Tanking with style

[Yeol]

now it's just load and shoot.

That is almost very FFXIV Job now. Each jobs just does it differently.

DRK 2nd combo gives MP, 3rd combo gives Blood. Blood weapon gives both MP and Blood.
If you are not keeping uptime as DRK you lose two resources not one.
If you can't constantly hit 5 GCDs in blood weapon, your are losing two resources not one.
and once that happens, almost your entire MP and blood need to be recalculated for the entire fight.

Because you missed a couple of hits before boss jumped away or missed few hits inside blood weapon, you will not be spending as much MP and blood inside raid buffs. You'll not have enough MP for TBN in some phases. Your living shadow will get delayed by and an extra combo or two, and it gets out of sync from raid buffs. Bye bye DPS.

Once you mess up, you have to keep in mind to not spend everything when they are available. You have to check if TBN is needed soon or if living shadow is coming off CD. This is the recalculation part i'm talking about. Even the duration of the fight affects the way you generate/spend your resources (example: killing ads faster)

All jobs in the game get punished. People tend to think low of DRK because of "just load and shoot" mentality. Until they realize they did less Bloodspiller and EoS in the fight.
They cared more about spending than generating. Since current DRK MP and blood generation is low, making mistakes makes it even lower.

[shao32]

snip

Every single job in the game is afected with the rule of always be casting, hit all your GCD under your buff windows and keep everything on recast, DRK is not special just bcs he have 2 resources in 1 combo, if you mess up you need to recalculate for the next buff window not the entire fight at all, thats with all respect a over exageration considering how little resources generate right now and how wide the downtime is, you have plenty of time to know if you should use a edge early or not depending of your resources aviable.

If you missed a few hits before the boss jump thats nothing compared to start no mercy window with GNB and miss everything with no return or inner release Window that cost WAR more dps and infuriate CD reduction, DRK mistakes are way less severe than the other tanks due how the job have no inner mechanics whatssoever to keep in check, resource generation and spending and keep GCD always runing is a norm for everyone as you say and at contrary than others jobs like the rest of the tank who have to delay the whole burst window or lose it complety DRK biggest mistake is only not having living shadow have his full duration uptime since everything else can be recolocated easily after and prepare your resources for the next buff window resulting in mimnimun loss compared to the other tanks mechanics, there is a reason why is so easy archive high score with DRK on certain web.

DRK basic (and mostly advanced) optimization is reduced on hit 5 GCD under BW and Delirium and keep everything on recast wich thats a task that only happens during 10s every min, not in vain DRK is considering with WAR the most brain dead jobs of the game right now by the raiding comunity due the little requeriments of optimization and the absurd amounts of downtime to do whatever you need, in fact DRK is picked bcs TBN is just to strong and you have so little to do with the job you can complete savage on easy mode focusing way more on combat mechanics at the same time many says the job is boring to play when you master it.