Trying to compare survivability between DRK and PLD

I like doing older content both solo and as a duo alongside a DPS (generally BRD) friend. In my heart I think I want to play DRK, but I feel like if I play PLD both myself and my friend will have better luck surviving in challenging fights. My problem is I'm not sure whether that's true, as I could be overestimating the impact of things like PLD's healing vs DRK's mitigatio. And if PLD actually is better at surviving, I'm wondering how meaningful the difference actually is.

So I tried to crunch the numbers and quickly became overwhelmed by trying to do math that incorporated not just healing ability but also things like mitigation, mana management, and limited GCD's to do it all in. I'm guessing that someone in the community has probably crunched all this before or at least has a better understanding, so I thought I'd ask if someone could point me in the right direction.

So if I want to solo/duo Extremes, Raids, and Savages without a Healer, how much if any will PLD be better at helping myself and my group survive relative to DRK*?

*Those are the only 2 classes I'm interested in, thanks!

Short answer, PLD is better.

Long answer, PLD has clemency which is just the outright most broken heal for healing other party members in low man content, PLD also brings cover which will allow you to protect a party member from mechanics they may not survive on their own, examples such as exploding towers that are meant to be taken by 8 people will deal massive damage and usually apply vun up that most people won’t survive, but a PLD will and they can take it for others too.

While WAR can certainly keep up with PLD on the healing front, no other tank, especially DRK has any answer to cover. PLD also has extra party wide mitigation compared to DRK and it applies to all damage types where DRK only has magic protection.

PLDs only downside is it brings less damage and it gives up even more of that damage to heal others. So there’s the potential to not meet enrages if your dps isn’t good enough where a WAR might.

You may notice I mentioned WAR a lot and not DRK and to be frank, that’s because DRK pretty much isn’t in the conversation. PLD and WAR are the tanks with the sustainability, DRK and to a lesser extent GNB simply can’t keep up with them. So unless you are doing very low level content to the point you don’t need any healing those two tanks are going to be less than ideal.

Dark Knight simply can't keep up in solo content compared to the other 3 tanks. You CAN solo with Dark Knight however making mistakes pretty much means death while the other 3 can just heal through it, Blackest Night while really good in theory does not keep you alive anywhere near as well as a good heal would. I would rank all the tanks when it comes to soloing like this WAR -> PAL -> GUN ----------> DRK.

One thing to keep in mind (reading the above comments) is what level PLD gets abilities. For example, Clemency doesn't come until 58 (and Raw Intuition until 56). Before 58, PLD has zero healing. It doesn't have healing in its rotation until level 84 (EIGHTY-FOUR, no that was not a typo) when Holy Spirit/Circle start healing you.

Up until level 58, PLD has zero healing (somewhat counterintuitively). WAR and DRK both have healing from the -3 of their 1-2-3 combos as soon as they get those (level 26) and GNB gets half that healing but paired with an equal amount of shield from their -2 from level 4 on. Though you can't start with GNB until level 60 anyway, so...

This is pertinent if you're doing stuff like Palace of the Dead, as PLD doesn't get any healing until you get near the level cap (60) of that content.

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Once PLD gets Clemency, it's a beast, though. I soloed some HW Extremes back in ShB and some people were soloing some SB stuff. But they were also doing that on WAR.

WAR and PLD are both good choices. Right now, WAR has basically PLD's sustain + more damage to boot, so it's pretty far and away the strongest Tank for any content, including soloing. PLD is pretty solid for soloing and for Tanking in general, and probably has slightly higher defensives than WAR. So it kind of depends on which you prefer. DRK you can't unlock until at least level 50, but yeah, it's great in level 90 content and Ultimates due to the way its damage profile and burst work, but it's less good for soloing stuff and can be a bit of a pain to level until you get your defensives in the 70s. GNB is actually a pretty good "all around" Tank, all things considered. It has less sustain than PLD, but gets its healing earlier, and it may do the best damage at the moment, or close enough to that it doesn't matter (though Tank damage isn't that wildly apart for the most part anyway...)

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They're all fine for whatever content you want to do, but DRK will have a harder time with soloing and stuff like that. WAR probably is the easiest in the game right now and has good damage and defensives/healing as well. PLD and GNB are what happens if you take that and go more towards defense and healing (PLD) or more towards offense (GNB). PLD's also easier than GNB; GNB is probably the hardest Tank to play if you aren't great at burst and high APM (DRK second hardest).

Where DRK struggles is that of the three types of defensives (Mitigation, Shields, and Regen), DRK only really has access to two, being Shields and Mitigation.
TBN is the fattest shield a tank can give itself, and its cooldown is very short, but its not constantly up, and because it eats into your resources, and is a damage loss if used too much, its not something you can use too much.

The only single target regen DRK has is an incredibly small 300 cure potency on the last attack of its single target gcd rotation. This works well enough in low level content, but around HW-SB levels it becomes basically irrelevant.
So if you're not doing rotation in favor of Bloodspiller spam, this means DRK has no single target heals until you get back to it, which can honestly be about 20 seconds.
AOE wise its not much better, Abyssal drain is honestly terrible. 200 cure potency per target sounds nice, but its 60s CD makes it basically unnoticable, and theres nothing beyond this.

(these numbers are laughably small compared to basically any other tank)

This results in any damage DRK taking basically sticking, it is very hard for a DRK to refill its health once damage is taken, and unfortunately with lower health Mitigation is a lot less effective.

Now DRK's mitigations are either Busted or mediocre depending on the content. If theres a lot of Magic damage, DRK is incredibly sturdy, if its more on the physical side, then DRK is significantly more frail.
This basically comes down to the skill Dark Mind make or breaking DRK. Its either rampart with a shorter cooldown, which is insane, or absolutely useless.

TBN does not hold up to the other 3 Tank short mits, Oblation kinda evens this out, but then thats two mitigations you have to cast to equal another Tank's singular mit. In tight situations where you have to react fast to save somone with your skills, DRK once again comes up short.

You can make DRK solos/duos work, but the job is incredibly selfish to no real benefit of your friend, especially when you find out its really not even that good at doing damage without heavily relying on raid buffs, which obviously wont be that common in duo/solo content.

EW DRK is in a really weird spot right now, if you're not specifically in love with its play style, or doing savage content I wouldn't recommend it. WAR right now is the tank I'd say is best job at literally everything under the sun.

PLD has its own problems too, it gets its healing late, its damage isn't all that good, but in terms of party utility and defensives its a solid choice.

I'd say Paladin is way more self sufficient then Dark Knight for Solo content, Due to having so much self healing abilities, your magic attacks are a consistent source of healing, if you're really low then yes you do have Clemency, a Ability like that is generally more suited for solo play and some cases of saving a run, but it's around on par with every healers GCD Heal, The only issue is you aren't really a healer and even healers should avoid GCD healing if they can, So it should only be used in real emergencies and it shouldn't really be counted as a massive upside for most normal content. I think if you do runs without healers Clemency is generally more used I've actually done a couple runs of 1 tank (pld) and 3 dps and found it fine to do so in later content.

I'd say in a 4 or 8 man party, Paladin is easily still the better tank at least for all forms of casual content, not to say bringing a Dark Knight is a bad thing, because every tank if played well is good but Paladin generally brings a lot more self sustain while having pretty good defensives, While Dark Knight has a ton of defensive abilities it really lacks in sustain which is generally good in casual content.

Paladins last benefit is having a lot of team utility and even healing to keep friends alive, in Clemency single target heal that also heals you if on a party member, Divine Veil, A group shield also comes with a Heal in later content, Intervention, mitigation on a team mate that also heals over time in later content, Passage of arms a cone raid wide that gives pretty good mitigation to party members ect.

I think DRK gets the strongest passive heal from their 1-2-3 than WAR and GNB do, probably to offset their lack of spot-healing. But i doubt it means much.

Souleater: Cure Potency: 300
Storm's Path: Cure Potency: 250
Brutal Shell: Cure Potency: 200 + Shield Potency: 200

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I think DRK gets the strongest passive heal from their 1-2-3 than WAR and GNB do, probably to offset their lack of spot-healing. But i doubt it means much.

Souleater: Cure Potency: 300
Storm's Path: Cure Potency: 250
Brutal Shell: Cure Potency: 200 + Shield Potency: 200

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Brutal Shell is the strongest by far, if needed you can only do 1-2-1-2... for more self healing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arohk

Brutal Shell is the strongest by far, if needed you can only do 1-2-1-2... for more self healing.

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While true, in terms of actual consistency and viability Souleater in comparison pulls ahead and is generally not obstructed by branching combo paths or alternate combos. Generally the resource generation is also fairly tame compared to Warrior and Gunbreaker, so they tend to use less Bloodspillers vs Fell Cleave & Burst Strike/Cart combo. At levels where other healing tools or healing enhancements come into play however is where the other tanks definitely pull ahead in terms of sustain, which is where rigorous monitoring of "what can I TBN efficiently to reduce healing needed" is the only thing that allows you to come close to the sustain of other tanks.

Also, not related to your post Arohk, but - I'm going to die on a hill saying this since I read this too many damn times every time TBN's 15s cooldown is brought up along with "but it is a DPS loss if used too much"...

High TBN usage is only a loss in the following three scenarios:

• when used excessively before a 2min global burst window so you can't pool 9000-12000MP worth of Edge of Shadow
• when used during a 2min global burst window and it won't break in time before damage buffs fizzle
• when it doesn't break in the first place

And of course using TBN excessively when your healer is in a position to comfortably heal you with one or two oGCDs is not necessarily a loss, but just overkill.

Bonus Info:
If you play raidbuff-less comp aka <tank> <tank> WHM SGE SAM MCH BLM <ideally RPR or MNK> where Raid buffs are utterly minimal then using TBN until you pass out will be such a minimal loss that you can more likely attribute what DPS loss you have gotten over the course of the fight to damage and crit variance than losing 3-5% per Edge of Shadow in a buff window. The comp is perfectly fine for doing damage and clearing content btw.

PLD and its not even close. PLD has group mitigation with passage of arms. Group shields and regen. Clemency and intervention. DRK has TBN and oblation and dark missionary which provide no healing and only mitigation, and dark missionary only covers magical attacks.

If you want the cool factor go with DRK and sacrifice group utility, if your party needs extra help with heals and shields and mitigation go with PLD. For dungeons at early game you are better off going with PLD.