When would you take DRK over PLD or WAR?

[Tila]

If you choose to ignore "Drk goes for Magical mitigation and add control, PLD excels at Physical mitigation and defensive team support."

Just because you say it doesn't make it true. So far all anyone has proved is that DRK is a little better at magic mitigation. But certainly not on the level that PLD is better at physical. With other classes, their role is big an obvious. For DRK people struggle to find areas that they might be slightly better at. Nor are they better at defensive team support with their pety, rng based parry proc that can't be relied upon for important moments, and can only be used on bosses they are MTing (and ones that have a steady parrage of parriable attacks, so say, Ramuh, would never be reprisaled, making their whole "magic damage tank" shtick a hell of a lot weaker).

[PWilson]

Huh. And I felt the DRK would be an off-tank class, with it's endless enmity generation via both MP and TP, since the AOE and ranged enmity abilities are the ones running off of MP and comparatively cost the PLD and especially WAR a -lot- of TP.

It's interesting to see forum wisdom go the other way, based upon things other than holding hate.

[Faytte]

Huh. And I felt the DRK would be an off-tank class, with it's endless enmity generation via both MP and TP, since the AOE and ranged enmity abilities are the ones running off of MP and comparatively cost the PLD and especially WAR a -lot- of TP.

It's interesting to see forum wisdom go the other way, based upon things other than holding hate.

Off tanking is about putting up single target dps, but much more importantly, its about applying debuffs to bosses. No debuff the DRK can put up as an offtank is very good. Raids are almost exclusively single target fights, or with very limited adds.

[PWilson]

Off tanking is about putting up single target dps, but much more importantly, its about applying debuffs to bosses. No debuff the DRK can put up as an offtank is very good. Raids are almost exclusively single target fights, or with very limited adds.

Hey, I don't disagree, I just thought it was an interesting thing. Shows my own inexperience, more than anything, I guess.

[Faytte]

Just because you say it doesn't make it true. So far all anyone has proved is that DRK is a little better at magic mitigation. But certainly not on the level that PLD is better at physical. With other classes, their role is big an obvious. For DRK people struggle to find areas that they might be slightly better at. Nor are they better at defensive team support with their pety, rng based parry proc that can't be relied upon for important moments, and can only be used on bosses they are MTing (and ones that have a steady parrage of parriable attacks, so say, Ramuh, would never be reprisaled, making their whole "magic damage tank" shtick a hell of a lot weaker).

False. There are areas there are better at, its just NOT mitigation. They have great aoe, insane off gcd attacks, good offense, and mobility where no tank has any sort of mobility They have great sustain and other mechanics. Now--none of that applies to classic raiding, but I want to underline this because -if- drk's could match say a paladin in mitigation (even come close to it) AND have all those other perks, they would be over powered. Paladins have slow offense, no burst, and no real aoe--so yes, they rock in their areas (mitigation and support).

[Kiteless]

They have great aoe,

True, but mostly irrelevant for trails and raids. You could remove this ability completely, or buff it to points that trash completely melts under your heel, and no one would really care.

insane off gcd attacks,

They are quite good, but as good as they are, they don't make up for our poor damage output overall.

good offense,

We do less damage than WARs off the start, and after a short while PLD outdamages us (those kickass potencies that don't require resource management in picking and choosing what skills to activate really add up, and they can keep adding it up far longer than we could ever hope to).

and mobility where no tank has any sort of mobility

One skill in Plunge, which is solid, but has to be factored into our damage rotation if we want to be considered even remotely comparable to WAR and PLD in damage output, so keeping it up ends up leading to us choosing between damage and mobility. Furthermore, WAR and PLD have never really been begging for that mobility in the first place.

They have great sustain and other mechanics.

Blatant falsehoods right here. Our sustain is absolutely, completely non-existent.