Dark Knights are an absolute joke and I'm tired of pretending they're not

[Malthir]

Played Drk since they were added. The issue around wiping is the player not the class. Drk isn't broken it's just boring and busy. The comments about having to keep and eye on the mana bar are true, they have the worse mana management in the game, their mechanics are bland and stolen from other classes without having a kit actually built around them. There is no heart and soul to the class anymore, but they aren't broken, if you're constantly wiping on dungeon pulls I suggest you practice your rotations more. in a pull you should be using TBN on cooldown, between that and AD and your defensive kit, as long as the healer isn't a sleep you wont die.

[ThorneDynasty]

I'm a sage and my partner is a DRK. We haven't had any issues whatsoever. He can pull as large as he likes and I keep him up better than most other random tanks I have to heal. Combo that with the much higher dps and it's wonderful.

The problem is either your management of cooldowns, your gear, or those of your healer.

"Much" higher?

[Oizen]

I typically find the people with DRK are also the people who argue that Arms Length isn't mitigation.

[Kalaam]

Even with good gear and proper mitigation use and spacing (Arms' Length, TBN, Shadow Wall etc) it happened very often for me to die as a DRK because the healer couldn't keep up. And since I couldn't use an invuln to stay alive and give them a few seconds to breathe, it often wiped the group.
Never happened with GNB, and that's the one with the least healing out of the other 3 tanks.

[Marxam]

I typically find the people with DRK are also the people who argue that Arms Length isn't mitigation.

also the same people that think reprisal is single target only smh. DRK has to work harder in dungeon pulls but FFXIV isn't balanced around dungeons, it balanced around savage/ults. Atm DRK is okay in savage though WAR still beats it out of the water, as a tank. The fact that WAR can invul 3/5 of the tbs in P2S and still heal themselves back up to atleast 50% without any help shows that tank dps isn't always the best. Healers can keep spamming broils, glares, etc and let the WAR heal themselves is a dps gain also.

[Tho-Much]

[...]

Then I leveled up DRK. And holy hell, it is genuinely trash. Every. Single. Dungeon. I die. I cannot pull more than 1 group without the healer struggling or completely failing unless they're a WHM. [...]

Didnt read all. Simple: You playing wrong.

You are welcome.

[Kalaam]

Lots of people coming out of the wood to say "it's fine actually, it's just you"

[Oizen]

Lots of people coming out of the wood to say "it's fine actually, it's just you"

I'm just kinda tired of all these DRK threads acting like its completely unplayable and you cannot even fight 1 trash mob on your own, when that really isn't the case.
No the class is not as easy as WAR, and honestly I do not want it to be WAR, nor do I want to see even further Tank homoginization by giving DRK big heals like the other tanks got.

This isn't me saying DRK doesn't have problems, of course it does. SE deserves a lot of scrutiny for letting the Living Dead meme go on this long, but to say the class is frail and unplayable just isn't true.

[Malthir]

Lots of people coming out of the wood to say "it's fine actually, it's just you"

Because that's the truth of it. There is no safety net as a Drk so you have to pay more attention than you do as other tanks. Doesn't mean it's broken, the only problem with the Drk is they aren't fun to play. The damage is silly when you get your rotation down, everything should be dying very fast and if you use your defensive kit properly you wont die for no reason.

[ASkellington]

Lots of people coming out of the wood to say "it's fine actually, it's just you"

I just came out of an expert dungeon with a DRK tank and he was awesome. Nice big pulls, great timing on AD and TBN and his mits.

I've also had DRK tanks in the same expert dungeon drop to Waking Dead within what feels like seconds and have me scrambling to spam Benefic 2 cause everything else I used is on CD.

It genuinely depends on the player. Same as healer or dps.

DRK has its problems. A slew of them. I knew that when I played the class in Shb. It still has those same problems in EW with a few more. It has the lowest sustain of the tanks. Period. And because of that they don't have as easy of a time in large pulls. Doesn't mean they cannot do it.

Its just that, to me while it is an issue, sustain for DRK is the least of its problems.