What is the General Consensus?

[Aniya_Estlihn]

All three are capable of doing content effectively, even if one is grossly disadvantaged by simply having it's fault ignored repeatedly, they all three can perform their base function, that being to tank. Warrior and Paladin simply excel at it compared to Dark Knight. Warrior is seemingly based around the idea of doing more with less, Paladin has a cooldown and utility for almost every situation, and Dark Knight is the opposite of both and requires vastly more effort to achieve the the same results with no consideration or extra reward for the effort put in to doing so.

but with all the anti-climactic ‘doom and gloom’ over Dark Knight.

Honestly, for Dark Knight, it's not doom and gloom when it's the absolute truth.
Poor mitigation, lacking in offensive ability and an over reliance on multiple, separate resources.

[Hierro]

Honestly, for Dark Knight, it's not doom and gloom when it's the absolute truth.
Poor mitigation, lacking in offensive ability and an over reliance on multiple, separate resources.

People are far less likely to take your opinion seriously when you use hyperbole. DRK mitigation is anything but poor. TBN supplements all defensive CDs, for a cost that breaks EVEN in dps. Offensive capability isn't that lacking either when you look at top performing DRKs vs top performing WARs. Also, the last statement is something that's wayy too overloaded with meaningless words.

[Hierro]

Nothing I said was deceptive or untrue.

Oh, honey.

TBN breaks even in its cost. To understand that statement, it means that whether that resource was used for your "offensive abilities" or on TBN makes no difference, the DPS will be the roughly the same. This means that DRK only stands to gain by using TBN so long as the shield breaks, which is no challenge on a 7 second duration. The DRK gains mitigation and keeps their damage. The same could not be said for WAR's Inner Beast. As far as damage goes, the point of showing top performance is what a job is capable of. Is it behind? A bit, but only a bit. Again, when you look at the facts objectively, the doom and gloom surrounding the opinion on DRK leads to people disregarding said opinions.

Your hyperbole has no meat, and I'm quite hungry.

[Hierro]

I never disregarded this, so I am not sure why you are so up in arms about it—I ignored it as there was no reason for me to bring it up.

In regards to TBN, you are being misleading. By bringing up the fact that TBN shares a resource with your "offensive abilites," you are implying an opportunity cost. This is far from the case, as I've pointed out, and why I've brought it up. What you did was deceptive.

My post was also centered around bad design.

Just in case you missed the keypoints, here's what I stated:

I like how you pick and choose exactly what you stated. In reality, you went on to say all three can perform the bare basic function of a tank-- to me, this screams "only to take hits!" Your post goes on to detail the other can excel in other areas, and drk can do nothing else. You then sum your post up with "poor mitigation, poor offensive capabilities," and a bunch of loaded words with no real meaning.

By the way, the former two claims are something that's based on actual numbers, and not something vague and subjective like "feeling."

Dark Knight has a lot of risk involved with play compared to the other two tanks and they are rewarded very little for taking said risks, and often time punished if they don't pan out.

Risk? Yeah, right. You keep your oGCDs on cooldown and make sure to never cap out on resources. Boy, that sure was risky... You talk like DRK is all about olympic gymnastics, when in reality it has less risk involved than PLD!

I pugged all of Deltascape with it

Congratulations on your 4.1 clear.

The complaints, the doom and gloom as many perceive it, is often mentioned or stated in regard to the fact that it had the most stripped from it at launch out of the three.

It plays the same way as 3.0, more or less.

TBN was a band-aid fix that was supposed to shore up the losses but only does so marginally and not to the extent that they presumably hoped.

Ah, yes, how could I forget that useful dark dance?

This has led to an aimless, disjointed play-style that lacks any real flow and is overly reliant on resources and breaking an OGCD shield that costs said resources. Again, bad design.

Great, more loaded words. BTW, breaking that oGCD shield is not hard on a 7 second timer.

Like all of my posts about Dark Knight, I do not and will not mention numbers, I avoid it due to people like you

People like me? Well excuse me for not being born white You avoid talking about numbers because you can't offer an argument based on substance. Instead you focus around popular sentiment while being misleading on your argument. You avoid it because numbers and facts are not convenient to your argument.

So cease, desist, stop bringing up useless details that have nothing to do with the original point I was trying to make and move along.

How dare I bring up numbers in a game about numbers?

[Jukebox12]

I got a question for you

can I give you a hug?

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, for Dark Knight, it's not doom and gloom when it's the absolute truth.
Poor mitigation, lacking in offensive ability and an over reliance on multiple, separate resources.

And yet you're found in progression parties and top speedkills alike.

It's plain that DRK has disadvantages, gameplay-wise and technically and I'll agree they are worth fixing (though I'd suggest that many of the ones I most want for a more intuitive and engaging DRK should probably wait until Defiance buffs oGCD healing and some of the latest PLD nerfs are reverted at least partially).

But, it's also not to an extent that is actually forcing them out of compositions except in the circumstances where people could have been saved once per 90 or 120 seconds by Vit melds... or a DV/SiO, which usually come already as a fault of slow shielding on the AST's or SCH's part, or else amount to merely a more flexible use of CU, ES, Indom, or Assize.

Also, at 140 potency above Souleater's, or at a base equal to Souleater's DA use, a Bloodspiller as generated by TBN already pays off its own cost. It provides 140 potency. Just like every other viable ST use of DA outside of CnS.

[Xan_Kriegor]

And yet you're found in progression parties and top speedkills alike.

I was kinda curious about this statement so I went to fflogs to check it.
I checked the top 5 speedkills in every phase of Sigmascape and their tanks.

Phantom Train: 5 PLD, 5 WAR
Demon Chadarnook: 4 PLD, 4 WAR, 2 DRK
Guardian: 5 PLD, 5 WAR
Kefka: 5 WAR, 3 PLD, 2 DRK
God Kefka: 5 WAR, 5 PLD


You are right, DRK is found at some speedruns comps but he is clearly in a worse position than PLD and WAR. He is somewhat like WHM that has only 3 appearances in those comps that I analyzed. However WHM is the healer which has the highest number of parses while DRK has less than 1/3 of the other two tanks:

All Bosses Sigmascape total number of parses:
PLD: 33,209
WAR: 32,073
DRK: 10,951

WHM: 31,006
SCH: 30,576
AST: 14,502

I know, it is still too soon in this patch to jump to conclusions. But for me it is clear that DRK doesn't have a niche where it excels.

[Shurrikhan]

You are right, DRK is found at some speedruns comps but he is clearly in a worse position than PLD and WAR. He is somewhat like WHM that has only 3 appearances in those comps that I analyzed. However WHM is the healer which has the highest number of parses while DRK has less than 1/3 of the other two tanks:

All Bosses Sigmascape total number of parses:
PLD: 33,209
WAR: 32,073
DRK: 10,951

WHM: 31,006
SCH: 30,576
DRK: 14,502

I know, it is still too soon in this patch to jump to conclusions. But for me it is clear that DRK doesn't have a niche where it excels.

(WHM also has the lowest rDPS and participation in speedkills, however. Parses =/= strength. It's more a measure of perception and of gameplay.)

Honestly, I don't find these numbers all that frightening or signifying of massive imbalance. (Again, I do think DRK needs more, something its own other than damage. I just don't think, to use Aniya's words that the "doom and gloom" is an "absolute truth." It far closer than that.)

Despite the carryover from rigidly "PLD or I quit" PLD mains from ARR to HW, those numbers still seem far more even than Gordias or the like. Parse counts, also, tend to stratify until someone proves what all the trailing class is really capable of and only then snowball back towards balance. Though the instances are fewer, the damage and total mitigation from the DRKs present seems wholly competitive for fights not steeped in raid damage.

Heck, the funny thing is that, say, in Phantom Train, if there were simply two DRKs they could as easily perform many of the tank-specific uptime strats that DV and SiO afford. PLD will remain invaluable in 6 due to HG-Soak + HS spam, but maybe if we saw greater SAM viability we'd be able to avoid WAR even in the few comps that wouldn't necessarily pull the desired rDPS out of a NIN. Perhaps if physical DPS just had a few more noticeable mitigation tools and/or casters more Magic Defense so that a single TBN could cover a particular eHP disadvantage rather than requiring -- due to multiple being thus disadvantaged -- a raidwide shield, then we might see more DRK value in Kefka.

Its value is entirely conditional, and I'd hate to see yet another homogenization forced upon us to deal with a categorical gap when the category (e.g. raidwide mitigation) shouldn't be outright mandatory to begin with. I'd like to see DRK's gameplay and sense of intuitiveness improved upon first, and perhaps even rebalances made towards other DPS's surrounding kits before we even consider, say, a DA-raidwide effect from DM or Shadow Wall making an actual wall, as neat as those would be. We don't need a TankAntiSlashing 2.0 obligatory effect.