[Armando]

the extra damage from DRK outstrips the minimal enmity boost from Cures when you can't cast too many of them.

In the old days, I might've agreed, but no-TP-loss Signet resting and pseudo-permanent 1 MP/tick Refresh due to FoV, I'd say a low level PLD can afford to cast relatively freely. 1 MP/tick is 20 MP a minute, Cure II costs 24. Granted, a DRK can invest MP into hate if he wants, too - but he'll lose more autoattack time than a PLD in doing so since it'll take multiple casts of Bind/Blind.

Ideally the DRK would use a Great Axe, Shield Break + Acid Bolt everything, and the party would plow through with their combined brute force. You could probably plow through things quickly enough in that way. The DRK might have to eat Defense food to keep the downtime low, though. On the other hand, a PLD might be able to get away with DD food thanks to his shield and self-healing, blurring the line between him and the DRK's damage a bit.

From the looks of it, though, Dyft's interests have already wandered over to MNK tanking.

[Takelli]

Originally Posted by Armando

Ideally the DRK would use a Great Axe, Shield Break + Acid Bolt everything,

I would like to point out that every Drk and War that can do this should do it.

I actually gained exp faster than I ever did in kazham because of this. (3 lvls in 3 hours). 1st fight is just to build Tp. Second fight you Shield Break + Acid Bolt, and the fight will end as quickly as it started, and you should be at 100 or 2 swings to 100 Tp.

If this is done correctly with the correct set up, you can actually kill faster than the puller can even pull. Had a thf in the party, was getting the mob down to 50% hp, and the thf would actually start pulling at that point as we where killing so fast because of that.

Just thought that I would point that out. Even if a war or drk cant afford the acid bolts, the thf should have them, and should be using 2-3 a fight.

[Dyft]

Yea I have somewhat moved over to the MNK tank idea in favor of DRK or PLD. For some reason I just feel like it will work better (gut feeling could be wrong as hell lol) Plus I finally got my Cross-counters... pretty hard to NOT try it out

As far as the Acid Bolts + Shield break, I find that while this is a very nice set of debuffs on the target, when your fighting Ts/VTs with a DRG and a MNK that you dont really need to shield break + acid bolt... right now Combo + Double Thrust + wyvern breath pretty much does about 80% dmg to most things we fight.... No need to debuff it if its already dead lol...

With the DRK I was pretty much only casting drain... little costly on MP but boy can it pull some agro when you heal for ~65 hp with it (or at least it seemed as such) and as was stated with FoV refresh MP isnt as much of an issue as it used to be.