 extra DA + SE. DA adds 140 potency to your already 260 potency souleater attack. So you get an extra 140 x 3 = 420 potency over those same 2 min.

So, it's fine if you want to value the HP regen from DA + SE over DA + C&S, but it's mathematically impossible for you to get more damage out of DA + SE unless you're doing something wrong.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Don't use Dark Arts on Power Slash. I think it takes it from 5.5x to 6.5x enmity.

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Not true, as you will need to use it at least once in a pull either at the start or later in the fight when you start loosing hate. Preferably you use DA+PS at the start of a boss pull then just stick to DA+SE and Delirium rotations for the rest of the fight.