Big pulls with Dark Knight.

[cactuarzzzz]

AD can heal like half your HP bar or more with enough mob.

Last I check, Abyssal Drain can only heal 200 potency. It doesn't increase with each number of targets that got hit by it.

[shao32]

You can pull big with any tank if you have a decent healer, but TBN is definitely not a good CD for mass pulls. It's basically just a 20% shield; even with your best damage reduction CDs up it's gone in an instant once everything you pulled swings at you. The worst part is that the class is balanced around TBN; so it's passive mitigation sucks, it's invulnerability CD is the worst in the game and AD is the only decent self healing DRK has. Once that TBN disappears you're the worst tank in the game in a mass pull.

I'm not trying to say Dark Knights can't mass pull, but Paladin has the versatility to mass pull in any situation; not just in a good group where everyone's totally got you.

From my experience a Trust is basically a modestly below average group. With my Paladin I can wall to wall pull without breaking a sweat; I'm able to react to whatever level of neglect the healer decides to throw at me. That's a capable, versatile tank. Dark Knight just dies; no invulnerability CD, no sustainable self-healing, terrible passive mitigation all to justify TBN, which is gone 2 seconds after you pop it.

It's a 25% shield not 20% witch it's really massive and the trick on aoes is due it have the most short recast (15s) you have to keep it on colddown and use the procs for flood, it's affected by your HP so the more ilvl you have more powerful it gets, so no, DRK is not weak or you are not using it enough, you gear it's just extremely low or both at the same time.

PLD can heal himself but lower the contribution of DPS on the pull making it take way more time to kill and DRK on the other hand can be a eternal wall with TBN spam as long as you play it properly and keep generating mp, something it's extremely braindead to archive this expansion and dealt one of the most broken aoe dps of the tank role killing everything so fast, the faster your targets die the better always.

Btw you can use reprisal since it's aoe, there is just tons of mitigation tools right now, don't depend of the silly heals of PLD without run out of mitigation tools first.

Last I check, Abyssal Drain can only heal 200 potency. It doesn't increase with each number of targets that got hit by it.

It's a heal of 200p per target so if you hit 5 targets with AD you get 5 heals of 200p.

[cactuarzzzz]

It's a heal of 200p per target so if you hit 5 targets with AD you get 5 heals of 200p.

Ah, thank you, been a while now. I'm surprised how 1600 potency heal from AD doesn't heal as much as a heal from the healers.

[Goji1639]

It's a 25% shield not 20% witch it's really massive and the trick on aoes is due it have the most short recast (15s) you have to keep it on colddown and use the procs for flood, it's affected by your HP so the more ilvl you have more powerful it gets, so no, DRK is not weak or you are not using it enough, you gear it's just extremely low or both at the same time.

PLD can heal himself but lower the contribution of DPS on the pull making it take way more time to kill and DRK on the other hand can be a eternal wall with TBN spam as long as you play it properly and keep generating mp, something it's extremely braindead to archive this expansion and dealt one of the most broken aoe dps of the tank role killing everything so fast, the faster your targets die the better always.

Btw you can use reprisal since it's aoe, there is just tons of mitigation tools right now, don't depend of the silly heals of PLD without run out of mitigation tools first.

It's a heal of 200p per target so if you hit 5 targets with AD you get 5 heals of 200p.

Losing 1 or 2 casts during req doesn't make it take "way more time to kill," you severely overestimate the tanks contribution to overall DPS. Clemency is a great tool for when you're pulling for a healer who seems to be struggling to handle mass pulls. Staying alive is a DPS gain. With a good healer your defensive kit barely matters during a big pull, so it's pointless to compare tanks in that context.

Interesting note about server ticks, though; I'll try not popping TBN and a defensive CD together and see if that makes a notable difference.

Also, I've never been sure how the math works with potencies in this game, but what I do know from simple observation is that Clemency crits for 50K plus HP, and AD seems to hit for about 2-3k per target. I'd need about 15-20 targets to match 1 cast of Clemency, and I can technically spam Clemency 6-7 times in a row if I needed to. There's absolutely no comparison when it comes to self-healing.

[shao32]

Losing 1 or 2 casts during req doesn't make it take "way more time to kill," you severely overestimate the tanks contribution to overall DPS. Clemency is a great tool for when you're pulling for a healer who seems to be struggling to handle mass pulls. Staying alive is a DPS gain. With a good healer your defensive kit barely matters during a big pull, so it's pointless to compare tanks in that context.

Interesting note about server ticks, though; I'll try not popping TBN and a defensive CD together and see if that makes a notable difference.

Also, I've never been sure how the math works with potencies in this game, but what I do know from simple observation is that Clemency crits for 50K plus HP, and AD seems to hit for about 2-3k per target. I'd need about 15-20 targets to match 1 cast of Clemency, and I can technically spam Clemency 6-7 times in a row if I needed to. There's absolutely no comparison when it comes to self-healing.

I belive you are the one that understimate the value of tank contribution to overall DPS on aoe situations, specially from DRK and PLD since the first one have extremly powerful skills that can end anything quickly and push more dps that a DPS in short periods of time and the value to land all your holy spirits+confiteor during requiem cast, if you belive that having a good healer you defensive kit barely matters then you are being negligent on purpose or you don't fully understand the the potential behind optimice your kit under such situations.

In an aoe situation if you have a good healer properly use your kit allow that healer to push more DPS and combined with yours that doesn't cost anything due the simplicity of everything right now will make the combination of both nuking the pull independent of the size, you shouln't refuge on the excuse of "the healer is good then my defensive kit it's mostly irrelevant now" when you can do much more.

now on the oposite scenario if the healer is bad it's pretty much irrelevant, this game is hella easy and everything hits like a wet noodle, if you use you defensive kit properly and push dps as your should you will see how brainless everything is right now, and if you pull and need to use clemency for whatever reason reason (being honets the chances of any good PLD have to use clemency to stay alive are nonexistent but in the case that happens) then you should pull smaller since pushing dps and keeping the hp on check without having to use clemency it's way better and faster that forcing mass pulling, both tank and healer being bad at their jobs and rely on clemency to success it's a bad practice when smaller pulls can do the same more safe and way more faster.

in resume, tanking on mass pullings it's all about how much you and your healer can keep your considerable amount of dps output with the defensive and healing tools at your disposal, pulling smaller it's always way better if you are in the situation of being forced to use clemency without any doubt specially if your dps are aoe skills allergic, and when you start using DRK properly you will see is not the weak tank you claim it is, it's you dont knowing how to use your tool since DRK it's by far one of the best dungeon tanks since ever.

[OdinelStarrei]

Last I check, Abyssal Drain can only heal 200 potency. It doesn't increase with each number of targets that got hit by it.

Yes it does. It operated like that since the beginning, despite it being changed to an oGCD. It scales linearly with Attack Power I think, so whatever damage you deal is returned, with a small amount of variance as they are calculated as heal potency and not as life steal, meaning Darkside doesn't affect the healing, only the damage. Ex. ~49.5K damage over 9 targets = ~45K healing.

Now then.
If your metric of how good a tank is relies on your team being absolute idiots, or even comparable to ACTUAL BOTS I don't know exactly what to say. This is like saying AST is a bad healer because WHM is easier to fix party mistakes with. Just don't make mistakes and be competent at playing your role instead :^)))) Bad players or crisis scenarios should not be the metric where you define how good something is, that doesn't make sense. It can certainly be a positive attritube, but due to the relative infrequency of these crisis situations, I don't think it's accurate to lynch the other tanks for not being able to Cover someone with six vuln stacks or heal themselves with 2 GCDs instantly at the cost of their rotation. It's too uncommon.

Defensively, I'm pretty sure you're either undergeared or using TBN wrong. That's a bold claim, but understand that TBN, unlike other CDs, increases in power the higher your HP/Defense stat is, on top of whatever mitigations you apply to yourself, due to it not being multiplicative buff. When you complain about TBN breaking "in 1 second" or "instantly" that's a tell-tale sign something is wrong, as the only way my TBNs ever break at all is if I pull huge. Other people have already gone into this part of it, Shadow Wall with TBN and Arms Length if you have a very large amount of adds at the start of a pull, Rampart with TBN, add in reprisal, throw magic mitigations on top if something in the pack uses magic. Stacking it that way, you've already gotten yourself 35 seconds of AT MINIMUM, 20% personal mitigation, 10 seconds of -10% debuff (Reprisal), 15 seconds of a -20% debuff (Arm's Length), AND 50% bonus HP coming off TBN, with the next usage being 10 seconds away, assuming the pack isn't dead already. And functionally, because of the additive nature of shields and cooldown stacking/debuffing, it is MORE than 50% eHP. If you have a VERY large pull, like the ones in Anamesis, Abyssal Drain can scale to incredible amounts, like 2600 potency, which doesn't interfere with the outgoing tank damage at all. And honestly, if your add packs aren't dying in at max 30-40 seconds of sustained DPS, it's not the tanks problem. It's the 0 DPS healer and the not-AoEing DPS's problem.

Offensively, this is actually where DRK shines the most, because it's burst is HIGHLY favorable in the AoE department. I'll do a sample 1-1, potency calculation at 9 enemies that factors in the AoE burst window, a simple wall to wall pull you can find in Cosmos or Anamesis currently, with everything able to be used. Comparision with your chosen tank, PLD, to illustrate this point with adjusted potency after buffs in bold. There are only test examples, please don't take them too literally.

(TBN/AL once you planted yourself in the "time to aoe" spot to drain mana, you'll passively gain around 1200 MP over 10 GCDs depending on server ticks)
1. Unleash (165 > 1485)
FoS (330 > 2970)
put your entry mitigations here

2. SS (176 > 1584)
Salted Earth (330 > 2970 over 15 seconds)
Plunge (220)

3. Unleash (165 > 1485)
Plunge (220)
BW for mana and blood

4. SS (176 > 1584)

Living Shadow
This needs it's own small section. Not affected by Darkside, 4 single target attacks (1200) 3 AoE attacks (900 > 8100) for a total of 9300 over 24 seconds, but the AoE hits are the 1st, 3rd, and 4th out of 7, so the majority of the damage is within the first 15 seconds.
Delirium (+500 mana per Quietus, total of +2500)

5. 1st Quietus (231 > 2079)
FoS (330 > 2970) (free because Dark Arts)
TBN

6. 2nd Quietus (231 > 2079) *Shadow Wall should fall off here*
Abyssal (220 > 1980) +1800 potency heal
put more mitigation here (rampart probably)

7. 3rd Quietus (231 > 2079)
Cns (495 single target, free mana)
FoS (330 > 2970) (free because Dark Arts)
probably reprisal

8. 4th Quietus (231 > 2079)
FoS (330 > 2970)

9. 5th Quietus (231 > 2079)
FoS (330 > 2970) *should have enough mana here from passive mana ticks and delirium

After that you should be left with 40 Blood and very little mana after around twenty-two seconds. At this point, your pack should either be dead, or very close to death, to the point of where healing isn't needed/you drop the last FoS temporarily to save the mana for the next TBN. Assuming everything hits all adds (which will almost never happen because enemy positions are never this ideal) you have a theoretical cap of 46,568 tank potency. Realistically, I'd say you get about 40Kish of it due to things dying sooner, variable amount of enemies, Flood/Salted/LS not hitting everything, variable mana amounts, holding mana for next pull etc etc.


Let's compare this with PLD.

Hallowed on pull, I'm going to assume you have 50 gauge even though at the start of dungeons you don't.
1. Total Eclipse (120 > 1080 )
Spirit's Withing at max HP (370)
Intervene (200)

2. Prominence (220 > 1980 )
Req (550, +50% to Holy Circle and Confiteor)

3. 1st Holy Circle 375 > 3375
CoS (295 > 2655, combining initial hit and DoT

4. 2nd Holy Circle 375 > 3375 *Hallowed is gone here
Add Sentinel, mandatory Sheltron, AL

5. 3rd Holy Circle 375 > 3375
6. 4th Holy Circle 375 > 3375

7. Confiteor (1200 > 10800 )
Add more mitigations if everything isn't dead
FoF

8. Total Eclipse (150 > 1350 )
Intervene (250)
9. Prominence (275 > 2475 )
...Repeat for the next 20 seconds, zero mana, but you still have CDs, assuming hallowed was used. Otherwise, probably would have to lead with it and place rampart in Holy Circles.

That puts PLD at 35,210 at a theoretical cap, that can be decreased (but not as easily as DRK) due to positioning, things dying, Confiteor wasn't targeted in the direct center, etc etc. Using your own words here, that number drops by 3.3K every time you replace a Holy Circle with a Clemency, and you wouldn't replace Confiteor with a Clemency ever, that's ridiculous to suggest, even for a strawman arugment.

Napkin math, it's not perfect, but the point I'm trying to make here is that DRK takes a bit more effort (i know, i know how that sounds coming from me), but you're rewarded with SIGNIFICANTLY more scalability in your damage, without having to compromise your defensive skills at all. And in FFXIV, at this point, the best defense is the best offense. DRK can kill things a bit faster than PLD can in burst, out of burst still has FoS usable, and has enough tools to make it easy to heal. That gap gets even larger with more gear. If things last too long, THAT'S NOT THE TANKS FAULT, assuming the tank also did AoE and mitigated.

And DRK isn't even the tank you should be complaining about in the CD department. That's GNB, and even that's really flimsy because Camouflauge parries excel in big pulls, you still got your 30%, but Aurora and HoS are a bit lacking, particularly compared to Nascent/TBN in the exact same scenarios. But that doesn't matter because you still have Rampart, Reprisal, AL, and at 9 enemies under NM, you're dishing out 4032 total potency Fated Circles every 3rd GCD, more than that with pre-prep/Bloodfest.

Is DRK good in dungeon pulls? Yes, absolutely. But every single tank is "good" in dungeons. Because dungeons are brain dead easy and don't hit you hard enough for it to actually matter. Dungeons, like everything else, is a "bring the player, not the job" affair. If you're PLD, you can offset your lower damage, replace a HC with a Clemency, and let the WHM Holy for another 5 GCDs and have long solo sustain, both options having a massive nuke at the end. WARs can instantly full heal themselves, very high burst. DRK has very high damage that is not affected by it's high TBN sustain, if used correctly. GNB just does insane sustainable AoE damage. All tanks can annihilate packs in their own way, but a lot of things, from your CD priority/planning to your damage dealing, will not transfer 100% from tank to tank. Recommend looking at some of the world's fastest dungeon runs, and seeing just how high tanks can get. At the higher levels of play, all tanks are fairly close together.

TL;DR Kill things faster if you don't want to die.

Also Low Blow is a valid cooldown, stun is free.