Cannot decide between Warrior and Dark Knight

[Tila]

Sounds like people are saying go with warrior. Also warrior seems straight forward. Keep up your buffs and debuffs, and you get one big single target and one big AOE move per stance and mitigate or pop cooldowns as needed.

The Dark Knight stances and Mana cooldowns and dark arts and so forth doesn't seem intuitive. It seems confusing and a little overwhelming, on paper anyway. I doesn't really make sense to me and I figured I would need to play it to get it.

I didnt find DRK overly complex. I just found that it had a lot of redundancies. Nothing had that "oomf" I've come to associate with tank classes in MMO. Just felt floaty and all over the place.

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

If you're just looking to have fun and not worry about the meta and bla bla bla here's what you need to do. Answer this question: Do you like a big Axe or a Big Sword? That answer will tell you what to play—the rest is irrelevant.

[Kienkarajo]

I have both a Warrior and a Dark Knight, both are good I think people are exaggerating about how bad they are, I really like my Warrior but my DRK looks great and so far I'm not having any kind of issues with it however I agree that is a little bit difficult to get used it at the beginning, just go with the one that looks better for you, I decided to go with my DRK because Im having fun, also all new classes are going to have changes to address their mayor issues so nothing to worry about.

[Faytte]

Warrior feels better.
Warrior has burst self healing.
Warrior has better burst offense.
Warrior has better utility.
Warrior has better mitigation.
DRK has better AOE.
DRK has better damage while tanking (ignoring War changing stances)
DRK has better sustain self healing.
DRK has more powerful sustained emnity.
DRK has better mobility.
DRK has more damage off GCDs.

[Xariann]

I went through the same ordeal. I have a WAR since 2.0 but really liked the look of the DRK. Played DRK up to... 48? Or something like that. Then did some reading and also made the maths. I stuck with WAR.

Basically if you think of tank busters (although it depends on how often they happen) in an ideal scenario where you have all your CDs, WAR gets more effective health through healing and mitigation than DRK. If the tank buster was a magical one (as people say DRK is a magic tank due to Dark Mind) the WAR still pulls slightly ahead, but you could consider them on par because the difference in minimal.

And with WAR you don't have to worry about the mana management.

The thing where DRKs shine right now is tanking multiple mobs. However while WAR is slightly more annoying in that regard with having to aim Overpower (and anyway, while you are running and gathering the mobs you can just use Flash), WAR can definitely do AOE tanking just fine.

Stance dance with WAR is fun btw. I know that Aery isn't really a challenging dungeon, but hey, I was tanking a boss using Deliverance, kept aggro and the healer said I wasn't hard to heal at all. Of course you should do something like that in the right encounter...

[Rhaja]

Dark Knight is the most fun I've had in a long time on an MMO, but it is both not without it's flaws (some are just... wtf) and I'm only running dungeons atm.

The ability bloat is very real, and while I can use every ability without much issue (thank you gaming mouse) I still look at Abyssal Drain and wonder if I'll every actually use it.

That being said, I don't think I can ever leave this class solely because of the amount of off GCD abilities we have. With some luck on parry it doesn't feel like we ever stop attacking.

[Tanthalus]

Interesting? Yes. Competitive? No, not really, sadly.

If you like the look and feel of what DRK has over WAR, go with that. But go in knowing that DRK is suffering from a lot of problems right now that really hold it back, and stop it from being viable for endgame content (but you should be able to get through 4 mans and basic story content just fine, you can do that with pretty much anything). While I have no doubt that these problems will be handled in time, right now, I wouldn't make the choice to play DRK based on viability.

Hmm. This is interesting as I don't believe it's based on anything other than opinion. Could you explain or post a fact or two on how you came to this conclusion?
Aka: Drk is doing great

[Lamia-Blackheart]

war appears to be mega OP right now. either get on board asap or forget about it since it will likely get some nerfs. a solid war can easily outdps a typical decent bard.

[Aerya]

I have another question. I'm a lvl 60 Paladin and I'm currently trying the DRK, I'm really curious about that class.

But for now (level 33 or something, just the beginning), DRK feels exactly as a PLD. I mean, we have Flash, we have the 3-hits combo, the MP combo, the shield oath, and the 3 shields strikes... I can do almost exactly the same actions in the same order. The DPS stance and MP managing aren't really special for now...

I see a lot of people hesitating between WAR and DRK, but is it worth it for a PLD to play the DRK? (I don't plan on leveling my WAR) Is it fun? Challenging? New? I'm not talking about "competitive", I have my PLD for that while waiting for a patch. Oh, and is there good animations later? (PLD dosn't have a lot) Right now, watching my character swinging this huge sword feels really clumsy and I hope we will get some cool moves later...

[Kydi]

PLD and DRK start to feel very different about level 45 or so, and keep becoming more different. I played PLD up to 50 in ARR, went DRK for HW and I'm having a blast. DRK moves into much more of an enjoyable class when you get Soul eater and Delirium and start to add Dark Arts, meaning you now have to manage your MP as well as dots, enmity and dps. You also get a load more oGCD offensive abilities which you'll want to juggle and have as much uptime as possible, meaning a bit more of an interesting time staring at the bosses face whilst they wail on you.

The animations are good, perhaps a little too flashy, but they're certainly more interesting than PLD used to be (not tried post patch).