Tanking, Dark Arts, and Souleater?

[Gangaloo]

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:

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

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

It's 1340 vs 1320.

[Sapphidia]

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

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

It's 1340 vs 1320.

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!

[Gangaloo]

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!

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.

[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.

[Giantbane]

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

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

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.

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.

[Marxam]

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

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.