Terrified...

[Syzygian]

It's not the same thing because black mage's umbral ice can be active in anytime you'd want. It has no cooldown. Saying DRK is as good as BLM when it comes to MP management is simply wrong. Umbral ice 3 fully restores MP WAY faster than spamming syphon strike with blood weapon out ever could without dark arts. Even Umbral Ice 1 is faster While dark arts is on then even MP regen is slowed to a complete crawl even if you had blood weapon. THAT'S assuming you were using your abilities at the same time. I'm not even going to touch on how long it takes blood price to fully regen your MP because it is entirely subject to how often you take damage. That means Dark Dance with Dark arts, Dark Passenger with Dark arts, pacifies, stuns, blinds, and monster wasting your time doing nothing will all impair blood price's effectiveness because no damage taken/evasion (Barrier are an exception)= no MP. That is not synergy because the result of such combos is self sabotage.

And you are just saying nothing that'll come to the OP's benefit because like everyone else with their job, they also have to know and work around their faults to succeed. Just pretend all the faults don't exist only because you can make it work. I can make it work all I want but that don't make the faults go away. Do you even know how skilled you are compared to him!? Pretending/ignoring them as a DRK results in going OOM before you know it and/or leads to you doing nothing decent. The job has faults and MP management is one of most serious of them.

When it comes to playing your job right, you overestimate how much of it is "skill", and underestimate how much of it is simple motivation and ability to comprehend the design of the job and how its abilities interact. Any remotely skilled DRK can maintain its MP indefinitely (just like a BLM), and currently the most brutal physical fights in the game such as A2S and A3S (the latter is more equal parts magic/physical) are as clearable on DRK as on PLD.

Stop being a pretentious "OMG WHY PLD" person - WAR/DRK players have to pay way more attention to what they are doing and are more complicated then a pld for a beginner

For the OP, this person sums it up well. PLD is a good training wheels job in the scope of leveling your first tank. But there's zero reason you have to get it to 60 if you start leveling it and decide you aren't hitting your skill cap/enjoying it. What I would do if I were you is get PLD to 34 so you can at least have all the cross class abilities and by then you should have a good grasp of the basics and whether or not you'd like to take up WAR or DRK instead. WAR and DRK, assuming you intend to level these jobs to 60 and actually play them in content, are considerably more difficult and involved, and have actual mechanics specific that are to the job that you will have to manage (Wrath/Abandon and Darkside/Dark Arts, respectively) alongside all the basics (holding hate, mitigating, dpsing) that PLD simply doesn't have. So that is something to consider.