Filthy Casual looking for DRK advice

So, I tend to avoid Savage or EX fights mostly because personal reasons, so this is more for braindead roulettes, though I would welcome anything from those environments that would apply.

I'm actually more concerned with trash pulls and the like, Since I never really drop aggro on bosses without touching grit. Though I almost exclusively stick to grit on trash pulls because I'm concerned about AoE emnity and to help the healer. I cycle my cooldowns like shadowskin+foresight, and when its off cooldown, I'll do my DA+DP/DA+DD dodgey combo. and of course blood price off cooldown. I'll use either unleash or abyssal drain, depending on my target and how the mobs are bunched up, sometimes abyssal drain wont reach everything.

My concern here is mostly... My "pocket healer" friend I almost exclusively play with has a hard time with cleric stance. A combination of I tend to pull alot so my HP spikes and they are not COMPLETELY comfortable with the tool yet (this is admittedly my fault for scarring them from ever using it because I pull half a dungeon in ARR content when they were new).
In essence, I would like to know what cooldowns I should be cycling, if I even need to change that, or are there times where I can just help ease my friend into CS with my own tools as a DRK?

Are there times I can safely drop grit, even on large trash pulls?

You can drop Grit on any pull as long as you're cycling your CDs, using BP, and putting up the evasion buffs when BP falls. If your healer friend wants to stay away from Cleric then they probably won't notice too much of a difference, however if they do decide to dabble in Cleric then you'll want to work together and coordinate CDs so that lack of Grit doesn't mean too much excess damage. This greatly depends on what healer they are as well, WHM in particular has a lot of tools to make dropping Grit pretty safe even if the healer does DPS (Bene, Tetra, Dem HoTs, etc). I'd say your best bet is to talk it over with your healer friend and figure out when they'd feel comfortable with you dropping Grit.

is a lot better keep grit on big pulls no matter what, healers do more dps that you in pack that us without grit and the mitigation tools we have are limited.

and i dont see you use in big pulls abyssal drain+DA, is a nice combo with blood price and a lot of self heals, you can do as spooky say drop grit in any pull, but in my opinion is a lot better have a healer doing dps that you gain from out grit.

Like Shao said, DA+Abyssal Drain with Blood Price up is you and your Healer's friend for big pulls.

You're friend shouldn't worry too much about your health spiking. Every healer has tools that make Cleric Stance use fairly easy. Essential Dignity, Fairy, Bene, etc. allow healers to have a lot of leeway in their healing when they are using they DPS spells and stance.

As SpookyGhost mentioned WHM has things like HoTs (Regen and Asylum are the basics in trash pulls), and dropping Cleric Stance for a second to throw out Tetra then throwing it back on is really effective too. Holy is another useful ability to ease damage since it stuns.

SCH are literally easy mode when using CS in dungeons. Their Fairy and spells like Lustrate make SCH very good at keeping CS up consistently.

AST has Essential Dignity, which is OP while in CS. Nothing more really needs to be said except HoTs are useful.

Stance Dancing takes practice so I would suggest starting out slow at first. Maybe have your friend practice in easier dungeons, or with smaller pulls, before trying the harder stuff.
Though I will admit that dancing gets easier the more spells the healer and the tank have access to.

It's been said before, but I'll say it more in-depth:

The most powerful tool DRK has for big pulls is Abyssal Drain. When you use Dark Arts for Abyssal Drain, you gain some HP back per every enemy hit. The larger the pull, the more you get back. For you to spam this, you need to have Blood Price up. As long as you don't use Blood Price at the same time as a WHM starts Holy stunning everything, you should be getting back enough HP and MP to sustain yourself without any healer input until Blood Price is down, at which point it's a good idea to pop Dark Dance buffed by Dark Arts for the evasion bonus. DA Dark Passenger is a good buffer for this, as are tertiary CDs like Convalescence and Foresight.


Also, don't be afraid to pair up two or even more CDs for trash. If you pull big, it should last enough that the CDs you use will be up again for the pull after the next one. Blood Price is on a ridiculously short CD, so it should be up for every pull, but once it falls down depending on the pull you'll want to pop Shadow Skin, Foresight, Dark Dance and Convalescence can all be used mixed with one another to increase your resistance and give the healer more time for CS uptime.

Finally, don't forget about Living Dead in case you mess up your buffs or your healer friend messes up Cleric Stance usage. If your friend is a WHM or AST they shouldn't have problems with LD, but if they're a Scholar they might have trouble and you might die if they're not prepared for it. If you have constant voice communication with your friend, you should always tell them if you plan to use LD so that they know and go into CS to take advantage of it.

Use Grit and CDs early before your selfhealing ramps up, then shut it off and let go with DA ADs

I actually recorded some fun AoE pulls on DRK from expert earlier:

http://puu.sh/s5PPk/f09ea8b256.webm
http://puu.sh/s5PQO/fe12a81195.webm

So, one day, I was doing Lost City of AK Hard (I think it's this one, with the butterflies at the bottom of the path leading to a wall that need to be destroyed).

Anyway, I run PLD mostly, and would have to pop Hallowed Ground here if I pull all the mobs from the top to the bottom. One day, I went as DRK for the first time, and I pulled this group. Not going to lie; I panicked. I didn't think to pop Living Dead, but I instead tossed on a Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain. Surprised, I began to spam it. MP was getting low, so I hit Blood Price. O...M...G... I was amazed.

I began to do many large pulls in other areas as DRK. Now, I prefer dungeons as DRK while Primals/Coil/Alexander as PLD. DRK was almost my main, but I'll meddle with it more in learning parties until I'm comfortable. I guess I like DRK's crowd control.

Dropping Grit for big pulls is a big no no, since you when you have actually stop with all the mobs they actually hit a bit hard for the first few hits so rather have Grit up to help your healer out, and spam Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain with Blood Price up = The most beautiful action sound for me personally in the game. On bosses it's safe to drop Grit after 2 Power Slash combos if you cycle through CD's appropriately since DRK have insane amount of aggro generation and your healers don't mind you dropping Grit (there are some that point blank refuse to heal you unless you have it on, though you safe since your friend is healing).

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Originally Posted by Chubby13

DRK have insane amount of aggro generation

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DRK has the weakest aggro generation because our DPS combos use no enmity moves unlike WAR and PLD.

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Originally Posted by MoarLegion

DRK has the weakest aggro generation because our DPS combos use no enmity moves unlike WAR and PLD.

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Power Slash has the highest potency of the three DRK combos, with Delirium 2nd and Souleater 3rd (unless you Dark Arts + Souleater), so 2 Power Slash combos, 1 Delirium combo, or 1 Power Slash, 1 DA+SE combo, 1 Delirium combo, still won't make you lose aggro.

PS: (150+220+300) = 670
Del: (150+250+280) = 680
SE: (150+220+240) = 640
DASE: (150+250+400) = 800

Power Slash is lower potency combo than Del and DASE. It also generates no MP, while you gain half a DA usage with the other two. Although PS has the highest enmity potency out of enmity combos of the three tanks (150+770+1650=2570 enmity potency), DRK is penalised the most for using it. Your goal is to minimise PS use, which is why we run much narrower enmity margins than a PLD or WAR.

WARs have the most consistent enmity generation, as BB is both their highest potency and enmity combo. PLDs are somewhere in the middle, as SB is incorporated into both their enmity combo (RoH) and their dps combo (RA) and has an enmity multiplier attached to it. Once you establish and secure aggro on DRK, in contrast, you're essentially holding it through raw dps alone.

I'd also like to point out an important factor:

I would see some DRKs spam Dark Arts + Souleater, using Dark Arts just before Souleater. While I'm no veteran DRK, I can get a good return on my MP and combos by using Dark Arts just before Soul Siphon.

Sounds like your friend didn't experiment with clerics enough at low levels, or at least the big pulls might have discouraged stance dancing from the get-go. Stance dancing is hard for a newbie! As a tank who is guiding a budding healer, it's your job to pull just the right amount -- enough to put a significant dent in your hp but not enough to kill you downright. That'll provide your healer friend with the perfect environment to practice and master stance dancing while also training them to ramp up their HPS (healing per second). It's also good to surprise them once in a while with a random huge pull just so that they get practice with their emergency skills and so that they can familiarize themselves with their personal HPS ceiling.

As for your performance on a DRK, you can't forget about reprisal, low blow, bloodbath, foresight, convalescence, and especially living dead. Reprisal, low blow (Stun), bloodbath, foresight, and convalescence are very strong when paired up (ie: Conva + foresight). There are many pulls in this game which are only possible with a top-tier tank AND healer -- not to mention you probably would want to be fully capped on your gear for certain pulls in certain dungeons.

I'm geared to the teeth, but nevertheless, this is what I do:
1) Pop sprint (just for kicks and because you don't actually need much TP for huge trash pulls! That's one great thing about DRK -- makes speed runs really quick.)
2) Aggro groups with unleash/abyssal drain
3) Clump up the mobs while cycling Shadowskin and Shadow Wall
4) Drop grit/stay in grit depending on how much damage I'm taking
5) Pop Blood Price and spam Abyssal Drain or DA > Abyssal Drain (Abyssal Drain spam EVEN out of grit still generates huge amounts of aggro!)
6) Once Shadowskin and Shadow Wall are used up, I then resort to the little cooldowns (ie: Foresight + Convalescence ; Foresight + Dark Dance ; Dark Dance + Awareness ; etc etc)
7) You can cast Sole Survivor at any point so long as it's on a dying monster so that once it dies, you get a nice heal + mp regen.
8) If things get dire, always remember you have living dead and you can always get back into grit for that extra 20% mitigation if you're not already in it.

If you're already doing this, then you should be fine. It's not the be-all end-all way to do things, but it's the way that works for me and with sprint, I can speedrun the latest dungeons so fast. DRK master race! Because it's always a race!

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

I'd also like to point out an important factor:

I would see some DRKs spam Dark Arts + Souleater, using Dark Arts just before Souleater. While I'm no veteran DRK, I can get a good return on my MP and combos by using Dark Arts just before Soul Siphon.

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It depends on what oGCD recasts are just finishing and the timing of your defensive moves, which can potentially consume DA as well. If weaving DA earlier allows you to avoid a double weave that could potentially clip, then you should, provided that you aren't planning on weaving in another DA move that could consume it prematurely before DASE.

This is where most of the complexity of the job comes out, in understanding priorities and which combinations of oGCDs can safely fit in the spaces between GCDs without clipping. There are times in which the decision to DASE or Del will also vary not just on your MP, but also on whether you need DA to proc on something following your third combo hit.

I appreciate the input thus far, but I would also like to mention, though I am asking for general input on how to better myself, I do have a basic understanding of how to play DRK in my own right. I'm mostly after a means to better myself further and was originally asking for ways I could use my tools to better allow for my friend to get more use out of Cleric stance.
So while alot of this advice is sound, most of it is, sadly, things I have a firm grasp on.

I was also curious, because of some mitigation tools DRK has and it's ease of aggro in a dungeon pull scenario if it would be a good idea to drop grit to help melt down the mobs. And if so, when would be a proper time.

While the latter was pretty much dressed, I feel the former did not gain much traction. Again, I appreciate the input, and none of it is really wrong, but I feel my initial request might have been too poorly worded. I did not feel it was appropriate to clog up a post with every nuance I do on every pull, and I feel the lack of it's inclusion left the impression I was fresh to DRK as a whole. I am simply not at raiding level and wished for further information on how to be better than that of "average" and, in turn, allow my friend to improve as well.

EDIT: Ah, after the initial post, I forgot to add an update! silly me.
I've started pumping out DA+ADs more, but now my MP management has gone a bit out the window than I'm used to... is there an average rule of thumb of how many DA+ADs i can/should be able to fit into a BP before I dump a DA/DP+DA/DD? I've noticed getting too trigger happy drains me too much to afford my dodge combo

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It depends on what oGCD recasts are just finishing and the timing of your defensive moves, which can potentially consume DA as well. If weaving DA earlier allows you to avoid a double weave that could potentially clip, then you should, provided that you aren't planning on weaving in another DA move that could consume it prematurely before DASE.

This is where most of the complexity of the job comes out, in understanding priorities and which combinations of oGCDs can safely fit in the spaces between GCDs without clipping. There are times in which the decision to DASE or Del will also vary not just on your MP, but also on whether you need DA to proc on something following your third combo hit.

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I was speaking from a DPS perspective, especially since I just finally got into the 1k dps since I starting using DA just before Siphon.

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Originally Posted by Fluffernuff

I've started pumping out DA+ADs more, but now my MP management has gone a bit out the window than I'm used to... is there an average rule of thumb of how many DA+ADs i can/should be able to fit into a BP before I dump a DA/DP+DA/DD? I've noticed getting too trigger happy drains me too much to afford my dodge combo

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You should be using normal AD until you actually need the heal, spamming it will just drain your mana and give you a ton of overheal. It's important to remember that DA costs more mana than Abyssal Drain, so every time you DA after BP stops you're cutting off 1~2 ADs - generally you should only be using DA+DP or DA+DD if you need the extra mitigation and your healer is going crazy on the DPS, and most of the time it's better to just DA the Abyssal Drain and use normal DP/DD.

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

I was speaking from a DPS perspective, especially since I just finally got into the 1k dps since I starting using DA just before Siphon.

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I was too. If you DA before SS, but then DP comes off just as you hit SS, you're now in a situation where you have to delay DP for a GCD (you don't want DA to activate on DP by mistake here, as single target DADP gives you 100 potency for one DA, DASE gives you 120 over Del). There's no hurry to burn off MP in DASE unless you're in danger of capping, so you should always be predicting what's coming off CD over the next 3-6 GCDs in order to plan out where you're going to slot DA. Likewise, you probably can't double weave Plunge with DA without clipping into your GCD, so if Plunge comes off CD just after HS, then you should probably push DA forward unless you're saving Plunge for something else.

It's a good idea to activate DA earlier if you can, but you can't do it blindly.