What is the General Consensus?

[Aniya_Estlihn]

Idk why people are obsessed with mitigation all that much, its not like warrior has it any better.

Vengeance is the best defensive CD in the game. I say this as a DRK/WAR main, I'd prefer WAR's kit much over TBN and can survive busters much easier on WAR as I simply have more options. Survivability is much higher. Inner Beast also gives you a defensive buff as well. Being able to take hits because you have the HP to do so is far more valuable than simply mitigating it, especially when Warrior has the ability to heal themselves up reliably.

[Nedkel]

Vengeance is the best defensive CD in the game. I say this as a DRK/WAR main, I'd prefer WAR's kit much over TBN and can survive busters much easier on WAR as I simply have more options. Survivability is much higher. Inner Beast also gives you a defensive buff as well. Being able to take hits because you have the HP to do so is far more valuable than simply mitigating it, especially when Warrior has the ability to heal themselves up reliably.

Still it has 120 sec cooldown aaand damaging part of the ability triggers only for physical attacks, which is kinda disappointing on the raids/trials where the boss spends more time shooting aoe abilities than actually hitting you with hand.

More options doesnt make it easier to manage the busters.
15 sec shield is over all the best def ability in the game and i am happy to keep it, than having shake it of, raw intuition and 2 heals.
As a DRK i could heal myself without losing any DPS with souleater + DA, warrior need to sacrifice a lot in order to do that with his GCD's, and those 2 heals he posses are kinda meh in therm of healing per second, much worse than clemency, but they are on regular CD so they are better that way than nothing.

DRK is all around designed for end game content, where warrior and pally are just better dungeon running tanks in terms of mitigation, but that doesnt mean a lot anyway, so they are given some support utilities to not be feel inferior in them.

[Luin]

Still it has 120 sec cooldown aaand damaging part of the ability triggers only for physical attacks, which is kinda disappointing on the raids/trials where the boss spends more time shooting aoe abilities than actually hitting you with hand.

More options doesnt make it easier to manage the busters.
15 sec shield is over all the best def ability in the game and i am happy to keep it, than having shake it of, raw intuition and 2 heals.
As a DRK i could heal myself without losing any DPS with souleater + DA, warrior need to sacrifice a lot in order to do that with his GCD's, and those 2 heals he posses are kinda meh in therm of healing per second, much worse than clemency, but they are on regular CD so they are better that way than nothing.

DRK is all around designed for end game content, where warrior and pally are just better dungeon running tanks in terms of mitigation, but that doesnt mean a lot anyway, so they are given some support utilities to not be feel inferior in them.

That is nonsense.
A boss isn't going to use a tankbuster every 15 seconds. You don't need a 15s CD to handle a tankbuster.
How to recognize a tankbuster: Can you read? Is the name of the skill a tankbuster? There, you recognized all of the game's threatening tankbusters.

What will happen every 15 seconds? Mechanics. Mechanics that affect the entire party. Mechanics that The Blackest Night does literally nothing against.

As for healing, Inner Beast. It's like you don't even read the tooltips. Or are you seriously trying to say that a ~5k heal over 3gcd is better than Warrior which has that same exact heal, but also with Inner Beast for a large burst heal, and a Rampart on top of it, and they can keep near 100% uptime on it?

But that's a nonexistent situation, because Warrior's cooldowns are better and it can just mitigate that damage. I love how you list Raw Intuition, and not Thrill of Battle. Not Inner Beast, not Holmgang (have fun in o5, drk), not Equilibrium. Not even Vengeance, which is a straight upgrade over Shadow Wall. Which, by the way, is your *only* Cooldown. Unless you decide you want to count Dark Mind.

Also, you're complaining about Vengeance's damage being underwhelming?
Shadow Wall doesnt have that damage. Why are you complaining about literally free damage? The only cooldown Dark Knight has besides TBN, Warrior has an exact copy of, but better.

If you like Dark Knight that's fine. I like Dark Knight. But posting blatantly wrong information will not make Dark Knight better.

[Shurrikhan]

That is nonsense.
A boss isn't going to use a tankbuster every 15 seconds. You don't need a 15s CD to handle a tankbuster.
How to recognize a tankbuster: Can you read? Is the name of the skill a tankbuster? There, you recognized all of the game's threatening tankbusters.

What will happen every 15 seconds? Mechanics. Mechanics that affect the entire party. Mechanics that The Blackest Night does literally nothing against.

But TBN isn't limited to its defensive value. It also offers you a GCD option (Bloodspiller) that deals 100 potency more than your second strongest option, only 40 potency short of DA on Souleater (with this gap decreased when comparing crits, especially if DAing Bloodspiller as well). As long as it's fully consumed, it still gives nearly the same potency as Dark Arts, but with a free shield atop it.

Heck, if you consider them the GCDs spent in terms of their place in or out of their combo chains, the potency increase can actually be as high as 160, a 20 potency advantage over a simple DA-SS or DA-SE.

[Nedkel]

That is nonsense.
A boss isn't going to use a tankbuster every 15 seconds. You don't need a 15s CD to handle a tankbuster.
How to recognize a tankbuster: Can you read? Is the name of the skill a tankbuster? There, you recognized all of the game's threatening tankbusters.

What will happen every 15 seconds? Mechanics. Mechanics that affect the entire party. Mechanics that The Blackest Night does literally nothing against.

As for healing, Inner Beast. It's like you don't even read the tooltips. Or are you seriously trying to say that a ~5k heal over 3gcd is better than Warrior which has that same exact heal, but also with Inner Beast for a large burst heal, and a Rampart on top of it, and they can keep near 100% uptime on it?

But that's a nonexistent situation, because Warrior's cooldowns are better and it can just mitigate that damage. I love how you list Raw Intuition, and not Thrill of Battle. Not Inner Beast, not Holmgang (have fun in o5, drk), not Equilibrium. Not even Vengeance, which is a straight upgrade over Shadow Wall. Which, by the way, is your *only* Cooldown. Unless you decide you want to count Dark Mind.

Also, you're complaining about Vengeance's damage being underwhelming?
Shadow Wall doesnt have that damage. Why are you complaining about literally free damage? The only cooldown Dark Knight has besides TBN, Warrior has an exact copy of, but better.

If you like Dark Knight that's fine. I like Dark Knight. But posting blatantly wrong information will not make Dark Knight better.

Well, some of the bosses does hit a lot, like deltascape 4.0 if i remember.

Tank buster doesnt happen every 15 seconds, but any other attacks does. You could use in in between the tank busters.
Still its just a reliable 1 key to use all the time instead of 20 others, and this is a good one since it does not cost you any dps, you are sacrificing anything with it.
And still you have the Dark mind 30% damage reduction on 60 sec cooldown, there is no other cd that time effective, its just cost some mp.
Shadow wall + roles are more than enough to tank, why would you need more in this case? You dont need more on a DRK.
He has an ability to mix TBN with a mitigation CD, that makes it even stronger.

I am not arguing about the overall tank performance, because i just admit it, DRK has no utility at all, but saying he has worst mitigation is clear exaggeration, no he doesnt. Only because he is not given 20 abilities with damage reduction, doesnt mean its worse.
Time plays in this game the most important factor, and that 15 seconds cooldown along with 7 seconds duration build up a ton of mitigation itself, much more than 20% hp more once every 120 sec or shake it of 8% every 60 sec.

Inner beast is only usable during the defiance stance, and it takes 7xgcd to generate it if you are not using storms path and in fact 8x GCD to use it, and in general it is impacting the warrior dps by a ton to use it in defiance stance. You could keep yourself healing all the time inner beast and storm path combo, and you will end up dealing way less damage than DRK.
Why? Because entire warrior class is based all around the GCD and he has only 2 not good enough cooldowns that cost him gauge anyway.
My apologies for forgetting about the inner beast, yes it has 20% mitigation built in it and it is indeed a good one, yet its still gated behind the defiance stance and you sacrificing a lot of DPS, and its not kinda good that way.
Warrior is not worse, he is just a game of choice, you sacrifice dps for healing and vice versa, because you cant have everything.
DRK basically doesnt sacrifice anything, maybe soul eater drain when out of grit stance, thats it. He is absolutely fine tanking, dealing damage and healing himself at the same time. Warrior could do the same, but then he does less dps anyway.
Warrior indeed loses a giant chunk of his dps when he is trying to tank and heal himself.

[Xan_Kriegor]

To be fair, I don't agree with the DRKs that they are lacking mitigation. I guess the only place that they are below the other tanks mitigation wise is V3. The problems that DRK has are more related to its DPS and the lack of things like burst windows, utility, anti-knockback tools and enmity generation tools. Also DRK has an overall poor design skillset.

[Chrono_Rising]

Clue 1: There is a reason you don't see dark knights in speed kills using TBN every 15 seconds. If it was DPS neutral people would absolutely be looking to maximize this skill usage in order to maximize healer damage. Once again, TBN is powerful mitigation, but it isn't as strong as paladin's kit against reasonably spaced tank busters, and it isn't as powerful as warrior's kit which covers both busters and fluff damage. Dark Knight mitigation shines more in god kefka where there are frequent magical tank busters, but progging with warrior/paladin comp the advantages offered seem really overblown.

Clue 2: The fact that warriors are getting away with only using a subset of their kit doesn't point to the kit being weak.

DRK basically doesnt sacrifice anything, maybe soul eater drain when out of grit stance, thats it. He is absolutely fine tanking, dealing damage and healing himself at the same time. Warrior could do the same, but then he does less dps anyway.

How are dark knights self-healing themselves? Are we talking about the undesirable grit locked soul eater that warrior has access to in both stances? Are we talking about Sole Survivor that can only be used on adds once every 2 minutes if the raid just happens to include them (thankfully more did include adds this tier)? Or are we just talking about plain old abyssal drain which does little inside a raid?

Warrior's might give up a chunk of dps when trying to do something similar, but hey, if you are healing yourself its usually a "do or wipe" situation, and in that context warrior does it better and more effectively than anything dark knight can do. Same can be said for paladin, if the chips are down, spam clemency and pray will get your further than grit and soul eater.

To be fair, I don't agree with the DRKs that they are lacking mitigation. I guess the only place that they are below the other tanks mitigation wise is V3. The problems that DRK has are more related to its DPS and the lack of things like burst windows, utility, anti-knockback tools and enmity generation tools. Also DRK has an overall poor design skillset.

I agree, the only thing I would want to see changed about dark knight mitigation kit is a physical analog to dark mind for leveling purposes and to make the dark knight mitigation more well rounded.

Overall I think the lacking dps is the bigger issue the class faces.

[Nedkel]

How are dark knights self-healing themselves? Are we talking about the undesirable grit locked soul eater that warrior has access to in both stances? Are we talking about Sole Survivor that can only be used on adds once every 2 minutes if the raid just happens to include them (thankfully more did include adds this tier)? Or are we just talking about plain old abyssal drain which does little inside a raid?

Warrior's might give up a chunk of dps when trying to do something similar, but hey, if you are healing yourself its usually a "do or wipe" situation, and in that context warrior does it better and more effectively than anything dark knight can do. Same can be said for paladin, if the chips are down, spam clemency and pray will get your further than grit and soul eater.

You cant use equilibrium in deliverance, you are left with the thrill of battle and storm paths combo and shake it off, with 90 and 120 cd and a GCD little heal, when DRK has still TBN. :P

Comparing DRK in grit stance to warrior in defiance, DRK does more dps, where war has more mitigation, and the similar healing power as DRK it may be a little higher but not by too much, soul eater still is the thing.

[Chrono_Rising]

You cant use equilibrium in deliverance, you are left with the thrill of battle and storm paths combo and shake it off, with 90 and 120 cd and a GCD little heal, when DRK has still TBN. :P

TBN is not healing, it is mitigation. It shields your for 20% of your HP but unless we want to really muddy the waters with whether or not all mitigation is a form of self healing then I don't think this is a road we want to go down. Warrior might not have access to some of these things out of its tank stance, but it can switch into its tank stance for access to something like equilibrium for nearly free every 90 seconds. Of course Inner beast is still a dps loss so spending gauge on that might not be the best idea unless you need it.

Comparing DRK in grit stance to warrior in defiance, DRK does more dps, where war has more mitigation, and the similar healing power as DRK it may be a little higher but not by too much, soul eater still is the thing.

This is just plain false. Warrior's have numerous moves which ignore their stance penalty, which is exactly the same penalty than dark knight has. If you have proof otherwise please share it because right now this just seems false. Warrior is losing access to Fell Cleaves, but dark knight is losing access to blood weapon, which means less blood and less mana for enhancing attacks. In general tanks are hit with a 25% penalty for being in tank stance.

[Xan_Kriegor]

I also don't know the numbers. Once I heard that all of the three tanks lose something like ~35% of their DPS if they stay the entire fight in Tank Stance. But it doesn't matter to our discussion because there is no need to stay in tank stance the entire fight. We were talking about situations in which a tank may want to go to defensive stance to use some extra mitigation and avoid a wipe. In this scenario the stance dance that WAR has is better than the DRK's which is better than PLD's.