Dark Knight or Gunbreaker

Hi y’all I’m playing a Roe female dragoon and having a blast. I used to play wow and main dk for dark class and lore. Now I only play ff14 with other games and I want to unlock dark knight and reaper. I’m not in heavensward yet but I will be and I really want to try dk. However some people say to go gunbreaker for a dps main like me. I want to get dark knight but should I go to gunbreaker? Also I’m still stucking with dragoon and reaper but I want to ask dk mains is it a fun class?

There is nothing stopping you from just trying out both. Play what you find more fun.

Sorry I’m just used to wow for so long this is still so new to me.

DRK is a way to go.

Superior class

I too used to play DK in wow.

games come and go, DK and edge is forever

there is a pretty big divide if people find DRK fun or not especially on forum but you seem really interested in DRK so might as well go with that and you can always unlock GNB later if you dont like it.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

There is nothing stopping you from just trying out both. Play what you find more fun.

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Indeed
There's no consequence for trying out multiple jobs since multi-classing is a thing

that being said and going off information in OP's post and considering they aren't even in HW yet
They'll technically get access to DRK first but it starts at level 30 so they'd have to retread old ground and do content they just completed before they progress anymore msq
Whereas if they wait til 60 they can swap to GNB right away and progress through msq as a GNB

those are my practical thoughts
as far as which job is ultimately more "fun" is subjective

I ll be honest as a main tank, DK and Gunbreaker are the worst check in order :

Paladin Rank 1 Best defense, good dps, can heal and have the strongest attacks, can use magic attacks, great at pvp
Warrior Rank 2 Good defense, Best dps, great at pvp
Gunbreaker Rank 3 Good defense, Bad dps, very bad at pvp
Dark Knight Rank 4 Bad defense, good dps, bad at pvp

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Originally Posted by HanWenqing

I ll be honest as a main tank, DK and Gunbreaker are the worst check in order :

Paladin Rank 1 Best defense, good dps, can heal and have the strongest attacks, can use magic attacks, great at pvp
Warrior Rank 2 Good defense, Best dps, great at pvp
Gunbreaker Rank 3 Good defense, Bad dps, very bad at pvp
Dark Knight Rank 4 Bad defense, good dps, bad at pvp

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yeah there's a bunch of stuff that is wrong in that
you're just showing your personal bias

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Originally Posted by Rowde

yeah there's a bunch of stuff that is wrong in that
you're just showing your personal bias

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Yes, this is my personal point of view from my experience, if you find that there are mistakes I wait for your explanations otherwise it's useless to say that.

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Originally Posted by Swampking

Hi y’all I’m playing a Roe female dragoon and having a blast. I used to play wow and main dk for dark class and lore. Now I only play ff14 with other games and I want to unlock dark knight and reaper. I’m not in heavensward yet but I will be and I really want to try dk. However some people say to go gunbreaker for a dps main like me. I want to get dark knight but should I go to gunbreaker? Also I’m still stucking with dragoon and reaper but I want to ask dk mains is it a fun class?

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It does not matter. The DRK and Gunbreaker are up to 95% the same thing. The jobs in FF14 are not classes like in other roleplay games. The jobs are basically skins over a class. One or two cooldowns are different but the rest is exactly the same.



Cheers

Another thing you could do is try Deep Dungeons for a hyper aggressive dunk into how they feel to play, look into a content called Palace of the Dead (located in South Shroud - Gridania, Quarrymill). Also may consider checking out PvP- while this isn't really indicative of how they are in PvE content... you can get the flavor vibe from it as well.

Even if one job isn't in a great spot they're all viable :)

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

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Originally Posted by Swampking

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

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drk just got an update lol

here's the thing "top dps" tank shifts around expansion to expansion and sometimes even between patches during expansions depending on what they adjust
it's more important to try them out and figure out which one was the playstyle that you most enjoy

All the tanks have all the tools needed to clear content

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Originally Posted by Swampking

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

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Both are viable up to, and including, Ultimate. It really depends on what you personally enjoy playing. Give both a try, and see which fits you better.

I would also recommend trying a couple of other classes(particularly ones that still have positionals so that you understand why some tanks make those players angry when they spin the boss constantly). You might find one that you enjoy and have that as a backup class to play.

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Originally Posted by HanWenqing

Yes, this is my personal point of view from my experience, if you find that there are mistakes I wait for your explanations otherwise it's useless to say that.

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I'll do it, real quick like, real sloppy post incoming. I think you're pretty wrong honestly.

Paladin is the best support tank, consistent rotation, low APM. It has 1 extra cooldown designed for party mitigation. It's rotation is mostly fixed, with potential of heavy optimization, giving it a higher skill ceiling than the other tanks. It's personal cooldowns are relatively mediorce, because it's missing one, but in emergencies, and only in emergencies, it can be supplemented with Clemency. Defensives are mostly centered around high mitigations and good on-demand support supplementation. The lack of healing on the physical GCD rotation is still a small problem that is slightly mitigated by the ability to block, but buffed Interventions still make it a top tier co-tank. Invulnerability is hampered by it's incredibly long 7m cooldown, leading to other tanks gaining a usage of their invuln over it in many situations, despite it being a true invuln. It's DPS is adequate among tanks, on the lower end with WAR, but is hindered by it's inability to abuse the raid buffs of the party in full uptime encounters. Paladin does not have the strongest attacks, that's Dark Knight. Paladin has a very CONSISTENT spread with lower peaks, and higher valleys than the others, paired with it's DoTs. Surprising good in multi-target. PvP PLD is very good in the right hands, it's infuriating in Onsall.

Warrior is the easiest tank, burst rotation, low APM. Simple rotation, great cooldowns, an opener to basic builder-spender priority systems on the tank role. Burst DPS is high, but the valley for WAR is low, and the lack of syngery with critical hit buffs from party members leave much of WAR's theoretical damage output stagnated by it's own design (auto critical direct hits being a staple of their burst phase). Players who optimize gauge management can put filler Fell Cleaves inside of burst windows to boost their damage, but the filler rotation outside of burst is weak. Trade that for being pretty much unkillable due to a litany of personal mitigation, the best invuln in the entire game, and with proper use of Bloodwhetting, self-healing potential. Defensively focused on HP recovery after tanking hits, with solid mitigation skills on top. Very good in progression environments. Great AoE at the start of bursts, but falls off quickly like it's other offensive traits. A good starter for tanking in PvP, low skill floor, low skill ceiling, but impactful nonetheless. Really great pick, even after adjustments.

Dark Knight is the burst rotation, high APM tank. Dark Knight has the same generic builder-spender skeleton as WAR and other DPS jobs, but features a significantly higher emphasis on stockpiling resources for burst windows. GCD rotation is very simple, and the lowest engagement of the tanks, but the sheer amount of oGCDs that are placed with 2 minute burst windows will blow apart every other tank in DPS except for Gunbreaker. The highest peak, beyond every job in the game except for NIN. It's DPS is incredible if abused for aDPS, inside of burst windows, with a favorable killtime or in multi-target, as many of DRK's attacks cleave or are noticeably resource positive in terms of GCDs spent at 2+ targets. Living Shadow in terms of potency, is the highest potency per action ability in the entire game at full duration. Defensively, has much more restrictions on what can properly mitigated due to magic attacks not being common in casual content, and TBN requiring an understanding of damage intake, the effect of stacking multiplicative mitigations with an additive shields, proper CD cycling, and also teams that aren't dumb as rocks. Opposite to WAR, defensively we're focused on negating damage entirely. Invulnerability is now #2 after fixes. Great tank in progression environments for it's solid OT/party support, flexible rotation, and more frequent on-demand cooldowns (15s vs 25s + 1 extra 60s with 2 stacks) and THE tank for optimization/farming environments. PvP is like, harder WAR with different CC. Pretty good on contested points/teamfights, and a menace if you fight or are chased by anyone with a DRK supporting them, much like PLD. Smaller niche compared to PLD/WAR in that content though. Better after Bloodspiller and LB tweaks.

Gunbreaker is the consistent rotation, high APM tank, with a little gauge management. A little bit of everything from other tanks, jack of all trades, ace in some situations. High mitigations in the kit, an extra physical based cooldown, magic-based party mitigation, two personal regens, a great on-demand cooldown, a serviceable invuln at 6m, and the highest damage in the game for a tank on a personal level with no team interaction. Bursting happens every 30 seconds, with a heavier burst at the 1 minute. A lot of time on GNB is spent bursting, and it suffers more than any other tank to drifting out of alignment, and for inexperienced players, movement during said bursts. High barrier to entry, but doesn't have a particularly obvious downside or stipulation like other tanks that isn't personal preference. The damage however, is very high, and reasonable to reach just because of the high potencies on each skill with an appreciable amount of oGCDs. Solid in AoE, resource positive like DRK in multi-target. Absolutely broken at Level 70 in comparison to other tanks at that level. I don't play GNB in PvP.

What should you play?

Any tank worth their salt in this game, is an omni-tank, in my opinion. They all do within like 5% DPS of each other, they all have enough cooldowns to do any content you need. Think of the tank role as the class, and each individual tank as a spec, if you will. You play all of them, maybe main one as a preference/comfort pick, maybe play one a lot less because you're not a fan of it (me with WAR). You share gear, no reason not to, right?

Speaking from a healer's perspective: DRK is a lot easier to heal than GNB, because of TBN and the recent update that changed a useless ability into something that is so much better.

My personal experience with this is 'it's the job' because I've seen the same person on both jobs tanking when I heal, and it's always more of a pain to keep GNB up. GNB though does have some really good DPS burst damage, so I dunno WTF that other guy on the first page was talking about where GNB was bad DPS. I'm not the only person who hates healing GNB either.

Speaking from a tank's perspective: DRK storyline is one of the most interesting to go through; it was written very well. Personally, for me, it is more fun to play than GNB. It does very decent damage, has a better toolset for defense than GNB, and who wouldn't want to swing around a huge sword? (It makes for a great NieR 2B character too, haha). Playing GNB, I always feel like I am running out of defensive capabilities, because you get hit by everything. I think GNB could quite honestly gain a boost in defense.

Dark Knight is regarded to have a "braindead" GCD rotation which involves repeating 3 buttons most of the time, but between that you weave a lot of abilities and sometimes you can do bloodspillers for GCD.

Dark Knight can be really fun with varied abilities to press, especially with enough skill speed, but it depends on what you like. Gunbreaker is much faster-paced at level 90 with a big GCD rotation and a lot of abilities to press between them because of its continuation mechanic.

You have to tank while doing this rotation and that isn't very distracting in dungeons but it can be in other content. You might find a simple GCD rotation makes tanking easier or you might prefer Gunbreaker's busier rotation where you can't delay the abilities as much.

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Originally Posted by HanWenqing

Paladin Rank 1 Best defense, good dps, can heal and have the strongest attacks, can use magic attacks, great at pvp
Warrior Rank 2 Good defense, Best dps, great at pvp
Gunbreaker Rank 3 Good defense, Bad dps, very bad at pvp
Dark Knight Rank 4 Bad defense, good dps, bad at pvp

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When you say bad defense, that could be misleading because Dark Knight's mitigation is among the best, with a powerful shield called The Blackest Night which absorbs damage worth 25% of health on a 15 second cooldown. This can be combined with the 2-charge Oblation and all of the standard tank mitigations to effectively increase this percentage before the shield disappears.

If the damage is magic, which a lot of damage is, Dark Mind behaves as an extra Rampart, so it provides more mitigation than other tank's version of it like Camouflage or Thrill of Battle. Unlike paladin, their aoe mitigation, Dark Missionary, can benefit them as well.

Where Dark Knights suffer is self-healing and that might be what makes you feel weaker. The defense can suffer if you are afraid of The Blackest Night not breaking, but you can argue that if it doesn't break, then the incoming damage probably isn't that high anyway.

Warriors just have the standard defenses that other tanks have, but where they are stronger is with self-heals. Their unique focus is on taking damage with Holmgang and then healing it back up or increasing their total HP with Thrill of Battle instead of mitigating.

Gunbreaker is somewhere in the middle between Warrior and Dark Knight because it combines magic shields with self-healing.

They have different levels of mitigation, shield absorb and self-healing, but they are all meant to achieve the same result. Dark Knight just suffers a bit in early EW dungeons with fewer heals in aoe situations, but the recent update to Living Dead helps.

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Originally Posted by Swampking

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

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that person has no idea what they’re talking about. DRK is top DPS tank with GNB right on it’s tail. however it does not matter. every tank is good with its own str and weakness. play what you want.

(DRK storyline is fantastic by the way)

If you're looking at which is more fun to actually do stuff with its a toss up. Drk is nice an edgy but its "burst" window is just Warriors without the guaranteed crits HOWEVER its shadow spirit aids its damage output immensely, whereas Gunbreakers kit is extremely fun if you dont mind a drift. Gnb burst rotation recently simplified its button inputs if that was an issue before.

If you're looking at story Id say Gunbreaker is better. You get new racial npcs in Eorzea (poor Sid is trapped in Ishgard and no new jobs have au ra except Warriors 60-70 questline), the Job NPC gets revenge on Garlean filth for destroying is country and family and torturing him and theres no bs "oh but you just disagreed with their facist One Race supremacist ideals ;_;" like Endwalkers story.
Dark Knight WOULD be better but if you dislike player agency being stripped away and how you write or interpret your character being interrupted by other characters telling you who you are, you wont like it. Drk fell off hard for me in its stormblood story like no little elf boy I dont feel the slightest bit bad for killing all the people Ive slaughtered for the msq not one of them was worth keeping alive they were all imperialist thugs please stop trying to guilt trip me.

Both. GNB has a more friendly endgame though.

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Originally Posted by HanWenqing

Yes, this is my personal point of view from my experience, if you find that there are mistakes I wait for your explanations otherwise it's useless to say that.

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If we look at fflogs statistics for the entirety of the current raid tier this patch (meaning the 6.1 patch), GNB actually does the most damage, DRK behind it by less than a 1%, PLD behind them by around 2%, and WAR behind PLD by just under 1%. So it's basically GNB > DRK > PLD > WAR in damage, with GNB at the top, and WAR at the bottom.

On my own personal opinion though, between DRK and GNB, both feel similar in hecticness, and it's going to rely on your own personal taste for which one you go for. DRK is basically 1-2-3 the tank, all the time when not using its burst moves. GNB, while the same way, has a lot more to do in the downtime between bursts considering you're trying to prevent overcapping on your class mechanic. They also have one hell of a burst, with you going John Madden on oGCDs.

Of all the tanks..I've used Gunbreaker the least so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt since I usually main WAR.

Gunbreaker - The fun thing with this is you have an ability called Continuation that gives you a pretty good burst of damage as you do one attack and then follow it up with continuation...and you do that three times per every cartridge you wanna spend to do the full combo. Each time you use Continuation...it rotates automatically to a new ability ( Which why don't they do this for all combo actions like in PvP I'll never know ). They can also heal themselves with a regen or even put it on someone else if the healer is out of commission and the boss is nearly dead and you want to save one of the DPS.

Dark Knight - It is all about MP management. You can use it for a flat 30% of your health as a shield or you can use the MP to do good damage to a single target or a pack. You'll have options to regain that MP quickly as well with Blood Weapon. So depending on the situation you can have burst defense or burst offense. If you have a SCH with you you can opt to be more offensive since they will likely shield you. Or you can just have lots of shields if you alternate between their shields and your own since they do NOT stack.

Personally, I miss the old DRK… Call me crazy, but the HW version was the best imo. The MP management was a challenge by itself, a very interesting one. Now it’s just… bland.

As a DPS main I really do enjoy the GNB, I think it’s quite nervous for a tank.
I love PLD too because I find it very “noble”.

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Originally Posted by ValkyriaCrystalis

Personally, I miss the old DRK… Call me crazy, but the HW version was the best imo. The MP management was a challenge by itself, a very interesting one. Now it’s just… bland.

As a DPS main I really do enjoy the GNB, I think it’s quite nervous for a tank.
I love PLD too because I find it very “noble”.

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HW and Stormblood DRK was great...since then, not so much. I miss going from almost dead to full HP spamming Dark Arts and Abyssal Drain with Quietus to refill MP, and Salted Earth down to fill the job gauge.

Just do both. Swap back and forth to whichever you want more since they share the same gear outside of BiS.

Dark Knight has the notable drawback of starting at level 30 when you have to be level 50 and make it to Ishgard to even unlock it. It's a bit of a slog. However, they did recently (finally!) fix Living Dead so it doesn't just outright kill you if you don't have a decent healer handy. It also has some of the best job story quests in the game. Plus, giant swords.

Gunbreaker starts at level 60, so it's easier to jump into if you want to play the rest of the game with it. It has a busier rotation, with lots of buttons to press to keep everything going. On the downside, it gets loud when every swing has an explosion behind it. I'm personally somewhat less fond of it, but that's purely my opinion.

On the bright side, this game lets you play every job on a single character, so the only thing stopping you from trying both and choosing for yourself is time.

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Originally Posted by ValkyriaCrystalis

Personally, I miss the old DRK… Call me crazy, but the HW version was the best imo. The MP management was a challenge by itself, a very interesting one. Now it’s just… bland.

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DRK was very challenging to play in HW and I'm surprised I even pulled it off. I didn't feel it needed to be that challenging. A lot of the challenge came from what felt like poor design with RNG mitigation like parry dictating whether you could use certain abilities. Parries only proc from physical attacks and at the time, most bosses were doing magic attacks, so you had to know your enemies to know what abilities you had available. It was not a good feeling for Reprisal to proc when you didn't actually need it and it works a lot better now. The dot was not part of a combo and it did 100 potency damage itself which added pressure to spam it when you already had a lot of abilities to use and manage.

The MP, dot and enmity management, rotation, mitigation, unlocking mitigation, fight mechanics and pressing all offense abilities off cooldown was a lot but there were so many little things that only applied in certain situations that would come up at certain points in a fight, like when you needed to aoe or prepare Dark Arts for Dark Mind.

It was great in a way but with buggy ideas like RNG mitigation and spammable dots. It felt like a lot of new players were not going to get that good at a tank like that and people were already afraid of the tank role. I just don't think a tank has to be that complicated but they should be distinct.

To put it very simply:

GNB plays closer to a melee DPS than the other tanks.

DRK has probably the best class storyline in the game (minus the Moogles) and it’s worth doing just for that.

Either way, I recommend doing the Hall of the Novice for tanks to get your bearings and start getting used to tanking in the first couple of dungeons in the game and working your way up from there as you get more comfortable, even if your class starts at a higher level. Having a lot of abilities unlock immediately can be daunting.

Palace of the Dead/Heaven on High/Bozja can help, but those aren’t traditional battle content type places and dungeons can give you a better idea of what to expect.

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Originally Posted by HanWenqing

I ll be honest as a main tank, DK and Gunbreaker are the worst check in order :

Paladin Rank 1 Best defense, good dps, can heal and have the strongest attacks, can use magic attacks, great at pvp
Warrior Rank 2 Good defense, Best dps, great at pvp
Gunbreaker Rank 3 Good defense, Bad dps, very bad at pvp
Dark Knight Rank 4 Bad defense, good dps, bad at pvp

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If you're using Clemency on PLD as a positive, your opinion without any solid basis

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Originally Posted by Swampking

Hi y’all I’m playing a Roe female dragoon and having a blast. I used to play wow and main dk for dark class and lore. Now I only play ff14 with other games and I want to unlock dark knight and reaper. I’m not in heavensward yet but I will be and I really want to try dk. However some people say to go gunbreaker for a dps main like me. I want to get dark knight but should I go to gunbreaker? Also I’m still stucking with dragoon and reaper but I want to ask dk mains is it a fun class?

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get what you want really.
Both has differences in gameplay.
PS: you can always try both eventually.
and pick which you want to main later

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Originally Posted by Swampking

Hi y’all I’m playing a Roe female dragoon and having a blast. I used to play wow and main dk for dark class and lore. Now I only play ff14 with other games and I want to unlock dark knight and reaper. I’m not in heavensward yet but I will be and I really want to try dk. However some people say to go gunbreaker for a dps main like me. I want to get dark knight but should I go to gunbreaker? Also I’m still stucking with dragoon and reaper but I want to ask dk mains is it a fun class?

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Can you weave oGCDs fine and not have issues moving while doing that and tanking? Then both are good options. GNB is more busy if you want to play it more optimally but DRK is the highest dps tank provided you understand it and do some cursed stuff. Give em a try and look up their rotation. For me GNB feels super rewarding getting your weaves and your burst done.

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Originally Posted by Swampking

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

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then DRK. Big ass sword

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Originally Posted by Rowde

lThey'll technically get access to DRK first but it starts at level 30 so they'd have to retread old ground and do content they just completed before they progress anymore msq
Whereas if they wait til 60 they can swap to GNB right away and progress through msq as a GNB

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There isn't a clear-cut one you get access to "first".

Because DRK requires MSQ progress to Heavensward, then there's a fair chance of hitting level 60 before reaching HW, at which point GNB becomes available sooner.

OP's character info says they've already hit level 60, so they can pick up GNB right now.

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Originally Posted by Swampking

I hope I’m not making anyone angry.

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Nothing makes people on this forum angrier than the suggestion that someone might be enjoying the game.

GNB has a more involved rotation and does slightly more damage over an entire fight, I would also say its overall kit is a bit more versatile than DRK as DRK has an abundance of a damage only moves and not too much in terms of utility, and what it does has honestly has to be very well understood to maximize the use of. Pro tip if someone tells you Dark Mind is a bad skill their opinion should be discarded.

DRK is a lot more simplified, and honestly less clunky as a result. It also has a much higher synergy with big burst windows so its going to barf out damage harder than any class in the game (except ninja) at the start of any fight.

I personally prefer DRK over GNB, but nothings stopping you from playing both

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Originally Posted by Swampking

Hi y’all I’m playing a Roe female dragoon and having a blast. I used to play wow and main dk for dark class and lore. Now I only play ff14 with other games and I want to unlock dark knight and reaper. I’m not in heavensward yet but I will be and I really want to try dk. However some people say to go gunbreaker for a dps main like me. I want to get dark knight but should I go to gunbreaker? Also I’m still stucking with dragoon and reaper but I want to ask dk mains is it a fun class?

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Big Girl + Big Sword = Big Fun. The same can be said of Big Girl + Big Axe.