What is the General Consensus?

[Aana]

We are undervaluing these defensive utilities.

o5s: Cover and tempered will keeps your cotank on the boss. Shields from shake it off and divine veil make it so you can keep melee on the boss for head on.

o6s: Party shields make it so you can have the ranged take the stack mechanic by themselves freeing up hollowed ground for covering ground aoes on melee increasing uptime for the party.

o7s: Party shields save healer GCD's and can be alternated in a Divine veil and SiO pattern. Covering prey targets reduces healer babysitting on dps reducing the tank babysitting to regen. Passage of arms keeps the party closer for the boss beam at no dps loss increasing uptime.

o8s: Covering Hyperdrives reduces tick damage so it can be covered by a regen, covering a ranged for double wings increases cotank uptime during trick attack windows. Divine veil and shake it off alternate on Foresakens and light of judgement to save dps, and reduce healing GCDs. Intervention saves cotank mitigation giving more flexibility in handling mechanics.

Defensive utility is absolutely a big thing. Can healers and the party adjust having a dark knight? Sure. But why? This isn't just a meta crisis, this is a "is there a reason to bring a dark knight" crisis. Monk isn't a meta class, but there are reasons you might want to bring a monk. Some have pointed out that dark knights have mitigation for every attack, while true I haven't run into this issue on paladin either and feel I mitigate more than what I would do on dark knight. Maybe warrior runs dry from time to time, but you have your paladin there to share their mitigation with them.

Take everything all together and you are mitigating for less, costing your healers more GCDs healing you and your party, costing your group dps from healers, losing uptime for melees, and doing what still appears to be slightly less damage than the other two tanks. As others have said before me, each thing is little on its own, but a little here, a little there, and a little over there can add up to alot.

Pld had nearly all off that available in 3.0 and a greater stranglehold on knockbacks as there was not a plethora of anti-knockback actions. They have been defensive powerhouses for ages and had more utility than every other tank at all stages of 14 history. Yet still it has both risen and fallen based on DPS. Healers and parties sure didn't seem to mind having to 'adjust' without plds in the past. If Drk/war did significantly more damage than Pld/X they would again. Utility has a non-zero benefit obviously, but it pales in comparison to DPS when defining the meta in this game. The meta will drop utility like a hot potato if they can grab more damage in its place. This has born out in history for both DPS, healers and tanks. Utility always takes a backseat based on this games setup. It is not of zero value, but it is, unarguably, much less value than DPS.

The thread asked 'whats the general concensus of tanks'. I really have 1 have (failed) to explain that my simple statement to answer that.

CURRENTLY: Drk is weaker than War/Pld, but the degree of weakness is exaggerated on the forums.

I don't think that is a statement many would disagree with. We can quibble over the 'how weak' and to 'what degree' but I don't think theres much room for discussion that 1: Drk is weakest. 2: Forums claim drk is weaker than reality. What is forever under debate is the delta between those 2 as the only thing we can factually measure is DPS thanks to mountains of data on FFLogs. But utility and mitigation are forever fuzzy and shifting items.

To be fair, DRK players tried constructive criticism at the start, and only started being the Tri-State Pop Off Champions when they saw how well it worked for WAR and BLM. The DRK players thought they were being ignored and started the loud hyperbole and memes to get the attention, just like the other non-meta jobs as you mentioned.

Saying that Drks are loud isn't an insult. Its just a fact. It is also a fact that every non-meta/disenfranchised group online will have an extremely loud group fighting for change. You can say "But Drk is different. We tried being polite. It worked for X group. Etc" But the fact is, its the exact same lines said by every lower tier group in every game since forums existed. That doesn't make you better or worse than them, just some perspective. In a game someone is always on bottom as perfect balance doesn't exist. Whoever that is will complain, loudly, about it. Right now its Drks. 3.0 was Plds. Next year it will be X. Year after that Y. Its how games that patch over time go. Things will eventually change for better and worse if you play long enough. My only reason fro bringing it up was to support my base statement. Drk is weak. Forum loudly exaggerates how weak (just like most every weak/non-meta group in a game forum). Not to try to 'call out drks'.