Dark Knight Direct Hit

[Phoenicia]

Snip

I wasn't trying to be aggressive as much as I was trying to be comical. And while you are allowed to play the way you like and I even encourage doing so along with experimenting, giving advice that goes against what good players give isn't always helpful.

So no. While changing the melds of the same gear may only make a 1~3% difference, you have to take into account the gear picked because of substats as well. Melding for damage isn't just 100 DPS difference, it can make up to thousands of damage difference. For example, changing from ilv 400 gloves and boots to eureka ilv 390 with 5 melds alone nets you 60 to 200 DPS gain, or a median of ~160. That's only 2 pieces of gear LOSING item level in favor of melds. Imagine what keeping the same item level, therefor same str and stat budget, for the better stats can contribute to. Then imagine changing the entire gear and meld choice combined can add up to.

Completely abandoning direct hit and going for tenacity over crit will definitely hit you closer to 1k of DPS if not more. It's been mathed AND tried out. When we're talking 4.x thousand DPS that goes up to near or above 6 thousand, we're definitely not talking single digit percents DPS anymore.

Going full tenacity as opposed to 0 tenacity is ~12% reduction in damage intake. But that's not necessarily 12% DPS gain. Since you lose crit, DH, det and/or sks. Items have a stat budget, so you're not getting "free tenacity", you're trading other, better for damage, stats for it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that Tenacity does not increase healing received btw, it increases healing YOU DO. Guess what increases that better than tenacity? EVERY OTHER STAT!
/end edit.

Also, with all due respect, how do you know you're putting out "decent numbers" if you do not bother with parses? Because it is literally impossible to know if you're doing well unless you check a parse or try Sky, Earth, Sea or w/e it's called and give a good kill time. Because single hits do not matter, damage throughout the fight, or damage per second (DPS), does. Hitting a random 32k Bloodpiller once a fight isn't "decent numbers", it's just a random hit. Hitting 23-28k Bloodspillers consistently is.

On another note, how much DPS you do does not really matter that much outside of savage raids or extreme trials because enrage timers don't exist and they are tuned so low that 1 decent member dishing out enough DPS is most likely enough to carry the remaining 7 players. You won't lose aggro if you are sitting in tank stance and pushing your buttons either, compounded with the fact most people you get aren't dishing out enough DPS to be a threat anyway. And if you are sitting in your tank stance, tenacity doesn't matter either because of the default 25% increased effective health from the stance. So the whole point of what you meld doesn't matter.

Where I come from is pushing out the most out of your job. This means no staying in tank stance, getting the most out of your DPS and the most of your defensive abilities. If you are using your defensives properly, tenacity makes VERY little difference there. And if you want DPS, tenacity is ranked 5th out of 5 secondary stats, therefor my whole point of "tenacity isn't bad enough to avoid, but not good enough to prioritize". And I believe the whole point of this thread is the OP wanting to push out the most of his DRK.

Again, nothing against you personally, but my post was definitely against your advice because it wasn't good advice. I hope my explanation gave you insight as to why. And if you would prefer to keep playing the way you prefer, be my guest, it's your sub! And definitely your time for you to enjoy as you please.