The Definitive Dark Knight Guide

[Lyth]

Foresight is a solid defensive ability. It's become significantly more effective since the last expansion, and it supplements DRK quite well in the physical defense department. But you don't have to give up Foresight to get Mercy Stroke, so this isn't really an issue.

Bloodbath is a fantastic ability on WAR, and to a lesser extent, PLD. It has good synergy with potency-boosting offensive cooldowns such as Berserk/FoF. The fact that it's linked to physical damage lets WAR take advantage of it in multi-target situations, where it really shines. In addition, the trait doubles its duration from 15 s to 30 s.

DRK isn't really able to take advantage of that so well. Instead of popping skills like FoF or Berserk to boost potency, we drop Grit. Bloodbath doesn't interact with our magical based attacks, which make up a reasonable portion of our oGCD attacks and all of our multi-target attacks. It also doesn't interact with DoT ticks, which make up a much higher percentage of DRK dps than they do on WAR.

Lastly, remember that Bloodbath is tied to the amount of physical damage that you do in a 15 s period. Let's face it, if you're subscribing to the AFK-shieldwall tank mindset, you're probably not going to get a whole lot of a defensive advantage from this. Tanks who understand the patterns of incoming damage in a given fight well enough to maximize their dps are the ones who will get the maximum healing potency from this skill, and they're probably going to bring along Mercy Stroke because it's an extra oGCD (i.e. free potency).

Also, if it's worth anything, the DRK in this raid tier's set of world-first clears uses Mercy Stroke.

On a side-note: there's nothing that says that you should dps at the expense of survival or holding aggro. If generating enmity or mitigating attacks is challenging for you, then this must be your focus. But it's a bit like breathing. It's fundamental, but once you figure out how to do it automatically, then you get to move on to other matters.

You don't start a video game on Easy difficulty if you're already familiar with the gameplay. You start on Normal difficulty at the least.

It's never "How do I press activate this instantaneous oGCD defensive cooldown during the telegraphed 2 second tankbuster cast while staying in defensive stance for the entire fight and using my threat combo." It's "How do I use my defensive cooldowns to absorb all of the unmarked cleaves so that I can stay out of stance for as much of the fight as possible." On Tank jobs, the more skilled that your use of defensive abilities becomes, the better your offensive capability becomes. The two are intertwined.