Filthy Casual looking for DRK advice

[Fluffernuff]

So, I tend to avoid Savage or EX fights mostly because personal reasons, so this is more for braindead roulettes, though I would welcome anything from those environments that would apply.

I'm actually more concerned with trash pulls and the like, Since I never really drop aggro on bosses without touching grit. Though I almost exclusively stick to grit on trash pulls because I'm concerned about AoE emnity and to help the healer. I cycle my cooldowns like shadowskin+foresight, and when its off cooldown, I'll do my DA+DP/DA+DD dodgey combo. and of course blood price off cooldown. I'll use either unleash or abyssal drain, depending on my target and how the mobs are bunched up, sometimes abyssal drain wont reach everything.

My concern here is mostly... My "pocket healer" friend I almost exclusively play with has a hard time with cleric stance. A combination of I tend to pull alot so my HP spikes and they are not COMPLETELY comfortable with the tool yet (this is admittedly my fault for scarring them from ever using it because I pull half a dungeon in ARR content when they were new).
In essence, I would like to know what cooldowns I should be cycling, if I even need to change that, or are there times where I can just help ease my friend into CS with my own tools as a DRK?

Are there times I can safely drop grit, even on large trash pulls?

[SpookyGhost]

You can drop Grit on any pull as long as you're cycling your CDs, using BP, and putting up the evasion buffs when BP falls. If your healer friend wants to stay away from Cleric then they probably won't notice too much of a difference, however if they do decide to dabble in Cleric then you'll want to work together and coordinate CDs so that lack of Grit doesn't mean too much excess damage. This greatly depends on what healer they are as well, WHM in particular has a lot of tools to make dropping Grit pretty safe even if the healer does DPS (Bene, Tetra, Dem HoTs, etc). I'd say your best bet is to talk it over with your healer friend and figure out when they'd feel comfortable with you dropping Grit.

[shao32]

is a lot better keep grit on big pulls no matter what, healers do more dps that you in pack that us without grit and the mitigation tools we have are limited.

and i dont see you use in big pulls abyssal drain+DA, is a nice combo with blood price and a lot of self heals, you can do as spooky say drop grit in any pull, but in my opinion is a lot better have a healer doing dps that you gain from out grit.

[ZhaneX]

Like Shao said, DA+Abyssal Drain with Blood Price up is you and your Healer's friend for big pulls.

[VanilleFang]

You're friend shouldn't worry too much about your health spiking. Every healer has tools that make Cleric Stance use fairly easy. Essential Dignity, Fairy, Bene, etc. allow healers to have a lot of leeway in their healing when they are using they DPS spells and stance.

As SpookyGhost mentioned WHM has things like HoTs (Regen and Asylum are the basics in trash pulls), and dropping Cleric Stance for a second to throw out Tetra then throwing it back on is really effective too. Holy is another useful ability to ease damage since it stuns.

SCH are literally easy mode when using CS in dungeons. Their Fairy and spells like Lustrate make SCH very good at keeping CS up consistently.

AST has Essential Dignity, which is OP while in CS. Nothing more really needs to be said except HoTs are useful.

Stance Dancing takes practice so I would suggest starting out slow at first. Maybe have your friend practice in easier dungeons, or with smaller pulls, before trying the harder stuff.
Though I will admit that dancing gets easier the more spells the healer and the tank have access to.

[Fernosaur]

It's been said before, but I'll say it more in-depth:

The most powerful tool DRK has for big pulls is Abyssal Drain. When you use Dark Arts for Abyssal Drain, you gain some HP back per every enemy hit. The larger the pull, the more you get back. For you to spam this, you need to have Blood Price up. As long as you don't use Blood Price at the same time as a WHM starts Holy stunning everything, you should be getting back enough HP and MP to sustain yourself without any healer input until Blood Price is down, at which point it's a good idea to pop Dark Dance buffed by Dark Arts for the evasion bonus. DA Dark Passenger is a good buffer for this, as are tertiary CDs like Convalescence and Foresight.


Also, don't be afraid to pair up two or even more CDs for trash. If you pull big, it should last enough that the CDs you use will be up again for the pull after the next one. Blood Price is on a ridiculously short CD, so it should be up for every pull, but once it falls down depending on the pull you'll want to pop Shadow Skin, Foresight, Dark Dance and Convalescence can all be used mixed with one another to increase your resistance and give the healer more time for CS uptime.

Finally, don't forget about Living Dead in case you mess up your buffs or your healer friend messes up Cleric Stance usage. If your friend is a WHM or AST they shouldn't have problems with LD, but if they're a Scholar they might have trouble and you might die if they're not prepared for it. If you have constant voice communication with your friend, you should always tell them if you plan to use LD so that they know and go into CS to take advantage of it.

[Sweetgrass]

Use Grit and CDs early before your selfhealing ramps up, then shut it off and let go with DA ADs

I actually recorded some fun AoE pulls on DRK from expert earlier:

http://puu.sh/s5PPk/f09ea8b256.webm
http://puu.sh/s5PQO/fe12a81195.webm

[Jim_Berry]

So, one day, I was doing Lost City of AK Hard (I think it's this one, with the butterflies at the bottom of the path leading to a wall that need to be destroyed).

Anyway, I run PLD mostly, and would have to pop Hallowed Ground here if I pull all the mobs from the top to the bottom. One day, I went as DRK for the first time, and I pulled this group. Not going to lie; I panicked. I didn't think to pop Living Dead, but I instead tossed on a Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain. Surprised, I began to spam it. MP was getting low, so I hit Blood Price. O...M...G... I was amazed.

I began to do many large pulls in other areas as DRK. Now, I prefer dungeons as DRK while Primals/Coil/Alexander as PLD. DRK was almost my main, but I'll meddle with it more in learning parties until I'm comfortable. I guess I like DRK's crowd control.

[Chubby13]

Dropping Grit for big pulls is a big no no, since you when you have actually stop with all the mobs they actually hit a bit hard for the first few hits so rather have Grit up to help your healer out, and spam Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain with Blood Price up = The most beautiful action sound for me personally in the game. On bosses it's safe to drop Grit after 2 Power Slash combos if you cycle through CD's appropriately since DRK have insane amount of aggro generation and your healers don't mind you dropping Grit (there are some that point blank refuse to heal you unless you have it on, though you safe since your friend is healing).

[MoarLegion]

DRK have insane amount of aggro generation

DRK has the weakest aggro generation because our DPS combos use no enmity moves unlike WAR and PLD.