Help choosing Gnb or Drk.

[Renryuu]

Hiya, so I'm having a dilemma in trying to choose to play Gnb or Drk. I know that dps wise the tanks are well balanced, but I'm looking at other aspects. Things like which is less dependent on a healer (as in if healer dies, which could last long enough until the healer is revived), which is able to solo old content better or able to solo more content than the other, which the healers like healing more, etc. I know these are odd things to try and decide what to play, but I do like going back to old content for glamour farming as well as not having to worry too much about a healer dying for whatever reason. So I would appreciate the opinion of those who have played as a tank far longer than me and thus are more experienced than me as until now I've only dabbled in tanking.

[shao32]

both jobs are pretty limited in terms of selfsustain to heal himselfs, if you want a tank to run old content alone and have way more options tu survive if something happen to the healer then play PLD, his utility and self sustain (at the cost of his own personal dps) is unmatched.

on terms of mitigation don't think about that, healers have a incredible busted healing kit they will top you in a fragment of a second independent of how well you mitigated and bosses hit like a wet noddle on everything except savage, but in resume DRK have superior mitigation kit since TBN (the blackest night) is busted for a shield and is the carring factor of the job.

on the other hand all of this depend of how you will farm that old content, if is un-sync with a healer then it wont matter since youn will faceroll everything and if you are alone the best option is always PLD, if is sync then pick GNB, they have the full defensive kit earlier and DRK is pretty trash under lvl 70 without TBN (the blackest night) aka his carry skill and living dead is way more annoying that superbolide, you can't survive walking dead alone.

if you still want only DRK or GNB and will do everything un-sync then it wont matter, playing the job properly will make you healer lifes easy no matter which one you pick so look better at his gameplay, DRK is brain dead and more simple than a stone and GNB have way more complexity to don't get bored with mindless spam so try both at the end.

[Renryuu]

Well reason I hadn't included Paladin in the equation is cause it is only level 67 or so and I would have to level it up where as my Drk and Gnb are already level 80s. Would Pld truly be worth it to finish leveling and use? How is it in dungeons and raids and such compared to Drk and Gnb? Is it easy enough to grasp the rotation for in comparison of the other two tanks? Is it able to stand ground as a main tank or better off as a off tank?

[TouchandFeel]

If you are trying to solo old content, I find PLD to be the easiest to do it on due to Clemency making them have the most potential healing autonomy. After that I would say GNB/WAR are about equitable since WAR has a 1200 pot self-heal and GNB has a 1200 pot self-regen, both being available every 60s. Unfortunately for WAR, Nascent Flash won't work in solo scenarios. Then probably lastly, DRK. DRK has the lowest self-healing potential in a lot of, if not most, soloing scenarios due to Abyssal Drain providing less healing when not facing a group of 6 or more enemies, which will often be the case, especially when soloing old trial fights. TBN will help mitigate a good amount of damage, but when soloing old content you will likely not be taking enough damage in TBN's duration to break the shield and recoup the MP cost which will drastically drop your DPS, moreso than PLD casting the occasional Clemency.
It's potentially possible to solo old content with any of the tanks, but the above is what I see as the line-up for how easy/effective they will be.

In regards to PLD for max-level content such as dungeons and raids, all the tanks can get the job done and can act as main or off tank effectively. I personally like playing PLD in the off-tank role because I just like the way it feels in a more supportive capacity, but that is just a personal preference.
The rotation for PLD is probably the most straight-forward and easy to grasp of the tanks because it just flows very naturally and everything is designed in a way that it all lines up perfectly, so much so that in my experience after playing PLD for a little while you basically stop even thinking about the rotation and you just end up doing it through muscle memory.

If you really want to do a lot of soloing of content, I would say that it is definitely worth leveling PLD.
If you are mainly going to stick to current max lvl content and only do a little bit of old group content, then it isn't necessary and you could get by with DRK or GNB, although of those two GNB is probably the least negatively affected by level-syncing since anything under lvl.70 means DRK doesn't have TBN and it really suffers since TBN is so central to DRK's defenses.

[Hierro]

DRK is better for dungeons, flat out. In large pulls, Abyssal Drain is FAR superior to Aurora and when smartly used between TBNs and HP thresholds, you really ensure a degree of independence from the healer that GNB just can't achieve ever. If your healer is a decent WHM, they will probably prefer DRK because they can make better use of LD than they can with Superbolide. Even when discounting invulns, healers will find that DRK can last longer than GNB before needing a GCD heal, which is a nice selling point for good healers.

As for soloing older content, depends. If it's really old content, it doesn't matter. If it's recently old content, neither is very good at the job lol.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Well reason I hadn't included Paladin in the equation is cause it is only level 67 or so and I would have to level it up where as my Drk and Gnb are already level 80s. Would Pld truly be worth it to finish leveling and use? How is it in dungeons and raids and such compared to Drk and Gnb? Is it easy enough to grasp the rotation for in comparison of the other two tanks? Is it able to stand ground as a main tank or better off as a off tank?

No one can really tell you which tank is better and so on, just level them up, or play them. Look to The Balance discord for rotation guides, or you may be able to google them, and read your tooltips and learn how each and every skill works or interacts with your kit, and see which tank you prefer. Major emphasis on learning what your skills are and what they do, far too many people do not and it only makes the time for the party miserable to put up with people like that.

Also there is no Main Tank or Off Tank designation as such anymore really, but a co-tank relationship in 8 man content, both tanks have defensive toolkits that can be utliized better through co-ordinated tank swaps. Paladin only suffers pulling if there is an early buster, as it cannot supplement it's bigger cooldown with their short cooldown, but that's a negligible thing at best. You typically only use MT/OT for macro purposes on fights, where MT is the pulling tank. But some tanks will perform slightly better or slightly less well than other tanks, but healers have very powerful toolkits, so you should not let "helping out the healer" influence your decision.

Just see which tank playstyle you prefer and go with that at the end of the day.

[shao32]

Well reason I hadn't included Paladin in the equation is cause it is only level 67 or so and I would have to level it up where as my Drk and Gnb are already level 80s. Would Pld truly be worth it to finish leveling and use? How is it in dungeons and raids and such compared to Drk and Gnb? Is it easy enough to grasp the rotation for in comparison of the other two tanks? Is it able to stand ground as a main tank or better off as a off tank?

tanks this expansion fill both MT and OT role well since they have been oversimplifed and all have the same tools aka same basic mitigation, same aoe mitigation, same single target mitigation ect ect ect,tank mechanics are non-existent so basically we are DPS mitigating TB and aoes with the same tools everyone have, the only real diference remains that PLD have a bit more support with extra party mitigation tools and self sustain aka clemency at the cost of you DPS (notice you don't wanna use it if you optimice you dps but clemency it's a great tool for solo content so i consider it's perfect for you) so yeah i firmly belive PLD will the best option for you, it's all round works pretty well even in the most crazy solo runs and the diference of mitigation in lvl 80 content it's as small as the dps diferences betwen tanks with the exception of DRK is busted agains tank busters but every tank mitigate damage just well, give it a try and lvl it up in your free time, will be worthy for you.

[VenKitsune]

They both have the same BiS and melds/sks requirement. They also fulfil very similar roles, the main difference between them being that DRK is slightly more defense based and GNB is more offense based. Just play both? That's what i do.

[BarretOblivion]

Hiya, so I'm having a dilemma in trying to choose to play Gnb or Drk. I know that dps wise the tanks are well balanced, but I'm looking at other aspects. Things like which is less dependent on a healer (as in if healer dies, which could last long enough until the healer is revived), which is able to solo old content better or able to solo more content than the other, which the healers like healing more, etc.

Tenically in a spur of the moment when this happens GNB is > DRK assuming you are low on MP on DRK and can only get 1 TBN on yourself. Living deading yourself is the definition of relying on a healer cause... you still die if you don't get full healed, which there is 0 way for you to do that yourself and likely the one healer that is up trying to get the other healer up unless they are a WHM with bene in their pocket. GNB if you time the superboilde and you have a decent regen can survive better without a healers but... both of them are kinda the worst in the category you are speaking of especially soloing content, PLD is the best at that right now with WAR behind them.

WAR has the fastest/consistant self sustain and PLD has clemency, hallowed, and during requiscat can instant cast heals... so if you honestly cared about this aspect the answer is... neither.

[CaptainFishSticks]

It's all down to personal choice. DRK is usually regarded better for big Dungeon pulls and GNB is great for burst DPS, not better nor is it worse than any of the other classes.