Can I play drk like I play pally

[HelSpites]

My question is if your playing pali what are you doing you are doing single target damage , and spaming flashing are using scorn when it comes off cooldown...

You know, you keep talking about how paladins don't do AoE, but you know, as a paladin, you should be putting up goring blade on as many mobs as you can when you do big pulls. Tanking is all about holding hate and staying alive while doing as much damage as possible. Even paladins, with their limited skill set, should be stance dancing and and using what tools they do have to maximize their damage. Unless you're new and still learning the class, there's really no reason why you should gimp your damage output the way you do.

[bswpayton]

You know, you keep talking.

I did just start about 2 days ago, and just found it more comfortable to grit on adds, and dark side and blood weapon on bosses if Ive become comfortable with the healer if not ill even keep grit on then. My idea of a successful run is playing it safe and not dying and gettin through the dungeon a whip is unsuccessful in my eyes, and just tryin to play like a pure dps with no defense can likely lead to death which I dont like. I dono about other peoples experiences but I see people dying all the time or little things being forgotten all the time. And we are human I am human I do the same thing, but if Im tanking its not about a speed run to me which Im willing to do more so now with a drk, its about nobody dying and gettin through the dungeon without having to regroup.

[Lilseph]

I personally think you should stick with Paladin. If the MP drainage is an issue for you, maybe DRK is not a job you will be comfortable with. There are certain actions, both mitigation, self-healing and damage dealer, that can only be activated with Darkside up. You have also plenty of tools to recover your MP: Blood Price, Syphon Strike for single target, Sole Survivor, Carve and Spit if you don't care about the DPS loss and Blood Weapon which is also single target. You can also drop Darkside in between pulls to re-generate your MP. The reactivation of said skill consumes less than the 7% of your MP.

So you have two options: Stick with Paladin or level Dark Knight to 60 and take your own conclusions.

[Awful]

@ OP you should keep Darkside up 100% of the time there's no excuse to not keep it on you can't play Drk like a pld they have similar CDs but in the end they're both vastly different in terms of gameplay and scope. If you don't use Darkside all the time and you hit 60 people are going to make comments in dungeons, heck i'd be saying say in SV "why aren't you using Darkside?". I know i'm a Drk main but you have Blood Price (lvl 38) and you can hop out of Grit during boss fights and trash to use Blood Weapon things don't start getting hairy until DD or if you have a bad healer.

You're also missing out on a ton of your defensive and offensive CDs as well as not having Dark Arts available (you'll get it later) which Dark Arts boosts certain abilities at the cost of a ton of your MP roughly 1/3. Darkside is also a 15% dmg AND threat increase whereas plds have Fight or Flight on a min CD but the different is you can keep 1 on forever.

I know you stated you're an average player but do you really want to be? I'm not attacking you by any means but you should be listening to what the comments are saying as a tank you WILL be DPSing at max lvl once you've gotten threat, as a tank you WILL be using all your toolkit (as well as any class). By not using Darkside you're not becoming a regular player you're becoming what the community doesn't like and if people see that you haven't gotten the basics as a Drk they'd kick you, not to sound cynical but I would too after I said in /p chat "Why aren't you using Darkside?" and not getting an appropriate response.

This is why we have jobs like Blms only using ice spells/ fire III > Fire I > Transpose at max lvl, or Brds not using Wm and doing 30% less dmg, and there are other drks who don't use Darkside 100% of the time as well just on bosses, you don't want to be lumped in with that group.

[bswpayton]

@ OP you should keep Darkside .

I play blm also and trust me I dont just use blizzard 3 if anything I hardly ever use blizzard, and I mention keeping grit up as a lack of trust on my part the game is full of other players that are just simply average and its a great divide between them and great players. I dont trust a healer unless I just see they are doing great from the start to keep me up in an offensive only stance. Like I said last night I ran into two healers that used protect mid fight like what is the point in that exactly. So I do use darkside, but Im saying I dont see a need to have it up 100 percent of the time, but if a player kicks me from a party then so be it simply if I am keeping hate and still dpsing even in grit I really dont understand the problem. So your saying that when your outside of grit and you just have an average healer that youve never died in a dungeon, from tryin to do a pull the healer couldnt keep up with?

Like I feel like dying is acceptable in this game more than a dps loss , are big pulls at the risk of dying is ok maybe my objective is different from others, I dont wana die in any content period if I can help it and everyone just isnt at the maximum skill level to avoid that so I just prefer the safe side.

[Awful]

So I do use darkside, but Im saying I dont see a need to have it up 100 percent of the time, but if a player kicks me from a party then so be it simply if I am keeping hate and still dpsing even in grit I really dont understand the problem.

The problem is you're missing out on an infinite 15% dmg increase, threat increase, defensive and offensive CDs if you get in this mind set that you don't need Darkside then all you're gonna do is spam Unleash and Abyssal drain without it on making the run go by soo much slower. You could use Dark Arts + Dark Passenger for example and then use Dark Arts + Dark Dance and the adds won't even hit you because of the blind effect on Dark Passenger you can't even use it if you don't have Darkside up. You're also missing out on Dark Arts + Dark Mind which is one of the strongest magical CD in the game (if not the strongest) and you NEED to use it especially in A12 which is regular content, you can even use it when you pull a pack of sprites and shrug off the attacks or any kind of magical enemy it's amazing.

Another is Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain where it's costly but a great AoE that also steals health when you Dark Arts it again another ability you're losing out on, you'll lose threat to a geared DPS if you're ilvl 220 or under, hell I even see tanks struggle with ilvl 240-250 and if you don't have Darkside on guess what? You're losing threat. You're playing safe but why not start experimenting and taking the time to learn how to play Drk for later on? I don't get why people just want to get away with the bare minimum and say "I'm good I don't wanna do this because it's outside of my bubble" just try you'll surprise yourself.

And you're wrong about the dying is more acceptable you get weakness, Hp/tp/mp is pretty much at 0, the thing about a DPS loss is it's still a time waster. I know this is a little off topic but I was healing a Gubal HM the other day and I had a tank (Drk) who also didn't use Darkside unless it was on bosses he lost threat and only used Unleash and Abyssal Drain, and it made the run go by 10 mins longer because of it. Bottom line we're all paying customers but not using an ability that they give you at the start and is easily manageable and people still choose not to use it is beyond me.

[bswpayton]

The .

Well I am still learning the class but I have seen where Ive taken grit off just to use dark weapon where I lost hate, in a dungeon, I can only do it on a party by party basses simpy because like I said , its just to many players Ive come across not using all their abilities either , like the no protect at the beginning of dungeon just drives me nuts, like I have patience enough to wait on a whm to cast stone 2 , when Im running my whm , I hardly get that ever. When I run my whm or scholar I try to stay step for step with the tank when pullin, other healers lag behind and show up like after nearly half my health is gone. what ive seen no tank is gona wait on me but again I dont get the same from other players. So the only thing I can do is play it based on my party, I just cant go full offensive if I know that its a chance I could die, Id rather take longer than die, because whips make a dungeon way longer than anything.

[alimdia]

snip

First of all you need to get familiarized by the class before you start stance dancing, you don't have to remove grit until you're comfortable with keeping aggro, once you learn your basic job (keeping aggro, using cds) comes your second job, to deal as much damage as you can while taking care of your main job. I personally don't expect tanks to stance dance in leveling dungeons, but the closer you get to 60 the more familiar you should be with your class, by that point you should start practicing stance dancing. Note I'm talking about grit here, darkside should be up 100% because there's no reason not to, if you use blood price you wont run out of MP.

Second, if you are properly mitigating damage you need to stop worrying about your health bar, pretend it isn't there, it's the healer's job to keep you alive, if you are doing your main and secondary tasks you shouldn't worry about your health bar, even if the healer is constantly letting you drop to 20% health before healing you, as long as you're not dying he's doing his job and you're worrying for nothing, you don't gain extra points for having your HP bar full. What if you die despite you using cds and dodging aoes? The responsibility is on the healer, not you, again stop worrying.

[bswpayton]

First of all you need

As a healer main I cant help but look at hp, I start to worry even when healing when someones health gets below 25 percent, so naturally as a tank I feel the same I have used max potion on myself several times to avoid death. I been using my cooldowns and I use unleash as often as I used flash witch is often because its so easy to lose hate with flash alone, so I have done some mobs with an unleash spam and using blood price to where its almost unlimited. and when the mob is smaller then I will turn on darkside and dps. Its just from the beginning of the pull I dont want my mp going down to where I can only do one or two unleashes and end up losing hate that was my issue with pali flash its so easy to lose hate with so far with unleash I never lose it. I just wonder at wat point if any will someone say yess its the dps job to do the most damage, thats how it is with pali they are just a punching bag for adds pretty much but for drk you have to play a certain way, surviving is my number one priority Im not a risk taker. Ive found people complain the most when you whip more so than the dungeon taking thirty mins to do.

[FallenWings]

Dark Knights do not have as many effective cool downs compared to a Paladin to be an effective main tank. Dark Knights are only situational main tanks when there is a boss who is magic focus or when there is no paladin tanks. You are expected to preform max DPS just like any other tank. Paladin's will have a second AOE around mid 50's to help pull bigger mobs, but the answer to your question is that all tanks are expected to know their rotation and maximize dps to ensure a smooth fight.

This is incorrect.
DRK only loses out on Sheltron and Halone(Reprisal?) against a PLD when considering physical CD rotation. They however have more than adequate CD's to tank any fight without excessive damage stress. Paladin only has priority over Warrior(after pull) or over Dark Knight in absolute cutting edge progression in a physical orientated fight with minimum ilvl, but even then, it is questionable.

Dark Knight has the greatest priority in the main tank spot due to the existence of Blood Price, Reprisal, and Lower Blows versus Paladin's Shield Swipe and Warrior's nothing.

They are not situational main tanks; they are the best main tank.