Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

I have been putting it off for a long time now. And I wanted to try out dark Knight. But the main reason that I\\'ve been hesitant to try it out because everyone says they are the absolute worst out of the 3 tanks. Is this true? or are people just exaggerating?

It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Some things were "fixed" as of 4.3 but some more changes need to be done to do something about the extreme Dart Arts spam they turned SB Dark Knight into. The devs are aware of these complaints but need time to do more about it.

At the very least the reduced animation lock on plunge is a very good change (and Shadow Wall being a 120s cooldown now)

Dark Knight is fine, go ahead and enjoy the class.

It depends on what you mean by 'bad'. From a gameplay perspective, DRK is the most interesting tank to play. You're not locked into a fixed "rotation" and little variations in fights make a big difference to what you do, because of how your resources are generated. It also has the best lore, both from this game and the series as a whole. If DRK was a "bad job", then nobody would care about getting it revised. They'd just ignore it and play something else instead.

The main problem with DRK is that if you're playing it, you'd probably benefit your team more if you were playing another tank. This is most evident for the average player, but it's true across all skill levels. You'll get a bigger reward on WAR for much, much less effort. And it's not even like there's a reward at the top for putting up with this: even if your uptime and decision-making is perfect, you'll just narrow the gap, rather than pull ahead for your efforts.

Not to mention that Stormblood's poorly implemented role-action system stripped DRK of a lot of its unique benefits, whilst preserving PLD and WAR's unique advantages. This one-way homogenisation achieved nothing other than robbing from the poor and giving to the rich (yeah, WAR definitely needed Rampart). There aren't many times where you'd think to yourself "I could solve this problem more easily on DRK," but the reverse is true with alarming frequency.

The end result is that you have a number of players switching over to the other tanks even when they'd really rather not. Even if you stick to your guns, you'll find that you need to prove both yourself and your job to people who haven't seen you play yet. That's if you get your foot in the door. There are many people who specifically recruit for PLD/WAR, both in PF and statics.

Why does this matter? We're just about five years since ARR's release. If you've been around for that long, you'd probably find that even two expansions worth of changes can't save the original two tanks from feeling stale and crusted over several times. I don't want to see yet another expansion of WAR/NIN/SCH. But to do this, you have to systemically take apart the advantages that these jobs have been grandfathered into. Stop forcibly making WAR into the ultimate offensive tank. Stop forcibly making PLD into the ultimate defensive tank. Those aren't identities. And that slashing debuff needs to be burned with fire and destroyed with extreme prejudice.

The question isn't "Is DRK bad?" The questions that you need to ask are "Is DRK in bad shape relative to the other two tanks?" and "Is the present state of tanking bad for this game as a whole?" For the sake of injecting a breath of fresh air into FFXIV, here's hoping for a DRK/BLU/DNC/WHM/BLM/SAM/RDM/MCH expansion.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You're not locked into a fixed "rotation"

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Can't be locked into a rotation if you only have one combo to use.

I didn't know that pressing '4' instead of '3' every two cycles was all that different.

There is no reason why you should bring a DRK to a party, any combination with a DRK its complety inferior to PLD/WAR bcs you will loose everything this jobs offer and get nothing in return, DRK is not a progresion tank less a speedrun one.

Having played it since the start of Stormblood, it definitely is in a far better spot than it initially was and is definitely a fine tank the way it is right now. Sure, it does not have a group shield ability akin to Divine Veil or Shake it Off, but you really don't need that to be able to compete - DRK's self-mitigation suite is more than enough to ease the burden of healers considerably - if you actually make good use of it that is.

Damage wise I heard it is pretty much on par with Paladin, which is fine - Paladin has less self-mitigation to spare but comes with group utility as a trade-off.

The only gripe many have is the Dark Arts treadmill since the beginning of Stormblood. One of the worst offenders for this is Syphon Strike's DA effect, heavily restricting how you weave Dark Arts for other attacks (Carve and Spit, Plunge, Dark Passenger), the other how impossibly much MP you have spare for things if it wasn't for having multiple DA MP dumps. That part has been recognized though and the devs seemingly want to work on that.

I may not be Bokchoy or some other high-ranked DRK player, but I can confirm that Dark Knight is absolutely fine to play now, especially in the current tier (and very likely tiers to come) - nothing is having a must-pick status outside of absolute bleeding edge DPS racing (when it includes a PLD for utility on a fight).

So, like I think it started in HW where WAR basically had a designated raid spot.. which caused PLDs and DRKs to fight over MT.
The design philosophy for tanks in SB is that all Tanks can MT and OT. The issue now is that PLD has more utility and beyond respectable DPS. WAR still being the titan that it is, and DRKs kit being stripped makes it feel that they’ve gotten the short end of the deal.

In retrospect I think what’s needed is a fourth tank. A clear design philosophy on balance regarding utility and dps.

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Originally Posted by Magnedeus

I have been putting it off for a long time now. And I wanted to try out dark Knight. But the main reason that I\\'ve been hesitant to try it out because everyone says they are the absolute worst out of the 3 tanks. Is this true? or are people just exaggerating?

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They may be the worst of the tanks, but not by much. The difference in "goodness" between the tank classes is pretty small even if it is there.

All jobs are perfectly viable for all content - and that includes the tanks.
So if you want to try out Dark Knight, go ahead.