Another dk related question

Achilles! It will help you a lot on bosses and even training to keep your HP within zerk range. After Achilles you could do MW10 if you want.

 

Zak doesn't hit very hard, but usually dks will either rush into the body to avoid the pillar stuns or you can position on the right side close to the body so that ducking (pressing the down key) will make you tank the touch damage. It really depends on whether you have max achilles and your wdef, but usually you can just stay above like 9-10k I believe and you should be okay to tank for all 3 bodies. Otherwise you shouldn't ever be at risk of dying.

For HT it depends on where you are; if you're up at the top cleaving the left/middle head, then I just stayed above about 6k HP. If you're near the wings or could get hit by the wings, I generally stayed above like 9k (although you can stay above 10k to be safe).

The HP thresholds will vary depending on your level/whether you have achilles or not, so I would encourage you to just be safe and stay at a relatively high HP, and then observe how hard the bosses are hitting you for throughout the run. You can then limit test and see how low you can get before you're actually in any danger.

 

Adding on to mard's tips up there, I would say it has to do a lot with the pots you're using. The key is to keep your HP below 16500, while still maintaining it above a point that would put you at risk of being killed. Having said that, there are different thresholds used for each boss. In general, I would say the safe choice would be to use 3 ticks of auto-pot (each tick is 5%, so 3 ticks is 15% or 4500 HP) for every boss. The only exception, in my case, is Horntail where I keep it at 4 ticks (6k HP) just because the normal wings damage is around 5.8k when wings are not damage buffed.

The HP pots I use are (i) Ginseng roots; (ii) Sushis and (iii) Ice cream pops. (i) Ginseng roots are used for auto-pot. If you're at 30k HP, this pot will heal you 12k. So on the usual auto-pot setting (15% - 4500), the max HP you would get auto-potted for is 16499, keeping you below the zerk HP threshold. This auto pot setting will also keep your HP on zerk range if you get 1/1'd. (ii) Sushis are your manual pot and will usually be the pots you resort to if your auto pot fails (can also be ginseng if you're left at 1HP I guess), but also it will help you regulate for cases where bosses may have some attacks that kill you at the usual HP threshold (e.g. Warrior boss on CWK hits above 4.5k when buffed or HT hits more 6k if wings are buffed, around 7.7k). So as mard said, for you to maintain your HP above 8~9k, if you see your HP is at 8k, you use a sushi once and it brings you up to 14k. (iii) Ice cream pops, this are more uncommon to use but are helpful in some bosses. You could exchange these with unagis since you'll mostly be farming them in 7F if you train there. I use these pots more to regulate where my HP will end after roar but also for some bosses with really high attacks like Toad (hits for ~13k? I dont remember clearly). But the point here is not to overheal with any of these pots.

At first you'll probably get more nervous while seeing your HP as low as you can, but with time you'll get used to this. You most likely will die a lot of times but it just takes practice and attention. Sometimes you can use settings that are safer like using sushis on auto pot at 35% for HT, JC, and CWK which gives you the space to chill more but will be much more cost heavy. Just go out there and take risks until you're used to the setting that fits you the most!

 

Though I'm only a lvl 147 DK at the moment, my skill order so far has been 1 rush, max Zerk, max Beholder (for passive weapon mastery), max Stance, and currently working on achilles, and will do the Beholder buffs right after, probably hex first. MW, to me, is no priority since my shad already has it in case of grinding, or when bossing I kind of expect a bish to have it hehe.

Only done a hand full of Zak runs as DK, and use, as above, Ginseng root for 40% heal as auto pot for 1/1 at the mentioned 15%, and sushi to keep my self above touch death.
As for the advice to tank Zak to avoid stun, as a starting DK (with low achilles) I'm not comfortable enough, but instead I stand as far away from body as I can and still hit, this way a single KB also does not accidentally knock me into body. when I have max achilles I might look up more borders to avoid the stuns, but for now, no thanks hehe.

Done a few CWK runs aswell, with mixed results hehe, (curse you, Red Nirg and your Attack buff). But shouldn't be too hard.

And as for HT and such, well I'm not there yet so I'll take their ^ words for that haha.