Not really here to argue about the squishiness, but my point is just baseline sitting there I'm getting hit for more, and souleater health drain doesn't cover for that.

Since DRK are identical (and inferior) in every way to PLD defensive cd's, I'm wondering why at least the baseline defensiveness doesn't cover for that.

WAR gets similar self healing to DRK AND on top of that gets a 10% parry, roughly equal to base block I assume. I always thought cooldowns aside, all tanks should be taking roughly the same amount of autoattack damage.

DRK get none of that it seems, as well as a defensive cd literally worse than Keen flurry (and definitely worse than bastion), able to be buffed to...really do barely anything else.

The only thing DRK have going for them is Dark Mind...which I mean could be an advantage, but just sitting there getting hit they're going to lose out to PLD and WAR, and as far as I can tell WAR does more dps than DRK so why should I bring a DRK instead? Aside from purely magic fights w/o a MNK. And even then a WAR's pure 10% damage reduction is better, if you don't have one already.

It takes me 5 rotations to do another DA because I am doing other stuff. I really don't see the damage output from DRK being super high either, and frankly as long as I am hitting all my buttons and not capping on mana there really isn't any playstyle "skill" involved here either - none of the tank classes have a complicated dps rotation.

AoE rotation is obviously better than PLD, so I'm happy there. I guess I was just sort of expecting more, and a quicker regenning mana pool to use for fun things. Without blood weapon it really feels extremely slow.

OT i am sure they can do fine (until they run out of TP), but just MTing there since I likely will be, it just seems worse than PLD.