DRKs just falling behind even more.

[Chrono_Rising]

I don't see the problem with that when people were claiming drk was a big detriment to the group.

Personally, I don’t quite know where this comes from. I know people have said that they feel like a detriment to their group, but this is different than being a detriment. Most of the claims I’ve seen people make is that there is no reason to bring a dark knight because Warrior and Paladin can do it better. Dark is viable, I don’t think anyone has really said it isn’t. But there isn’t really a reason to bring one.

If the claims were Dark Knight is not viable then world first is definitely proof to the contrary. If they claim is Dark Knight is inferior to Warrior and Paladin then world first isn’t a meaningful measure.

[Deathshiro]

Dark is viable, I don’t think anyone has really said it isn’t. But there isn’t really a reason to bring one.

.

Personally that's where I'm at with my group atm. As raid lead I had a long talk before 4.2 with my healers about what tank they preferred me to play, DRK or PLD. They know my DRK play is excellent but it hurts when I take it as its harder to recover from a mistake or to heal me up before a tank buster if something goes wrong. Not only that all the group mitigation and covers to increase other party members dps is really huge. Whilst a DRK brings nothing other than a shield every 15s that I always feel like crap using, even if it is dps neutral.

[Eliroth-Kaminari]

Personally that's where I'm at with my group atm. As raid lead I had a long talk before 4.2 with my healers about what tank they preferred me to play, DRK or PLD. They know my DRK play is excellent but it hurts when I take it as its harder to recover from a mistake or to heal me up before a tank buster if something goes wrong. Not only that all the group mitigation and covers to increase other party members dps is really huge. Whilst a DRK brings nothing other than a shield every 15s that I always feel like crap using, even if it is dps neutral.

I feel you there,
V1 till V3 i did DRK , WAR comb as me being DRK in V4 it was easyer for healers for me to go PLD so we cleared V4 whit PLD/WAR. Sense this tier our war changed to Bard and our Bard to PLD i move to WAR not even thinking of doing PLD/DRK because of benefits we lose.

In hevensward all knew PLD needed rework and in mid hevenwards even SE admit PLD need work.
not even single Hevensward Raidtier was PLD not viable. Mather of fact PLD vas more disareble in HW then DRK is in Stormblood due fact PLD still had defencive niche in HW and PLD was good for running progression when DPS didnt mather. DRK in SB dont have any fo that no dps no def no utility so why would you pring class into comp that would make your other 7 players work harder if you could go PLD or WAR depending who you are missing.

[Hugowulf]

I just got DRK to 62 and I gotta say it’s underwhelming. Maybe add something like blood frenzy( kind of like warrior inner release/berserk) that drains black blood while boosting attack? It is a really cool class(visually at least). For now I’m just not even going to bother leveling it to 70. Sticking to a war main for now.

[Silver_Blade]

The problem with DRK isn't that they can't do things. It's that everyone can do it better and do more.
PLD has more defense, utility and healing.
WAR has way more burst, slash debuff and the king of raid savers, SIO.
Why should a raid bring a DRK when a PLD does the same DPS and brings two raid cooldowns and healing on demand?
Or a WAR with their amazing burst helping in many situations and bringing a 90s cooldown that can save the raid?

[Pinkie_Pie]

Why should a raid bring a DRK when a PLD does the same DPS and brings two raid cooldowns and healing on demand?
Or a WAR with their amazing burst helping in many situations and bringing a 90s cooldown that can save the raid?

Right now, PLD's are pulling MORE damage then a DRK. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they burst more.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Honestly I cringe every time I get a DRK in my sigmascape groups. While they are more than capable of beating the content, more often than not, it's always a DRK who's holding us back.
Lossing hate constantly getting people killed.
Taking too much dmg, just like the adds in the passenger rooms, and unable to sustain long or mitigate minor attacks enough.
And usually just doing less DPS, while losing threat, which ends up making most DRKs stay in tank stance further, lowering DPS more.

Its just easier to go PLD and WAR, and I won't bring myself to exclude DRKs, I can easily see why people wouldnt want to bring them. It's a headache. (Luckily I'm not a healer, so all I have to worry about, is diversion+Lucid not being enough to get hate off me with a DRK trying to 'tank'.)

For questions to the Live Letters, go to this post asking about DRKs, and like it, to get more attention to DRKs.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4564656
(Its post#15)

repeating at the end of my posts for people to see.

[Warkupo]

Dark Knights DPS trends behind the other tanks because Dark Knights DPS requires a lot more attention than the other tanks. A Dark Knight, Paladin, and Warrior playing optimally will all have incredibly similar DPS, with Warrior edging the other two very slightly. So they are 'balanced' on a spreadsheet, but the reality is that most people don't want to put forth the amount of effort Dark Knight requires when the other two tanks are so much easier to play and maintain.

Dark Knight either needs to be rewarded for its' complexity, or the class as a whole needs retooled to be more streamlined and less obnoxious to play. I'm personally voting for the former, as I think increasing Dark Knights DPS for playing it correctly would mostly mean that we'd have an influx of bad Dark Knights who think they're doing good damage, but would really benefit from playing something simple.

[Xan_Kriegor]

Mch has even less total parses than DRK but is part of the meta comp...So what shall those numbers tell us?

Ast has only 500 compared to sch/whm around 800/900..so ast needs buff too?

Your point is weak. TBN works really good in o7s for example, because there is a lot high single target damage other than tankbuster. Maybe some skills need to work in a different way, but we don't need every tank class capable of doing exactly the same with same potency only so that it feels more balanced to you guys.

There are jobs that are better for prog and tend to be more commonly used for that purpose and achieve a greater number of hard content clears. And there are still jobs that may not be so good to get the first clears in a certain content but after a while they are the best at optimizing it. Just like you mentioned examples of jobs that would not be good for prog but for speedkills.

The problem is that there are jobs that are not good in any of these niches. And this is exactly the case for Dark Knight (and for other jobs like BLM and SAM). You said the number of clears means nothing, and the meaningful thing is to be part of a meta comp. But DRK does not participate in these too. In my opinion, if the idea of SE is to keep this toolkit DRK has right now then the job should have a much larger rDPS to at least be viable in speedkill comps.

[Derio]

That is true. If DRK isnt going to have any raid utility, then DRK should have the highest DPS potential out of the 3 tanks, similar to how SAM/BLM are.

Otherwise the job needs to be fixed.