How bad are the issues with DRK?

I feel like Dark Knight is in a relatively good place. I need to play Paladin again, it just put me to sleep during early access and I haven't really looked back since the other people who want to tank in my FC are all going PLD.

I'm new to Dark Knighting. I got into it because I wanted a change from the usual DPS classes I play. The problem I have with it is that during the lower levels it's so... boring

I've spent my time grinding dungeons with very capable healers and I'm gratified when drawing enemies away from my DPS buddies, but when it comes to keeping up aggro I lose a lot motivation. I have two combos, one that has very limited strategic use (right now). Most of the time I'm just spamming the same few buttons over and over again. I can turn my head away comfortably and watch Netflix or Twitch. I get so bored I want to pull 3+ mobs just to spice things up. Really hoping for that light at the end of the tunnel.

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Originally Posted by Dizzy_Derp

The class in the worst spot is warrior by a good margin it has low dps and zero raid utility.

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Agree about the raid utility, but literally the only range that war isn't in the top dps spot for tanks is the top 9 percentile... While I get that you fall in that top 9 percentile, even your own war parses are higher than your pld. War is gonna be the goto secondary tank for speed-runs/farming after you no longer need the utility.

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Originally Posted by TheCount

That's a big problem in and of itself no? The fact that it feels incomplete and lacking at anything but the max level because that's the only point where your rotation becomes just a little bit more interesting than 1-2-3 and dark artsing everything. That to me is very bad design where a tank will feel bad to play for the majority of its levels

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It is an issue, but how big of one depends.

To those of us who leveled and played DRK during Heavensward, I feel it will be more glaring of a problem since we got used to a very active job that then got pared down and doesn't really regain much of that more active feel until 70. For those that are coming in fresh, it may still feel off but most likely less so because they don't have a preconceived notion of the way DRK feels, or should feel, when played.

I agree that the skills could have been given in a better order that would feel like a smoother progression of power, but I don't think it's a huge deal since it doesn't really crop up until the Blood Gauge is introduced which is post 60 and you can level 60 to 70 so fast that by the time it starts to bug you, you're already dinging 70.

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Originally Posted by Dregenfox

The FF logs are placing warrior DPS as ~7-8% ahead of paladin and a bit more over Drk. War also has one of the best defensive cooldown sets in the game. Certainly it's a fault of the game that defensive ability is useless, but warrior does have merits and is in nowhere near a bad a shape as you imply.

Warrior just needs some QOL changes and a slight buff to damage and everything will be fine.

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Idk what your talking about. Top pld parse is 3590 top war is 3198
Pld is doing way more damage, that's a fact

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Originally Posted by Deathgiver

Agree about the raid utility, but literally the only range that war isn't in the top dps spot for tanks is the top 9 percentile... While I get that you fall in that top 9 percentile, even your own war parses are higher than your pld. War is gonna be the goto secondary tank for speed-runs/farming after you no longer need the utility.

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The only reason my old is lower damage is because I haven't really played it. I only did like five times or something running with some friends and I got pretty sloppy in the end phase. If I tightened up my rotation on the later phases I would be doing more damage than my old. But yeah war does do more than drk.

Problems are mostly for under lvl 70 where the job lacks mitigation tools, due to many being taken away or modified.

However even at lvl70 DRK lacks mitigation compared to WAR and PLD and currently does the least amount of damage out of the 3 tanks

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Originally Posted by Derio

Problems are mostly for under lvl 70 where the job lacks mitigation tools, due to many being taken away or modified.

However even at lvl70 DRK lacks mitigation compared to WAR and PLD and currently does the least amount of damage out of the 3 tanks

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I really don't understand how they let it go through that you have a tank now that is bad in both those area's. I could understand a tank that has slightly less mitigation than usual but has a lot of damage (and through that, some self-healing) to compensate for that. I could understand a tank that has more mitigation than usual but has slightly lower damage than usual. I could understand a tank that has both in balance with eachother while not specializing

But bad in both those areas? You just messed up the balancing of a tank and it's glaringly obvious.

We have issues?

I'm personally enjoying Drk right now. Its definitely simplified from what it was in HW with most oGCD skills being replaced with dark arts spam, and for me, I prefer that, but I know others people enjoyed the complexity it had. DRK certainly feels incomplete until you get to 64/68, since you have this blood gauge you cant actually do much with. Our capstone, TBN, Im treating kinda like IB on WAR, quick mitigation, for tank busters, provided you've saved MP. I havent tried WAR post HW and my paladin is still sitting at 50 (cant seem myself leveling another class to 70 after DRK/AST/BLM, for a while), so I cant offer any comparisons.

I usually main healer and from a healing perspective Drk seems fine, along with paladin, War feels very squish though, I find myself spamming benefic 2 alot on them in dungeons.