Introduce a new tank and make dark knight DPS again

[Saeno]

what was the point of having a drg/nin comp if most of the monks on my server were on steroids
i honestly thought mnk was legit broken back then

DRG/NIN comp provides higher raid DPS than a MNK. MNK's personal damage does not even come close to the amount of damage either of the other melee brougth with their utility and own personal output.

i understand having the need for a drg because of the disembowel but for nin's TA, mch can easily make up for the loss
there were also fights where int downs werent that necessary. the entire midas savage raid favored str down over int down if we're talking mitigations. the only fight that i can think of that strictly required a drk was a12s

You would still bring a MCH in the DRG/NIN comp so you could use both TA and Hyperdrive. As for the INT down, A1s, A3s, A4s, A6s, A7s, A8s, A10s, A11s and A12s all had high magic damage, some more than others but for the most part you definately wanted INT down. The only fight where PLD was ever really good was A9s since it had a lot of physical damage and the auto attacks HURT, but as it turned out, Plunge helped the DRK dodge a scrapline in the fight, giving it extreme value over PLD which could only replicate that with Hallowed Ground.

i look at the pld as if it's the easier go-to class not just for the player, but the entire party. easier to heal and has good raid utility. i often played with healers that were too scared to play with dark knights because they were "harder to sustain".
i didn't get into dark knight that much until the last set of savage floors just because of a12s

PLD was not any easier to heal than WAR or DRK, you'd prboably need to heal more with a PLD since the party is now taking higher raid wide damage without INT down. As for utility, Divine Veil and Halone do not even scratch the effectiveness of Storms Path or Delirium/Reprisal. PLD very much lacked good raid utility. If a healer is afraid to heal a DRK, it should only be because of Living Dead. DRK on its own does not need any more healing than any other tank.

by the way, my server still favored war being the ST. idk about other worlds
so it's either drk or pld mt

Anecdotes don't really help anyone's case. Regardless if you had a DRK or PLD, a WAR should always pull and the DRK or PLD should then provoke the boss to begin getting value from Reprisal/Blood price/Low blow and Shield Swipes.

drk as st is undoubtedly superior to pld in terms of dps. but if that was the case, paladins were free to clemency and divine veil whenever needed. they also can cast protect if the healers are tight on mp
oh and stoneskin

DRK was never better than PLD at OT. DRK was actually pretty damn bad at OTing since they could not Reprisal effectively anymore and they also lost DPS from Low blows and Blood price. As for the healing issues, those things should never happen since there are TWO healers, not just one. If the healers are in such a bad spot that they need help from a PLD, something went very wrong. Even if a PLD chose to help the healers, it meant they lost DPS from casting those spells which is still very bad.