What is the General Consensus?

[Aniya_Estlihn]

Idk why people are obsessed with mitigation all that much, its not like warrior has it any better.

Vengeance is the best defensive CD in the game. I say this as a DRK/WAR main, I'd prefer WAR's kit much over TBN and can survive busters much easier on WAR as I simply have more options. Survivability is much higher. Inner Beast also gives you a defensive buff as well. Being able to take hits because you have the HP to do so is far more valuable than simply mitigating it, especially when Warrior has the ability to heal themselves up reliably.

[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.

[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.

[Luin]

Then why do people fight over it exactly?

Drk's only tank w/o raid mitigation. Only tank still eat resource from swapping stance (MP). Literally 2 unique cooldowns & one of them is magic-exclusive & the other is counterintuitive to Blood Gauge.

Can Drk clear? Yes. Holding aggro, cycling cd, that front all the tanks are basically copy+pasted. You could remove all 'unique' utilities & would still be able to have a tank clear most content. The problem is Drk as a job isnt rewarding to play. Anything Drk can do, War and Pld can do better & more.

Point is Drk doesn't reward the player. War has burst damage & strong self-cd, Pld has best raid mitigation, Drk has neither or the damage to make up for it. Drk *is* that copy+paste. And you don't want to play a copy+paste, because it's boring.

Most importantly, War is too strong. You can't do Pld/Drk, you lose too much dps during burst windows and on the pull.

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.

This depends on Delirium. Because BS eats GCD you're pushing back SS and SE and losing blood and mp. Using TBN to proc BS is a DPS loss while not in Grit. TBN to proc Delirium is a gain.

As for using DA, BS should get priority because crits don't scale linearly so the extra potency goes further, but that's minor.

Also, Inner Beast isn't remotely similar to Bloodspiller. IB is used as a defensive cooldown, not necessarily for damage.

[Nedkel]

Vengeance is the best defensive CD in the game. I say this as a DRK/WAR main, I'd prefer WAR's kit much over TBN and can survive busters much easier on WAR as I simply have more options. Survivability is much higher. Inner Beast also gives you a defensive buff as well. Being able to take hits because you have the HP to do so is far more valuable than simply mitigating it, especially when Warrior has the ability to heal themselves up reliably.

Still it has 120 sec cooldown aaand damaging part of the ability triggers only for physical attacks, which is kinda disappointing on the raids/trials where the boss spends more time shooting aoe abilities than actually hitting you with hand.

More options doesnt make it easier to manage the busters.
15 sec shield is over all the best def ability in the game and i am happy to keep it, than having shake it of, raw intuition and 2 heals.
As a DRK i could heal myself without losing any DPS with souleater + DA, warrior need to sacrifice a lot in order to do that with his GCD's, and those 2 heals he posses are kinda meh in therm of healing per second, much worse than clemency, but they are on regular CD so they are better that way than nothing.

DRK is all around designed for end game content, where warrior and pally are just better dungeon running tanks in terms of mitigation, but that doesnt mean a lot anyway, so they are given some support utilities to not be feel inferior in them.

[Luin]

Still it has 120 sec cooldown aaand damaging part of the ability triggers only for physical attacks, which is kinda disappointing on the raids/trials where the boss spends more time shooting aoe abilities than actually hitting you with hand.

More options doesnt make it easier to manage the busters.
15 sec shield is over all the best def ability in the game and i am happy to keep it, than having shake it of, raw intuition and 2 heals.
As a DRK i could heal myself without losing any DPS with souleater + DA, warrior need to sacrifice a lot in order to do that with his GCD's, and those 2 heals he posses are kinda meh in therm of healing per second, much worse than clemency, but they are on regular CD so they are better that way than nothing.

DRK is all around designed for end game content, where warrior and pally are just better dungeon running tanks in terms of mitigation, but that doesnt mean a lot anyway, so they are given some support utilities to not be feel inferior in them.

That is nonsense.
A boss isn't going to use a tankbuster every 15 seconds. You don't need a 15s CD to handle a tankbuster.
How to recognize a tankbuster: Can you read? Is the name of the skill a tankbuster? There, you recognized all of the game's threatening tankbusters.

What will happen every 15 seconds? Mechanics. Mechanics that affect the entire party. Mechanics that The Blackest Night does literally nothing against.

As for healing, Inner Beast. It's like you don't even read the tooltips. Or are you seriously trying to say that a ~5k heal over 3gcd is better than Warrior which has that same exact heal, but also with Inner Beast for a large burst heal, and a Rampart on top of it, and they can keep near 100% uptime on it?

But that's a nonexistent situation, because Warrior's cooldowns are better and it can just mitigate that damage. I love how you list Raw Intuition, and not Thrill of Battle. Not Inner Beast, not Holmgang (have fun in o5, drk), not Equilibrium. Not even Vengeance, which is a straight upgrade over Shadow Wall. Which, by the way, is your *only* Cooldown. Unless you decide you want to count Dark Mind.

Also, you're complaining about Vengeance's damage being underwhelming?
Shadow Wall doesnt have that damage. Why are you complaining about literally free damage? The only cooldown Dark Knight has besides TBN, Warrior has an exact copy of, but better.

If you like Dark Knight that's fine. I like Dark Knight. But posting blatantly wrong information will not make Dark Knight better.

[Shurrikhan]

That is nonsense.
A boss isn't going to use a tankbuster every 15 seconds. You don't need a 15s CD to handle a tankbuster.
How to recognize a tankbuster: Can you read? Is the name of the skill a tankbuster? There, you recognized all of the game's threatening tankbusters.

What will happen every 15 seconds? Mechanics. Mechanics that affect the entire party. Mechanics that The Blackest Night does literally nothing against.

But TBN isn't limited to its defensive value. It also offers you a GCD option (Bloodspiller) that deals 100 potency more than your second strongest option, only 40 potency short of DA on Souleater (with this gap decreased when comparing crits, especially if DAing Bloodspiller as well). As long as it's fully consumed, it still gives nearly the same potency as Dark Arts, but with a free shield atop it.

Heck, if you consider them the GCDs spent in terms of their place in or out of their combo chains, the potency increase can actually be as high as 160, a 20 potency advantage over a simple DA-SS or DA-SE.

[Nedkel]

That is nonsense.
A boss isn't going to use a tankbuster every 15 seconds. You don't need a 15s CD to handle a tankbuster.
How to recognize a tankbuster: Can you read? Is the name of the skill a tankbuster? There, you recognized all of the game's threatening tankbusters.

What will happen every 15 seconds? Mechanics. Mechanics that affect the entire party. Mechanics that The Blackest Night does literally nothing against.

As for healing, Inner Beast. It's like you don't even read the tooltips. Or are you seriously trying to say that a ~5k heal over 3gcd is better than Warrior which has that same exact heal, but also with Inner Beast for a large burst heal, and a Rampart on top of it, and they can keep near 100% uptime on it?

But that's a nonexistent situation, because Warrior's cooldowns are better and it can just mitigate that damage. I love how you list Raw Intuition, and not Thrill of Battle. Not Inner Beast, not Holmgang (have fun in o5, drk), not Equilibrium. Not even Vengeance, which is a straight upgrade over Shadow Wall. Which, by the way, is your *only* Cooldown. Unless you decide you want to count Dark Mind.

Also, you're complaining about Vengeance's damage being underwhelming?
Shadow Wall doesnt have that damage. Why are you complaining about literally free damage? The only cooldown Dark Knight has besides TBN, Warrior has an exact copy of, but better.

If you like Dark Knight that's fine. I like Dark Knight. But posting blatantly wrong information will not make Dark Knight better.

Well, some of the bosses does hit a lot, like deltascape 4.0 if i remember.

Tank buster doesnt happen every 15 seconds, but any other attacks does. You could use in in between the tank busters.
Still its just a reliable 1 key to use all the time instead of 20 others, and this is a good one since it does not cost you any dps, you are sacrificing anything with it.
And still you have the Dark mind 30% damage reduction on 60 sec cooldown, there is no other cd that time effective, its just cost some mp.
Shadow wall + roles are more than enough to tank, why would you need more in this case? You dont need more on a DRK.
He has an ability to mix TBN with a mitigation CD, that makes it even stronger.

I am not arguing about the overall tank performance, because i just admit it, DRK has no utility at all, but saying he has worst mitigation is clear exaggeration, no he doesnt. Only because he is not given 20 abilities with damage reduction, doesnt mean its worse.
Time plays in this game the most important factor, and that 15 seconds cooldown along with 7 seconds duration build up a ton of mitigation itself, much more than 20% hp more once every 120 sec or shake it of 8% every 60 sec.

Inner beast is only usable during the defiance stance, and it takes 7xgcd to generate it if you are not using storms path and in fact 8x GCD to use it, and in general it is impacting the warrior dps by a ton to use it in defiance stance. You could keep yourself healing all the time inner beast and storm path combo, and you will end up dealing way less damage than DRK.
Why? Because entire warrior class is based all around the GCD and he has only 2 not good enough cooldowns that cost him gauge anyway.
My apologies for forgetting about the inner beast, yes it has 20% mitigation built in it and it is indeed a good one, yet its still gated behind the defiance stance and you sacrificing a lot of DPS, and its not kinda good that way.
Warrior is not worse, he is just a game of choice, you sacrifice dps for healing and vice versa, because you cant have everything.
DRK basically doesnt sacrifice anything, maybe soul eater drain when out of grit stance, thats it. He is absolutely fine tanking, dealing damage and healing himself at the same time. Warrior could do the same, but then he does less dps anyway.
Warrior indeed loses a giant chunk of his dps when he is trying to tank and heal himself.

[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.

[Xan_Kriegor]

To be fair, I don't agree with the DRKs that they are lacking mitigation. I guess the only place that they are below the other tanks mitigation wise is V3. The problems that DRK has are more related to its DPS and the lack of things like burst windows, utility, anti-knockback tools and enmity generation tools. Also DRK has an overall poor design skillset.