Question with Grit/MP restoration

[ErdrickLoto]

Ran my first dungeon as a DRK today. Had both Darkside/Grit up, but dropped Grit to pop Blood Weapon since my MP was getting low. One of the DPS saw it and berated me for getting out of tank stance to use Blood Weapon (admittedly, my word choice could have made matters worse).

End question is this - should I have kept Grit up the whole time and just used Syphon Strike to recover MP? Or is dropping it fine to recover MP with Blood Weapon? Or does it, like stance dancing in general, just depend on the healer?

[Ashelia_Ferron]

If you didn't die or lose hate, there's nothing song e with dropping Grit to use blood weapon.

That being said, was this on a boss or trash? Most people keep tank stance on for trash because

1. You take significantly more damage on big pulls and
2. For DRK, MP restoration is generally handled through blood price on trash.

[ErdrickLoto]

It was trash.

It was also Haukke Manor, trash, though, so I didn't have Blood Price.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

As a lvl 31 DRK, your mp restoration tools are limited to siphon strike and blood weapon. Granted, later on you'll get blood price, which recovers mp for every hit you take. For now though, if it's on trash, you'd probably be better off using the siphon strike combo. On bosses however, if your healer's up to it, you can drop tank stance for blood weapon on the boss, provided you can rotate cooldowns for it.

[Kitfox]

If the incoming damage is high or you need the hate generation, use Grit. If not, then you're free to play around with Blood Weapon. You shouldn't rely on it as your main source of mp though.

[AlphaFox]

I do generally make it a rule tho if I drop grit, I also pop a defensive cooldown to make up for the lost defense. Otherwise as it was said if you didn't lose hate and no one died, the dps can whine all he wants.

[shao32]

lvl 31 drk? the only mp you use and that level come from drakside, unleash and unmend, you dont have to increse the risk for blood weapon when shipon strike do it well alone in that level, when you get dark arts is another history, but tank without grit is a advance gameplay, better get use to to tank normaly with grit and reserve turn it off in boss battles on lvl 50-60 dungeons when you have better tools to defend yourself outside grit (only if you are enough geared) in lower levels is a unnecesary risk.

[Fluffernuff]

I would actually argue that until temple of qarn, Grit isn't all that needed- UNLESS you really need the damage reduction, such as the last boss of Brayflox (or pulling too much trash in general). Not having Grit at those levels SHOULDN'T cause any real stress on the healer. Plus emnity really is a non-issue for DRK at any level- even without grit. The main concern is the incoming damage.

I say this because Unleash, IMO, has superior range to something like Overpower. Heck, Darkside boosted unleash has just as much damage, if not more than Overpower. That and blood weapon+syphon strike regens stupid amounts of MP... not to mention Darkside boosted unleash will generate silly amounts of emnity in somewhere like haukke, even without grit.

Something else to consider is that Power slash is your highest single target potency combo until level 45, when you get DA+SE. it further falls completely out of favor at 50 when you get delirium, so you should be using your emnity combo on bosses already, meaning single target, DPS shoudnt pull from you on bosses anyway.

However, after level 35, Blood Price is a far superior and safer method for MP generation than ignoring grit completely. Though just to reiterate from above, I feel pre-35, spamming unleash under Darkside more than makes up for anything else(so long as you dont use ALL your MP on it- you dont want darkside to fall off). Grit at those lower levels can be considered as an expensive cooldown. Stance dancing is just not a viable enough strategy pre-blood price because grit takes too many resources you can't restore. run with it or don't before then. and stick by it.

I personally feel that up until Qarn, and debatably until stone vigil, DRK is the easiest tank to use. I feel they have.... "Training wheels" for such low levels. Not saying they STAY the easiest, just that they have the tools at low levels the other 2 dont. which makes it far easier for DRK

EDIT: just as an added point to reinforce point 1 i made so my cozy straw hut isn't burned to the ground, please remember that between 30-40, the other 2 tanks, PLD and WAR, don't get a passive 20% damage reduction at all (shield oath isnt available yet and defiance doesnt reduce damage)... DRK is the only 1 with this benefit. so it is very much nice to have, but is by no means mathmatically necessary to have at those levels

[whiteblade89]

Sounds the like the dps doesn't actually know what he or she is talking about, or has a skewed perception of it. Dropping grit is good for both your mp (Blood weapon is one of the sole reasons for dropping grit) and for your damage output. Out of grit, you have a 15% dmg boost with darkside. That's a damn good reason to drop grit, especially if dps is slow. But like everyone else has said, make sure to coordinate your cooldowns to make up for the extra incoming damage, but otherwise you're fine. Normal people will thank you for it. Me personally, I don't drop grit on big pulls until about the last 2 or 3 mobs. It's much easier to do against bosses once you know you have a solid aggro lead as well.

[DestroyerOfLargePlanets]

Healing is too easy in dungeons. If you're NOT dropping grit, then you're not doing it right. So long as you have aggro and you're not undergeared, then you should be dropping grit. For huge trash pulls, which I doubt you're doing at your level, you'll want to stay in grit. Once you get better with your cooldowns, you'll be able to drop grit even when you're doing huge trash pulls.