Dark Knight or Gunbreaker

[RyuDragnier]

Yes, this is my personal point of view from my experience, if you find that there are mistakes I wait for your explanations otherwise it's useless to say that.

If we look at fflogs statistics for the entirety of the current raid tier this patch (meaning the 6.1 patch), GNB actually does the most damage, DRK behind it by less than a 1%, PLD behind them by around 2%, and WAR behind PLD by just under 1%. So it's basically GNB > DRK > PLD > WAR in damage, with GNB at the top, and WAR at the bottom.

On my own personal opinion though, between DRK and GNB, both feel similar in hecticness, and it's going to rely on your own personal taste for which one you go for. DRK is basically 1-2-3 the tank, all the time when not using its burst moves. GNB, while the same way, has a lot more to do in the downtime between bursts considering you're trying to prevent overcapping on your class mechanic. They also have one hell of a burst, with you going John Madden on oGCDs.

[Renalt]

Of all the tanks..I've used Gunbreaker the least so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt since I usually main WAR.

Gunbreaker - The fun thing with this is you have an ability called Continuation that gives you a pretty good burst of damage as you do one attack and then follow it up with continuation...and you do that three times per every cartridge you wanna spend to do the full combo. Each time you use Continuation...it rotates automatically to a new ability ( Which why don't they do this for all combo actions like in PvP I'll never know ). They can also heal themselves with a regen or even put it on someone else if the healer is out of commission and the boss is nearly dead and you want to save one of the DPS.

Dark Knight - It is all about MP management. You can use it for a flat 30% of your health as a shield or you can use the MP to do good damage to a single target or a pack. You'll have options to regain that MP quickly as well with Blood Weapon. So depending on the situation you can have burst defense or burst offense. If you have a SCH with you you can opt to be more offensive since they will likely shield you. Or you can just have lots of shields if you alternate between their shields and your own since they do NOT stack.

[ValkyriaCrystalis]

Personally, I miss the old DRK… Call me crazy, but the HW version was the best imo. The MP management was a challenge by itself, a very interesting one. Now it’s just… bland.

As a DPS main I really do enjoy the GNB, I think it’s quite nervous for a tank.
I love PLD too because I find it very “noble”.

[Avatre]

Personally, I miss the old DRK… Call me crazy, but the HW version was the best imo. The MP management was a challenge by itself, a very interesting one. Now it’s just… bland.

As a DPS main I really do enjoy the GNB, I think it’s quite nervous for a tank.
I love PLD too because I find it very “noble”.

HW and Stormblood DRK was great...since then, not so much. I miss going from almost dead to full HP spamming Dark Arts and Abyssal Drain with Quietus to refill MP, and Salted Earth down to fill the job gauge.

[Restonance]

Just do both. Swap back and forth to whichever you want more since they share the same gear outside of BiS.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Dark Knight has the notable drawback of starting at level 30 when you have to be level 50 and make it to Ishgard to even unlock it. It's a bit of a slog. However, they did recently (finally!) fix Living Dead so it doesn't just outright kill you if you don't have a decent healer handy. It also has some of the best job story quests in the game. Plus, giant swords.

Gunbreaker starts at level 60, so it's easier to jump into if you want to play the rest of the game with it. It has a busier rotation, with lots of buttons to press to keep everything going. On the downside, it gets loud when every swing has an explosion behind it. I'm personally somewhat less fond of it, but that's purely my opinion.

On the bright side, this game lets you play every job on a single character, so the only thing stopping you from trying both and choosing for yourself is time.

[Jeeqbit]

Personally, I miss the old DRK… Call me crazy, but the HW version was the best imo. The MP management was a challenge by itself, a very interesting one. Now it’s just… bland.

DRK was very challenging to play in HW and I'm surprised I even pulled it off. I didn't feel it needed to be that challenging. A lot of the challenge came from what felt like poor design with RNG mitigation like parry dictating whether you could use certain abilities. Parries only proc from physical attacks and at the time, most bosses were doing magic attacks, so you had to know your enemies to know what abilities you had available. It was not a good feeling for Reprisal to proc when you didn't actually need it and it works a lot better now. The dot was not part of a combo and it did 100 potency damage itself which added pressure to spam it when you already had a lot of abilities to use and manage.

The MP, dot and enmity management, rotation, mitigation, unlocking mitigation, fight mechanics and pressing all offense abilities off cooldown was a lot but there were so many little things that only applied in certain situations that would come up at certain points in a fight, like when you needed to aoe or prepare Dark Arts for Dark Mind.

It was great in a way but with buggy ideas like RNG mitigation and spammable dots. It felt like a lot of new players were not going to get that good at a tank like that and people were already afraid of the tank role. I just don't think a tank has to be that complicated but they should be distinct.

[MikkoAkure]

To put it very simply:

GNB plays closer to a melee DPS than the other tanks.

DRK has probably the best class storyline in the game (minus the Moogles) and it’s worth doing just for that.

Either way, I recommend doing the Hall of the Novice for tanks to get your bearings and start getting used to tanking in the first couple of dungeons in the game and working your way up from there as you get more comfortable, even if your class starts at a higher level. Having a lot of abilities unlock immediately can be daunting.

Palace of the Dead/Heaven on High/Bozja can help, but those aren’t traditional battle content type places and dungeons can give you a better idea of what to expect.

[SnowVix]

I ll be honest as a main tank, DK and Gunbreaker are the worst check in order :

Paladin Rank 1 Best defense, good dps, can heal and have the strongest attacks, can use magic attacks, great at pvp
Warrior Rank 2 Good defense, Best dps, great at pvp
Gunbreaker Rank 3 Good defense, Bad dps, very bad at pvp
Dark Knight Rank 4 Bad defense, good dps, bad at pvp

If you're using Clemency on PLD as a positive, your opinion without any solid basis

[hagare]

Hi y’all I’m playing a Roe female dragoon and having a blast. I used to play wow and main dk for dark class and lore. Now I only play ff14 with other games and I want to unlock dark knight and reaper. I’m not in heavensward yet but I will be and I really want to try dk. However some people say to go gunbreaker for a dps main like me. I want to get dark knight but should I go to gunbreaker? Also I’m still stucking with dragoon and reaper but I want to ask dk mains is it a fun class?

get what you want really.
Both has differences in gameplay.
PS: you can always try both eventually.
and pick which you want to main later