Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[shao32]

If you're talking about utility then sure, it's true that DRK does less than the other jobs. TBN is not a particularly great shield for cotanks with its diminished effect on other targets, and it lacks raid-wide mitigation outside of a reprisal that every other tank has.

But you don't need that anyways. Healers, particularly Scholars, already have the market for unnecessary amounts of mitigation well in hand. Things like shake and veil are not absolutely necessary, and by all rights PLD has the better of the situation regardless with Cover and the addition of Passage (recently buffed for god-knows what reason).

DRK was in world first for both UWU and UCoB, and did not cost them either the clear (obviously) or their world-first-ness. They were able to complete the fights regardless. DRK not being able to provide extraneous under-utilized mitigation anyways does not matter. If you go as PLD over DRK to raid but never save lives or casts of heals with veil, or save someone's life with Passage, you may as well have gone DRK.

shake it of and divine veil are layers of security, necesary or not the skills are excepcional usefull improving the security of the party and cover the usual mistakes you will find in midcore and casual statics/runs like a vulnerability before a big raid aoe, lack of protect bcs revive a few seconds ago and alarge ect, both shields help a lot in progresion reducing a lot the weight of the healers by presing 1 single buttom, have a DRK will request everyone do the mechanics perfectly bcs the chances of recovering from mistakes will be lower specially since is the job with the lower self sustain too.

speaking of dificulty of the job, the dificulty of the job dosen't matter if the job have a niche, the problem DRK dosen't have it, there is nothing unique that justifify the actual gameplay and ppl tend to complaing you have to work harder for barely same dps as a PLD, less utility and lack of do something impactful like take several TB with holmgang saving CDs, slashing debuff making ninja and sam rotations smoother, divine veil and SIO covering potential mistakes and able to keep yourself alive at the cost of dps if thats save the run, or not but you try it with it more that a DRK can do.