Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[Chrono_Rising]

I believe that Blood Price was locked in Grit stance since DRK was first introduced in FFXIV.

You are thinking of blood weapon only being accessible out of grit, blood price did not depend on stance in HW.

Nerfing unleash probably had 2 reasons. 1. DRK aoe was a little to solid for it's own good at the lower leveled dungeons back in Heavensward. 2. It is to encourage the use of Abyssal Drain as well in terms of using enmity aoe tools. Back in Heavensward, both Unleash and Abyssal Drain had the same potency, but Unleash costed less. Why use Abyssal Drain when you can get the same amount of damage and hate with Unleash. And the life gain from Abyssal Drain with Dark Arts is excellent too, but it takes quite a bit of MP management as well.

I don't remember the exact potency from back in HW, but I don't remember Abyssal Drain and Unleash being the same potency or unleash being more potency than Abyssal Drain, but at the end of the day the extra 50 potency on unleash wasn't breaking low level dungeon runs. Abyssal Drain use to be insanely strong when paired with blood price, it was always preferred over unleash once you obtained the skill.

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?

As for the original topic, is Dark Knight bad right now? The answer is no, as a tank, Dark Knight is doing very well in the area of mitigation.

What follows is a a subjective opinion (like most are) so people may disagree with it, but the 4.0 Dark Knight design is out of touch with what drew people to the class in 3.0, and that is why it feels bad to many people.

I've spent alot of time thinking about my experience with dark knight in heavensward and I came to a conclusion. What I enjoyed most about the job was the activity. Many will argue we are pushing the same number of buttons now as we did then, but I disagree that the button presses "feel" the same. What do I mean:

Low blow procs, this was our stun and dealt damage, it had a chance of being reset by parry procs for additional damage.
Reprisal procs, damage down and damage done based on parry procs.
Blood price, take damage and gain damage from mana absorption.

These skills made it feel like we were fighting back in a sense. But this also meant something, to get the most out of the class you needed to be actively tanking.

This is fundamentally at odds with the developers stated intentions for tanks in stormblood: that any tank be able to flexibly play the OT/MT role. So what can we do to achieve this intention? Low blow was taken off the job along with reprisal, this removes the preference for having a dark knight as main tank. Blood price is locked away in grit, so you only would use it if you were already actively tanking, if you care about damage there is no benefit to being the main aggro target as tank stance is a dps loss and this comes along with a nerf to the mana gain of blood price to shift our focus towards using blood.

Why do I say this is out of touch with the 3.0 design? Our kit was left mainly unchanged besides these, and other, removals, the missing skills and damage were filled in by taking away things like the mana drain (the part of our kit that made us feel the sacrifice of being a dark knight, another one of those dark knight themes), and adding in gauge moves, additional mitigation, and a skill to extend our dps skill. Our fast playstyle of mashing multiple different buttons was replaced with dark arts spam, which while it can be fun at times, doesn't feel as impactful as actively attacking those who attack you or those you choose to protect. Yes, the 4.3 changes definitely helped dark knight out in the area of mitigation, and pushed it well past the other two tanks in magic heavy fights, but those changes did not address the job being drained of many of its themes. And for that you still see people who want to the class to be redesigned because it just isn't living up to what it could be or even what it once was.

Consider what people didn't like in 3.0: shadow wall being on a long cooldown, stance locked skills on a job that could not flexibly change stances, and anti-synergy in skills (using blind and evasion while something like blood price was up or having a whm holy while blood price was active).

Consider what we got in stormblood: more stance locked skills, more additional effects locked behind stances, along with the removal of the synergy people enjoyed in the kit (like procs and resets) while keeping the anti-synergy between skills. Eventually we did get the reduction on shadow wall, but that came in 4.3 and not as part of the 4.0 expansion of the job.

Again, this is a subjective opinion, but the expansion of the job into stormblood just feels out of touch with why many players enjoyed it in heavensward. Dark Knight was not perfect in heavensward, and it did need some tweaking, but it felt more dark knight like to me. At this point, I've given up on dark knight and have been a paladin for the majority of the expansion, people say don't like don't play and so I'm taking that advice and maining paladin these days.