Dark Knight Megathread

[Ryaduera]

I would actually say Dawntrail made an active attempt to introduce Magic damage to trash packs. Its still not perfect but there are some pulls now where Dark Mind goes pretty hard

No, because DRK lacks other percentage mitigations (Mostly Oblation being as trash weak as it is next to other tanks) it actually still takes more damage even in pure magic pulls.

[Oizen]

No, because DRK lacks other percentage mitigations (Mostly Oblation being as trash weak as it is next to other tanks) it actually still takes more damage even in pure magic pulls.

Can't say thats really been my experience.

[Terhix]

(Mostly Oblation being as trash weak as it is next to other tanks)

Compared to what? Oblation is a free mitigation we got when other tanks got upgrades to their short CDs, no other tank has an analog button.

Any tank mechanic that requires a lot of mits, like Mountain of Fire in EX1 or conga line in EX2 currently, DRK is on par or better than other tanks (largely due to it being magic damage and you can abuse short CD on TBN on both). It's self-sustain we're missing, mitigation is not a problem at all.

[Ryaduera]

Compared to what? Oblation is a free mitigation we got when other tanks got upgrades to their short CDs, no other tank has an analog button.

Any tank mechanic that requires a lot of mits, like Mountain of Fire in EX1 or conga line in EX2 currently, DRK is on par or better than other tanks (largely due to it being magic damage and you can abuse short CD on TBN on both). It's self-sustain we're missing, mitigation is not a problem at all.

Compared to other tanks over longer durations and multiple mitigation requirements. PLD is basically also on charges and even in cases of single target burst damage the other tanks still reduce it by more as well. If you use Oblation with Dark Mind it's a difference of .2% damage reduction in the DRKs favor, but with 1 more cooldown and both having a 60 second cooldown (Or recharge for Oblation) which is pretty negligible next to the other effects each tank gets, the healing recovers more than the shielding from TBN prevents in all cases except GNB which has the benefit of damage, but also would take even less with their Dark Mind equivalent if necessary.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6534718

Oblation is also 10% for 10 seconds while the other tank short mits are usually some weird combination of 15% for 4 seconds and 15% more for 8 seconds.

Oblation is going to catch more damage than the other short mits, duration matters just as much as %.

This is very true, but also there's to consider actual uptime. 8s on a 25s cooldown is way more than 10s on a 60s cooldown. This matters a lot less for trials and raids, but keep in mind PLD also gets theirs on charges, just not conventional charges. It is functionally the same as charges and in ideal scenarios can be 21s before recharge, but realistically more like 25 seconds, which is less than half Oblation cooldown, being more than twice as accessible is a pretty big deal.

[Terhix]

(...) which is pretty negligible next to the other effects each tank gets, the healing recovers more than the shielding from TBN prevents (...)

Which nobody disputes, but that's a very different assessment from DRK missing % mitigation or Oblation itself being bad. You could buff Oblation to 20% mit, or heck, why not 30%, making DRK the absolute undisputed king of mitigation, and DRK would still remain the only tank in the game unable to solo a dungeon boss 100 to 0. Whether you are doing large pulls in dungeons or getting auto attacked by a boss in a raid the problem is the same - slow attrition of non-lethal damage eating into your HP that all tanks can recover from except DRK.

Good news is you can easily fix it without any major changes or the job losing (more of) its identity: make Abyssal Drain heal for non-meme amounts and make it usable in raids. If that's not enough give us a regen while standing in Salt and Darkness like it does in PvP, or any of the other suggestions people have given for adding some form of self-sustain to the job.

You don't have to touch TBN, you don't have to touch Oblation, you don't even have to touch Dark Mind - all of these buttons are fine at what they do. I don't know what it is about mits that makes people want every tank to have roughly the same buttons with the same values. PLD has lowest DPS of all tanks and nobody suggests that it should have the same DPS toolkit as GNB, but somehow talk about tanking and suddenly a lot of folks want TBN to be yet another Heart of Corundum.