Dark Knight, or Paladin?

[Faytte]

Which is 3 times more significant than popping Dark Dance on cooldown, for free, in addition to all of the other physical mitigation tools PLD has.

This will also continue to increase in value as the ilvl of your shield increases, whereas Dark Dance will always be 2% in an absolute best case scenario. DRK's other relevant cooldowns in A2S are Shadow Skin (matched by rampart) and Shadow Wall (Strictly inferior to rampart).

In return, DRK brings some mediocre AoE damage (It's not great in A2 because you get low or no value out of blood price on most packs). If you care about the damage, DRK isn't the answer in A2 - just bring warriors for the turn. They'll put out significantly more AoE DPS than either of the other tanks and do a better job of mitigating on most packs than DRK. I put out about 1100 DPS on A2S as Warrior this week, and I'm by no means the best.

All the other physical mitigation tools a Paladin has?
What? Sheltron? its eaten up by an auto attack, you can time it sometimes with a dolls smack, and thats really about it. Other than that...theres what? The shield itself? Towers don't block particularly often (in terms of overall mitigation through a fight, you are better off with a kite shield, but thats not really great with sheltron as you are basically just forcing a parry).


Drk has fantastic AoE--I'm not even sure what you are comparing your AoE against; certainly not paladins. Then what? Drk AoE dps is better than wars (save in burst, where wars are clearly better) which allows them to get ahead on A2 packs understandably. EDIT: Clarification--I'm not saying DRKs beat War dps in A2. It is still however, very very good--and leagues ahead of Paladins.

Also talking about what bulwark --could-- be in the future is largely irrelevant. We are discussing the content as it, the classes as they are, the equipment as it is today.

Notably, this isnt saying DRK is OP--no one is making that argument. They are clearly in the middle atm, but there isnt much debate I feel that Pld atm is not in a good position. The shield that they route for their 'great physical mitigation' is not incredibly useful thus far in Alex (A1 favor drk and war, a2 favors war--then drk, a3 was not able to be completed with a paladin, and was done just fine with war and a dark main tank).

Low damage does not work with heavy dps checks.
High cooldown defensives do not work with the timing of busters
Beyond that, they have a slightly better shadow wall and the best immunity out of the three---but hardly a reason id pick the class.