If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[JackFross]

Because it is a mechanic. You can heal for more; probably way more then your taking away depending on how you play. Warrior will never be replaced right now because hes decreasing the damage of the entire raid by 10%; which far outweighs even Dark Knight's healing if it was increased by 500%.

Right now Warriors out heal Dark Knight's and Out Damage them. So... yeah. *shrugs*

I dunno how you fail to see that you just supported all of my points in that first statement.
And, Warrior has leech, but also doesn't spend its health to deal damage.
Storm's Path is also really not used nearly as often or to as great effect as everyone seems to think it is...

Then don't call it one then.

I can get behind the whole "It shouldn't be Dark Knight if it's not gonna be Health management" thing, to some extent. I'm one of the few who sees the Dark Knight as primarily based in its flavor/aesthetic than the whole spending health to deal damage aspect. In that regard, it's spot-on.

I resent the implication that it's "poorly-designed" though. It's anything but that. Its kit has incredible synergy (with a few key holes I outlined earlier in this thread) and it has the most engaging, fluid combat system out of all three tanks. It's incredibly fun to play and incredibly challenging to play well.

I won't deny that the mitigation toolkit of DRK leaves a LOT to be desired - they have nothing truly unique to themselves that's worth a damn save the best magical defensive cooldown in the game (which, imo, isn't really good enough to differentiate them). That's certainly an issue, and a lifesteal modification to the Job would potentially fix that, unless it fell into the trap of 2.0 WAR - which was the lifesteal/self-heal tank. It was so bad that PLD/PLD was favored, since WAR brought literally nothing of worth to the table. Then they added mitigation to Vengeance and Inner Beast - which used to be literally just a counter-attack cooldown and a 300% heal based on damage dealt.

So, while I agree that lifesteal would be neat, they've tried it before and failed fantastically. I'm not surprised they didn't try again.

I agree pretty much entirely with this and your prior post; but let me just defend my pitch of the Darkness ability

Yeah, I got that out of what you said, re: Darkness. It doesn't change my arguments against it. If it costs almost your entire mana bar, it needs to be more MP efficient than 4-5 DA+SE in a row, since that's what you get out of a full mana bar if you drain it normally. Also important to note is that, if you're playing the Job correctly, your Mana will NOT be full after Blood Weapon runs out. So, as I said, the skill would need to either be INSANELY potent, or it would be a complete waste of mana. It has a long charge time, uses all of my remaining mana (while I have a skill on a 30s cooldown that uses mana and another on 60s that needs mana when it's ready), and also spends some health (possibly mitigated by a self-shield) in order to deliver a single attack.

I just don't think that meshes well -at all- with the Dark Knight's current toolkit, especially if you're gonna then inject even more uses for Dark Arts into it.

Everything else you said is directly in line with what I feel regarding Dark Knight's current status.

However, I play both DRK (on my main) and PLD (on my alt) and enjoy both immensely. My only complaint for PLD is the decided lack of AoE damage. There's absolutely nothing else about their kit that I would feel is a pressing concern to change, aside from potentially adding something along the lines of a TP restoration skill. Their mitigation kit is deep and powerful, their offensive skills are simple and not very difficult to properly manage (which is a hallmark of the Job, and not something I would see fit to change drastically) and I think the changes they did in 3.2 did more than enough to fix the vast majority of other issues they had.