DRK's Niche as a tank?

[Praesul]

PLD does roughly the same amount of damage as DRK, has better consistent utility (as in utility that is LITERALLY ALWAYS USEFUL EVERY SINGLE ENCOUNTER) and EXTRA utility on top of that, that while niche, is still something they can bring to the table. Better mitigation overall, too. Sentinel is a better version of Shadow Wall, Bulwark while unreliable and superfluous for tank busters is a better fluff cooldown than DRK has ever had, and PLD can passively block physical and magical damage.

Literally, the only thing DRK brings to the table is TBN. Intervention is just straight up a better version of TBN. It lasts for longer, scales with BOSS DAMAGE and not your own HP, and has the option of being upgraded to greater values while TBN is stuck at 10% for other players and 20% on self. Dark Mind is also a lame cooldown. The only reason I don't consider it terrible is because it's "free". You can just toss it in at any time along with another cooldown for magical busters, but the dark arts version is strictly worse than just spending MP on TBN since TBN reduces physical and magical damage. The only time one should consider using dark arts on dark mind is if it's a multihit magical tank buster.

Looking at WAR? It has the perfect selfish kit already. It has the best cooldowns in the form of vengeance, holmgang, raw intuition and holmgang, AND they can use rampart now which is infinitely better than foresight and bloodbath ever were. It deals the highest damage, and isn't reliant on another party member to buff their own damage. I think their damage potential is fair, but now they're tossing more utility on them which further tips the scale's in WAR's favor.

We'll see how things go when we see some actual numbers but I really don't see DRK faring well in the future if nothing is changed. The job has a neutered playstyle in comparison to before, whereas PLD and WAR increased in depth and I personally think fun, AND DRK is worse off balancewise? Yeah, not looking good. DRK has needed changes for a while but people have been too blind wearing their TBN goggles to see the big picture.