When would you take DRK over PLD or WAR?

[Nabian]

From my experience I see DRK as the farming tank. Of the three tank classes they have the highest DPS while in tanking stance. They have acceptable levels of mitigation (not quite as high as pld). They don't have the utility that PLD or WAR offers but their increased DPS can help with dps checks if that is your problem area.

Alternatively some could argue that the decreased defense will cause healers to have to heal more and thus less dps uptime for your healers. Either way DRK do not make good OT but can be acceptable in MT roll.

[Thugwaffle]

DRK > PLD for farming dungeons... Other than that no reason to.

[ZodiacSoldier]

From my experience, this is my opinion when it comes to the three tanks:

PLD are the best for main tanks, although they are the most boring of the 3 tanks. They offer the best mitigation and are the easiest to heal. For progressive raids I will always want PLD as the MT.

WAR are good for off tanks. They provide amazing DPS and I think they synergize better with PLD than DRK does.

DRK I feel are a mix of the two, good dps and good mitigation but not the best in either. Probably best in 4 man groups since they can use both their tanking stance and DPS stance together. I don't mind have them as a MT or OT in a raid group, but not optimal. The main think an OT should bring is DPS and Utility (ie Debuffs). An issue i have is that the 10% damage debuff they have is based off a parry, so they have to MT to use it and I much rather have a PLD as MT, and they can't even keep it up all the time, while WAR can keep both of their debuff up by alternating between the two Storm combos, the slash resistance can also be provided by NIN though. The other debuff DRK bring is the INT debuff, but that is easily provided by MNK.

[OliviaBadger]

I'll try to contribute to this by going through my experience with Alex and how I feel DRK performed.

A1 - Boss has a pretty even mix of magic and physical attacks - delirium useful and reprisal procced plenty. Even if you have a monk, there are two bosses at other ends of arena, so monk would DK the one you are not on. Sole survivor can be used on the ads

A2 - DRKs AOE damage really comes into play here. Plenty of use for DA'd abyssal drain for huge self heals. Abyssal with AOE damage is great. Plenty of use for sole survivor. DA with dark dance is just amazing for mitigating big packs.

A3 - Mostly physical damage on MT here so PLD wins out on this one, delirium useful if no monk for party wide damage. Plunge was useful for the ads.

A4 - Dark Mind was awesome on this. DA with Dark Mind and you can just pac-man gobble all the orbs. Sole survivor useful on ads.

A thing I'll add in general is..people look at DRKs set of CDs and say "its weaker than PLD", but souleater is a HUGE part of your mitigation. A sizeable self heal every 3 gcds is nothing to be scoffed at.
Overall I think the new raid is tuned very well to all three classes, and the deciding factor on who you take will be how good they are at their class, and not what class they play.

[Timat]

I'll try to contribute to this by going through my experience with Alex and how I feel DRK performed.

Bloodbath with AOE damage is great. Plenty of use for sole survivor.

Um...bloodbath doesnt work with any DRK AoEs

[Nabian]

A4 - Dark Mind was awesome on this. DA with Dark Mind and you can just pac-man gobble all the orbs. Sole survivor useful on ads.

Was reading this in class while supervising one of my students teaching. I literally busted out laughing. I don't know why I felt this so funny...but I did. Thumbs up to you!

[InfiniDragon]

Um...bloodbath doesnt work with any DRK AoEs

Gonna guess (hope really) they meant the DA Abyssal, otherwise yeah, we have some bad news for that person.

[OliviaBadger]

My mistake, yes I meant Abyssal. Edited

[Bustaperizm]

All these super long posts with theory crafting and weighty sounding opinions.

You bring a drk over the other two when one joins your pf. When one fits your raid schedule. When your long time in\game tank friend wants to play it instead of the other two. When content is on farm and you dont need the extra mitigation of a pld.

SE tests these classes in the content they provide. With actual info, concrete numbers and not reverse engineered fudgy ones. Im not saying SE is perfect. But itd be daft to think they created a class without proof they can make it through the content.

[Greven]

With a NIN or a WAR a good DRK can pull off a very nice amount of DPS due to the slashing debuff. Otherwise all the time the boss does more magical than physical attacks.