DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

[Starkbeaumont]

we nerfed the living balls out of DRK's mitigation

i guess you are talking about the old reprisal? cause DA dark dance was never a thing for raids. and non of the other skills got nerfed. rampart = shadowskin, shadow wall is the same as before, so is dark mind, conva and living dead. grit is also the same.

and talking about reprisal. you couldn't even use it in some encounters as it required a parry to activate.

Is DRK perfect? hell no! is it as bad as some ppl say? Definitely not.

[SyzzleSpark]

i guess you are talking about the old reprisal? cause DA dark dance was never a thing for raids. and non of the other skills got nerfed. rampart = shadowskin, shadow wall is the same as before, so is dark mind, conva and living dead. grit is also the same.

and talking about reprisal. you couldn't even use it in some encounters as it required a parry to activate.

Is DRK perfect? hell no! is it as bad as some ppl say? Definitely not.

No, I'm not talking about DA Dark Dance.

DD+Reprisal was what tied DRK's mitigation kit together. They were a package. Dark Dance is just gone, we can't get it back because in any serious content we don't have room for Anticipation, almost everything else is more valuable. So we don't get that back. A 5s Reprisal every 60 seconds in no way in no reality or dimension makes up for the loss of a 20s Reprisal every 30s, 40s if you were unlucky. Unlike Storm's Path, Reprisal was extremely effective personal mitigation because we kept it up as much as possible; it was a part of our cooldown suite. Without it, we are undeniably squishier.

Requiring a parry to activate locked its use out of 1 encounter (A4s). Every other boss in Alex savage had at least physical AAs. And where physical damage was not present... well... we're DRKs. You know, the pigeon-holed "magic tank".

TBN is powerful, and now it is a DPS gain to keep more or less on cooldown. But having to precisely time a cooldown every 15s and manage your mana around it requires a decent amount of skill and awareness, and yet its not fun. Its just stressful. And while I enjoy tradeoffs, gambling with a tradeoff mechanic 3-4 times per minute doesn't feel good. And the ability is overpowered, even, and our kit is entirely too over-centralized on it. DD+Reprisal simply bridged the gap between our stronger cooldowns. TBN doesn't work in the same way. Its high uptime mitigation, yes, but you risk a DPS loss every time you use it, assuming a cast/TB isn't incoming.

Our DPS and mitigation are so entangled with timing this one single button every 15s, to such a strong degree, that it just becomes a button that symbolizes stress. TBN is just too over-centralizing. All of our remaining defensive CDs are completely forgettable, and as Lyth pointed out, DA-DM is almost completely obsolete. While they argue Vengeance is overtuned, I would rather see Shadow Wall buffed, and of course Living Dead is still completely unchanged along with our ability (or lack thereof) to push any kind of reliable or appreciable self-healing throughput.

Honestly, the more I've discussed TBN on these forums with people, the more I've come to resent the ability. By its very design within the context of our toolkit, it symbolizes imbalance.

DRK is pretty bad. Its arguably the worst tank right now. WAR mains may have you believe otherwise, but a WAR/PLD comp brings better survivability, better damage, and only slightly less utility. Its still fun, and I enjoy and love the job, and will never stop maining it. But it needs a lot of help, as does WAR.