There's always going to be a "last place" in terms of parsing. From what I understand, though, DRK (last place) and GNB (first place) are within a very small window. The difference is less than 5%? There is no dire need to buff the lower performers.

As far as utility, TBN is so powerful, it makes up for missing an extra button. This ability is just bonkers. As a PLD main (with a DRK almost 80), there's nothing like TBN.

That said, if SE decided a dps buff for DRK was warranted, I think a fun buff would be to Dark Arts: make it so the next Edge/Flood is 0 MP *and* is an automatic critical/direct hit.

For a utility buff to DRK, the only thing I'd like to see is Living Dead get tweaked. It has its use (you put it up, but it doesn't "start" until you would die, so you can kind of guarantee a full 10s of invuln time), but the fact that it kills you if a healer in your party doesn't fully understand how it functions is pretty feelsbadman. Maybe change the drawback to something less drastic than dying? Or remove the drawback, but change the "invuln" to a damage stagger (you take a % of the total damage dealt to you, but as a DoT over time)? Or maybe at the end of Walking Dead, you simply take X damage. It could be a % of your max health? Something you can mitigate, though, via TBN (or even Dark Mind, if it's spell damage). I'm just spit-balling ideas at this point.