Tanks Advantage and Deficiencies

[Madepossible]

Yeah best AoE DPS is with no contest WAR. DRK is no match vs. Decimate/Steel Cyclone and Overpower spam.

You must fail at your job then.

[Whiston]

You must fail at your job then.

Why is that qualifying them as a failure?
It's not surprising warrior does more aoe dps. Their skills have high potency and aren't so extremely limited in resource.

Warrior aoe dps is quite significant, whereas dark Knight has burst potential, but blood price is only up so often.

[Twilite]

All I know is DRK's are #1 in aggro generation.

[Reynhart]

Yeah best AoE DPS is with no contest WAR. DRK is no match vs. Decimate/Steel Cyclone and Overpower spam.

Well, technically, spamming Overpower do more damage on several mobs than Steel Cyclone or Decimate, since you can't "spam" it.
While building Wrath stacks, you will only hit one mob.

So it's basically Overpower vs Unleash+Salted Earth
And on that, DRK wins

[Ayuris]

Well, technically, spamming Overpower do more damage on several mobs than Steel Cyclone or Decimate, since you can't "spam" it.
While building Wrath stacks, you will only hit one mob.

So it's basically Overpower vs Unleash+Salted Earth
And on that, DRK wins

Not necessarily, if you know when a wave of adds will spawn like in A2 you can have 5 stacks of wrath ready with an infuriate followup.
Warrior also have a dps stance were they are able to get 25% additional damage(20% from Maim and 5% from Deliverance) unlike Dark Knight that only gets 15% damage increase from Darkside.
And again I cannot stress enough how all this scales with Berserk when used correctly.

So it's not so cut and dried.

[saber_alter]

Yeah best AoE DPS is with no contest WAR. DRK is no match vs. Decimate/Steel Cyclone and Overpower spam.

Burst damage wise war wins in aoe.

Sustain though goes to drk. Blood price, salted earth, and multiple mp based aoes outlast war no problem.

[Freyyy]

Yeah in terms of sustained AoE DPS DRK wins. But in the majority of AoE situations we can't speak about "sustained" DPS. It's all about burning everything down, in which case the WAR wins.

You must fail at your job then.

You don't need to sound so salty. DRK is not really hard to play in AoE (there is no complex AoE rotation in this game except for SMN maybe, I don't play it at all so I won't speak for them). It's just that I know how to do maths and a WAR with Maim and Berserk on with 5 stacks already built can do double Decimate + spam overpower and there is no way a DRK can surpass that. Even with Salted Earth and Abyssal Drain spam under Blood Price. I think you underestimate how much damage a WAR does. Decimate can crit for 3.5k+ on every target. Overpower does over 1.2k. Yeah DRK has great AoE damage too and sustains really well, but a good WAR is just destroying everything. Decimate is a f*cking AoE combo'd Butcher's Block. Heck.

[MoarLegion]

Decimate reminds me of 1.0 steel cyclone, a 1.2k critting AOE stun, that was our combo ender.

[Xenosan]

WAR has a perk of all that synergy in it's CDs. Infuriate +5 stacks, Berserk(AttackPower+) & Equil(Moar TP for OP) & Veneance(AoE auto Attack) all + 1 stack. +1 stack for each refreshing of Maim = Moar Decimate/Steel Cyclone with added perks increasing dps and mitigation.

DRK AoE all shares the same resource, depleting use, and comes at the cost of DA Dark Dance/Dark Mind. Did you DA Abyssal Drain? That might cost you a DA for Passenger. Did you AD too much instead of Unleash? That might cost you a Passenger. Are you OOMP? Goodbye Darkside, DA DM & DD, threat gen, and all the dps and mitigation that goes with that. Blood Price helps, but it's not a guarantee, we can't flesh out an AOE rotation like WAR because the amount of MP Blood Price returns in one encounter won't be the same the next.

And is the WHM doing Holy spam? Hope you didn't pop Blood Price - cuz if you did it just got wasted.

[Rover1983]

Burst AoE DPS goes to DRK very easily - as a DRK I can spam a 100-potency point-blank AoE for 15-20 seconds with just 3 mobs on me...With 4-5, I can position the mobs and swap to a 120-potency targeted aoe. With enough incoming attacks, some cooldowns, and a bit of healer coordination, A good DRK can even self-heal through the incoming damage, allowing the healer to go cleric stance and help burn down the pack.

--Erim Nelhah
(Master, Astral Descendants <AD>, Malboro)
(60 DRK Main)

Hah - I disagree with the a good dark can even self-heal through incoming damage. Yes we have siphons but nothing that will counter the damage we take. Not strong enough life siphons. Wish they healed for more. Right now they're negligible, especially in the higher end content. Even a DA + Abyssal doesn't do much because mobs hit harder then what we siphon