Why does DRK is considered weak and bad?

Well i played DRK so far 61 lvl and my pld is 63 but as far as i could tell, the difference is not as drastic as it seems.

Damage seems alright, the only major flaw of a tank stance is getting small on MP but it all depends on the managament.
AOE doesnt seem like that great deal, but im looking forward to unlock quietus.
Single target damage is high enough, life drain makes up for the weaker cooldowns.
What i have noticed is DRK more challenging to play and funnier? There are some useful skills you could mix if dark arts to make up damage, some aoe, you need to make many choices and there is no dot you have to care about. just all about damage.

So whats the deal? I like the class more than PLD, its more indepth and interesting, however i do agree some abilities would love to get something to make them more useful like salty earth or blood weapon being usable during grit would be awesome.

If you compare the tanks across the board DRK falls short when it comes to Defensive Buffs, Self Healing, and overall raid utility. I was of the same mind as you but then play warrior and you will feel the self healing doesn't even compare. War can heal for 10-12k+ on a pack of 5-6 whereas DRK is 5-6k.

If you like DRK I would stick with it. Changes are coming.

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Originally Posted by Wintersandman

If you compare the tanks across the board DRK falls short when it comes to Defensive Buffs, Self Healing, and overall raid utility. I was of the same mind as you but then play warrior and you will feel the self healing doesn't even compare. War can heal for 10-12k+ on a pack of 5-6 whereas DRK is 5-6k.

If you like DRK I would stick with it. Changes are coming.

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I hope for blood weapon to be usable with grit on, it would make sooo muuuch easier to manage MP.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

I hope for blood weapon to be usable with grit on, it would make sooo muuuch easier to manage MP.

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Or the 3.0 Blood Price. It was amazing back then.

I miss that DoT attack Scourge so much. I don't mind most of the stuff they removed in Stormblood but it would be awesome to get that one back. Job adjustments coming... we know they're raising drk dps a bit so that's something. Good chance that I might get back on it if they don't overshadow it by overbuffing warrior in the same patch. I'm not too bothered about balance if it's just a single digit percentage difference in efficiency and every job can clear any content, it's what you call negligible. When you have options there will always be a best and worst option but in this game it's not a huge gap from top to bottom. They try to narrow the gap in updates as much as they can.

Honestly, you really need to hit level-cap (lvl. 70) with all the tanks and play all of them in end-game content to be able to really feel where the different jobs are lacking or shine in comparison to each other.

Playing the jobs under level-cap is only playing part of the job so it doesn't really present the full picture of how the job plays and functions.
On top of that, if you only have experience with say one tank job, it's really hard to judge how it compares to the others since firsthand experience is not there and you are required to go off of what others say.

As for why DRK is currently considered the worst of the tank jobs, the following are the reasons that are most often given.
- It does the least amount of damage of all the tanks. Not a crazy amount less, but it is somewhat noticeable.
- It has the weakest defensive kit, seeming to be at least one defensive cooldown short of what the other tanks have.
- It has the least amount of party/group utility since the one ability it has is limited to single targets as opposed to potentially affecting the whole party.
- It has the worst self-healing potential.
- It has the greatest number of abilities that feel effectively useless , virtually pointless or extremely underwhelming.

For me, my biggest gripe with DRK is that it currently feels disjointed to play, like a puzzle missing a piece right in the middle or a chain missing a link to connect it's two halves.
Basically it just feels like something is missing to feel and flow "right" when playing it. This isn't a feeling I get when I play as PLD or WAR.
Oh and having to double-weave with Dark Arts, not a fan of that.

As for MP management, it's really not that bad and you just need to get used to it as part of playing DRK. It's way easier now to manage at a base level compared to in Heavensward where Darkside would constantly drain MP and then turn itself off when you ran out.

Anyways, as Wintersandman said there are going to be tank changes coming with the 4.2 patch at the end of this month, so we will see what happens with those.

Most of the complaints you see are directed at the raid scene, not the dungeon scene. In dungeons, at 70, the tanks are more level since dark has pretty good AOE abilities. So the picture, as others have noted before me, is incomplete, and if at 70 you mainly do dungeons, not extreme primals and savage, then you will probably find yourself fairly satisfied with Dark Knight.

The problems are more apparent when leveling and in raid. There are a huge number of posts about dark knight damage and utility floating around, these are the major sources of complaints, and there is a reddit post by a fairly well know raider addressing this issue in a clean way here (it is a response to the question): https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ge_discussion/

As far as the leveling experience, many have noted that leveling dark knight feels squishier than leveling paladin or warrior. I cannot speak to the pre-60 content, as I was level 60 on everything before Stormblood, but from 60 on you are missing an eHP cooldown (or several) or passive abilities until you hit 70.

Pre-70:
Dark Knight: Shadow Wall and Dark Mind
Paladin: Sentinel, Bulwark, Sheltron, Passive Blocking
Warrior: Vegeance, Raw Intuition, Thrill of Battle, Inner Beast, passive parrying

As you can see Dark Knight is missing a few defensive abilities compared to the other two tanks, and half of them only work on one type of damage. Shadow Wall also has the benefit of being the worst of the three big unique cooldowns, being a minute longer cooldown compared to vengeance and mitigating 10% less than Sentinel. Of course, leveling dungeons aren't made to be optimized to the degree that this is the difference between life and death, but it does make things more difficult for no apparent reason.

Play what you like. It doesn't matter what tank you play unless you are raiding at level 70. Even then the differences aren't as big a deal as the outcry on the forum would lead you to believe. All tanks are viable for everything, just not optimal. Not to mention buffs come and go every patch cycle. Doing 5% less damage than the next tank on the list isn't a death sentence. If you enjoy and master your class, raid with whatever. If you aren't interested in high end raiding then it REALLY doesn't matter what you play. Have fun.

Chrono made various very good post and reply on different about drk issue.

He goes in great details as to why and how much weaker DRK.

For me the most important weakness that I hope will be addressed are the lack of raid utility compared to WAR/Pal and the missing cd.
People talk a lot about that 5% missing dps (which is adresses anyway) but I honestly didn't really cared about 5% tank dps. My first job is to survive with the boss on my face, I'm more worried about missing survivability as a tank than missing a few % dps. I can't recall a single case where me doing 5% more would have mattered.
But I can recall many times where some sort of Aoe TBN would have saved the raid from a wipe

Stormblood DRK is vastly inferior to Heavensword DRK. That's what has every DRK player upset.

What do people mean when they say DRK is missing a personal cooldown? If something is missing from my action bar, I'd like to know lol. Do Cover and Passage of Arms count as personal cooldowns?

PLD: Bulwark, Sentinel, Sheltron
DRK: Dark Mind, Shadow Wall, The Blackest Night

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Originally Posted by Reinha

What do people mean when they say DRK is missing a personal cooldown? If something is missing from my action bar, I'd like to know lol. Do Cover and Passage of Arms count as personal cooldowns?

PLD: Bulwark, Sentinel, Sheltron
DRK: Dark Mind, Shadow Wall, The Blackest Night

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At 70 they are fairly close, imo. Warrior technically has an extra when you count up theirs and stay in tank stance. Pre 70 Dark is missing TBN so it doesn't get that third mitigation until after the leveling experience. I believe that is what people mean.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

At 70 they are fairly close, imo. Warrior technically has an extra when you count up theirs and stay in tank stance. Pre 70 Dark is missing TBN so it doesn't get that third mitigation until after the leveling experience. I believe that is what people mean.

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Alright, thank you. It really makes no sense that DRK gets their most versatile and useful mitigation tool at max level and gets no time to practice using it on trash pulls and boss fights. Delirium and TBN levels should be swapped.