Quote Originally Posted by AlexiIvaniskavich View Post
snip
Awareness is in my top 5 for two reasons:

1. Mercy Stroke over the course of a fight is an EXTREMELY small DPS increase for a non-WAR; its cooldown is longer and DRK has no Berserk or FoF-style buffs with which to increase its damage. Its 200 potency which is the equivalent of a pair of auto-attacks. Lets take Plunge for instance, since it has the exact same potency. Assuming a fight where you have no adds to kill, you get 1/3rd of the DPS from Mercy Stroke as you do from Plunge (same potency, 1/3rd the recast) and then, only 1/5th of that because it is only useable when the target is under 20% HP. So if you gave Mercy Stroke Plunge's recast time and made it usable from 100% HP and below, it'd be the equivalent of a 13.3 potency oGCD (200/5/3). That's how little it helps.

2. 90% of the time you die and it wasn't the healers fault and it wasn't to a tankbuster, it was a crit. Oh, and then there's this:

-PLD-------/WAR-------/DRK
-Rampart/Inner Beast/Shadowskin
-Sentinel/Vengeance/Shadow Wall
-Bulwark/Raw Intuition/Dark Dance
-Sheltron/Thrill of Battle/Dark Mind
-Hallowed Ground/Holmgang/Living Dead
-Foresight/Foresight/Foresight
-Convalescence/Convalescence/Convalescence
-Bloodbath/Bloodbath/Bloodbath
-Awareness/Awareness/?????????

If you don't take Awareness on DRK, you have less cooldowns than the other tanks. This preys on my sense of OCD, personally. Awareness also synergizes very well with almost any native cooldown DRK has. If you feel that you need to bring Mercy Stroke to help with a DPS check, by all means knock yourself out. Just remember, its like a 13.3 potency oGCD on a 30 second recast. Either way, its not a huge difference.