DRK Questions

[Syzygian]

So I used to main PLD pre-3.0 and switched over to DRK when Heavensward released. I'm really enjoying the job, but I just had a few questions (mostly to see how others play the job).

1) When do you pop your defensive cooldowns? I was wondering if you always try to keep one up, or only use it when you are taking big hits. So far I have been popping them when I feel like I'm taking too much damage, or if I know a boss is going to use a tankbuster.

2) DE or SE combo? I know people have said to spam delirium for the added 20 potency, but is that really more useful than the self heal from souleater? Obviously adding dark arts to soul eater whenever possible is good, but for just the basic combo (assuming delirium is still applied to the target).

3) How often/when do you use dark arts on abyssal drain? I have only been using it about once or twice per large pull personally, but I'm just curious here as it uses a LOT of mana.

4) How often (if ever) do you add dark arts to carve and spit?

5) How often (if ever) do you add dark arts to dark passenger?

First of all, mad props to you for asking questions and wanting to play the job properly instead of bitching about how its different from PLD/WAR. I will try to give you in-depth answers and not gloss over rules that have exceptions like I see a few other people commenting have done.

1. This is a mistake a lot of tanks make, is they will be too conservative with cooldowns and save them for an emergency situation that never happens. If you're not rotating cooldowns constantly, save for 1 or 2 that you're saving for a big hit, you're letting yourself take damage that could have been mitigated for no reason. In most content in the game thus far, you can save Shadowskin and/or Shadow Wall for any moderately powerful hit that you know is coming. If its *really* big, and physical, pop one of those with Dark Dance. If its *really* big and magical, pair them with a DA Dark Mind. Other than that, you can easily rotate Dark Dance along with things like Foresight and Awareness to level out and clip the claws so to speak, of consistent incoming damage from trash, boss autos, etc, because Dark Dance's recast time is so short. Work in Convalescence as well, and if you use Bloodbath, pop it when you have a lot of MP to burn on DA Souleaters and get some nice self-heals. If there is no tank buster worth saving a CD for, what I do is pop CDs in pairs, and when they wear off, pop another two. Use Shadowskin and Shadow Wall by themselves though. Your recast times are such that you should have minimal downtime. Always do whatever you can to mitigate damage, no matter how small. Tank busters are easy, countless guides will tell you what CDs to pop and when, yet everyone revolves their thinking around them and assumes that any form of mitigation or self-healing you have is only worth its weight only against a tank buster, which is extremely flawed, unbalanced thinking. Tank busters are a piece of cake to survive. Healers top you up, you push these two buttons, boom, done. Its the damage in between that can get away from you.

2. Its a pretty simple priority system. Get hate (hate is very easy to get and keep on DRK, in fact its a net loss to include it in our DPS rotation, so get a lot of hate and get it fast so you can start DPSing ), keep Scourge up, keep Delirium up, if you're at greater than 75% MP you should be burning that MP on DA Souleaters. Even if there's a MNK in your group, if you need MP, Delirium is your top DPS. If you don't, DA Souleater is. If you're ever regenerating MP and you're over like 6K of it and you're not using it, that's bad. On that note, if you're off-tanking, don't pop Blood Weapon at the very beginning. The MP returns are wasted and thus you'll do a slightly better burst but you'll shoot your sustained DPS in the foot. Make a decent dent in your MP before you start popping CDs to regenerate it. It is hard to define a rotation for DRK because its all based on how much MP you have, so its very situational what you'll use. Aside from an opener, your sustained rotation is pretty much whatever the situation calls for, and keeping DoTs up. Also, the self-heal from DA Souleater is just fine. People like to say "if you're relying on X to do Y you've got problems" while describing a situation that is unlikely and silly. You use it consistently for steady, small amounts of healing, not to save your life from anything. As I said in the last question, avoid this mentality while tanking, where you focus on the buster and disregard maintaining your HP and mitigation in between, as if a tank's job entails nothing (other than hitting the boss) that isn't intended to survive a tank buster Boss autos are criting for 4.5K in Alex Savage, don't disregard the "fluff" damage, the devil is in the details, and in between the tank busters.

3. At the start of a pull, I'll get everything grouped up, pop a cooldown or two (unless there's mobs hitting me with magic I'll usually start with Shadowskin or Dark Dance+Foresight), pop Blood Price, and then immediately start spamming Abyssal Drain. During this I watch my HP. If I ever drop below like, 50%, that's when I'll DA an Abyssal Drain. However, it depends on how many mobs you have too. Abssyal Drain hits for anywhere from 3-550ish depending on your gear, so if you're tanking 4 or fewer mobs its probably a net loss to DA it. More than that though and you'll get like 2500+ HP from it. Basically if you're doing big manly pulls with 6+ mobs and you start plummeting it can be a good emergency button that will do damage, keep hate, and heal you for 2-4K depending on how much trash there is. If you drop below like 30% MP because a mob or two died really fast or wasn't hitting you much, switch to Unleashed. When Blood Price has about 1-2 seconds remaining, I stop AoEing. To sum up, I only do it if I'm tanking a LOT of mobs and my healer needs a little hand. And you should have plenty of attention to devote to that after popping your CDs and just standing there spamming one button

4. If you're tanking a boss and not a fuckton of adds, ALWAYS DA Carve and Spit. Watch its CD and make sure you're going to have the MP to do so. If you're tanking the aforementioned fuckton of adds, the 450 hit on only one of those adds is not worth the MP, you'd be better off (and doing more total DPS) using it to regenerate MP to continue AoEing. If you have to use it without DA on a boss, there is probably something you should have done different. On this note, its important to rotate your usage of DA based on its recast timer for maximum burst during times of high MP sustain. For example, you can time it so that you can DA two Souleater Combos and DA a Carve in between. One could argue that you can use un-DAed Carve to maintain MP to continue DAing Souleaters, but if you're DAing that many Souleaters in a row, you're almost certainly letting Delirium and Scourge fall off.

5. Never, unless I fuck up. Dark Passenger gains only 100 potency from DA, Souleater gains 140, Carve gains 350. So its a straight DPS loss. Weave in Passenger as often as you can and try and maintain MP to do so, but never DA it. Also, the blind is useless and actually a hindrance when you're trying to get hit by mobs to regain MP, so its not even really that useful when you're AoEing to DA it. It'd be a nice burst, but would neuter your sustain over the course of the pull.

[Litegrace]

Snip

Thanks everyone, I was just curious how other DRK's were playing. I figured that most of it was situational, but there were some good pointers in here. I have the tanking aspect down (pulling mobs, keeping aggro, staying alive), but mostly just needed some help with the job itself (maximizing dps and utilizing MP for the right abilities).

So essentially, I should always try to keep up a defensive buff whenever I am tanking a boss or multiple mobs correct? So basically just save shadowskin, shadow wall, and dark mind for big hits/magic damage?

As for dark passenger, I just feel like having the blind and extra dps on multiple mobs would make a big difference but I could be wrong. I guess I'm just so used to weaving in flashes between Paladin cooldowns that I have the mindset of blind being a good debuff to have up.

I also need to be less conservative with my MP, especially with blood price up (I get paranoid when I hit 50% or less).

[Syzygian]

Thanks everyone, I was just curious how other DRK's were playing. I figured that most of it was situational, but there were some good pointers in here. I have the tanking aspect down (pulling mobs, keeping aggro, staying alive), but mostly just needed some help with the job itself (maximizing dps and utilizing MP for the right abilities).

So essentially, I should always try to keep up a defensive buff whenever I am tanking a boss or multiple mobs correct? So basically just save shadowskin, shadow wall, and dark mind for big hits/magic damage?

As for dark passenger, I just feel like having the blind and extra dps on multiple mobs would make a big difference but I could be wrong. I guess I'm just so used to weaving in flashes between Paladin cooldowns that I have the mindset of blind being a good debuff to have up.

I also need to be less conservative with my MP, especially with blood price up (I get paranoid when I hit 50% or less).

Yeah this goes for any tank, always keep something up. Certain cooldowns like foresight and awareness are not designed to be popped on their own, you should stack these with something else even when just tanking trash. As I mentioned earlier there is no point in saving big mitigation CDs like Shadowskin/wall if there is no tankbuster in the encounter so feel free to work these into a CD rotation. You can practice popping your CDs in a fashion that enables you to have nearly 100% uptime some form of mitigation, especially on DRK where two of your major, job specific CDs have a recast of only 60 seconds. It can also be a good idea to save Convalescence for a tank buster if you realize that you are not going to have all of the mitigation CDs you need to survive it comfortably.

The added MP you save from not DAing passenger and added MP you gain from mobs being able to hit you stead of missing you repeatedly vastly helps your sustain. If your DPS are AoEing and you're wearing some pentamelds, abyssal drain spam will absolutely decimate large packs of trash. Speaking of AoEing, remember to multi-DoT. keep Salted Earth up, and put Scourge on as many mobs as you can; its a very cheap DoT for its potency, way better than fracture.

MP conservation while MTing is a fight-by-fight thing. Lots of bosses spend as much time fucking with the rest of your party (AoEs, unavoidable raid-wide casts, etc.) as they do hitting you, so you need to be aware of just how much the boss is gonna be hitting you, and adjust your MP usage accordingly. Frankly though, DA has such a high MP cost, that by the time you're in the danger zone you likely won't even have the MP to cast it. I generally start worrying about MP once I get under about 2500. Honestly, if Darkside falls off, its bad, try never to let it happen, but don't panic. Just hit a syphon strike and recast it, its off the GCD so its very easy to put it right back up if it ever drops. But yeah, don't be too conservative. If your MP is above 25-30%, it had better be dropping like a stone, or at least jumping up and down, or you're doin it wrong There's also little things you can do like putting Sole Survivor on any adds that spawn, and you should be used to doing that in dungeons anyway (I usually am able to use it every other trash pack).

One more thing - if there is ever a break in the fight (boss jumps, disappears, goes untargetable, whatever) TURN OFF DARKSIDE. There's literally no reason to have Darkside on while in combat if you're not hitting anything, if you're not dealing damage, it becomes nothing more than an MP bleed, it should go without saying, and likewise, if your party isn't able to hit anything, your BRD/MCH should be playing Ballad/MP turret, and with Darkside off, you will benefit from it. And unlike Grit, Darkside is off GCD and has a relatively cheap MP cost.

[Phoenicia]

One more thing - if there is ever a break in the fight (boss jumps, disappears, goes untargetable, whatever) TURN OFF DARKSIDE. There's literally no reason to have Darkside on while in combat if you're not hitting anything, if you're not dealing damage, it becomes nothing more than an MP bleed, it should go without saying, and likewise, if your party isn't able to hit anything, your BRD/MCH should be playing Ballad/MP turret, and with Darkside off, you will benefit from it. And unlike Grit, Darkside is off GCD and has a relatively cheap MP cost.

Depends on how long the jump is.　Darkside requires 442 MP to activate, which is slightly more than 2 ticks (6 seconds). So if the jump is NOT 6 seconds or longer, do not bother turning off Darkside.