Tank mitigation should be balanced to dungeons

[Derio]

DRK is fine in dungeons that you are not doing trusts with, or bad healers with. DRK is the king of mitigation. It lacks however self sustain to where you have to have more incoming heals than other tanks in dungeon outside of your abysall drain and TBN windows.

Overall the leveling process for all tanks needs to be looked at. Obviously if you do any dungeon on WAR, you can see it is way ahead of its tank counter parts. One will argue this is a dungeon and its casual content, but if one tank is way better in content most people play then there is a serious problem.

We only have to hope there are some serious changes to leveling, self sustain, and mitigation as a whole in the next expansion.

[Oizen]

DRK is the king of mitigation.

* Magic Mitigation

If you account for Physical damage, Dark Knight has no unique mitigation until lv 70, and in current content it only has 10% unique mitigation for it with Oblation. Not an issue in raids as they tend to either be mixed or dominantly magic, but in anything physical DRK only has TBN/Oblation on the other tanks. Not even its raidwide mit can be used here.

[HyperiusUltima]

* Magic Mitigation

If you account for Physical damage, Dark Knight has no unique mitigation until lv 70, and in current content it only has 10% unique mitigation for it with Oblation. Not an issue in raids as they tend to either be mixed or dominantly magic, but in anything physical DRK only has TBN/Oblation on the other tanks. Not even its raidwide mit can be used here.

I think DRK just needs to have Dark Mind swapped with something else entirely. If anything, in Dungeons you typically get 0 Value out of using it during W2W pulls, let alone normal pulls as mobs do Physical damage a majority of the time. If we're looking at a Raid perspective though, removing Dark Mind wouldn't necessarily harm DRK's mitigation kit too heavily, it'd just be a tad more reliant on TBN and ask for people to hold 3000 MP more often instead of burn it every 60s.

I'll use Bardam's Mettle as a standard as Oizen mentioned it was the hardest for DRK. I'll only be going over personal mits+survival tools and not Role Actions, as those are a given.

DRK: Living Dead(10s Doom and Undying w/ Lifesteal), Abyssal Drain(Minor Lifesteal)

WAR: Thrill(eHP), Holmgang(1 HP), Raw Intuition(100% Damage Lifesteal), Equilibrium(Self-heal)

PLD: Sheltron(15%), Hallowed(Invincible), Bulwark(Guaranteed 20% Mit), Divine Veil(Shield), Clemency(Hard-cast Heal)

GNB: Aurora(Regen), Super(1 HP, but Invincible), HoL(Magic Mit; useless here)

So as you can see, for dungeons PLD and WAR are stacked, while GNB/DRK are lacking in proper defensives pre-70 - DRK moreso due to a lack of survival tools. The 20/30% Mits are a given, but managing them boils down to healer capability mostly. If anything, I'm on the side of the fence for giving DRK one more Mit to be used to replace Dark Mind - but shifting TBN to Lv 62 would make a lot more sense by moving Delirium to Lv 70(since WAR gets Inner Release at Lv 70) and Bloodspiller/Quietus being moved to 64/68. GNB can have Heart of Stone moved to Lv 62 while Bow Shock can be 64, HoL be 68 so you get the mits you need earlier.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I think DRK just needs to have Dark Mind swapped with something else entirely. If anything, in Dungeons you typically get 0 Value out of using it during W2W pulls, let alone normal pulls as mobs do Physical damage a majority of the time. If we're looking at a Raid perspective though, removing Dark Mind wouldn't necessarily harm DRK's mitigation kit too heavily, it'd just be a tad more reliant on TBN and ask for people to hold 3000 MP more often instead of burn it every 60s.

I'll use Bardam's Mettle as a standard as Oizen mentioned it was the hardest for DRK. I'll only be going over personal mits+survival tools and not Role Actions, as those are a given.

DRK: Living Dead(10s Doom and Undying w/ Lifesteal), Abyssal Drain(Minor Lifesteal)

WAR: Thrill(eHP), Holmgang(1 HP), Raw Intuition(100% Damage Lifesteal), Equilibrium(Self-heal)

PLD: Sheltron(15%), Hallowed(Invincible), Bulwark(Guaranteed 20% Mit), Divine Veil(Shield), Clemency(Hard-cast Heal)

GNB: Aurora(Regen), Super(1 HP, but Invincible), HoL(Magic Mit; useless here)

So as you can see, for dungeons PLD and WAR are stacked, while GNB/DRK are lacking in proper defensives pre-70 - DRK moreso due to a lack of survival tools. The 20/30% Mits are a given, but managing them boils down to healer capability mostly. If anything, I'm on the side of the fence for giving DRK one more Mit to be used to replace Dark Mind - but shifting TBN to Lv 62 would make a lot more sense by moving Delirium to Lv 70(since WAR gets Inner Release at Lv 70) and Bloodspiller/Quietus being moved to 64/68. GNB can have Heart of Stone moved to Lv 62 while Bow Shock can be 64, HoL be 68 so you get the mits you need earlier.

Ok so here is my take on Bardam's Mettle. By every stretch, you are correct - if you look purely at DRK's kit it is possibly the most difficult especially when you consider the first packs with the Gulo Gulo.

However it is important to note that in Stormblood compared to future expansions healing done is comparatively a lot higher relative to your max HP both by healers and tanks. So while you still take a buttload of damage, Healers generally have an easier time keeping you up because their heals are relatively more potent than for example Lv80 or 82, which is weird because Healers only got more healing tools.

The reason I cited Tower of Zot in particular is because it is within that reach where you notice the disparity of mob pulls compared to other tanks the most. After the first boss the rooms with the Hypertuned hurt a lot and grabbing all iron giants + roader + magitek spiders at the end needs a LOT of mitigation AND healing, so both the tank and healer need to be completely on their game for that bit if they do the maximum pull.

This is why I suggest treating Dark Mind like Addle: 20% magical mitigation, 10% physical mitigation. It would help out in dungeons for being dominantly physical in mob pulls and would keep the emphasis of being a magical defensive vs GNB's Camouflage being more suited for physical damage, notably auto attacks.

[SerophisRagnarok]

I watch tanks not use all their resources on almost every occasion. You can mitigate dps with Reprisal and Arm's Length. You have a limit break that will just sit on 1 or two bars cuz barely anyone uses it in casual content like dungeons. You have your invuln which you don't owe it to the healer to not use because it hurts their feefees thinking you dont trust their healing, which you shouldn't because you don't know them in Pug roulette parties. I watched a Gnb not superbolide with 10 percent of his hp because i had fallen behind because of an irl distraction. I had to blow ALL my resources to keep him alive because he didn't invuln. you have resources and NO tank should ever have trouble in dungeon content unless its pre heavensward...screw ARR dungeons just saying.

[HyonaCookie]

I watch tanks not use all their resources on almost every occasion. You can mitigate dps with Reprisal and Arm's Length. You have a limit break that will just sit on 1 or two bars cuz barely anyone uses it in casual content like dungeons. You have your invuln which you don't owe it to the healer to not use because it hurts their feefees thinking you dont trust their healing, which you shouldn't because you don't know them in Pug roulette parties. I watched a Gnb not superbolide with 10 percent of his hp because i had fallen behind because of an irl distraction. I had to blow ALL my resources to keep him alive because he didn't invuln. you have resources and NO tank should ever have trouble in dungeon content unless its pre heavensward...screw ARR dungeons just saying.

But is it fair that other tanks can use less than half their kit to get through a dungeon easily while DRK has to use it's entire kit to do the same thing? If there's any justice in the world, they would buff DRK so it too doesn't require its full kit to survive trash packs or nerf all other tanks so they have to use every part of the kit to survive.

[Oizen]

But is it fair that other tanks can use less than half their kit to get through a dungeon easily while DRK has to use it's entire kit to do the same thing? If there's any justice in the world, they would buff DRK so it too doesn't require its full kit to survive trash packs or nerf all other tanks so they have to use every part of the kit to survive.

Its a bit worse than that. Dark Knight using its entire kit will not match the others and will still require team support.
Which I'm actually fine with and I would urge more on the side of nerf the others, mainly WAR and to a lesser extent PLD.

But since they wont nerf it, that kinda forces us to buff DRK in this unhealthy direction.