What is the General Consensus?

[Satarn]

Moral of this thread is that there is no General Consensus, only General Salt.
Although I am pretty sure we knew that already...

[SaberYukihira]

And the biggest factor you don't even take into account is most of Drks dps requires blackest night to be broken on cd or it loses out on all its blood spillers. So if you tried it on a dummy you'd definitely lose cause 1 no slashing and 2 no blackest nights. meanwhile war gets 5 free inner beasts every 90 seconds. good luck out parsing a war in tank stance.

[Derio]

Since WAR has highest dps it is meta. PLD has second highest and is meta. Botgh tanks have good utility.

DRK has lowest dps and no utility. So I think it's obvious and has been since 4.0

[Rathael]

Of course they can all do the content, but you're making it marginally more difficult for yourself if you bring a DRK. You're forcing the rest of your party to play better and make fewer mistakes.

DRK's lack the utility of Paladin and are considerably far behind warrior DPS. You are denying your party a good 500-1000 DPS if you bring a DRK instead of a warrior, and denying yourself many powerful mechanic-ignoring effects if you bring DRK instead of a paladin.

A lot of the frustration with DRK comes from the fact that the other tanks do many of the things DRK does but just better versions. As a DRK player I feel that I am actually giving my team a disadvantage because my spot could have been taken by one of the other tanks. This is not a nice feeling and I do not want to feel that way.

[Arcveld]

I feel like DRK is good enough to clear content. My main problem with it is that alot of DRK's abilities are generally inferior to their WAR and PLD counterparts. Grit for example, reduces damage taken by 20% and damage dealt by 20%. Shield Oath does the same thing but only reduces damage dealt by 15%. Defiance is a little different so it's more difficult to compare. Shadow wall is pretty similar as well, having the same potency as Vengeance and the same duration and CD time as Sentinel. Plunge has no resource cost, but is arguably inferior to Upheaval in every way. Living dead, while in theory can prevent you from dying for a solid 10 seconds, just feels so punishing to the healers. That and even if you die from the effect of Walking Dead, you still get that nice 300 second CD. DRK also feels a bit lacking in complexity when compared to WAR or PLD. I'd say DRK just falls a little short in a lot of areas and doesn't really make up for it anywhere else, that combined with it being oversimplified, makes it feel lackluster to say the least.

[Aomine1992]

Yea each tank can do the content but like others have said DRK requires to much attention while the other tanks can do the same job but much better and can also add more to the party...doom and gloom becaus DRK is not ok or in an okay spot as far as tanks go, besides being pretty good in the V8s fight but that's a whole different story lol

[Warrlordd]

-Before you give up on DRK entirely, keep in mind that the majority of tank busters in the game (and especially in HW) are magical, making Dark Mind pretty great.
-TBN becomes better and better as %dmg reductions get stacked up. The opposite is true for Sheltron and Inner Beast.
-Popping TBN results in negligible (almost invisible) loss to dps, or it is a gain if used to pop delirium at the start of a fight.
-TBN is not gated behind gauge, and can be used outside grit. Sheltron is gated behind auto-attacks or blocks, and Inner Beast can only be used in Defiance.
-It's true DRK has a weakness for having over simplified rotation and over-spammy oGCDs, as well as a hectic opener as you try not to waste MP or blood generation.

---etc etc. The list goes on. DRK is the selfish tank, nearly invincible if played right, does not need or desire to use Living Dead to tank very well. Unlike Paladins, who need to use Hallowed, or Warriors who are straight paper tanks.

Here's a list of tank busters that DRK is great (miles ahead of PLD and WAR) for mitigating.

-01S: Twinbolt.
-02S: Evilsphere
-04S: Thunder III, and on Neo, Aero III
-05S: Doom Strike
-06S: Demonic Shear, Last Kiss, Actually just everything its ALL MAGIC.
-08S: Hyperdrive, Wings of Destruction.

-Lakshmi: Pull of Light
-Shinryu: Akh Morn
-Byakko: Heavenly Strike

So with the exception of 3 fights, DRK outperforms in self-mitigation by a long shot. On those 3 fights, DRK performs equally.
DRK is on par with PLD on dps. Can beat WAR if good luck on Bloodspiller.

TLDR; DRK is more punishing because MP can get out of hand if you're not practiced with it. Otherwise, DRK is great, effective, and flashy. This post recognizes that DRK has sucky abilities, but that's because everything else is so disgustingly strong it would be unfair to buff Living Dead, Sole Survivor, Dark Passenger, or Quietus.

[shao32]

snip

What are You talking about?, DRK is not the best on self mitigation and i Hope dont you think dark mind is used with dark arts, while the other tanks having more free CDs for fluff damage DRK have to save everything for TB taking in general more damage from AA at the end.

TBN becomes stronger with more hp yes but that means less chances to make the shield pops with autoattacks and DRK is 200-400 dps behind WAR and 100-200 behind PLD with the exception of S8 where beat PLD so no, DRK cant even dream on that.

[Aomine1992]

TLDR; DRK is more punishing because MP can get out of hand if you're not practiced with it. Otherwise, DRK is great, effective, and flashy. This post recognizes that DRK has sucky abilities, but that's because everything else is so disgustingly strong it would be unfair to buff Living Dead, Sole Survivor, Dark Passenger, or Quietus.

But that's the thing no one is asking for flat out buffs but the problem is how these skill work currently

LD is trash no matter how you try to spin it they need to really rework this skill...

DP cost to much mp for what it does and it's secondary skill barely works like what even is this lol..

Soul survivor is completely useless in a raid kind of setting and in most situations it's still useless yea use it every now and than but not much gained from it...

Quietus is actually fine as is honestly...

But people want reworks not just buffs and maybe a utility that isn't just TBN lol

[Aana]

Data:
War>Pld>Drk

Forum 'concensus':
War>>Pld>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Drk

War does most DPS. Pld a smidge behind war. Drk a smidge behind pld. Each by a couple % in damage.

Pld/War mitigation kits are solid and jockey for 1st based on how much a war is in tank stance. Drk is behind by X amount in mitigation (depending on how its measured. Its an inexact science) but still has enough mitigation to be effective in all content.

Group support: Pld by miles>War (shake it off)> Drk TBN. While nice, are not nearly as important as the volume on official forums suggests.

Drk is behind by a bit in every category that matters, but only by relatively small amounts. It's entirely usable. Just not optimal. But anything that is even a fraction of a % suboptimal is always slammed as 'useless', 'unplayable', 'broken' and 100 other hyperbolic terms.

There is truth to much of the forum complaints. But the extreme loudness exaggerates them on every count.