Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[Khalithar]

Drk is not bad, it's more or less fine in fact. But the war/pld setup have more synergy than any other tank combo currently.

[Derio]

Its fine, however WAR/PLD combo have so much synergy together that it is better than any DRK/ WAR or PLD combo.

Also DRK still suffers in defensive abilities outside of lvl70 content. DRK leveling has the worst defensive kit compared to the other 2 tanks to where if its not level 70 content your healer is probably going to hate you.

I still main DRK. But for EX Trials I have been running with PLD just because people prefer it now.

[Aana]

They may be the worst of the tanks, but not by much. The difference in "goodness" between the tank classes is pretty small even if it is there.

All jobs are perfectly viable for all content - and that includes the tanks.
So if you want to try out Dark Knight, go ahead.

Pretty much this. Most of the 'issues' remaining with drk are personal preferences around loving or hating dark arts spam. Those preferences dont really say anything about the jobs ability to perform. All 3 tanks are the closer together right now than at any point since Drk was released in performance and capability. Damage, mitigation, enmity (the primary purpose for tanks to exist) are all very, very close. If you like the idea of drk, the aesthetic, or its gameplay (or all 3), now is as good a time as any to jump into it. Go for it.

[Lubu_Mykono]

It's still clunky with an over-reliance on Dark Arts. Doesn't shine til you get the Blackest Night. Good for random pub/casual runs though with that AoE.

[RyuDragnier]

They aren't bad, just too much of a reliance on Dark Arts for everything, and you're lacking in the cooldown department until you get The Blackest Night at the level 70 Job quest.

[Rufalus]

I have been putting it off for a long time now. And I wanted to try out dark Knight. But the main reason that I\\'ve been hesitant to try it out because everyone says they are the absolute worst out of the 3 tanks. Is this true? or are people just exaggerating?

Yes, you'll see exaggerations about everything all the time. You should try and see for yourself, you might like it a lot. Every job in the game is designed to be viable for all content. A good example is DRK being used in the world first clear of Bahamut (Ultimate) and that was before the patch that buffed DRK in several ways. There will always be some maximum efficiency composition of jobs for the fastest speed runs and people exaggerating about jobs outside of that meta being complete trash. The rest is just opinions based on playstyle which differ from person to person. There are some DRK fans around for sure.

[Garry]

ALl job can do the content and that is demonstarted even at the high end.

The main thing is that if i have a drk, a warrior, and a pld to chose from i'm not gonna pick the drk as there isn't much reason to. IN many fights the daamge is a trade off and atleast paladins bring support abilities. Heck War/War isn't even a bad set is probably a better one than war/drk.

Drk needs a reason to exist. It needs a point to the class. If they did alittle more damage than warrior or even as much, Maybe a raise??, or some other utility that makes you wants to have one in the party.

So they are the worst only in that they don't do warrior damage, and don't have any other tool to compensate. Its not a ridiculous margin however, but the margin is there none the less.

[Lorgana]

The real question is, are you going to do serious end game raiding. If the answer is no then this isn't really even something that actually matters

[Antagonist01]

Hello, first post but thought this was the right topic to ask/continue discussion and not post another topic.

I see a lot of the consensus is that there is no reason to pick DRK over WAR/PLD. But I am trying to understand why, and more importantly, what role DRK will play when paired with either WAR or PLD. So apparently, based on what I've read so far (including outside of the forums):

DRK vs PLD

- DRK has better self mitigation and enmity generation than PLD.
- Equivalent/comparable DPS.
- DRK is much worse in terms of team support options. PLD > WAR > DRK in terms of team support.

Therefore, PLD is the preferred off-tank in all scenarios. When put together, DRK should be main tanking and PLD should be off-tanking. Is this correct?

DRK vs WAR

I see this discussed less, so these are half questions and I am not sure at all:

- DRK/WAR are roughly equivalent in terms of "effective defense" and enmity generation (apparently WAR has the highest HP and good self-recovery, but DRK has better self-mitigation and magic defense? I presume this is fight dependent).
- WAR has slightly more team support options than DRK.
- WAR has the highest DPS among all tanks (I see this unanimously stated).

If yes, this looks like WAR is actually a "slightly better" main tank for most fights, and "strictly better" off tank than DRK.

Conclusion

Based on the above (please correct any misunderstandings), it seems like DRK will always be forced into main tanking (assuming similar player skill and item levels) when paired with another tank.

The only thing it seems it can reasonably do better is main tank over PLD, whereas it is not definitively better than WAR at any role. Any fight-dependent advantage that DRK has over WAR in terms of defensive kit (e.g. more magic mitigation for a magic damage heavy fight) is usually negated by WAR having much higher DPS and slightly better team support. Is this correct? If so, I can see why DRK is not picked for endgame content where people are focused on optimization or speed runs (even if DRK is perfectly viable for clearing hard content in general).

Presumably, though, having a DRK would still almost always be better than having a dupe (WAR/WAR or PLD/PLD).

[shao32]

DRK vs WAR

you forgeth a important skill, holmgang, this skill is used to skip half of the TB in a fight so any advantage mitigation DRK have against magic its meaningless compared that WAR can't die, for no mention holmgang has been used to cheese mechanics due is so short it can be used against multiple share TB alone like ultima embrace on godka and the thunder on exdeath without mention thanks to they burst they skip a entire phase on phantom train saving a lot of teamwork logistic, no PLD or DRK can compete against that, WAR is specially strong due they generate "WAR strat" across the board and no other job on the game can do that.