Job Guide: Dark Knight 4.0

A basic guide for Dark Knight tanking in 4.0 Stormblood. Directed at novice tanks and newbies.

Intro

Welcome to my Dark Knight guide, where I try to remedy the problem of there being too many tanks that don't understand tanking. This place is for the tanks that intend to learn their role, myself included.

With all that said, if there's anything outright wrong, out of date, or if there are better ways please feel free to comment and update me so I can update and improve all the guide, my own playstyle and the playstyles of the DRKs that may yet read my guide.

Basics

Core Concept

As a tank, your primary objective is to maintain dominance of Enmity. There is a wonderful guide written HERE to describe what enmity is and how to read it.

As you can imagine, with enemies constantly attacking you it makes sense to reduce the damage you take from them so you can take more of it for longer. This is where cooldowns come into play.

In general, a tank has access to 3 critical cooldowns that make a healer's job that much easier.
A heal intake stim, Convalescence,
A raw mitigation stim, Rampart,
And a Tankbuster counterstim, Shadowskin(or equivalent).

You also get access to an invulnerability "Holy Hell" button, Living Dead(or equivalent)

Finally on this point is stances.
Tanks have 2 stances usually, a tank stance which increases enmity generation at the cost of reducing damage slightly while you also take less damage, and a DPS stance which allows you to do just that.

Dark Knights get to use both stances at the same time, and in fact, the only stance you should ever drop as a Dark Knight is your tank stance, Grit.



The idea is to find a rotation of your cooldowns so something is always active, but only when you need it. If you pull a really big mob and your healer just can't keep up, Convalescence is your tool.
If you're trying to drop your tank stance for damage, Rampart's your go-to. If you're still taking ungodly damage after using Convalescence, you've got Shadowskin.

Role Skills

With the release of Stormblood mucking everything up, I'd like to list these separate from the other contents.

You now have access to Role Skills solely by levelling up to the required level to unlock them. Prior to this update, you would have to level a select class up to unlock it's Crossclass skill so you could use the weaker version of it in another class.

For reference, tanks get access to these ten Role Skills.

Role Skills

Mitigations
1: Rampart - a 20% mitigation buff that lasts for 20 seconds. It has a 90 second cooldown.

2: Anticipation - a +30% Parry Rate buff that lasts for 20 seconds. It has a cooldown of 60 seconds. A parry mitigates roughly 20% damage.

3: Awareness - you cannot be critically hit for 25 seconds. This cooldown has a cooldown time of 120 seconds.

Enmity Management
1: Provoke - This simply sets your enmity as +1 of the highest enmity in your party.

2: Ultimatum - This simply casts Provoke on all enemies within 5 yalms of you, the same range as Unleash.

3: Shirk - This diverts 25% of your current enmity value to a target party member.

Utilities
1: Interject - This is a Silence. It interrupts Magic Casting.

2: Reprisal - This is a strong damage debuff that does not last long. It's used for reducing a target's damage before it finishes a heavy hitting attack, such as Bosses that cast Tankbusters or partywide AoEs.

3: Low Blow - This is a Stun. It interrupts most Skill Casting, and rarely Magic Casting.

4: Convalescence - You are healed 20% more HP from Spells for 20 seconds. This cooldown has a cooldown timer of 120 seconds.
-Note: this does not apply to Fey Union, Lustrate, Benediction, Excogitation, Indomitability or other similar spells tagged as an Ability instead of a Spell

Role Skill Selection

With the listing out of the way, I'd like to talk about the ones I, personally, think are most important.

The skills I would keep handy are, Provoke, Convalescence, Rampart, Awareness, Anticipation, Low Blow, and Reprisal.

You need Provoke for end-game content where tanks have to Tank-Swap.

Convalescence, Rampart, Awareness and Anticipation are crucial mitigation buffs which help with trash mobs more than bosses, but help during boss fights nevertheless.

Low Blow and Reprisal are what I call targeted mitigations, as Low Blow can give you up to 100% mitigation 100% of the time from targeted attacks as most stunnable attacks have exactly the same cooldown as Low Blow.
Reprisal for the same reason, but with obviously lesser result since it will reduce incoming damage from attacks you can't stun or silence.

Going above and Beyond

Once you understand how to comfortably tank mobs without dying or losing enmity to a DPS, you should start trying to do more than your basic AoE enmity generation and your core 1-2-3 combo. This is where you start to learn some risk vs reward.

These are technically advanced techniques, though it should be fairly easy for anyone to do since this is the only part that each tank does differently.

Stance Dancing

This is by and far the simplest part to do.

After you have generated enough hate, you may simply disengage Grit. Re-engage Grit if you find your enmity slipping or if damage intake is becoming unmanageable.

For a visual reference, see the video below.
https://plays.tv/s/LKyg4wEL4xB9

While Grit is disabled, you get access to some very potent skills such as Blood Weapon.
Disabling Grit serves to increase the damage your skills do at the cost of being more vulnerable. Your MP regeneration is also severely reduced in comparison to being in Grit making this a Burst DPS mode.

Disabling Grit also disables your 20% mitigation. Offset this loss with a Defensive such as Rampart so the healer doesn't notice the difference.

MP Management

Since Stormblood rewrote so many of our Skills and Abilities, I can understand if you didn't fully read your skills at this point, or if you missed some things. I, personally, didn't notice the Grit modifier for your strongest MP sustain ability in this update.

For MP management purposes, Blood Price is nearly useless in comparison to its former self. You restore up to 120 MP per hit taken. Naturally this "skyrockets" the more enemies you have, but 700 MP per second is worth about 70% of an Unleash.

Blood Weapon on the other hand now generates a slight profit in MP per attack allowing freedom to push out all kinds of MP based attacks. This is counteracted by the new limitation that you can't Blood Weapon while in Grit, and you can't Blood Price unless you're IN Grit.
To combat the abysmal MP regeneration you now have with your MP sustain, they changed Syphon Blade.

While under the effect of Grit, Syphon Blade regenerates double the MP it does without Grit. This is your sole MP recovery power, and more than you should need for what you'll use it for. While out of Grit, Blood Weapon becomes more of an MP sustain than an MP recovery tool as you're going to be burning it fast on other abilities.

My go-to for MP sustain is to rotate once per Dark Arts I use.
Example:
Hard Slash(1) - Syphon Blade(4) - Dark Arts - Dark Passenger - Souleater(5) - 1 - 4 - Dark Arts - 5

You can get away with more Dark Arts per rotation with smart cooldown use, try it out.

DPS where-to

Let me preface this by saying, I really just made this guide for me. I couldn't figure out on the fly what does better damage where, so that's what this section is for.
AoE vs AoE2 vs Single Target vs Single Target 2.

The problem children of this patch are,


Unleash vs Abyssal Drain

Dark Passenger vs Quietus

Carve and Spit vs Bloodspiller

but the secret seems to be that Abyssal Drain while more expensive is always better for both damage and enmity generation, and you want to use both of each specific purpose DPS skill.

For Example, here are the cumulative damage charts for each of the skills. Note that a single target skill can do more damage than an AoE skill even if there is more than 1 target.

Skill	Total MP cost	1 Target	2 Targets	3 Targets	4 Targets	5 Targets
Abyssal Drain	1320	120	240	360	480	600
Dark Passenger	4800	240	480	720	960	1200
Quietus	0	160	320	480	640	800
Quietus	2400*	210	420	630	840	1050
Carve and Spit	2400	450	450	450	450	450
Bloodspiller	2400	650	650	650	650	650
Salted Earth	haha nope	525	1050	1575	2100	2625

*Note: Quietus restores 480 MP per target.

MP Cost	Enemy Count	MP Restored
2400 OR 0	1	480
2400 OR 0	5	2400

Note that Bloodspiller and Carve and Spit are not AoE damage skills and are reflected by the static damage numbers.

Note that Bloospiller and Quietus are both GCDs like Hard Slash, but like Unleash, they don't reset your combo bonuses. Use them like off-GCDs, weave in off-GCDs for Extra Credits

From a quick and dirty test, it looks like Grit and Darkside modifiers are additive,
example: damage=(damage)(1-(sum of modifiers))

100 = (100)(1-((-0.2) + (+0.2))

0.2 - 0.2 = 0

100 = (100)(1-(0))

100 = (100)(1)

To sum up my findings here

for AoE damage, you want to push out Dark Passenger with 3 or more targets at max level, and Quietus at 4 or more targets at max level to outDPS your Single Target heavy hitter skills

for single target damage,
Carve and Spit will deal more damage than Quietus at 2 or less targets, but not Dark Passenger so rotate it in every once in a while.

keep Salted Earth on cooldown, and make sure things stay in it.

Bloodspiller should be used to supplement Carve and Spit and your constant bombardment of Souleater Dark Arts.

grand note: the mp you have to recover from a Dark Arts Dark Passenger is worth around 6-8 GCDs in a sole MP restorative Grit rotation. you'll generate more hate and deal more damage spamming Abyssal Drain than you will rotating Hard Slash and Syphon Blade 2-4 times because you spent it on a Blind.

Macros - WIP

So far, I know 3 macros I'll be using. Feel free to list any in the comments and i'll include 'em here if I personally can endorse them.

Macros

Sacred Salted Shadow Flare
/micon "Salted Earth"
/action "Salted Earth" <t>

Target yourself and use this to plant it on your feet. Target an enemy and use this to plant it under THEIR feet.

Blood Weapon and Blood Price
/micon "Blood Price"
/action "Blood Price"
/action "Blood Weapon"

Since these can't be activated simultaneously, but you'll use them for effectively the same reason, MP and/or Blood Gauge. Should be mostly for Blood Gauge. Setting it like this shows you the cooldown of Blood Price, and will activate whichever buff is available.

[Phleet]

i'll add your note to the guide for anyone else that thinks it's useful. as for the macros those weren't possible at the creation of this guide. if it had a ground target, you couldn't macro it without manually placing it :/

it's an outdated guide, only thing that still has any value in it is the general principles of tanking. LoS, enmity, and positioning.

[☆Ferios☆]

Useful Macros I use :
Salted Earth (target) (To place Salted Earth directly on target)
/micon "Salted Earth"
/ac "Salted Earth" <t>

Salted Earth (self) (To place Salted Earth directly at your feet)
/micon "Salted Earth"
/ac "Salted Earth" <me>

[☆Ferios☆]

-Blood Price should always be used when available if you are in Grit. There is still a MP regeneration factor on the skill when you get hit, and Blood Sword is not available when in Grit stance. Blood Sword should also be used whenever possible when not in Grit stance. Both skill do the same thing : Increase Mana and increase Blood while also increasing effectiveness in the stance used.

Those are the two major points I saw that required some attention.

[☆Ferios☆]

Hey, just throwing that out there :
-You forgot to take into account mana consumption for multi-target skill usage. Abyssal Drain costs about half of Dark Passenger IF you don't use Dark Arts. It is 25% otherwise. So for every Dark Passenger at 100 potency you use, you could've used 2 Abyssal Drain at 120 potency, or for every Dark Passenger at 240 potency you could've used 4 Abyssal Drain at 120 potency. Abyssal Darin is always a better choice for large groups. Only use Dark Arts + Dark Passenger is the healer is struggling so that the monsters get blind.

[Phleet]

oops, not heavensward. but do keep an eye posted, i forgot to update this guide and it really needs it

[NYCLouisW]

This is fantastic! Thank you so much... Seriously. All the other Dark Knight guides I see online are 2-3 years old. And they just focus on how to tank or just focus on DRK abilities.

I have never tanked before. I am going to start with Dark Knight from Level 1. This guide and the Enmity guide are an excellent start! Time to learn how to tank for real :)

[Phleet]

added some stuff to the advanced user section, apparently we have some pretty punchy AoEs...
edited the charts so that i just had the one since all you do is +20% the numbers on the first chart

side note: had to rewrite my macros in-game so i just copy-pasted the macros i wrote here, so i know they work.