Am I missing something, or are Dark Knights just terrible?

[InfiniDragon]

I haven’t looked at the charts but from playing both PLD and DRK in dungeons I’d give the edge to PLD. Packs go down faster with PLD. DRK is still decent in aoe. DRK in single target is slightly lower in the numbers I have experienced while playing both.

Wait what? DRK AOE is a lot better than PLD's (and arguably all the other tanks), they can melt things in AOE scenarios.

PLD's edge over DRK is in single target, not AOE.

[Hierro]

Tbn is great for tank busters/raid wide aoes but is not as god tier as some make it out to be in mass pull dungeon scenarios. That shield goes pretty fast. I’d much rather have a Shelton that keeps mitigating for it’s duration than a shield that is gone in 3~ seconds then wait another 12 seconds till it’s up again.

When you combine TBN with a powerful CD like shadow wall, or even just rampart, that's mitigation that's being buffed even further. That mob has to chip away at an extra 25% of your HP that is also STRENGTHENED with mitigation. That said, there is no way that shield "goes fast" without a fight.

When you say that PLD beats out DRK in terms of mitigation, there's something definitely wrong with that conclusion because of how available TBN is compared to sheltron. Also, PLD has to sacrifice resources and DPS to self-heal which is NOT a decision DRK has to make, because healing and sustainability go hand-in-hand with optimizing DPS. If TBN does not make a deep impact in how you mitigate a large pull, then there is something that might need re-examining in your gameplay, specifically, how you allocate and use your defensive CDs and resources.

That said, and to echo the guy above me, DRK has incredible DPS ontop of their amazing resilience.

[Seku]

Nope. I don't find that DRK has mitigation issues at any level. It's boring, but it works. PLD and WAR may feel that they excel better due to the ability to heal themselves for a lot in a short amount of time if your healer doesn't know what their doing. That's really about it.


For the person that said that LD is the only invun that does not work in solo play well.....that means you're doing something wrong and that is just factually wrong. 3 out of 4 of the invuns are useless in solo play. GNB puts you at 1 HP. Warrior functions the same as LD, except you have to put it up before you hit 1 hp. And LD is LD. That basically means in 3 out of 4 cases you have 8-10 seconds to kill the enemy before you die. Unless you get lucky and the enemy does a casting animation. If anything I'd say that LD is the best of the 3 for solo play as you can put it up prior to taking a killing shot and no Mitigation nor HP is wasted, as the other two would have you do.

LD is however the worse skill for PUGs as it doesn't have a good indicator and you have to heal up to full health. It would be nice if they like just showed a grey health bar with "Time until death" on it that either counts down or slowly drains to indicate that you're dying. It's also probably the worse for resources depending on the situation. IE: If a WHM has to pick to either use benediction to recover a DRK from LD or save it for another mechanic. But I don't think that those situations are very common.

[Malmstrom]

Don't let that fool you, max damage between tanks varies up to 3 or 4% from highest to lowest. Damage isn't a critical factor when picking DRK.

DRK is actually solid as a progression tank due to TBN. Dont know what happens next? TBN and see. You do know and it deals damage to you or co-tank? TBN anyways, chances are it's worthwhile anyways as long as it breaks.

I hate this concept.

"The Blackest Night is only good if it breaks!"

Not breaking is considered bad, regardless of the amount of damage it lets you soak for some reason.

That's dumb.

[Tranquilmelody7]

Nope. I don't find that DRK has mitigation issues at any level. It's boring, but it works. PLD and WAR may feel that they excel better due to the ability to heal themselves for a lot in a short amount of time if your healer doesn't know what their doing. That's really about it.


For the person that said that LD is the only invun that does not work in solo play well.....that means you're doing something wrong and that is just factually wrong. 3 out of 4 of the invuns are useless in solo play. GNB puts you at 1 HP. Warrior functions the same as LD, except you have to put it up before you hit 1 hp. And LD is LD. That basically means in 3 out of 4 cases you have 8-10 seconds to kill the enemy before you die. Unless you get lucky and the enemy does a casting animation. If anything I'd say that LD is the best of the 3 for solo play as you can put it up prior to taking a killing shot and no Mitigation nor HP is wasted, as the other two would have you do.

LD is however the worse skill for PUGs as it doesn't have a good indicator and you have to heal up to full health. It would be nice if they like just showed a grey health bar with "Time until death" on it that either counts down or slowly drains to indicate that you're dying. It's also probably the worse for resources depending on the situation. IE: If a WHM has to pick to either use benediction to recover a DRK from LD or save it for another mechanic. But I don't think that those situations are very common.

Being left with one HP is hardly a death sentence when playing as a tank, even in solo play.
Having access to 8 seconds of pure invincibility really isn't hard to utilize, when you have means to recover your own HP with your character or AI companions.
Superbollide is honestly my favorite invulnerability skill of them all, there's a significant risk / reward factor but you're actually capable of recovering from the gamble on your own - unlike the literal death sentence that is Living Dead.

I'll admit that you'd probably have to go out of your way to bank on using Holmang in solo play due to the strict duration and minimum HP requirement, but at least the binding effect can keep it from being a truly wasted CD.

If you activate Living Dead and the Zombie Status triggers, it is nearly impossible to recover from in any single player scenario.
If you activate Living Dead and the zombie status doesn't trigger... congrats, you wasted a cooldown.

[Seku]

Being left with one HP is hardly a death sentence when playing as a tank, even in solo play.
Having access to 8 seconds of pure invincibility really isn't hard to utilize, when you have means to recover your own HP with your character or AI companions.
Superbollide is honestly my favorite invulnerability skill of them all, there's a significant risk / reward factor but you're actually capable of recovering from the gamble on your own - unlike the literal death sentence that is Living Dead.

I don't consider AI to be solo as you have a outside source of healing in which case you should never have gotten to the point of having to use a invun to begin with unless you messed up pretty badly and failed multiple mechanics. There isn't a situation where you should be using invuns in a solo situation outside of dungeons and trials (possibly) from old content and superbollide is not going to save you if you were taken that low to begin with.

If you activate Superbollide without being at 1 hp, you've wasted any HP that you had above 1...

If you activate Holmang without taking damage that would put you below 1 hp, congrats you've wasted a cool down.

With living dead, you have a 10 second window....which in reality is probably the 10 seconds you would have been pushed below 1 hp naturally if you didn't use the other 2 skills. If you're not within that 10 second window, you probably just wasted your HP bar of SuperBollide and a cooldown with Holmang.

[Tranquilmelody7]

On topic I have issues with DRK bit hyperbole akin to that present in the OP is honestly rather tiring.
DRK is far, far, FAR from a trainwreck performance wise and is still fun to many players(Coming from someone who actually loved SB DRK.

I don't think DRK is bad at low levels - soul eater is comparatively one of the best self sustain tools available during ARR.
Even Living Dead is rather useful during the early levels after you learn it - due to the comfortable duration to actually have access to the mitigation, in addition to the healing check being far more lenient: as opposed to late game usage of the skill.

Living Dead in particular is a passionate subject for me as I understand it can perform adequately well with the right setup, due to it's potentially 18 second window to be utilized and comparatively short 300 second CD.

It's just not fun or satisfying to use for many of us.
I can't think of a single skill in the game that I'd like to be changed more, even if it ends up potentially less useful due to appeal to accessibility.

It's not like it's a particularly creative skill anyway, it's always been essentially a more punishing Holmang with a more lenient duration.

[MerlinCross]

What worries me going forward is how much of our power seems to be in TBN.

Meaning if it gets balanced/nerfed/changed down the line, how hard is that going to hit us from both a Defensive and Offensive perpective.

And yeah, DRK really hurts low level due to all the stuff they cut out. No class should actually 'begin to work' at an expansion level cap. DRK isn't alone in this regard though, it's just their thing to do; cut lower skills to put new skills at high levels. Oh and maybe jump potion to skip the weaker sections to get to the dream "It works now" part.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I hate this concept.

"The Blackest Night is only good if it breaks!"

Not breaking is considered bad, regardless of the amount of damage it lets you soak for some reason.

That's dumb.

Consider the following:

If in seven seconds you didn't lose 25% of your maxHP, would you truly need it at that moment?

All cooldowns can be wasted if used in a low damage timeframe, it is just that TBN has a very visible indicator of failing to optimize it. On the flipside it is incredibly flexible due to the short cooldown and its' MP refund mechanic.

If TBN didn't have this incentive, it would just be a rather bland cooldown

[shao32]

What worries me going forward is how much of our power seems to be in TBN.

Meaning if it gets balanced/nerfed/changed down the line, how hard is that going to hit us from both a Defensive and Offensive perpective.

And yeah, DRK really hurts low level due to all the stuff they cut out. No class should actually 'begin to work' at an expansion level cap. DRK isn't alone in this regard though, it's just their thing to do; cut lower skills to put new skills at high levels. Oh and maybe jump potion to skip the weaker sections to get to the dream "It works now" part.

a 5%nerf on TBN won't hurt DRK much, they will go back to SB leves of mitigation wich is still superior to current tanks leves of mitigation.