Defensive ability, WAR VS DRK

[Launched]

How does a WAR outshine a DRK in defense? In offense as an OT, sure. As a MT, WAR doesn't really have anything over DRK. PLD is still going to be the "safest" MT.

WAR will outmitigate DRK any day of the week. It has Inner Beast (20% damage reduction) for every tank buster, and each IB will also have one of:
Vengeance (equal to Shadow Wall on a shorter cooldown)
Raw Intuition (another 20% vs physical attacks)
Thrill of Battle (and possibly Equilibrium).

WAR can also use stuff like Foresight/Awareness/Convalescence just with IB while DRK needs to stack them with a full cooldown.

[Reynhart]

How does a WAR outshine a DRK in defense? In offense as an OT, sure. As a MT, WAR doesn't really have anything over DRK. PLD is still going to be the "safest" MT.

Like I said above, Odin's fight is a good way to see the differences.
PLD has 5 preemptive defense CD, so you always have one ready for each Sangetall. WAR has Inner Beast. That alone is enough to mitigate every hit too.
As a DRK, I have 4 cooldowns (Shadow Skin, Shadow Wall, Dark Dance and Living Dead)., and they pop pretty fast, since Odin use its tankbuster very frequently. Maybe I lack some experience as a DRK, but it's far more difficult. And Dark Dance is far from reliable.

Living Dead, especially is a problem. The "get full HP or die" is pretty gruesome when healers have to heal the whole raid. Several times, I ended with two SCH, who, pre-50, seriously lack some pure healing efficiency.

Besides, I think DRK has the same problem than WAR in 2.0. Self-healing is good, but it's hardly enough without a good mitigation tool above it. That's why they changed Inner Beast, and I wonder if we will see the same kind of adjusment for DRK in a future patch.

Another route for DRK could be that they'd be designed specifically for dual tank situations, but they'd need a far higher DPS to make it competitive when compared to solo tank setup with one more DPS.

[Syfer22]

I like the concept of Living Dead, but the execution leaves much to be desired. It's a godmode button that requires too much work and attention to mitigate in comparison to Hallowed Ground/Holmgang.

And heaven forbid if you have to pop it in a dungeon... While you could say "you must be bad if you have to pop it in a dungeon, pshaw," there are times when you might have to -- And honestly, it doesn't seem feasible for a single healer to heal you back to full in 10 seconds on reaction, much less with a boss or multiple mobs wailing on you.

[Ceodore]

Also the 30s block. Most if not every tank buster is MAGICAL and you can't block magical attacks.

T13 Flatten: Melee
T9 Raven's Beak: Melee
T10 Critical Rip: Melee
T9 Dalamud Dive: Melee
T9 Rage of Bahamut (Nael): Melee
Death Sentence: Melee
Plummet (T13 Storm of Meracydia): Melee
T4 Dreadnaught Cleave: Melee
Swipe (T13 Pain of Meraydia): Melee
T1 Hood Swipe: Melee
T7 Tail Whip: Melee
T6 Bloody Caress: Melee


These are just a few of the melee physical tank crunches in the (previously) end game content.

T13 Ahk Morn: Magical
T13 Rage of Bahamut (If improperly handled): Magical
T9 Raven's Accent: Magical

These are the only magical tank crunches I can think of that comes from (previously) difficult end game content. Might want to go rethink your comment, leave it to a career Warrior who hasn't even finished Paladin to level 50 to assume blocking is so useless.

[Syfer22]

It'll be interesting to see if the new end game content is designed with DRK in mind to give them a potential spot/niche to fill.

[Faytte]

It'll be interesting to see if the new end game content is designed with DRK in mind to give them a potential spot/niche to fill.

If they do, it would penalize paladins and warriors whom are better set up to deal with physical tank busters (paladins being, almost exclusively set up for that).

You basically are going to end up pissing someone else off. A better solution is just to fix dark knights to have better defensives--its not a major change either. Remove 20% dodge from dark dance + dark arts and add on 10% mitigation to all, and chance shadow wall to also give you a free dark arts proc (since its kind of terrible at the moment vs vengeance or sentinel).

Then give them a real debuff they can use as an off tank..and your done? Everything after that is quality of life.

[SpookyGhost]

WAR is actually fine with magical tank busters, IB + Veng or IB + Thrill + Conv was our go-to CD rotation for 2.0 and that won't really change for magic fights. Equilibrium is also on a 60s CD so that also fits into the rotation nicely if needed. PLD has Rampart -> Sentinel -> Hallowed as well, but the major downside for PLD is that shields don't block magic damage - so if it's a purely magic fight or there is frequent magic damage, PLD starts losing it's shine. Dunno anything about DRK, but yeah, WAR and PLD are both relatively fine for magic stuff.

[Reynhart]

It would indeed make a difference is a fight pops magical tank busters at the very fast rate.

But this probably won't happen because it would create inbalance between the tanks, precisely what they don't want...and why WAR was given greater mitigation back in 2.1

[Syfer22]

If they do, it would penalize paladins and warriors whom are better set up to deal with physical tank busters (paladins being, almost exclusively set up for that).

You basically are going to end up pissing someone else off. A better solution is just to fix dark knights to have better defensives--its not a major change either. Remove 20% dodge from dark dance + dark arts and add on 10% mitigation to all, and chance shadow wall to also give you a free dark arts proc (since its kind of terrible at the moment vs vengeance or sentinel).

Then give them a real debuff they can use as an off tank..and your done? Everything after that is quality of life.

Why would it piss someone off (stupid question on the internet, I know)? It's not like WAR/PLD CAN'T do the content, they just may not handle it quite as well as a DRK can.

Granted, even if they did go that route, I still can't think of many situations a PLD/WAR wouldn't be able to handle something as well or better than a DRK.

[Ceodore]

Honestly, the whole "This tank or that tank is bad, or awkward, or weird, or funky" or whatever complaint there is, simply results from a player not being skilled enough with the class to perform. Dark Knight is honestly like a wet dream come true. So many of the erection inducing skills that Paladin and Warriors had have been passed along to this class. Complaints about Living Dead are honestly misguided. The complaint SHOULD be that it shouldn't have come to using Living Dead in the first place. Somewhere along the line, you, or someone in your party screwed the proverbial pooch. This job has so many low cooldown mitigation skills like Warriors, but also some high cooldown big damage reduction skills like Paladins. Then there's their two vampiric skills (Single target AND AOE), INT debuff for magical fights, off GCD skills that can be reset with parry, damage up skills, mp drain, A FLASH THAT DOES DAMAGE, a Flaming Arrow type skill that has a higher DOT potency, A gap closer, and very strong MP recovery skills which include a Riot Blade which recovers more MP than Riot Blade, a cooldown that recovers MP with damage taken on a low CD, and another that increases damage done and recovers MP on a low CD when off tanking. This tank has everything needed to be great, except one thing apparently... players who know how to use it to tank. The job has a lot already, let's wait until actually competent players weigh in on what the class is lacking. As it stands, I don't see much that it's missing.