I've been trying very hard to prevent myself from jumping into these discussions lol...but couldn't stay out of this one.

So as far as balancing goes, I really can't speak on everything. Although I have PLD and DRK at 60, and currently leveling WAR (@40) I can only speak on my experiences with the jobs as well as what I have read thus far. The TLDR of WAR and PLD: WAR seems perfectly fine to me (and a very fun job so far), and PLD could use some tweaks here and there, but I haven't had many problems with the job in my experiences (have done most content up to A1S on PLD).

And then there's DRK...I really pictured this job to be much different before it came out but was "mostly" pleasantly surprised by some of the things it could do. I'm a bit divided like most of the people who post on these forums about what I WANT from it and the changes I could realistically EXPECT them to make from the job.

Unrealistically: If I could redesign the job, I would completely get rid of Dark Arts first and foremost and somewhat bring back the absorb system. For a comparable MP cost (read lower) than DA, have Absorb Offense which would not only debuff the targets damage done for a fixed amount of time (just throwing it out there: 3-5% for 10 secs maybe?) and give the DRK the option to use a one time charge on any WS to boost it (much like DA works now) and still have the same affects on other WS such as HP absorb from SE, more enmity from PS and such, but would probably add a modifier to siphon to absorb more MP. Then have Absorb Defense (or call it whatever) would lower target's defense an amount (again thinking 3-5% for 10 secs)and would be able to enhance any of the DRK's defensive cooldowns (more mitigation on shadow skin/wall, more parry on dance, etc). So basically with this system DRK would be able to switch and choose which debuffs it could have on a mob while being able to enhance its own abilities. As far as everything else, it would be pretty much kept the same and just maybe add some way of getting back TP (absorb offense + delirium maybe).

Realistically what I would hope to expect with the job:
1) Make reprisal something we could trigger without parry. Just make it an oGCD ability that we could keep up at least 90% of the time.
2) Give the job SOMETHING that helps with TP drain
3) Completely fix living dead. This is the one thing that I can't forgive about the job. I haven't had to worry about it much before, but I just joined a new group for Alex savage and I had to spend a significant amount of time trying to explain to my healers about how to cure me when I pop LD. This should NOT be an issue. No one should have to worry about popping an ability and dying because they got cured too much and it didn't trigger, or being not cured enough and just dropping to the ground without something actually hitting you for that 1 HP. This was SE trying to be too unique compared to the other 2 tanks and it is just not practical. Honestly if it worked similar to Holmgang (just cant go below 1HP) but with a recast inbetween it and Hallowed, that would be perfectly fine with me and I'm sure everyone else.

Now there's one more thing that I have to address and it is what people say about the job's defensive abilities not being synergized (mainly the whole blind/dodge of DA+DD and DA+DP not synergizing with Dark price) and this doesn't bother me since I see it as something you should be using when your other defensive CDs are down (at least on trash) but it shouldn't cost a crap ton of MP to do both of those things. Now I do wholeheartedly agree with what Phoenicia said earlier that it is dumb to have parry and evasion on the same damn skill though...