Dark Knight's should not use Darkness stance for pulls with 3 or more mobs.....

[Madruck]

As per leveling my own Dark Knight, I burn through alot of MP keeping aggro from ranged AOEers and while having a High Damage Melee or Physical DPS in the group. As I have been leveling my 2nd job to 60 which is BLM, I have noticed so many bad Dark Knights in game more focused on acting like they are a DPS role and damage than actually a tank! Darkness is Dark Knights DPS stance while grit is our tank stance.....using it in boss fights is fine since most of the time there are little to no adds.....but during large pulls such as in level 53 dungeon...or the level 60 dungeons....it is so easy for a Dark Knight to lose hate with other geared players which easily wipe a party! Stay in grit stance and remember that Dark Knight is a tank...not dps. Focus on holding aggro and not on what your damage is!

[Lorielle]

Errr...You can have both Darkside and Grit on at the same time? Beyond that, it's up to the player to actually tank. Toggling Grit for any reason during trash will probably end poorly on the hate scale(Not counting times of Invulnerability)

[Janhyua]

What? I have dark side and grit on both at the same time I go in and and spam unleash like a mad man and turn on blood price and then I go afk. Problem?

[Soular]

You know, I had a rather scary run-in with someone who asked me

"Why do you use Darkside while in Grit?"


I didn't know what to say to him other than "Dark Arts". Much like I don't know what to say to the OP, so....

Dark Arts..?

[rjspencer4]

Darkside is supposed to be on regardless of whether or not we're MT or OT. Dark Mind, Dark Dance, Dark Arts and the other moves that start with the word Dark can't be used if Darkside is off. I've never had a reason to turn Darkside off, if you're using syphon strike, blood price, carve and spit, and sole survivor as needed then you shouldn't need to turn it off either.

[Hundred]

Testing is saying Drks have the highest Enmity Modifier of all tank stances.
Get better at holding aggro? You can run Darkside & Grit at the same bloody time and you should be dropping Salted Earth on them as well which only helps you with Enmity.

Solm Ai is nothing wtf.

[Aedra]

...
This is a troll thread right?

Been running dungeon since 51 to almost 59 (1 more vault run), full time darkside+grit w/o any mp and enmity problem and pulling non-stop w/o waiting for MP. The only time I'll have problem is when whm holy while I was using blood price.

[Agrieus]

I wouldn't say it's a troll thread since he does have a point about there being quite a few DK's not used to rolling a tank. I too run DS with grit and don't have any issues with holding hate. I'm only 55 atm, and I do turn off DS at times to conserve MP (I also momentarily turn off DS when I pop blood price just to get mp to fill back up quicker) but I'm a tank by trade so I'm used to having to adjust should the need arise. There's still a lot of new Dark Knights that don't assign enough keys to their keyboard so they're having to point and click their abilities which slows down their reactions and movements considerably. The new breed of tanks will get better with time. It just takes practice, like with all things.

[Agrieus]

On a side note, if there's only one or two enemies left I WILL turn off Grit and pop blood weapon to refill MP and burn the last remaining enemies quicker. I'll do it on bosses too, but I'll time it after I'm hit with the big attacks so I don't run the risk of being put down too low on my HP bar and I'll swap back to grit around the time that either another big attack is coming or Blood Weapon runs out. No need to take big risk if there's no real gain.

[Martin_Arcainess]

Errr...You can have both Darkside and Grit on at the same time? Beyond that, it's up to the player to actually tank. Toggling Grit for any reason during trash will probably end poorly on the hate scale(Not counting times of Invulnerability)

And the fact grit cost MP to be turned back on.