Comments on: 2092: I Can Have a Darkside If You Want Me To

By: SigurdVolsung

SigurdVolsung — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 09:05:09 +0000

In reply to Pete Davison. Yeah, I forgot that they were both gotten so low. You just got Dark Dance, which is very nice and gives you lower damage plus more chances at Reprisal. I always use it in conjunction with Dark Mind, but you won't get that until 42, and then I rotate that two combo with Shadowskin and Foresight (which is from WAR), for each group pull. And since you know the bosses so well from tanking them with PLD you can know when to use Dark Dance and Dark Mind to the best effect on the bosses. Dark Dance protects you against physical, and Dark Mind protects you against magical damage. And obviously Shadowskin protects against both. You also get Dark Passenger at 40, but I stopped using it after I got Abyssal Drain at 56 unless it's for very specific purposes. Combining it with Dark Arts can blind everything, but that is a crap ton of MP to use. And instead Abyssal Drain gives a ton of aggro (more than Unleash does), and also in conjunction with Dark Arts it drains HP and gives it to you.

By: Pete Davison

Pete Davison — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 00:22:44 +0000

In reply to SigurdVolsung.

You get Grit and Darkside immediately — or at least, I have them both already, anyway, though like an idiot I forgot to do the initial level 30 quest when I switched to DRK and consequently did a whole bunch of stuff without even having Darkside. It was only when I reached level 34 and got an ability dependent on having Darkside that I realised I had probably missed something somewhere. 🙂

Really looking forward to seeing how it handles at high level. Wonder if I can get it to 60 in time for 3.1 for some sweet DRK relic action…?

By: SigurdVolsung

SigurdVolsung — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 00:18:47 +0000

I always mained GLA/PLD since the beta for 1.0 FF XIV... until DRK, that is. Frankly, I love playing DRK and I'm always a tank class in all the MMOs that I've played. When you get access to Grit/Darkside and a few other abilities you'll have to post about it again and I'll go into more what a DRK is really like tanking. But the largest takeaway that I want you to remember is to not play it like PLD or even WAR, it's different. One of the most important things to know is that if you are playing DRK correctly, you should consider your MP to be your aggro meter. Use a lot of moves that require MP and then Siphon Strike and use your other abilities to gain your MP back. In fact, I am so unreliant on TP that I tend to sprint a lot as DRK in dungeons. Especially if my dps are casters. If I have a full team on board that knows what they are doing, I could literally sprint tank an entire dungeon. Later on, when you have a cubic ton of abilities, make sure you know what each of them does, unlike PLD, I tend to use a lot more abilities a lot more often. With only two exceptions, your cooldowns are all pretty short. So I'm usually using a cooldown each pull and I rotate between them. We have slightly less HP than WAR do (although I still have over 20k currently), but we are also much less squishy, especially verses magic damage which a DRK is especially good against. And WAR wish in their dreams that they can pull as much aggro as a like geared and well informed DRK can.