DRK question: when to blood weapon?

[ShadowLilly]

Tell that to DRK's maintanking savage without grit and with blood weapon. It is not for OT only and if the drk, healer and the dps can play he will never lose hate. Remember, its not always the tanks fault if he loses hate!

If you end up in a low level dungeon where you can use grit, use it no matter what.

Depend the situation, if you go for big pulls, for example, on lvl 50 you must keep grit up for less dmg while the dps do their job after they kill some mobs drop grit, use Blood Weapon to recover MP, activate Dark Arts and Soul Eater Combo. Some friends in LS told me that, tried out and worked well. I usually go for the safe way when i PUG in DF and keep grit up when i go tank my dailies, just to take less dmg and let the healers have fun dpsing, but now if the healer is good ill start drop grit and dps after make sure i have a solid aggro. Anyways i started enjoy Drk a few months ago and topics like this are very useful.

[Ilan]

Depend the situation, if you go for big pulls, for example, on lvl 50 you must keep grit up for less dmg while the dps do their job after they kill some mobs drop grit, use Blood Weapon to recover MP, activate Dark Arts and Soul Eater Combo. Some friends in LS told me that, tried out and worked well. I usually go for the safe way when i PUG in DF and keep grit up when i go tank my dailies, just to take less dmg and let the healers have fun dpsing, but now if the healer is good ill start drop grit and dps after make sure i have a solid aggro. Anyways i started enjoy Drk a few months ago and topics like this are very useful.

Of cause you don't drop grit during big pulls because of the damage that you'll take and because it makes your life easier keeping hate, you don't even drop grit on level 60 at the beginning of a pull. I was refering to bosses because that is what savage is about. You say let the healer have fun dpsing, but a bad healer will never start dpsing and if he does, you'll die even with tank stance up because he gets carried away or missreads the whole situation. In general you should only drop your tank stance if you know what you are doing.

Your example from keeper of the lake was by the way one of the lolDRK who doesn't know how to play at all. You can't take this as an example for keeping grit up.

[Sarcatica]

Of cause you don't drop grit during big pulls because of the damage that you'll take and because it makes your life easier keeping hate, you don't even drop grit on level 60 at the beginning of a pull. I was refering to bosses because that is what savage is about. You say let the healer have fun dpsing, but a bad healer will never start dpsing and if he does, you'll die even with tank stance up because he gets carried away or missreads the whole situation. In general you should only drop your tank stance if you know what you are doing.

Heck, DRK is so much fun on big pulls. Infinite mana, a lot of HP leech from DA>Abyssal Drain, even without Grit prepull you are quite fine.

Berke's footages: http://puu.sh/s5PQO/fe12a81195.webm http://puu.sh/s5PPk/f09ea8b256.webm

Some healers are annoying as heck tho, so I normally still do aoe so I don't have to worry about healer aggroing. And there is that WHM holy-ing every single opener, rip mana.

[ShadowLilly]

a bad healer will never start dpsing and if he does, you'll die even with tank stance up because he gets carried away or missreads the whole situation. In general you should only drop your tank stance if you know what you are doing.

Agreed, living dead won't save Drk if the healer take naps. It's rare find bad healers and tanks than bad dps.

[Seku]

Should use it when you got hate, you understand your Cool downs (Most Drk's don't.), there are 3 mobs or less (or about to be) as single target DPS starts to edge out over AoE. Any boss if your healer isn't trash and you understand the Cool down rotation for the fight, as you shouldn't be tanking with grit up once you've got a solid hate lead.

The above is assuming your armor is up to date along with your healer's. If either is behind, I'd test the waters first to make sure you won't go face planting into the ground.

[ShadowLilly]

Should use it ...

Drk, Pld or War can't maintain aggro if they pull and forget use Unleash, Flash and Overpower. This week i got a Drk(with strenght acc :x) in Keeper of the Lake and he did big pulls with Unmend, drop grit..Blood Weapon+Dark Arts, Soul Eater and forgot use Unleash to generate hate on mobs, he only used it after lose aggro. Lost aggro for Ast, Ninja and me Blm. In boss fights things got worse...Unmend, drop grit, Blood Weapon+Dark Arts, Soul Eater and again lost aggro for healer and dps even my blm having Quelling Strikes up, he kept losing aggro for me. He also rarely used Drk defensive cooldowns. In final boss we died twice and i asked him to keep grit up due his aggro and mp issues and he got all butthurt. He left, we got another Drk and he only dropped grit to dps, after take solid aggro on boss.

[Awful]

bad drk.

That Drk sounded like he didn't know how to play his class with Quelling Strikes is pretty bad...Usually for me I do drop Grit on big AoE pulls at 60, 1 because i'm heavily overgeared and 2 I play smart. Usually what I do is Unleash, DA+ DP, DA+ DD, drop grit and spam Abyssal Drain with Blood weapon up while DoTing and having Salted Earth up Abyssal Drain usually crit heals me for around 1500 which is enough for the healer to DPS.

As for low level pulls in the 30s-49 I do the same minus Abyssal Drain for obvious reasons but they're a bit trickier to live through especially if your healer isn't ready for it but Brayflox is so Drk friendly it's insane just do 1-2 Unleashs and drop grit it's like healing a paladin in SwO basically. Them getting their tank stance at 30 helps a ton so take advantage of Blood Weapon when you can and get into the habit of it while you're doing low level dungeons or 50 dungeons.

[MoarLegion]

On cooldown, when there aren't enough things to kill you, and you have cooldowns available to keep damage consistent.

[randysquirrel]

The general idea is that you pull in grit, establish enough of an aggro lead, then drop it when safe to do so, and push more dps

it only works if you're in a group of people that know what they're doing tho, eg healers knowing when dmg is coming and mitigating, you using your cds appropriately, dps using aggro reducing abilities when they should, etc. And you rarely/never get that in df

other times you might need to use grit as an extra cd, or if you're close to losing aggro. drop grit obv if there is a tankswap and you become the ot