Warrior and Dark Knight tips?

[Ninster]

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.

[AnimaS]

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.

[Misha_Tameshigiri]

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).

[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.

[ArdorGrey]

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.

[AnimaS]

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

[fm_fenrir]

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.

[ArdorGrey]

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.

[SpookyGhost]

It's not really a thing in savage

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

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.

[Ninster]

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