Best Tank

[Kiteless]

Or they could just... you know, let the bad WARs die off and let the good WARs continue business as usual.

[Nabian]

Many people often underestimate just how good a good DRK will be. DRK receive a bad reputation because currently there are ALOT of bad DRK out there. DRK mitigation is only slightly lower than PLD but they are more than capable of handling all the current content without placing alot of added stress on the healers. In addition their damage output in tanking stance far exceeds that of the other tanks. For example if you look at the dual boss setup of A1: Both tanks will be required to act in the roll of MT allowing for direct comparisons of tanks in a fight. With a DRK/PLD setup you can see that the DRK will consistently pull 100-200 dps more than the other tank while maintaining a similar level of mitigation (although slightly lower).

DRK is the farming tank, PLD is the progression tank, and WAR is the beastly OT. When you have content on farm status and you don't need the extra mitigation then DRK will be the preferred tank due to higher MT dmg output.

[dank1]

Many people often underestimate just how good a good DRK will be. DRK receive a bad reputation because currently there are ALOT of bad DRK out there. DRK mitigation is only slightly lower than PLD but they are more tot of added stress on the healers. ge output in tanking stance far exceeds that of the other tanks. For example if you look at the dual boss setup of A1: Both tanks will be required to act in the roll of MT allowing for direct comparisons of tanks in a fight. With a DRK/200 dps more than the other tank while maintaining a similar level of mitigation (although slightly lower).

DRK is the farming tank, PLD is the progression tank, and WAR is the beastly OT. When you have content on farm status and you don't need the extra mitigation then DRK will be the preferred tank due to higher MT dmg output.

People MT A1 in tank stance?

No wonder I see some tanks doing 400 less dps than me.

[Velckezar]

DRK of course.

[Zorthos]

It's situational. A4 runs I've seen PLD struggle on the last phase. When I tank it's like... No damage when discord and ray hits due to being magic damage. I think essentially you'll want a physical tank and magic tank in raid. Sure a PLD can do it no doubt, they just have a harder time. Physical fights they are King, magical fights you want a DRK. As for WAR... I dunno DPS? Lol

[Kiteless]

Many people often underestimate just how good a good DRK will be. DRK receive a bad reputation because currently there are ALOT of bad DRK out there. DRK mitigation is only slightly lower than PLD but they are more than capable of handling all the current content without placing alot of added stress on the healers. In addition their damage output in tanking stance far exceeds that of the other tanks. For example if you look at the dual boss setup of A1: Both tanks will be required to act in the roll of MT allowing for direct comparisons of tanks in a fight. With a DRK/PLD setup you can see that the DRK will consistently pull 100-200 dps more than the other tank while maintaining a similar level of mitigation (although slightly lower).

DRK's DPS as MT isn't that much higher than WAR. And depending on how often during the fight WAR can switch to Deliverance, it can overtake DRK by a very large degree. If you're pulling 200 more DPS than other tanks, regardless of which tank they are, you're hanging out with some very, very bad tanks.

Additionally, A1 is a bad example for your comparison, since every tank can get through that with their DPS stance. And if we're going by that standard, WAR wins by miles.

It's situational. A4 runs I've seen PLD struggle on the last phase. When I tank it's like... No damage when discord and ray hits due to being magic damage. I think essentially you'll want a physical tank and magic tank in raid. Sure a PLD can do it no doubt, they just have a harder time. Physical fights they are King, magical fights you want a DRK. As for WAR... I dunno DPS? Lol

Problem here is that with Inner Beast, WAR's ability to mitigate magic damage is pretty much on par with what DRK offers all without having to worry about nearly as much pesky resource management. And whatever extra difficulty PLD might have with magic heavy fights, it pales in comparison to what DRK has to deal with on the physical side. Especially when you consider that PLD's physical mitigation is far above what DRK's magical mitigation abilities can claim to offer.

[Gorlioliolio]

If A4 continues to have a magic tank buster on a 60s recast in savage I'm pretty sure DRK MT is gonna shine.

Pld can at that point rampart first, sentinel 2nd, rampart 3rd and blow hg on 4th (assuming savage gets to this point, I've never had more than 3 in normal). While drk can do the same thing except for the HG part but combine every one with an extra 30% mitigation from dark mind, taking a lot more stress off the healers. With delirium, shadowskin and dark mind I think I was taking roughly 2.5k per blast, less on shadow wall.

That is the beauty of the drk magic mitigation toolset, the ability to combine it with the other cooldowns which are almost the exact same as pld cooldowns (10% less sentinel vs shadow wall) since dark mind has such a low refresh. Would be tougher on something like twintania where death sentence had a 35 sec recast, but that was originally meant to be a tank swap anyways because of the healing debuff.

Paladin essentially has the same thing but with sheltron on physical busters, I'm not sure what a big shield mitigates at 60 (my pld is only 56) but assuming its 30%+ paladin will be able to combine their cooldowns with sheltron and take a ton of stress off the healers.

As it is currently balanced a good MT will be able to switch between PLD and DRK depending on the fight, while WAR is still by far the king of the OT role.

[Hundred]

DRK's DPS as MT isn't that much higher than WAR. And depending on how often during the fight WAR can switch to Deliverance, it can overtake DRK by a very large degree. If you're pulling 200 more DPS than other tanks, regardless of which tank they are, you're hanging out with some very, very bad tanks.

Additionally, A1 is a bad example for your comparison, since every tank can get through that with their DPS stance. And if we're going by that standard, WAR wins by miles.

I highly doubt most people even consider the equipment differences of the tanks they claim to out DPS.

Problem here is that with Inner Beast, WAR's ability to mitigate magic damage is pretty much on par with what DRK offers all without having to worry about nearly as much pesky resource management. And whatever extra difficulty PLD might have with magic heavy fights, it pales in comparison to what DRK has to deal with on the physical side. Especially when you consider that PLD's physical mitigation is far above what DRK's magical mitigation abilities can claim to offer.

Theres nothing particularly pesky at all with Drk's MP management. It's essentially the exact same as WAR's with the ability to use it consecutively in a smaller time frame. Warrior's use 8 GCD's to get 5 stacks of Abandon/Wrath.
8 GCD's can give you 1765 or 2652 mana. Which is equal to a Dark arts or 1.5 Dark arts in the same rotation that gives War A consumption move. Where Blood Weapon accelerates the speed of your next Mana option, as Berserk accelerates your rate of Stack acquisition.
The power of a DA option generally is weaker then any consumption action of a Warrior, but a Warrior again does not have the same consecutive use of their actions given DA's 5 second down time.

There isn't anything particularly pesky about DRK's resource management.

Naturally PLD's physical mitigation is higher, I don't know if anyone has noticed over the past 2 years....but magical damage is intentionally mitigated less. Would seem rather clear from a universal tanking stat like Parry being inapplicable and block being inapplicable. Part of the value of DRK is having a cooldown for an attack type that Yoshi has intentionally penetrate two defenses.

[Seku]

As it is currently balanced a good MT will be able to switch between PLD and DRK depending on the fight.

Didn't know that MT's had to level up another class and learn to play it to be good at MTing.

2nd, DRK's problem hasn't really been about it's mitigation, but rather it's ability to bring something unique to a raid to offer utility. And I can tell you now that if the Savage version doesn't bring stupid amounts of magical damage (it won't since all content is being made in mind to allow any combo of jobs), that while DRK's magical defense is high, it won't really matter that much.

There isn't anything particularly pesky about DRK's resource management.

Except it's bugged and gives false reading's.

[Hundred]

Except it's bugged and gives false reading's.

Except there's nothing false about it, while it is bugged it is accurately showing your mana at the time as a result of the Dark Side cost being taken at a different time then the Mana regen tick when desynchronized.
This is however trivial and does not affect proper resource management.