Is it me, or is DRK really isn't that super great, nor super bad.

[Fendred]

You are not supposed ot have darkside fall off

The idea is to manage your MP and keep it rolling

furthermore, abilities dont consume darkside, they require it active to use.

Woops, I was confusing dark arts with darkside. My bad.

Regardless, I do flip it off in between encounters to let my MP go back up, and I don't see any dark knight keeping darkside up if they are in a situation that requires heavy AoE.

[Avalon_Albrook]

Woops, I was confusing dark arts with darkside. My bad.

Regardless, I do flip it off in between encounters to let my MP go back up, and I don't see any dark knight keeping darkside up if they are in a situation that requires heavy AoE.

This is, at early levels, a little more tricky to manage, as Blood Price should never be on cooldown, but when you pop it needs to be strategic. You obviously shouldn't pop it when there's one mob left at half health and you'll get maybe 2 attacks worth of mp regen from it before the mob is dead. As you go and you get the feel for things, the mp management is way more comfortable. The more mobs there are, the more effective Blood Price is, and the more freedom you have with aoes, especially later. Like in the Vault last night, just for kicks, I did nothing but dark arts Abyssal Drain on a group of about 8 mobs while Blood Price was up. By the time dark arts was back up again for another Abyssal Drain, my mp was full.

Darkside should never be off if you're actively in combat. Never ever ever. Not while tanking, not while OTing, not while running around a map doing quests -- never ever ever off. If it falls off, turn it back on the second you have the mana for it. If you turn it off for better mana regen in between pulls, that's fine, but when in combat, if Darkside is off, something is wrong.

[MythToken]

Something to keep in mind, gear available for a level 50 will be inflated in power and ilvl.
As you level towards 60, you are actually getting worse, in terms of gear and its power/ilvl.
Once you hit 60 then everything starts to smooth out and go back up.
So a lot of the DRK's complaining that are lvl 55, I would imagine the increased stats from better gear at 60 will make MP management much easier.

The other issue is probably that, DRK can use really powerful MP intensive moves with no cooldowns. But in reality the hidden cooldown is your MP.
This gives a skilled tank a lot of flexibility in terms of ability usage. But it allows a bad tank to blow all of the stuff right away and run out of MP and then start switching out of Grit.
(switching out of grit has its place, but mostly when MTing you wont be)

Also very few people are "good" at being a DRK, give it some time its been like 4 days? People have been playing PLD and WAR for a year or more.

Nothing I have seen is out of balance on a scale of 1.0 War/Pld DRK's don't need some giant buff.

side note they should fix the Darkside graphic it does look stupid.

[Rbstr]

I think it's unfair to make Shadow Wall worse than Vengeance or Sentinel with no upside. But it'll still do its job of being the big mitigation CD.

But, all told, DRK is plenty capable. It's got Rampart and Sentinel (basically). It's got an extra magic defensive CD on a short timer. The parry CD is a bit meh, but has good synergy with a 10% damage down that's up 2/3rds of the time and a DPS-increasing proc. And it's got all the cross-class CDs.
As an added benefit it's got a pretty heavy amount of self healing and strong damage potential MT and OT.
All told for mitigation, besides the Cross-class, CDs:
War gets Inner Beast, Vengeance, ToB (...well it gives more eHp) and Intuition (phys only)
Pld gets Rampart, Sentinel, Sheltron (phys only), Bulwark (chance-based, phys only)
Drk gets Shadow Skin, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind (magic only), Dark dance (chance, phys only)

I think that's pretty decent ballance, aside from some minor things. Then in the Tanking-DPS realm, DRK gets limited more by mana availability, rather than cooldown uptime. We really have to wait a while to see how that part sorts out. But, for now, it seems pretty decent.

[Syfer22]

I've only played PLD to 50; I haven't really touched WAR. So far I do enjoy DRK but I can still say that PLD is the better tank -- It's easier to play and it does its job more effectively.

I do have more fun playing DRK, but one thing I wonder -- Does Blind really do anything? I feel like Dark Arts is primarily for Souleater, with Power Slash coming in secondary along with Dark Dance and Dark Passenger coming in last.

[TouchandFeel]

In most level 50 content blind didn't do anything because most stuff was immune or would begin resisting it very quickly. They may have changed this for the new content but I don't know, so I'm not sure of blind's viability now.
Not sure if getting the blind effect is worth the dark arts use though.

[Syfer22]

In most level 50 content blind didn't do anything because most stuff was immune or would begin resisting it very quickly. They may have changed this for the new content but I don't know, so I'm not sure of blind's viability now.
Not sure if getting the blind effect is worth the dark arts use though.

I agree; it's tough to say. Blind as a mechanic just feels like it does... Nothing. I could be wrong, though.

[Gardes]

Eh, maybe we're meant to use dance and pass right after price runs out in dungeons. Start a pull, mitigation + price, dump mana into drains and unleashes then as you run out of price and still have decent mana, you cast blind and evasion (that's like 2/3 of our mp huh?) and then stick to mana combos until next pull?

Just basing this on my first 2 HW dungeon runs. I've been doing single pack pulls because the enemies are tougher and takes longer to kill...so I'm not sure the healers are comfortable with big pull on level synced content. Price tends to be up not long before I start my next pull so I think they take 40 seconds ish but price is only up for like 15?

[wonka11]

Its just...

Blah..

It doesn't hit hard no where near against a warrior nor the health

Doesn't have the defensive mitigation like a paladin but damages just a tad more then a paladin.

Depends on parry with a long cooldown to reduce the damage of a mob (parry reprisal) for 10% when a warrior can do it just by storm path combo(doesn't stack it seems)

It seems its a "Tricks of all trades, master of none" right now.

Its the middle lane, mediocre tank at the moment.

[Diva_]

Been levelling my DRK for the last two days, lvl 47 atm, and it's been an absolute cakewalk tanking. Aggro is off the charts after 2-3 unleash on aoe pulls. Mana issues have been fairly non existant and with cross class skills such as conva, foresight and bloodbath having some sort of a buff up is no problem at all. The only time I died was when I grossly overpulled. If your healer is somewhat decent there shouldn't be any issues at all.

However I've learned from playing MMO's over the years that even basic logical thinking seems to be soooo stressful for people and getting a decent rotation seems to baffle 90% of the players, in any game.