Good bye FFXIV tanking..... maybe.....

[Lynesse]

snip

Edit: Oops. I don't want to hijack the thread! We got it! Thanks for the advice!

[Claire_Pendragon]

Dark Knight has been heavily simplified...I can understand people's frustrations and challenge with it in HW...but it's not so bad now?

DRK lost Foresight, and lost 'less often DA's Abyssal drains'. (also, in good gear,on trash mobs, foresight was darn near 15%+ mitigation. I think I reached around 20% mitigation in my i270 gear on DRK in 3.4, but in Alexander savage it was as weak as 5-7% depends on how good ur gear is, and the stats of the enemies.)
You also sacrifice a chunk of DPS to DA abyssal drain.
DRK gained Quietus and TBN.
(Technically DRK also lost its evasion bonus on dark dance. And I would argue its long lasting reprisal, which I honestly relied upon for physical tank busters in physical heavy fights. but reprisal is single target, and not related to the subject at hand.)

DRK is overly simple in holding hate, and doing DPS.
DRK is not however overly simplified in mitigation.

(Its actually better to pull big on DRK, due to not always having a CD up for every pull, so to stall for time, running to another group of enemies helps)

DRK requires MUCH more attention to timing to make it equal to heal.
(I usually dread having to heal DRKs now, due to how squishy they are if not played good enough, and they already used up their main CDs)

DA AD's heal doesnt help if you just got healed up enough to ruin half/most of the heal from the drain. But you cant just pop it when u want, u have to wait for the GCD, and you need to make sure its at an optimal point in your MP, and used to fill in when ur CDs are low. (since its a DPS loss)
Sole Survivor is off the GCD, but it wont trigger right away, and if u try to wait to the last second, its possible someone kills the enemy before the animation ends, and the game tick updates it having it.
AND if it does apply, you have to worry about being healed in that period of time. mainly end up using it for the MP.
If you miss out on some of the MP, thats a DPS loss as well.

The Blackest Night is your other mitigation, taking up the same mp as a DA before AD.
The difference being that it can almost recover the lost DPS.
Depending on pull size, it may or may not help u mitigate as much as DA+AD on larger pulls, but it does help you do more DPS since quietus works better on more mobs.
If you plan to go the "easy" route, just rely on TBN, for an extremely small amount of mitigation. (sometimes its back up before a CD is, but if ur pulling big enough, and ur DPS dont suck, you'll have decent CDs back up before its ready to use a 2nd time.)

So again, DRK is pretty straightforward in DPS/threat, and its basic mitigation.
But to actually compare to the survival, and ease on the healer, as a PLD or WAR, it's MUCH harder

[Gravton]

Yeah I'm starting to realize that too. My drk in lvl 66 and lower dungeons is horrible at single pulls. I'm just so squishy and mp intensive I've been considering bigger pulls. But I'm squishy so the thought of a bigger pull is worrying. My thinking was more procs on salted earth, more hp recovery from Da-Ad, more procs on blood price. I don't know if quietus gives flat mp or if it scales with each mob hit though.

*this isn't even an issue on my pld. I can pull as much as I want and be just fine. Ya know, clemency.

[whiskeybravo]

Yeah I'm starting to realize that too. My drk in lvl 66 and lower dungeons is horrible at single pulls. I'm just so squishy and mp intensive I've been considering bigger pulls. But I'm squishy so the thought of a bigger pull is worrying. My thinking was more procs on salted earth, more hp recovery from Da-Ad, more procs on blood price. I don't know if quietus gives flat mp or if it scales with each mob hit though.

*this isn't even an issue on my pld. I can pull as much as I want and be just fine. Ya know, clemency.

It's tougher while leveling for sure, you have enough cds for pretty much 1 big pull at a time. Quietus gives flat MP return based on lvl but it's for each enemy hit, so more mobs = more MP. Same with salted earth (gauge builder) and blood price, the more the better. You have to spread out cds as best you can and just hope the healer has your back. At least that's the way I felt while leveling drk.

[KalinOrthos]

Yeah I'm starting to realize that too. My drk in lvl 66 and lower dungeons is horrible at single pulls. I'm just so squishy and mp intensive I've been considering bigger pulls. But I'm squishy so the thought of a bigger pull is worrying. My thinking was more procs on salted earth, more hp recovery from Da-Ad, more procs on blood price. I don't know if quietus gives flat mp or if it scales with each mob hit though.

*this isn't even an issue on my pld. I can pull as much as I want and be just fine. Ya know, clemency.

I can assure you, tanking will get much better once you hit 70 and get TBN. I would say while you level, especially once you get to Doma Castle, just work on controlling your pulls to make sure you don't bite off more than you can chew. Aggro shouldn't be a problem, but there's only so much you can do to mitigate.

[Lynesse]

TBN is a huge life-saver, but I wish DRK had something like Hallowed Ground instead.

My DRK friend now has big pulls down, but I still feel way safer when he's on his PLD.

I find that PLD can get by on Largesse + Regen, but I need to supplement this with Asylum for DRK. Cure during the pull -> Divine Benison -> Largesse -> Asylum -> Regen -> Swiftcast -> Holy -> Presence of Mind -> Aero III -> Tetra > Cure II > Benediction > Holy spam under Thin Air.

It's a lot of buttons, and he has to survive long enough for me to get Aero III out.

We both have to make zero mistakes, which makes every pull a mini heart attack.

PLD can drop Hallowed Ground and /sit for all I care. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but healing for a DRK is scary.

But I will say that when he's doing his rotation flawlessly, it's poetry.

[Ilan]

TBN is a huge life-saver, but I wish DRK had something like Hallowed Ground instead.

My DRK friend now has big pulls down, but I still feel way safer when he's on his PLD.

I find that PLD can get by on Largesse + Regen, but I need to supplement this with Asylum for DRK. Cure during the pull -> Divine Benison -> Largesse -> Asylum -> Regen -> Swiftcast -> Holy -> Presence of Mind -> Aero III -> Tetra > Cure II > Benediction > Holy spam under Thin Air.

It's a lot of buttons, and he has to survive long enough for me to get Aero III out.

We both have to make zero mistakes, which makes every pull a mini heart attack.

PLD can drop Hallowed Ground and /sit for all I care. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but healing for a DRK is scary.

But I will say that when he's doing his rotation flawlessly, it's poetry.

Whut? He uses living dead and then a few seconds before walking dead runs out ----> benediction and done.

[Lynesse]

Whut? He uses living dead and then a few seconds before walking dead runs out ----> benediction and done.

That's one way of doing it, but he'd still need Asylum and Regen during the pull. All that does is change the order of things, it doesn't make them any simpler.

[Ilan]

That's one way of doing it, but he'd still need Asylum and Regen during the pull. All that does is change the order of things, it doesn't make them any simpler.

Well why don't you say directly that you want a tank where you don't have to do anything as healer?

Weird that my healer had never any issues when i was on drk during HW. All i've ever heard was "take what you want, they are all easy to heal"

[whiskeybravo]

Well why don't you say directly that you want a tank where you don't have to do anything as healer?

Weird that my healer had never any issues when i was on drk during HW. All i've ever heard was "take what you want, they are all easy to heal"

It's not HW anymore lol

I'm still getting used to using TBN on dungeon pulls, until you get TBN dark knight literally only has Shadow Wall as an all-purpose damage reduction cd. Rampart is good ofc but it doesn't really make up for how weak anticipation, awareness and convalescence are for damage reduction, nor how long of cd Shadow Wall has. Both the other tanks have more native cds in additional to role skills.

(for the record I do think awareness is a worthwhile cd, it's just impossible to tell how much it's actually reducing anytime you use it. For the most part it feels like you need to combine 2 of those cds to equal 1 normal reduction cd)

Shadow Wall really needs a 120 sec cd. It's kind of ridiculous that War has the same 30% DR which is 5 seconds longer AND returns 50 potency attack when hit, but DRK stuck with 180 sec cd.