Lil Drk Help/Advice?

[StormDisciple]

As the title says.

Little over half into 52 Drk. What armor/weapon should I be gearing towards as of now and till 60?

Any general tanking tips? Class wise, pretty experienced in other mmos, but this is a whole different beast with totally different fangs.

Much Appreciated.

[ZhaneX]

Ironworks Gear purchased with Poetics is pretty good all around. If you can upgrade it to ilvl130, even better. Leveling stuff for 50-60 caps out at ilvl150, so it you can get upgraded Ironworks, you're pretty much golden. Otherwise just whatever you can snag from the leveling dungeons.

Far as general tanking tips...always remember to have Grit on when tanking, keep an eye on your MP and CDs...that's really all I can think to say?

[Tint]

you should use dark side all the time. without dark side the drk is just a worse version of paladin. this will drain your mana, of course.
to solve the mana problem try to use your aggro combo as few as possible. on most bosses i only use the aggro combo just one time in the opener. your main combo is the delirium combo (in tank stance). this will give you enough mana to always use dark passenger and dark arts + carve and spit (when you are lvl 60) when it is back from cooldown.

tanking with the delirium combo will also lead to higher dps, because it is your strongest combo without dark arts, but you have to keep an eye on the aggro bar. when your mana is at max you can burn some mana into dark arts + souleater combo for additional damage.

for trashpacks you can spam aoe's like crazy as long as blood price is up, nothing easier than that ^^

turn your dark side off when you are in fight but have nothing to attack for a longer time, like when you are pulling trashmobs a long distance (like in castrum) or the boss moves around the whole time (2nd boss in keeper of the lake)... stuff like that. don't forget to reactivate it afterwards ^^

[whiteblade89]

Pretty much everything Tint said. Drk is the easiest to hold aggro with, in my opinion, but that varies from person tor person.
Other tips for mp management: at 58 you get Sole Survivor, which if put on a mob that will die within 15 seconds restores 20% mp and hp. Great for ending a pull with some extra mp.
Carve and spit is awesome. It also restores mp if not used with dark arts. In big trash pulls, it's ok to use it for the extra mp, but on a boss, try to use it with dark arts for the extra damage as much as possible. You'll learn other tricks as you play and get used to it. So have fun and experiment a bit.
Edit: the above advice is for when you hit 60. Until then, just enjoy getting to know the new skills.

[Awful]

Drks a little awkward once you get over the 50 hump as you burn mana like crazy but once you start getting past 54 and start getting fun abilities like Plunge which is a 20 yard gap closer great for getting on demand distance and does 200 potency to boot.

After 56 mana becomes more manageable and you get access to Abyssal Drain which is amazing for AoE trash packs, the biggest things for Drk is managing your MP and Darkside if you're in a fight (Gonna use Ravana for an example) where you don't have to DPS anything like when he flies away for mechanics, drop Darkside and get some MP back.

Drks pretty fun once you get the hang of it start pulling more and staggering your CDs, Dark Passenger and Dark Arts + Dark Dance is really powerful on trash as it'll make the mobs never hit you just make sure you got Blood Price falling off to get some extra MP before you burn all that mana.

[DestroyerOfLargePlanets]

Lots of new DRKs run out of mana often, which is a huge problem because if you have no mana, you won't be able to turn on Grit, you won't be able to unmend, unleash, dark arts, your darkside will drop, etc etc. The key to playing DRK is to manage your mana. And the funny thing is, in order to manage your mana as a DRK, you have to be thirsty for damage. Case in point: Blood Weapon. You want to use blood weapon as much as possible -- pretty much use it every time it's up because not only does it replenish HUGE amounts of mana, but it also gives you +10% attack speed which increases your rate of mana replenishment while also increasing your DPS.

However, in order to use Blood Weapon, you must be out of Grit. Lots of new DRKs get scared to drop Grit because it makes them squishy, but that's the thing with DRK. You MUST drop Grit often so that you can use Blood Weapon often. A plus side to that is that you deal huge amounts of damage out of Grit. A minus side is that you get really squishy. But thankfully, DRK has many defensive cooldowns. Drop Grit > Blood Weapon > Shadowskin and you're good to go for mana. DRKs in Alexander Savage can easily tank the boss without Grit -- even without defensive cooldowns! But try to at least pop some light cooldowns when you drop Grit (dark dance, foresight, convalescence).

[Brannigan]

Dark Arts + Dark Dance is really powerful on trash

Ohohoho NOT JUST TRASH MY DARK FRIEND.

You can even dodge the most POWERFUL MANROBOT IN THE GAME (right click->open in new tab for big)



I feel that people really undersell this skill. It's just autos on something like this, but I agree it's super powerful on trash stuff.

[Awful]

Snip

That's pretty badass!

Meanwhile in DF all other Drks

[Launched]

You can make DRK easy when you realise that you don't need to stay low on MP. As long as it never hits 100% you're not wasting any Dark Arts and you don't need to think about keeping enough MP for when Dark Passenger or Carve and Spit come up. Then DRK just becomes:

• Use lots of Delirium
• Pop off gcds when available
• Use DA+Souleater to stay below 100% MP

[Truefaith87]

Tanks in general have a bit of a backward gearing system in this game.. Weapons are where our emnity production begins at a BASE. The weapon damage plays a HUGE role on how much emnity you produce, as well as the fact that DPS might out gear you, which while leveling, makes it nearly impossible to hold hate unless you are marking. If you ARE marking and they are still offtargeting, there is not much you can do about it sometimes. Some people are just PITAs. If you seem to be struggling a LOT though, there are some opener rotations that can help with snap emnity.. AOE pulls its pretty common to pop a defensive and blood price as soon as everything balls up, throw 2-3 unleash, a dark arts dark passanger (god this is amazingly underestimated) when they are a column in front of you, then a dark arts dark dance. You have basically 20sec of taking near no damage. Move into alternating emnity and mp regen combos, and your emnity combos should be spread out (example, hit #2 on the final target in a pull, hit #3 on the primary target of the pull). Aside from this, most of what everyone is saying is definately all legit advice.