Dark Knight feels terrible to play

I completely agree with you, like players keep shoving the whole "but endgame content they're good :^)" and we're like "we know, we literally just said that" What some don't really grasp is the struggle of levelling it and how easily it could put you off it. Personally even if it's ok as endgame content, it's not capable of soloing things like how a WAR could or a PLD.. Unsure if GNB's can but they have some useful defensives if done right.
DRK has way too much magical defensive things, and there's barely anything that you will encounter that uses magic. DRK needs a little rework, nothing drastic, don't think TNB should have mp cost. I'd trade it to have a longer cooldown like 25 seconds. Or something.
Blood weapon needs to be stacks, maybe 5? Uh.. make some CD's be physical based also.
I don't think some realise how bad DRK has it, yes it has highest damage, but what some confused players forget they are still tanks.

Even in endgame content, DRK has problems. You cannot use Living Dead in Savage or Ultimate unless you have a White Mage. If you wish to mitigate you have to press roughly 3 or 4 buttons to mitigate as much damage as the other jobs, who only use 2 buttons. This wouldn't be so bad on a job like Paladin or Warrior, but DRK is anyway off GCD heavy.
I have had different suggestions over time on how to fix this:
-Oblation and Dark Mind should be removed. Their damage reductions should go into TBN.
-TBN should offer besides the 25% shield, a 10% or 15% damage reduction, and if broken grant you a 700 potency heal.
- Instead of Dark Mind, add in a healing ability with stacks or at the cost of Darkside. TBN instead of granting 1 free Edge/Flood, could give 1 use of this ability for free.
- Living Dead can stay the same, however adding in a 20% more healing from all sources ( not GCDs only) would allow the DRK player to use above mentioned heals ( whether it be on 2 stacks, or at the cost of Darkside to heal himself, or at least help the healers)

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

If you wish to mitigate you have to press roughly 3 or 4 buttons to mitigate as much damage as the other jobs, who only use 2 buttons. This wouldn't be so bad on a job like Paladin or Warrior, but DRK is anyway off GCD heavy.

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Aight, hold up a second. What? First of all, you shouldn't be stacking defensive CDs in the first place outside of tankbusters, in which case the go-to is TBN + almost anything else. Hell, most of the time you don't even need to combine anything with it. Second of all, where in the world did you get the idea DRK's mitigation is inferior? It has hands down the strongest raw mitigation out of all the tanks. What it lacks is self-healing. And oGCD usage? GBN beats it by twelve miles, but they're still able to mitigate just fine. Not being able to oGCD weave efficiently is a git gud problem, not a job problem.

This isn't to say I don't absolutely loathe the current state of DRK, of course. I do. It truly does feel awful to play 90% of the time. Still, one mustn't misrepresent the facts if there's to be any hope of a rework that doesn't make them suck to play even more than they already do.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Aight, hold up a second. What? First of all, you shouldn't be stacking defensive CDs in the first place outside of tankbusters, in which case the go-to is TBN + almost anything else. Hell, most of the time you don't even need to combine anything with it. Second of all, where in the world did you get the idea DRK's mitigation is inferior? It has hands down the strongest raw mitigation out of all the tanks. What it lacks is self-healing. And oGCD usage? GBN beats it by twelve miles, but they're still able to mitigate just fine. Not being able to oGCD weave efficiently is a git gud problem, not a job problem.

This isn't to say I don't absolutely loathe the current state of DRK, of course. I do. It truly does feel awful to play 90% of the time. Still, one mustn't misrepresent the facts if there's to be any hope of a rework that doesn't make them suck to play even more than they already do.

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DRK's raw mitigation is about the same against single hits and worse against multiple-hit tankbusters. TBN only beats HoC if you stack it with other mitigation and even then it's close.

Also, there is such a thing as too many oGCDs. You can't triple weave after all, so sometimes you either lose damage or do the ole "healers adjust" tactic.

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Originally Posted by DarkTonyBerry

I completely agree with you, like players keep shoving the whole "but endgame content they're good :^)" and we're like "we know, we literally just said that" What some don't really grasp is the struggle of levelling it and how easily it could put you off it.

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God agreed I hate argument. “Oh it’s better later!” Okay cool. How do I get to the later? Oh this is the slog? Noooo thank you, there’s other jobs that feel better. “But it gets better!” Then level it for me.

My DRK is sitting back at 70 because of how it felt to play and I have no desire to go back and try leveling it because every time I load up the gear slot to try I realize shortly; “Oh. Yeah. That’s why I quit.”

And I know, there is the idea of “oh you don’t even have a DRK/Job to max level, you can’t say anything” at times but maybe if the should be fun enough to make me want to get to max level cause it’s fun, not cause it’s good at max level.

DRK is good at end game content. So? Are people that say this admitting they don’t do roulettes with their really good end game DRK? Or they do, they just change jobs before hand? I’m not gonna level a job for use in like 10-15% of the game. Good at end game just... ragggh.

Rant done needed that.

Controversial opinion we are looking at things the wrong way, Drks don't have too little mitigation the other tanks have too much.

The game has been becoming simpler and simpler and it's in part because they made healing and tanking braindead exercises. ARR/ Heavensward Wall to wall pulls were reserved for people with the best gear who knew what they were doing/sweaty try hards not literally every instant run from the word go. Tanks used to have to pay attention to agro gain, dps used to have to use moves that lower their agro, healers HAD to heal. That's gone now, healers pretty much dps and chuck the occasional heal at the tank, the tanks role their faces on the keyboard being dps with more health and the dps stand in aoes and die. The oversimplification of the roles is really the bigger concern imo.

Upsettingly enough I think it might have all started by allowing everyone to sprint. Remember the days when melee and tanks couldn't sprint or they lost all TP, that certainly contributed to stopping wall to wall pulling. Let's face it when we wall to wall who doesn't pop sprint so you easily outpace the mobs meaning no white damage and you can easily gather everything without any dps having time to get aggro.

I hope they just flat out rework the gauge system. I previously had some fun with it but I'd rather bloodspiller and quietus be some type of ogcd and delirium being a third part of the aoe rotation or deleted. I hate gap closers being a must(for all tanks) but especially as drk it feels very clunky, only second to pld. being on the lower end of personal mitigation doesn't bother me though; I like the high dps direction it's going in, big sword big damage, makes sense enough to me. also I'm glad LD remains unchanged.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

God agreed I hate argument. “Oh it’s better later!” Okay cool. How do I get to the later? Oh this is the slog? Noooo thank you, there’s other jobs that feel better. “But it gets better!” Then level it for me.

My DRK is sitting back at 70 because of how it felt to play and I have no desire to go back and try leveling it because every time I load up the gear slot to try I realize shortly; “Oh. Yeah. That’s why I quit.”

And I know, there is the idea of “oh you don’t even have a DRK/Job to max level, you can’t say anything” at times but maybe if the should be fun enough to make me want to get to max level cause it’s fun, of cause it’s good at max level.

DRK is good at end game content. So? Are people that say this admitting they don’t do roulettes with their really good end game DRK? Or they do, they just change jobs before hand? I’m not gonna level a job for use in like 10-15% of the game. Good at end game just... ragggh.

Rant done needed that.

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Haha, I tried so hard to level DRK this go around but I think my side project is sitting at 83 now. I refused to take it out of zadnor. It’s the only place I can get self sustain on DRK.

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Originally Posted by ArcticSirius

I really feel like Oblation was meant to be something added onto The Blackest Night, until someone decided not to do that and give us current-from Oblation instead. TBN also still costs MP (meaning we can waste it, and not get our Dark Arts proc), gets ripped to shreds in 2-3 seconds meanwhile other tanks get to enjoy 8 seconds of comfort from their main mitigation, as well as having bonus defensives slapped onto it.

Dark Mind still only works for magic damage, Blood Weapon wasn't changed to a charge system while Delirium was, we still don't have Stalwart Soul until level 72, and Living Dead can be both ended early by a healer doing their job and can kill the dark knight in Walking Dead status (also I think it's bugged to where a DoT can kill LD effect rn). Also Carve & Spit can't heal us despite sharing a recast timer with Abyssal Drain and both restoring MP.

Besides buffing TBN, tying it with Oblation at the very least and reworking Living Dead, I'd go ahead and swap the level requirements of Stalwart Soul and Abyssal Drain (or Carve & Spit) so DRK has at least their 2nd AoE combo pre-70.

Forgot: can someone delete Enhanced Unmend and replace it with something good?

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Oblation seems like it was a bolt on to fill in 82 where the other tanks get something great and also because DRKs spike damage it takes is too high for healers to deal with outside of extra mitigation tools… enter oblation. Either that and/or they were all one but because of the extra mitigation it wouldn’t reliably break so this is what we ended up with… two years wasted. Eh… I’m pretty much done with DRK and have moved on to GNB. Love the animations current and past DRK but devs need to wake up. It’s a game - it needs to be fun. DRK is not fun to play. Extra DPS while sacrificing self-sustain/mitigation on a tank seems like a lopsided exchange and one I’m not willing to contend with.

You stop having issues on drk in dungeons when you figure out how to weave your mitigations properly and get paired with a healer that knows when to cover the gaps in your defense. Once you hit that, you'll never drop below 60% health.
The issue is that if you get into a bad situation, you have no way of getting yourself out of it, and roulette healers are all too eager to turn their brains off and allow that bad situation to occur. That's why my runs with SCH have always been smooth.

GNB has the same issue, but if it all goes to shit, you at least have an invuln to fall back on. Drk does not have an invuln.