Dark Knights...

[Steady]

So I usually main warrior, and I've been known to dabble in DRK but definitely my least favorite class to tank as. But I'm noticing more and more, the ones I pug, of queue up with, really really irritate me.



When it's in AS12 and I'm on War, I'm used to running with a PLD, which pretty much means full time OT and sexy dps. The first encounter with a "MT" Drk, he wants me to start the fight... and then take the boss intermittently in the fight, including facing him South instead of north, and claims that's Standards for DRK Main. Hafta say I'm a bit confused.

Now that I'm working on my SCH relic... I find Drk's tend to be light on the cooldowns, often want to stance dance mid double pulls, and it's really throwing me off compared to other tanks. Usually I adlo/stoneskin, pre-pull, and maybe an extra adlo mid pull... but these guys aren't using cooldowns, drop tank stance, which just tears through both shields before I can even get a round of dots to spread.

We get to the last boss, and he Living deads during the 4 add spawn, which is usually when I'm getting ready to spread dots... because... yay, 5 mobs!, and uses it for the tank buster... which makes me hafta immediately stop, and scramble, cause he used his LD a cooldown for the tank buster.

So I guess my question is... is that typical that DRK's are gonna ask you to sacrifice your DPS for theirs? I mean, I guess I play the job a bit more conservatively, and when I've ran with DRK's i know, I don't typically see this attitude, but overwhelming all others I seem to.

[ManuelBravo]

Honestly it varies by communication and player to player. A well geared DRK, and one who knows what to do, shouldn't have done that. In my opinion there are very few DRK's that actually know their role properly. From what I can read seems you just had some bad luck with terrible players who claim to know DRK.

[Steady]

Well, I know for myself when I play DRK, between effective cooldown use, blood price, and abyssal drain... I can practically sustain myself. So I suppose it confuses me why they need more love than the Faerie. Both had adequate enough gear. I guess I don't get the gratuitous use of Living Dead as a cooldown. No offense to DRK's, but I always kinda considered it inferior to both the HG's, so using it as a defensive cooldown instead of an o-shit button seems a but moot. Hell half the time I use Holmgang to pull mobs in more than I use it to stay alive, particularly in a dungeon where threats are practically non-existent. I suppose at this late in the HW expansion, most solid tanks are playing their off-classes, and everyone else to boot.

[SpookyGhost]

You'll run into bad players of any job. DRK is a bit more troublesome than most, though, since it's an aesthetic that appeals to DPS players... but it's a tank... so you end up with a lot of people that don't know what they're doing. Same goes for NIN but at least NIN's a DPS.

When it's in AS12 and I'm on War, I'm used to running with a PLD, which pretty much means full time OT and sexy dps. The first encounter with a "MT" Drk, he wants me to start the fight... and then take the boss intermittently in the fight, including facing him South instead of north, and claims that's Standards for DRK Main. Hafta say I'm a bit confused.

This is actually standard regardless of who your co-tank is, as it's the highest gDPS opener (DRK and PLD both never want to be in tank stance or using their threat combo, whereas WAR has access to Unchained at the cost of one FC and their threat combo is also a DPS gain). Specifically for A12S you also have Holmgang, the shortest CD invincibility button of the 3, which allows the healers to not need to heal you at all in the opener. Here's a video I found on the opener for A12S, this is a speedkill but it's also just super easy to pull off so it's useful in normal clears/farms/etc as well.

[Steady]

Our PLD just Hallowed ground the first tank buster, and healers could full dps for that first one as well.

[SpookyGhost]

Our PLD just Hallowed ground the first tank buster, and healers could full dps for that first one as well.

Yea, but it's still less damage since now PLD needs to use Rage of Halone as well as (potentially, at least) Shield Oath. Hallowed also now sits on CD for the next 7 minutes, whereas Holmgang will be back in 3. It's not absolutely terrible to have either the PLD or DRK pull, it's just worse overall than simply having the WAR pull.

[aleph_null]

You can't generate as much enmity lead without going into shield oath and using halone (which is less potency than royal authority) a few times though. The dps loss the warrior suffers from losing one fell cleave to pop unchained is not as big as the dps loss the drk/pld suffers from having to grit/shield at pull. If you have a nin you quite literally have nothing to lose by pulling the boss as a war, since you can just tomahawk > equilibrium > deliverance and continue with your "OT" rotation.

If anything by having a pld MT the whole of a12s the healers lose a lot more dps than if you actually MT it as war instead, or better yet if you do several tank swaps to share the tanking burden. Pld is just terrible for a12s. This full time "MT" and "OT" mindset is bad, and if communication is possible it's far better to have war pulls and tank swap a few times to utilize both tanks' toolkits.

Just to add a bit, that drk who asked you to pull the boss probably does way more dps than the plds who sit in tank stance all the time to let you full time OT the fight (which also costs some healer dps since pld doesn't have as much magic mitigation as drk). As Lyth said in the post below, if you're serious about raiding as a tank you should try to understand the other tanks and healers' skills so you can plan for the strat that allows your group to attain the highest total dps, instead of maximizing your own dps at the cost of others'.

[Lyth]

...

Optimising your gameplay on DRK requires teamwork and coordination. The reason why your DRK asked you to pull in A12S is to take advantage of Unchained, because it helps with enmity and syncs up your opener well with the first tankbuster. At other times, they may ask the NIN to use Shadewalker and Smokescreen to facilitate enmity transfers, allowing them to stay out of Grit.

WAR has the opposite problem to the other two tanks. Because it's a potency gain to use your enmity combo, you don't really have to worry about enmity management while tanking. But when you're not actively tanking, you have to be careful not to accidentally take aggro when you use your enmity combo. So most of your enmity management happens when you're not actively tanking. Some WARs have responded to this by offloading the responsibility on to their co-tank, but it's a net loss for the group to force your co-tank into defensive stance simply because you couldn't be bothered to manage your enmity when off-tanking. The general consensus, even amongst skilled WARs, is that enmity management is still a tank's responsibility even when off-tanking. Hopefully this will get addressed in Stormsblood, and we'll see WAR finally move away from 2.x era PLD style tanking with an all-in-one combo that maximises both their dps and enmity.

Coordinating swaps is required in A12S to get the most out of your dps and to minimise your defensive stance uptime. This is true regardless of whether you're a PLD, WAR, or DRK. It comes down to thinking about combined tank dps, instead of personal dps. There really isn't a way around this.

Living Dead requires healer intervention. It's DRK's strongest defensive cooldown, and unfortunately it comes with a heftier limitation than the other two tanks. It'll generally get used one-to-two times in the fight, depending on dps.

I understand that it may be a nuisance to have to cooperate with other players in a multiplayer game. Part of the problem is that WAR has been turned into a job which requires very little coordination from other players. It's also been presented to a lot of players as the "go to job" if you want an easy ride. It's easy to go into a fight and try to fly under the radar as "OT" (read: not take on any tanking responsibilities, and perform a one to two combo rotation while feeling good about doing middling dps). If you're serious about tanking, it's actually requires you to work closely and coordinate with all of your teammates. If that's not your thing, there are plenty of melee dps jobs that better suit a single-player mentality.

[Steady]

We had a ninja,and our Paladin had little issue tanking in sword stance. I understand why he wanted me to, I also understand that it's essentially just trading my damage for his, so I suppose I'm not as sold on it. But As I previously mentioned, I'm used to running with a PLD and that wasn't how we played it. He also tanked the boss off to the side at the beginning, backwards post LB3, and would randomly demand tank swaps. Suppose the whole contrast to what I was used to put me off, particularly when my group didn't do it that way and had no problems doing it that way. Suppose it was largely the drastic change of strategy on the fly that I found myself put off by, particularly in that it was stark contrast to how our group runs. But hey, if that's the war/drk way to go for most people, I'll concede my point as it just being contrary to what I learned. Though I mostly just found the encounter forcing me to nerf my enmity generation the entire fight to make up for it. (again, a problem I didn't have with my usual pld tanking partner.)


As for using living dead in a dungeon.... why? Throwing your hands up in the air and letting yourself purposefully drop your HP when you have other cooldowns available, just seems like a waste. The first time he did it, was when I typically spread dots... which I couldn't cause I had to mitigate all his damage for him on my sch. Just seemed like a lame use there. The 2nd time he used it, I just virused, adlo'd and just didn't bother trying to dps during it and let him waste his cooldown since I didn't save all my lustrates for it. I certainly don't use Holmgang unless I'm in an o-$#it situation in a dungeon.

[aleph_null]

It's not exactly a "standard" way to tank a12s as drk/war, if anything I understood that there's no standard strat in NA data center for PUGs. It's close to a speedkill strat based on what you're saying, it's definitely not how I'd play in a farm PUG other than asking the war to pull. I'll try to break it down and hopefully I can help you understand it a bit better.

Pld MT in a12s in full sword oath is a terrible idea since it'll switch the burden to healers. You can't stack sentinel + rampart for a tank buster since that means you won't have anything for the next one. Switching to shield oath costs a gcd, switching back to sword oath costs another gcd, that's a big dps loss so even with a pld you should do some tank swaps to ease the tanking/healing burden, especially if you know the pld and you're used to tanking with him. Fixed MT + OT positions has never been optimal since you could've added several swaps to utilize the OT's defensive cds and let the MT concentrate his on the fewer tank busters he'll be taking. Another thing is that if the tank is a drk, he won't gain aggro lead naturally without using grit or power slashes, since their dps rotation has absolutely no extra aggro multiplier, so aggro is a bigger problem for drk than pld. Anyway if your pld maximizes his dps, you wouldn't be able to just alternate butcher's block combo and storm's eye combo since you'll definitely overcome his aggro. If you never caught up with him, it's probably him using halone combo (dps loss) multiple times just to let you not worry about your own aggro. It's a bad tradeoff since halone is 90 potency less than royal, while butcher's block combo is 20 potency above eye combo. I can't say anything for certain unless you have a video or fflogs parse, but I can say for sure a war alternating eye-block combo will give a pld/drk tank aggro issues, unless they're using aggro combo too many times or staying in grit/shield oath too long.

Tanking the boss off to the side makes it easier to dodge the gravitational anomalies to the mid, while having the boss' corner between rear/flank positionals near the mid of the arena, so melees can still get positionals while dodging. This isn't very commonly used in PUGs, and I don't think I'd do it with people I don't know since they might actually be around the mid before the gravitational anomalies appear, blocking the safe spot.

Tanking the boss facing south (if that's what you meant by backward) after tank LB3 is to minimize the number of times the boss turns around. The short phase after tank LB3 lasts shortly above 20s, so most dps will have to frontload their cds, so the nin ideally uses trick attack much earlier than in a normal opener. Trick attack has rear positional, so using it close to when the boss is turning after chronofoll is quite risky. If I remember correctly when the boss rotates north a drg would be doing one of the 4th tier hit in their combo, so that's another risk of positional loss. This is of course assuming that the nin knows that he should be using trick attack earlier, but again, while it's a "better" strat it's not a very common one. Most PUGs are familiar with the entry = safe, boss = north mentality, just like how most zurvan ex groups tank him facing north, despite the boss "turning" south a few times (after reappearing, when casting the ice circle below him).

I do understand your concerns though, if you're unfamiliar with these strats it'll be difficult to adjust to perfectly execute it. Even speedkill groups practice multiple times to get used to it. Tank swaps mid fight requires planning to minimize dps loss and risk, so it's not easy executing that perfectly as well (sometimes you need to involve the nin as well in the planning, to put smokescreen and/or shadewalker on the tanks). I definitely wouldn't join a group of people I don't know and ask them to do these stuffs. Maybe at most I'll ask the war to pull and holmgang the first tank buster, but that's it. On the other hand though, I just wanted to clarify that these strats are actually there for good reasons, not just something that drk randomly spouted off to annoy you. Hope that helped.

In case you're curious, this is my speedkill video of a12s, you can see some of the things you mentioned are being done there: https://youtu.be/P52pux8_0Q8.