Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[Lyth]

I don't think that tanks or healers should be differentiated on the basis of raid dps buffs. On their own, they can be the deciding factor to bring a certain job. Even small things, such as the way in which Veil and Shake can be exploited to generate additional Limit gauge, end up influencing popular job picks. If we start adding Trick Attack analogues to the tanks, everyone is going to start demanding to get one on their job, and we're going to end up with a 5.2 rework in which an unwanted WAR ability gets converted into Balance card 2.0.

If you got rid of Slashing, removed Limit gauge generation from barrier shields, and categorised tank dps on a spectrum from Burst to Sustained such that no tank was the best at both, you'd allow for the tanks to feel different while preventing dps from being the primary reason for picking a given tank. Ideally, it should be balanced such that a burst orientated tank pulls ahead on a low uptime fight, and falls behind under high uptime (target dummy) conditions.

Setting aside gameplay issues for the moment, I'd like to see changes to DRK focused around a particular theme, to give it a sense of identity. If PLD is thematically about supporting the group and protecting allies, I'd like to see DRK focused on survival and being the last person standing. It's already thematically implied, with skills like "Sole Survivor" and "Grit".

The obvious way to do this is to make lifesteal into a core Dark Knight feature. There are a lot of requests for Souleater's self-heal to occur out of Grit. There's no reason why that can't happen. You could build it into things like Bloodspiller and Quietus as well, so that you get that sense of stealing resources (HP/MP/blood) as you slice through your opponents. Similarly, Soul Survivor would have more value as sustain if it slowly fed you resources over time, rather than dumping it all in once the debuff expires.

You don't need any individual hit to give you a lot of life back. Finding the correct value is a tuning issue. You just need small but regular amounts that allow you to keep going just that extra bit longer. I'd like to see DRK be the tank that your team counts on to survive long enough to show them how the next mechanic unfolds. Relentless resolve.

A Living Dead rework would fit in with this as well.