honestly, back when i had 5/5 DB, i used it in parties/groups religeously offensivly. Like warriors charge for drg. Solo, I used it to do things like chain 5 or 6 greater colibri (along with angon). You get to the last mob you HAVE to zerg down super fast to keep chain, i couldnt afford to heal myself a bunch and keep chain, so I used DB so that I could shave off one less cure during the final chain. Angon mob, beat it down, get to lower than normal HP, DB>heal finish mob for nice chain.
But other than that, i didnt really use it to "save" myself. Id use it when I or someone in my party unweakened, or to heal mnks. Otherwise i didnt use it much for actual oh ***moments. THe delay is to precious when your borderline death. But now we have a 1min insta breath without cast times /mage or /dd so i havent needed it.
Thus i remerited. As for strafe, when im solo, no body cares anyway and im probably raping whatever im killing. Groups is when my wyvern might actually die. That is also when i have shell/buffs etc. For me, when my wyvern might actually die is also when i have buffs to help it live. Im loving empathy now. Also, the buffs arent random, its from left to right and doesnt copy buffs it already has. So if you have pro/shell/brd song/haste and 2 empathy, the 1st will copy pro/shell. Second one will skip pro/shell and do brd/haste. 4empathy gets all of em at once.
Angon helps me/group kill faster than wyvern breath acc bonus. Empathy keeps it alive better so my spirit/soul jumps kick *** instead of suck. Besides, if wyvern is dead, strafe aint helpin no one.