[Opener/Tips/Advices] How to play Drk

[Syzygian]

I'm still getting use to healing DRKs (took a 5-ish month hiatus until recently) so I'm wondering what kind of buffs I'm looking for in the party window. I was just in a run with a DRK and I couldn't tell if he was using his CDs properly or not (I'm mostly looking to know what the icons are, but if I knew the names I could find them myself). I never saw any CDs from other tank classes and he seemed as squishy as a wet sponge... Also he was spamming this weird AoE spike-thingy against like 2-3 enemies. Is this normal? Thanks. Sorry if these are dumb questions. :P

Greetings healer! Please don't judge us by that guy.

DRK can use the cross class skills of the other two tanks, and has 4 native cooldowns. Shadow Wall is a dark purple icon with a 3-point star-looking emblem on it. Its the big Sentinal/Vengeance equivalent. Shadowskin looks like Protect, but red. Its the Rampart/Inner Beast equivalent, slightly weaker. Dark Dance is a purple-white swirly icon, this is a parry or parry+dodge rate increase, depending on whether it is boosted. Dark Mind you probably will not see much in dungeons, but its a magic-only Shadow Wall, essentially, and is an odd pyramid icon with gold/black/purple-ish colors.

The pink icon is Blood Price. Your DRK is trying to regen MP from getting hit. If you feel like being a team player, don't stun if you see this. Most good DRKs will find a way to work around it if you decide to holy-spam or the like, though.

The red emblem is Darkside. If you see a DRK tanking something without this, promptly feel free to request they turn it on. Grit is a black figure surrounded by blue/flames/sword looking things. This is their tank stance. Do not be surprised if your DRK turns this off during boss fights, in fact, prepare for it. If you see a deep red sword icon, that's Blood Weapon. This can't be used in Grit and is essentially their DPS stance in the form of a cooldown.

In particular, look out for Living Dead, the Hallowed Ground/Holmgang equivalent. Its a red hourglass icon. When it triggers, it turns gray. This grey icon will kill the DRK if you don't heal them for an amount totalling their max HP. However, they are invincible for the duration of the red and gray icons, both of which last up to 10 seconds. A lot of DRKs have a macro for this.

More than any other tank, DRK has a toolkit that lends itself to big pulls in dungeons (high MP returns from being hit repeatedly multiple times, being able to use that MP to self-heal proportionate to how many targets they can AoE on, and on that note, a ridiculously potent swiss-army-knife of AoE skills. Not to mention they can both blind and boost their own evasion when not regenerating MP), so a skilled DRK is probably going to see how far he/she can push you as far as large pulls. Just be ready for that.

Speaking of AoEs, the big spikey red thing (the sea urchin :P) is a targeted AoE called Abyssal Drain. Its a 120 potency enmity generator, and can be boosted to absorb 100% of the damage dealt to *each* target. This easily translates to 3-4K self heals on large pulls every 5 or so seconds, at the beginning when the DRK has Blood Price up. This is what most DRKs will be doing for the first 12-15 seconds of any big pull. If a DRK pulls a huge pack and spams this upon reaching their destination, they're doing it right. When they suddenly stop, it means Blood Price has fallen off or is about to fall off, and they're moving to a single target rotation, and will likely start using blind/evasion cooldowns at this point.

This is all assuming the DRK you got queued with is good, and sadly, not all of them are. But hopefully now you know what to expect a bit more =]

Is awareness even all that good? I thought it was the weakest defensive move. Enemies only have a 5% crit rate for 50% extra damage (2.5% damage reduction, only on abilities that crit) and it has a 5s shorter duration than foresight. I prefer foresight, as it can help with DRK's overall weaker mitigation vs. physical damage. If i'm trying to maintain constant mitigation against physical damage, I try to pair Foresight + DD + Reprisal proc (may need to hold the reprisal to get them to all line up) and mix that in with your normal shadowskin/shadow wall usage, etc.

Bloodbath doesn't seem that special either, particularly since you can't pair it with a damage boost like berserk or FoF. I mean, I use it on the DRK, but I wouldn't consider it must have like Convo & Provoke.

Here's the thing. If you do NOT take all of the cross class defensive cooldowns from PLD/WAR for your DRK, your DRK actually has less cooldowns than a PLD and WAR assuming they take eachother's cross class cooldowns.

Awareness pairs extremely well with Dark Dance, every crit you do not take is an increase in your parry rate and a direct boost to the effectiveness of that cooldown. Same goes for your dodge rate in dungeons, if you Dark Arts it. Blood Bath stacks well with DA Souleater in Grit, and synergizes well with Blood Weapon when out of Grit, as the increased attack speed=increased Blood Bath heals.

People have unrealistic expectations for cross-class cooldowns. Consider these 1/2 CDs, or 1/3 CDs. Combine them with eachother or your native CDs to boost their effectiveness. I don't consider any of them useless. Haymaker is useless. Cross-classing Skull Sunder or Savage Blade is useless. These CDs are not.