Feelings on the current three tanks

[Phileas]

I have been playing as a tank ever since the end of 3.0 and started with my beloved dark knight (RIP my dear friend...).

After having some fun playing around with the three tanks in the new expert dungeons and extreme trials I wanted to just air what I think.

Paladin

The tank for all seasons.

Paladin seems to be on Hallowed Ground when it comes to patches as the incremental nerfs to holy spirit (and a larger nerf on shield swipe) have done little to dampen how well it functions in terms of being a cooldown machine, three different party utility skills and the requiescat/holy spirit combo that makes it do rather decent DPS with everything it offers.

It still remains the tank of all seasons, able to main tank and off tank extremely well. In large group situations it has clemency to self heal and total eclipse while for raid bosses it can easily laugh at them in sword oath (both as MT and OT) with respectable single target DPS and a bevy of cooldowns to mitigate damage and party utility to help in progression. It really can do it all and with large glowing wings on it's back.

Warrior

The Comeback Kid

After an extremely strong showing in 3.0, 4.0 warrior felt a little off. Shake it off was largely laughed at and beast gauge management was extremely janky with all beast gauge points lost when you swapped stances. As time has gone on, it began with incremental changes...and then there is 4.2.

Most notably, Warriors ability to deal with large groups of trash has gone through the roof. With inner release usable in Defiance, its possible to use Steel Cyclone up to 5 times which provides an insane amount of HP regen or you can slam the floor with Decimate 5 times if you feel a bit riskier to your health pool. Warrior's trash game has become a lot safer.

In terms of single target/raid situations, you dont need as much preparation as you used to and so the Warrior "rotation" has become much easier (Inner release -> 5 x Fell cleave then maintain Storms eye and do whatever else you want till Inner release comes back. I'm sure there will be something more optimal released at some point). The downside of this is those warriors that enjoyed the slightly more complex gauge management of the pre 4.2 Warrior - but no doubt it will make Warrior easier to approach for beginners. Sure, Storms Eye got nerfed and other potencies buffed but i'm not a napkin math warrior so i can't say if this has boosted or worsened dps. I can
only say that the changes make Warrior "feel" powerful. Shake it off is the crown amongst all of this providing a decent party wide shield.

Warrior is back baby (well I guess some would say it never left to begin with...).

Dark Knight

The Black Sheep.

Yes yes I know, dont groan as you hear another rant about how DRK is lacking (only because its true). Dark Knight received a couple of QoL changes (really in the grand scheme of things) and its core issues remain unresolved. With the changes to Warrior, DRK feels even worse.

In terms of trash, DRK has the worst of the lot. Unleash is expensive and ineffective for damage and only used maybe once. Dark arts + Dark Passenger remains expensive for damage it causes and the blind effect is the only useful part (but come on...Flash is spamable...). Dark Arts + Abyssal drain gives back HP but you can only do this maybe twice at most (after using unleash) before running out of MP (and you just hope that Delirium is up to restore some MP). The only positive abilities is...Salted Earth - No cost and gives some blood gauge (to help a little bit?) and Quietus restores MP so you can abyssal drain some more. Blood Price is just laughably weak now...made worse when you have a whm that uses Holy. DRK just feels a lot more difficult to self-sustain in trash battles compare to Warrior and Paladin.

For Raid and single target, DRK remains largely unchanged. The change to TBN have helped to make it activate more so theoretically you can gain more blood to spill more blood. Whether its the highest damage tank, I'm not sure...but if its not, it sure as hell has nothing else to offer to a raid. TBN really only benefits as a main tank and sure you can use on another tank if in the OT role but really DRK offers little in utility and has even fewer CD options than WAR and PLD making DRK slightly more tricky as MT. TBN is good as a tank buster CD but a waste if it doesnt go off and you miss getting the blood gauge. Whats worse is that I can never be sure if I want to use TBN to get blood gauge or just save it for tank busters.

Really I just feel confused when it comes to DRK. It doesnt "feel" powerful and feels like it offers so much less than Paladin and Warrior...

Well sorry for wall of text...this has been bubbling for the last two patches or so...ultimately I am going to use Warrior this cycle (my other friend is a PLD) and cry black emo tears as I lay my DRK to rest for the mean time...

[Silver_Blade]

PLD - King of defensive and utility.
WAR - Ridiculous single target and AoE burst. Yet also has the best utility skill in the game.
DRK - Lowest dps, defense, self healing and utility. While also being the most clunky with dark arts.
I've shouted it til I am blue in the face but SE just doesn't seem to care. Dark Knight is broken.

[Xenosan]

Other than the tweak to Souleater, DRK hasn't seen any adjustments to their non-Stormblood skillset. adjustment has been to DEL,Q,BS,TBN.

I'm maybe foolishly optimistic, but I hope now that they've got those skills where they need to be, they'll start fixing some of the lower level kit, which was nerfed at expansion or made redundant/poor after lvl70, or was always meh

[Phileas]

Other than the tweak to Souleater, DRK hasn't seen any adjustments to their non-Stormblood skillset. adjustment has been to DEL,Q,BS,TBN.

I'm maybe foolishly optimistic, but I hope now that they've got those skills where they need to be, they'll start fixing some of the lower level kit, which was nerfed at expansion or made redundant/poor after lvl70, or was always meh

Would be great if we got Dark Dance back as our old ability...I mean WAR has Raw intuition and we have to...Cross role it? Makes no sense....

[Silver_Blade]

The best idea I have seen that would be painfully simple to do is make sole survivor apply either a damage vulnerability like trick attack or crit vulnerability like SCH's strategen. This would give them offensive utility but would leave their dps lower than WAR's which is apparently a must.....
This would make DRK desirable and compensate for their lack of defense. While making a niche cooldown at best into a core ability.

[Hierro]

If you're struggling to AoE as DRK, you're messing up somewhere. As far as dps skills go, unleash is irrelevent. Its purpose was never to be a useful AoE attack, only to gather aggro for the real dps in the form of abyssal drain. The trick to sustaining AoE DPS is to use TBN on cooldown, and using your blood on quietus. If you're pulling big, you are sure to generate a lot of blood via blood price and salted earth, ontop of the blood from TBN. When this happens, you are permitted to spam DA-AD. Once you are low on MP, use quietus. If you pulled large enough, you will regenerate enough MP to spam more DA-AD, but don't go below 1/4th of your MP bar when TBN is about to come off CD.

The end result will have you performing constant AoE while maintaining tankiness. To illustrate, I was running skalla and pulled wall to wall the groups before the second boss. My healer died fairly early on in the pull because they reacted slowly to a group of AoEs, but thanks to the number of enemies, I was able to heal so much from DA-AD, and regenerate more than enough MP to continue and delay HP plummeting from TBN until my healer was rezzed back.

[Phileas]

snip...

I didnt say I struggled, I just think it's not as easy as PLD or WAR. It is particularly annoying if a white mage spams holy because that prevents me from building MP or building Blood efficiently. I can ask a white mage to stop, but I dont need to do this as WAR or PLD.

Compare all the work needed for DRK to generate blood and MP but WAR has Infuriate and Inner release to spam all their abilities. If you use infuriate then inner release, infuriate comes back off cool down after you spam 5 cyclones (with enhanced infuriate trait) so you can infuriate again for an additional cyclone or whatever you want. Steel Cyclone is DA/AD in a single button and can be used fairly frequently as building gauge with Warrior is too easy with infuriate...as welll as using inner release drops any cost to zero.

[Hierro]

I didnt say I struggled, I just think it's not as easy as PLD or WAR.

IR is only 10 seconds of super sustainability, on a 90 second cooldown so it can't be used for every trash pull. Infuriate won't even be back up if for about 20 seconds if you do what you described, cause only lowers the timer by 5 seconds for each use. 6x5=30 seconds. Meanwhile, what I described for DRK can be used be used every pull and for far longer sustainability. Is it more complex than using a button? Sure, but what it's miles better than whatever AoE option PLD has and makes a strong case for being on par, if not better, than WAR's trash clearing capabilities.

[Rasikko]

If you're struggling to AoE as DRK, you're messing up somewhere. As far as dps skills go, unleash is irrelevent. Its purpose was never to be a useful AoE attack, only to gather aggro for the real dps in the form of abyssal drain. The trick to sustaining AoE DPS is to use TBN on cooldown

left stuff because char limit

I'm guessing all you run is expert, because TBN is out of reach below 70. All of DRKs glaring problems shine the brightest(or darkest heh..) below 70 :/. It's also somewhat depressing that TBN is basically all I've been reading when DRK is discussed. How far the mighty has fallen from Heavensward days as we've now been reduced to exactly one skill..

[Reinha]

The best idea I have seen that would be painfully simple to do is make sole survivor apply either a damage vulnerability like trick attack or crit vulnerability like SCH's strategen. This would give them offensive utility but would leave their dps lower than WAR's which is apparently a must.....
This would make DRK desirable and compensate for their lack of defense. While making a niche cooldown at best into a core ability.

Sole Survivor - target takes increased damage
Dark Passenger - targets do decreased damage

Simple fixes to make both skills useful against bosses and to give DRK some utility.