What is the General Consensus?

[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.