DRK Cross Class Skills

[FOOLK1LLAH]

Greetings everyone, I'm sure there is a thread like this somewhere on this forum but since I could not find it I will post a new one.

My Dark Knight just hit 50 last night and I was wondering what cross class skills I should be using from now til 60? (if I haven't been using the right ones already) Right now my DRK has Foresight, Bloodbath, Convalescence, and Provoke. Is this right, or should I be using something else? I know I get Abyssal Drain but that's at 56 and only with Dark Arts active so do I still need Bloodbath? Provoke is good for some single target pulls but that's about all I use it for as I normally lean towards Unmend. Foresight is great and Convalescence I'm not sure if I need it or not.

Any help with this matter would be appreciated and I look forward to any advice that ya'll can give.

[Einheri]

Provoke just puts you on top of threat it doesn't build threat. You can use it to pull cause of the range but be sure you follow up with a threat building attack. Any action will pull threat of you only provoke.

Cross class skills are mediocre at best for pretty much every one. You can either take awareness cause it prevents crit and if an attack would crit you can't parry it. You can take fracture its a poor dps dot or you can take mercy stroke for the free 200 potency attack once a pull and slight chance for a heal.

provoke for tank swaps is basically the only needed cross class everything else is extremely mediocre. For bloodbath figure if you are doing 1000 dps you then heal for 250 hps for 15 seconds, its less then a single cure from a healer spread out. Fracture is somewhere around 7% damage reduction against physical attacks. Con is straight 20% healing its not amazing but helpful.

They are all meh but better than nothing.

[Syzygian]

Greetings everyone, I'm sure there is a thread like this somewhere on this forum but since I could not find it I will post a new one.

My Dark Knight just hit 50 last night and I was wondering what cross class skills I should be using from now til 60? (if I haven't been using the right ones already) Right now my DRK has Foresight, Bloodbath, Convalescence, and Provoke. Is this right, or should I be using something else? Iknow I get Abyssal Drain but that's at 56 and only with Dark Arts active so do I still need Bloodbath? Provoke is good for some single target pulls but that's about all I use it for as I normally lean towards Unmend. Foresight is great and Convalescence I'm not sure if I need it or not.

Any help with this matter would be appreciated and I look forward to any advice that ya'll can give.

The ones you have are 4 of the best, but cross-class skills are mostly fluff. Not useless, but not amazing either. When you get Abyssal Drain, that does NOT replace Bloodbath. You should have and be making use of both (but not at the same time). Abyssal Drain is your go-to AoE spam move, and you ONLY use it when A: Blood Price is active and you're tanking 3+ targets or B: when you need to pull multiple targets clumped closely at a distance. Abyssal Drain can be used with or without Dark Arts, and I would not use it with Dark Arts unless you are tanking 5-6 or more mobs and again, have Blood Price Active. The idea is, the more you are getting hit, the more MP you'll have, and the more damage you'll be taking, so the more you'll want to self-heal with AD.

Abyssal Drain is magical damage so it benefits from buffs to magic damage, but it runs off your Strength stat like everything else. Confusing I know. Bloodbath only heals you when you're dealing physical damage. Keep that in mind.

Foresight is good but not great. I would never use it by itself. Stack it with something else. Keep in mind it only boosts your defense, not magic defense, and scales with gear, unlike Shadowskin and such, which scale off the damage you take.

Convalescence is actually the best. Its required IMO. It doesn't mitigate damage but it makes you require less healing. Again its well-stacked with other cooldowns. The same goes for most cross-class skills - they shine the most when you tack them on to something else.

Awareness and Mercy Stroke are completely up to preference. I personally prefer Awareness by default unless I'm struggling to meet some sort of DPS check, the time that Mercy Stroke saves through added DPS is almost completely inconsequential. Crits can happen at any time and the ability to avoid them synergizes with almost every other defensive cooldown you have, as they can all be crit through, and being unable to be critically hit also indirectly increases your parry rate slightly.

You should not be pulling with provoke unless:

1. The target is too far away to reach with your other abilities and/or gets healer aggro. This must immediately be followed up by Unmend or the like as the target approaches.
2. In certain, rare situations in the game, usually in raids, adds will spawn with pre-allocated aggro on the party (a lot of it), almost always accumulated against the healer. In this scenario Unmend, etc. will not catch you up, and you most provoke, and then follow up.

Other than that, NEVER pull with provoke (definitely not against bosses). Its primary use is for tank swaps or regaining aggro after you've lost it, and in all of these scenarios it must be followed up with an ability that deals damage and therefore enmity in order for you to keep it.

Other than these, the other cross class skills are almost 100% useless to DRK. Skull Sunder and Savage Blade should never be CC'ed by anyone or anything, Flash is a 100% loss to Unleash (unless in the future we see more mechanics where we must hold hate without dealing damage for some reason), and Fracture is a big DPS and TP loss for DRK.

[Jonnycbad]

I'll be honest, I like pulling with Provoke in 4man dungeons whenever its up due to its ridiculous range and then do my AoE as soon as the enemies are in range. Provoke is 99% never needed in a dungeon anyway unless you die or are tanking without a tank stance on (arguably this is not uncommon if you are overgeared in an expert dungeon) and DPS go ham. Although this is not a problem usually if you open with an enmity combo or two anyway, I find.

[Merkava]

I'll be honest, I like pulling with Provoke in 4man dungeons whenever its up due to its ridiculous range and then do my AoE as soon as the enemies are in range. Provoke is 99% never needed in a dungeon anyway unless you die or are tanking without a tank stance on (arguably this is not uncommon if you are overgeared in an expert dungeon) and DPS go ham. Although this is not a problem usually if you open with an enmity combo or two anyway, I find.

Then the first tic of Regen cause enemies to zip right into your healer since you a grand total of 1 enmity. You are ultimately right that provoke shouldn't be needed in most 4-man content but provoke can help in the case of any mistake and using it at the start of the pull means that you'll have it on cooldown when you might need it. The times where pulling with provoke is a good idea are extremely rare as what range unmend (or the vastly superior Abyssal Drain) offers is more than enough while ensuring that your healer isn't going to receive any unecessary damage.

[FOOLK1LLAH]

Thanks for the advice guys, really helpful. I'm a relatively new tank as I have a lvl 51 MNK and a lvl 58 NIN so I'm always grateful to more experienced players that can help me improve my tanking game.

[Dante_V]

I have the those four and awareness. I use foresight and awareness as complimentary cooldowns along with others. By themselves they aren't all that but in combination with others they can be useful. It won't make or break you either way but I'm big on using what I have available. A good example is dark dance/awareness to increase parry or dark dance/foresight/awareness for increased physical defense and parry. On tank busters in thordan and savage ive used foresight and shadow skin to save myself a few times when i've accidentally blown my other "pairing" cooldown out of rotation by accident and it helps. Or bloodbath while doing DA Souleater to get back more hp returns. By themselves they arent really all that but they do provide some decent synergy when paired with other cool downs. Play around and see what you can come up with.