My friend told me not to bother with Dark Knight

[DarkChild]

I've been playing this game on and off for two years as a Paladin. But I have always wanted to be a Dark Knight.

A few nights ago a good friend of mine was online. I know this guy well as we played Street Fighter 4 together and he is a top player in that game.
In this game he is a level 70 Dark Knight.

I told him that I now have less than 20 main story quests to do before I can finally achieve my dream to become a Dark Knight.

He said to me not to bother. That the class was butchered in 4.0.

He says the other tanks got buffed and Dark Knight didn't. He said tiers don't matter in fighting games because individual skill is more important but in MMOs he said the numbers are everything.

Is Dark Knight really not worth it? I will be so upset if I can't play this class after wanting it for so long.

[Sarcatica]

DRK is fine.

[SpookyGhost]

If he's specifically talking about a tier list, then atm it's PLD >> DRK => WAR. So PLD is tippy top tier and DRK and WAR are a toss up, though generally people prefer DRK over WAR since it brings utility in Blackest Night (which, tbf, is pretty strong). If you plan on raiding, then you're fine there. If you don't plan on raiding, tier lists don't matter at all.

It mainly comes down to if you have fun with the job. If you end up enjoying it then stick with it.

[Deadshadowz]

If u plan on raiding at endgame, I've seen a lot of statics using Dark Knight main tanks and PLD as off tanks. Atm with warriors having no utility so they normally aren't wanted.
But choose what you like or want.
P.S. DRK can do more dps than a PLD if used right

[The_Last_Dragoon]

Metas change so you shouldn't level or play a class solely based on it. It's possible that by the time you get to the point where it would actually make a difference as a lv70 PLD tank, the game could have already shifted to where a different tanking class is on top. Plus, it sounds like you're trying to race to the current end game content where it would actually matter what tank you are, so you should definitely play whatever class you want to.

[Aomine1992]

I play DRK and I love it besides some obvious things they need to change like more CDs and dps boost...It's fine and I use DRK in savage and had zero issues

[SyzzleSpark]

The job has definite problems that need fixing, but your friend sounds more like he is just upset by how the job plays, which is incredibly subjective in terms of enjoyment.

[Nabian]

The job is fine. It's not perfect, but to me it sounds like your friend doesn't really know what he's talking about in this instance.

[DarkChild]

The job has definite problems that need fixing, but your friend sounds more like he is just upset by how the job plays, which is incredibly subjective in terms of enjoyment.

The job is fine. It's not perfect, but to me it sounds like your friend doesn't really know what he's talking about in this instance.

So when he says numbers are everything. Any idea what exactly he meant by that? Is it something to do with rotations?

[SyzzleSpark]

So when he says numbers are everything. Any idea what exactly he meant by that? Is it something to do with rotations?

Right now tanks deal roughly the same damage in an actual PvE encounter. The problem is that PLD offers equivalent damage and yet brings more to the raid than WAR and DRK combined, in terms of utility. All this being said, DRK and WAR have more punishing rotations than PLD, and both are heavily dependent on uptime, whereas PLD has a casting burst that can be used at range, and a significant portion of their DPS is DoT based and thus is not effected by melee uptime.

The problems with DRK right now are mostly that of personal mitigation.

Based on the utility that PLD offers, DRK ought to deal more damage, and WAR even more than that. But the community very oddly (in my opinion at least) seems to be settling on the idea that the tanks all dealing roughly equivalent damage is okay, and that DRK and WAR should just be given utility to compensate. The issue here is that adding utility is harder than buffing DPS (adding whole new abilities or effects to existing abilities is harder than simply buffing potencies/percentages), so people have decided that the problem that would be easily fixed is not actually a problem, and the thing that would be harder to fix is now what needs looking at. Doesn't make much sense to me, but that seems to be the growing consensus.

In all likelihood, your friend is referring to dummy parses, in which DRK is notably behind. this changes somewhat in actual encounters where TBN can be used, but this brings up another issue with DRK in that even when optimizing TBN and DA usage, the payoff is extremely small relative to someone who didn't do any of that and just let their cat roll around on the keyboard.

If your friend is referring to DRK's lower DPS, he's not wrong, not entirely anyway. My initial comment was a reaction to his description of the job as "butchered" which I don't believe is wholly the case. If anything I'd describe their mitigation as being more butchered than their DPS. He's also not entirely wrong that the other tanks got buffed and DRK didn't, this is mostly true. PLD absolutely got buffed to Valhalla and beyond, and WAR (sort of) got buffed in the sense that they do more damage at 70 with their new rotation than they can do at 70 using the old rotation. DRK's can't even use their old rotation if they wanted to.

In any case, if you want to play the job and find that you enjoy it, his words don't mean anything, and you should play it anyway. The community backlash to DRK's current design is from people that have been playing the job for years who are in a position to see that the job did not improve at all from 60-70 and if anything got worse. But for someone just starting to play the job, these talking-points needn't mean much.