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'.

[Saeno]

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.

You're forgetting to mention that 3.0 WAR and DRK had better utility than 3.0 PLD thanks to Storms Path, Delirium and Reprisal. DRK and WAR had enough utility but they also did more damage. That's why DRK/WAR meta was a thing.

In fact im willing to go as far as saying Delirium, Reprisal and Storms path were the biggest reason why you took DRK and WAR. So yes, utility is a big thing.

[Chrono_Rising]

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.

This completely ignores all context of Heavensward to try and prove a point that is utterly ridiculous. Lets fill it in here so that we have some semblance of reality left.

Cover: redirected physical damage only in HW. In SB this was turned into redirecting physical and magical damage and mitigating it at 20%.

Divine Veil: This existed in heavensward. So why is it good now and horrible back then? Because it was a 10% shield every 2 minutes. What did this compete with? 10% magical mitigation up 100% of the time, 10% damage down which could be kept up as much as you want, and another 10% damage down in the form of reprisal that you could get up 50 to 60% of the time. Yes, Paladin also brought a strength down on its aggro combo, but to put that up meant giving away damage, it didn't make sense to use this.

Thats all the utility that paladin had, one was useless and buffed to usefulness. The other was completely obliterated by dark knight and warrior. Divine veil is useful now that those skills are out of the game/role actions for all tanks.

Defensive options. Yes Hollowed was still OP. But the meta back then was to have your warrior OT as much of the fight as possible and push your main tank to mitigate the majority of the damage unless you wanted to use HG. Paladin could only block physical damage, saddly the majority of tank busters were magical. This mean paladin had only 2 defensive options while dark knight brought 3, one of which was on an extremely short cooldown that could be boosted to shadow wall levels of defense (this was the time before we had to dark arts every weapon skill). Dark Knight was heads and shoulders above paladin in magical fights, which was most of heavensward, and did fine in physical fights thanks to things like reprisal dark dance and other cooldowns.

Healers and parties sure didn't seem to mind having to 'adjust' without plds in the past.

Yes, because when you put it in context of the skills dark knight and warrior brought, you realize that healers didn't mind adjusting because the adjusting meant healing less and getting more damage from your tanks. The two tanks bringing the most damage also brought the best utilities. Like now only the names have changed.

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.

Except that it doesn't, your appeal to "reality" here isn't backed up. There are several reasons why:

(1) We haven't had a time when tank dps and defensive utilities were balanced against eachother: I.e. Higher damage means lower utilities and higher utilities means lower damage.

(2) This isn't true for the dps meta. The highest hitting classes aren't taken over those which provided direct damage utilities.

(3) This isn't true for healers where astro is within the meta despite being the weakest damaging healer by a significant margin compared to white mage.

Utility wins, every single class in the meta brings a utility (either direct damage or defense utilities: read healer dps utilities). While it is very nice that you agree that dark knight is probably the weakest of the three, I find it disingenuous that you sit here telling people how much they should be complaining or how loudly they should complain while posting context free (and therefore misleading) factoids that don't represent the actual situation at the time. I'm not disagreeing with your conclusions that maybe people over state things, but having your constant detraction of "it isn't that bad" in every thread is really less than helpful after 10 months of complaints have gone unanswered.

[Aana]

Except that it doesn't, your appeal to "reality" here isn't backed up. There are several reasons why:

(1) We haven't had a time when tank dps and defensive utilities were balanced against eachother: I.e. Higher damage means lower utilities and higher utilities means lower damage.

(2) This isn't true for the dps meta. The highest hitting classes aren't taken over those which provided direct damage utilities.

(3) This isn't true for healers where astro is within the meta despite being the weakest damaging healer by a significant margin compared to white mage.

Utility wins, every single class in the meta brings a utility (either direct damage or defense utilities: read healer dps utilities). While it is very nice that you agree that dark knight is probably the weakest of the three, I find it disingenuous that you sit here telling people how much they should be complaining or how loudly they should complain while posting context free (and therefore misleading) factoids that don't represent the actual situation at the time. I'm not disagreeing with your conclusions that maybe people over state things, but having your constant detraction of "it isn't that bad" in every thread is really less than helpful after 10 months of complaints have gone unanswered.

"This isn't true for the dps meta. The highest hitting classes aren't taken over those which provided direct damage utilities. " I just said that damage dealt is the number 1 factor. When people talk about tank 'utility' (I know this term gets thrown around a lot so lets be clear what I'm talking about) it is usually in the context of veil, shake it off, TBN, cover, etc. Defensive utilities. That is how I was using the term. Forgive the confusion in syntax.

Trick attack is not a 'utility' skill in this context. When I say damage defines the meta that includes skills like trick attack. Like sch speed buffs. Brd: Magic damage up is damage. Removing a debuff would be 'utility' in my eyes. Utility gets thrown around a LOT but this is what I mean when I talk about utility skills. Maybe a better term is 'support' skills. Whatever, you get the point.

So when I say damage defines the meta, I mean exactly that. Trick attack is a strong, meta defining skill (read: Damage). Cover is not (read defensive). The meta has very consistently been the combination of jobs that provides the most damage. Drk/War provided the most damage in HW. Right now Drg/Nin provides the most damage. If Sam/Mnk brought more total raid damage to the table than Drg/Nin it would be meta. Mnk has only been meta in the past when it did the most damage. When it has fallen behind it was promptly kicked regardless of having (defensive) utility of mantra. While it was in the meta it was praised for mantra, but conveniently overlooked that it also provided the most damage. Remember double mnk combos? Triple melee+mch combo? All Brd combos in 2.0? Whatever gets the damage done.

As you stated. Combos with the most damage and utility are 'usually' meta. However, combos that provide the HIGHEST damage are ALWAYS meta. All squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares. Sure, drk/war had path/reprisal. They also crapped all over pld damage. However, Pld/War was also meta at 4.0 before shake it off existed and Drk actually had more defensive utility than war. (war had zero. Drk had TBN) because it did more damage. There has never been a time in FFXIV history that the combinations of jobs that did the most damage was NOT the meta. Many of those times overlap high defensive utility combos, but not all. The single constant is that Raid Damage is the only factor that follows the meta. Defensive utility does not have this record. Damage does.

I'm not disagreeing with your conclusions that maybe people over state things, but having your constant detraction of "it isn't that bad" in every thread is really less than helpful after 10 months of complaints have gone unanswered.

But that doesn't make my position less true. I could say the same about toe constant big fish exaggeration being 'less helpful after 10 months of complaints' too. I don't see how pointing out exaggerated complaints is somehow 'less helpful' than jumping on the QQ hyperbole train making issues appear bigger and scarier than they actually are. I'll leave that to the politicians and media.

[Chrono_Rising]

"This isn't true for the dps meta. The highest hitting classes aren't taken over those which provided direct damage utilities. " I just said that damage dealt is the number 1 factor. When people talk about tank 'utility' (I know this term gets thrown around a lot so lets be clear what I'm talking about) it is usually in the context of veil, shake it off, TBN, cover, etc. Defensive utilities. That is how I was using the term. Forgive the confusion in syntax.

There is no confusion. Direct damage utility vs. defensive utility, I see no sign of confusion so I assume this is to create wriggle out of the the phrasing

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.

.

We can say that these aren't utilities, but when we are asked to drops some names of utilities tirck attack and shadewalker are probably up there. The fact is that the meta currently drops dps who out dps the meta dps, because the utilities offered by those dps raise the raid dps more than having high dps. We can enter a world of hypotheticals like what if we double sam damage, but I would rather not deal with hypotheticals. Much like trick attack directly increases your output, defensive utilities are there to increase your uptime. Just because a defensive utility doesn't directly raise any single players damage output (what I refer to as a direct damage utility), doesn't mean you cannot use them offensively to gain dps.

Trick attack is not a 'utility' skill in this context. When I say damage defines the meta that includes skills like trick attack. Like sch speed buffs. Brd: Magic damage up is damage. Removing a debuff would be 'utility' in my eyes. Utility gets thrown around a LOT but this is what I mean when I talk about utility skills. Maybe a better term is 'support' skills. Whatever, you get the point.

So when I say damage defines the meta, I mean exactly that. Trick attack is a strong, meta defining skill (read: Damage). Cover is not (read defensive). The meta has very consistently been the combination of jobs that provides the most damage. Drk/War provided the most damage in HW. Right now Drg/Nin provides the most damage. If Sam/Mnk brought more total raid damage to the table than Drg/Nin it would be meta. Mnk has only been meta in the past when it did the most damage. When it has fallen behind it was promptly kicked regardless of having (defensive) utility of mantra. While it was in the meta it was praised for mantra, but conveniently overlooked that it also provided the most damage. Remember double mnk combos? Triple melee+mch combo? All Brd combos in 2.0? Whatever gets the damage done.

I would consider these utilities but lets not quibble about what we are going to exactly call them. The closest thing I would point out to you is that things like shadewalker are an example of a DPS utility that does not directly increase damage. The aggro manipulation of ninja is a huge factor in increasing tank dps on pull. Even without trick attack Ninja would provided a raid dps increase because of its aggro manipulation tools. In that vein:

So when I say damage defines the meta, I mean exactly that. Trick attack is a strong, meta defining skill (read: Damage). Cover is not (read defensive)

The debuff Trick attack isn't damage in itself. You can put up the debuff of trick attack, afk, and then come back to see you've done no extra damage because you didn't use the debuff. Cover is definately a defensive utility. But it has a huge number of offensive uses. If you read my first post you can get at least 5 different applications, and thats not all, of cover as an offensive utility to increase uptime for healers and your cotank. This is no different of an idea than dropping tank stance. We drop tank stance in an effort to increase both tank and healer dps, this requires using our defensive abilities in offensive ways. Defensive utility has exactly the same type of applications.

We are also now back tracking that doing more damage is actually secondary to raid damage, the highest combine dps for the entire team is what matters. Paladin warrior has both higher output for tanks, and for healers, and for dps, all of that is what makes them meta, not just their individual dps. The meta is the highest raid damage, not the highest individual. So once again, its about the utilities the classes bring and how they interact. I know I said I wouldn't quibble about what to call them, but these really are utilities.

As you stated. Combos with the most damage and utility are 'usually' meta. However, combos that provide the HIGHEST damage are ALWAYS meta. All squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares. Sure, drk/war had path/reprisal. They also crapped all over pld damage. However, Pld/War was also meta at 4.0 before shake it off existed and Drk actually had more defensive utility than war. (war had zero. Drk had TBN) because it did more damage. There has never been a time in FFXIV history that the combinations of jobs that did the most damage was NOT the meta. Many of those times overlap high defensive utility combos, but not all. The single constant is that Raid Damage is the only factor that follows the meta. Defensive utility does not have this record. Damage does.

Yes, but if Dark Knight brought enough defensive utilities to bring healer dps significantly higher then bringing a warrior, the meta would have been dark knight/paladin. This is the point people have been making, what dark knight offers is not in balance with the other tanks. Things have only gotten worse since then since warrior has seen a damage buff and a utility buff while dark knight has seen little.

But that doesn't make my position less true. I could say the same about toe constant big fish exaggeration being 'less helpful after 10 months of complaints' too. I don't see how pointing out exaggerated complaints is somehow 'less helpful' than jumping on the QQ hyperbole train making issues appear bigger and scarier than they actually are. I'll leave that to the politicians and media.

What makes your position less valid, in my eyes, is that your points for saying things are "over stated" have been analyzed and found lacking, but you refuse to actually acknowledge that your position is not nearly as strong as you make it out to be with your statements of dissent. You have brought up 3.x paladin abilities completely out of context, claimed its utilities were better (which is false in many cases), to try and use that to support your claim that the entire issue with 3.x paladin was its lacking dps, when in fact that was only a piece of the puzzle. You say the defensive utilities aren't that important and are not damage utilities, after I gave you a turn by turn of using defensive utilities to increase dps, you continue to say they are just defensive abilities. At the end of the day you haven't provided anything to show that the issues are hyperbole, you just made the claim, were shown that your reasons for making the claim were not well founded, and then continue making the claim as if it still has support. And the other side of the debate has its merit, dark knight is doing less everywhere and it adds up to something big. It is viable but not great.

Grass is purple, because I think I remember purple grass here are some examples. Well here are all the examples of grass you thought you remembered as being purple, none of them are purple, please stop claiming grass is purple. My opinion is valid, people who say grass is green are wrong I refuse to jump on the "green grass" bandwagon just because people think it. <= Thats not a true or valid position, thats just refusing to admit that our stated reasons were not correct. Persistence doesn't make us correct.

At the end of the day I suppose that is what I take issue with most. That you have an opinion that is not backed up by strong evidence, and are asserting it everywhere like it is absolute truth. People want to engage in hyperbole? Well maybe thats true, maybe it isn't, but we should at least engage in a discussion to determine if it truly is hyperbole before accusing people of it without knowing which.

[InfiniDragon]

Not to try to 'call out drks'.

Oh I didn't think you were. Was just saying that it actually took a decent amount of "waiting and seeing" before the DRK players started getting really belligerent about it.

[Aana]

There is no confusion. Direct damage utility vs. defensive utility, I see no sign of confusion so I assume this is to create wriggle out of the the phrasing

Well then, let's recap then shall we to see the wiggles.

My initial post:
War>Pld>Drk while noting the triad of Damage, Mitigation, and Utility Rankings and that the forum exaggerates. (I didn't specify defensive utility but, based on followup posts and that most utility discussions in the tank forums circle defensive skills, I don't think that's terribly unreasonable)

TouchandFeel Response was: Drk is significantly farther behind because of multiplying effects of each of those 3 deficiencies when combined.

My counter was: I don't add the multiplier effect because damage is (imo) by far and away the most important and that (defensive) utilities don't hold much weight.

Crono_Rising: No, we are undervaluing utility skills. (Lists a buncha ways utility skills increase damage).

(Insert long recent posts about the value of varius types of utility.)

My initial point was, and still is that Drk is last, the forum thinks its worse than it is (which many seem to fundamentally agree on which was the point of the OP determining the consensus on tanks).

Everything after that has been about the how much weight utilities have or 'should' have when looking at this ranking (specifically defensive utilities that tanks roles are assigned. No tank has ever had a powerful raid buff direct damage skill). Considering my initial points were that the damage Drk brought to the table was the only thing that actually mattered (and why I didn't give it a multiplier for other weaknesses) has not wiggled or changed.

Call it what you will, defensive/support/whatever utilities do not get anywhere near the same value as direct offensive utilities in shaping the meta and never have. Trick attack (when used properly) creates a large boost to damage, and I still maintain that damage defines the meta. War using Shake it off 3-4x a fight can in a roundabout way create healer damage. If it saves 1 aoe GCD per use and its used say, 5x in a fight, a healer gained 4 gcds of damage. That is a pitiful amount of damage compared to a 60 sec trick attack on damage used 7-8x a fight. Mantra might save a healer a gcd (as rarely outside of bleeding edge progression do any of these shields cause a wipe). Whats 1 healer GCD compared to a direct damage buff like 20% raid crit rate for 20 seconds on Drg?

Follow the simple logic here. If raid damage defines the meta, direct damage abilities or classes which compete based on raw personal damage (whatever provides the most damage) are strongly favored over indirect damage increases like defensive utilities which 'may' give a much smaller increase via healer GCDs or increased uptime. Therefore: Defensive utilities carry less weight in defining the meta. The tank conversation has consistently for months broken up tanking into 3 categories: Offense, defense, utility (defensive specifically). You have since pointed out every way that defensive tools can be leveraged for offense to say that I'm being inconsistent. If we are going to measure defensive utilities by how much offense they create, then my point still stands. Defensive utilities carry much less weight than damage because they are pennies on the dollar to direct damage buffs or direct damage itself. No matter what angle you look at defensive utilities, the bottom line is they are not as powerful as their offensive counterparts. This is not backtracking. This is sticking to the same fundamental point I have made since the 1st couple posts. The ability to create damage is by far and away the best indicator of the meta, whos on top and whos on bottom. Defensive skills hold less weight because they provide pennies on the dollar compared to straight damage buffs.

[TouchandFeel]

TouchandFeel Response was: Drk is significantly farther behind because of multiplying effects of each of those 3 deficiencies when combined.

Um ... my response was that it was more behind than what you were implying with the way you were presenting the information.
While the importance and weight value of damage potential versus other facets of a job can be debated, the value of those other aspects can not be conveniently ignored even if individually they are lesser.

Significantly implies a level of severity that I never leveled with my response, so please don't put words in my mouth. I am more than capable of speaking for myself.

I think that a problem with what you are saying is that you are calling out the opinions that DRK players are presenting as being overly "loud", over the top and hyperbolic, however by painting with such a broad stroke as well as being arguably hyperbolic in your portrayal of opinions being presented and what is being said, you are yourself enacting that which you are decrying.

There is no doubt that some people exaggerate about DRK, both with how bad it currently is as well as how perfectly fine it is. There are also a good number of people that are quite rational and measured when discussing DRK (as well as the other tanks) and tend to openly disagree with both extreme sides of the argument.

Perhaps people should slow down a bit on trying to "win" and be "right", take a step back and have a good look at what they are saying, how they are saying it and perhaps most importantly, why they are saying what they are saying in the way they are saying it while treating themselves with the same level of scrutiny they are giving to others.

[Chrono_Rising]

Call it what you will, defensive/support/whatever utilities do not get anywhere near the same value as direct offensive utilities in shaping the meta and never have. Trick attack (when used properly) creates a large boost to damage, and I still maintain that damage defines the meta. War using Shake it off 3-4x a fight can in a roundabout way create healer damage. If it saves 1 aoe GCD per use and its used say, 5x in a fight, a healer gained 4 gcds of damage. That is a pitiful amount of damage compared to a 60 sec trick attack on damage used 7-8x a fight. Mantra might save a healer a gcd (as rarely outside of bleeding edge progression do any of these shields cause a wipe). Whats 1 healer GCD compared to a direct damage buff like 20% raid crit rate for 20 seconds on Drg?

The sun is very bright. I still turn on a light when its dark despite my lightbulbs much lower output.

You are comparing direct damage utilities to defensive utilities, I don't think it takes alot of investigation that dps utilities have a greater weight. The dps difference among tanks is lower than that on dps, and the utilities we are comparing are comparatively lower. If we are talking meta, then you also have a shield saved from paladin, maybe another 4 healer GCD's, and cover maybe saves another 3, so now we have gained 12 GCDs at 200+ potency each. Suppose that also saved a dps from losing up time and they gained a GCD. It adds up to a non-trivial amount of dps. I agree this pales in comparison to trick attack, but there is no reason to compare to trick attack because tanks don't offer a skill which is comparable. This is only made worse by then recognizing that dark knight brings less dps than the alternatives as well as losing party wide GCDs. Warrior has only 1 utility that might save a group GCDs and brings much more dps to compensate. We should apply the same logic to dark knight.

It actually does matter on non dps fronts as well. For groups that just want to clear and don't care about pushing mechanics may also appreciate more defensive options on tanks. But again, even there dark knights cannot find a home because the tanks bringing more dps are bringing better utilities.

Snip

I agree 100%

[Aana]

Um ... my response was that it was more behind than what you were implying with the way you were presenting the information.
While the importance and weight value of damage potential versus other facets of a job can be debated, the value of those other aspects can not be conveniently ignored even if individually they are lesser.

Significantly implies a level of severity that I never leveled with my response, so please don't put words in my mouth. I am more than capable of speaking for myself.

>>> can be described as significantly more than >. Triple is pretty significant. Or more, greater, increased, larger, notable. Take your pick it is really not important to the post. The crux of the post to cronos hardly hinges on using 'significantly' or 'more' when simply summarizing the path of posts that got here as we had gotten quite far into the weeds and felt lost sight of the original points we were going for. It was really not an remotely important point as it was a flyby to give context in the post and hardly worth picking out. Hardly trying to 'speak for you'.

I think that a problem with what you are saying is that you are calling out the opinions that DRK players are presenting as being overly "loud", over the top and hyperbolic, however by painting with such a broad stroke as well as being arguably hyperbolic in your portrayal of opinions being presented and what is being said, you are yourself enacting that which you are decrying.

There is no doubt that some people exaggerate about DRK, both with how bad it currently is as well as how perfectly fine it is. There are also a good number of people that are quite rational and measured when discussing DRK (as well as the other tanks) and tend to openly disagree with both extreme sides of the argument.

Perhaps people should slow down a bit on trying to "win" and be "right", take a step back and have a good look at what they are saying, how they are saying it and perhaps most importantly, why they are saying what they are saying in the way they are saying it while treating themselves with the same level of scrutiny they are giving to others.

The post was in response to the OP who asked for concensus. As you pointed out there is no true concensus and a variety of opinions, but in the service of actually answering the OP's question I divided my response into 2 parts instead of giving a thesis on the nuances of Drk in the current meta and content vs War/Pld. Broad strokes to a broad question. As comments piled up on the nuances of the differences the discussion predictably went much farther into the weeds. But answering a broad question with a simplistic, yet generally true answer is not an affront. "Whats the concensus on drk?" "Its slightly behind but if you casually read the forum and take it at face value you will probably get the idea that drk is significantly (definite intentional 'severity' implied) more behind than it is.

Yes its more nuanced. Yes there are reasonable posts and people. Of course its a group of people, not an individual. But when considering the actual point of this thread, it is not unreasonable to state that, on balance, if you knew nothing about the state of tanks and read these forums and took it at face value, you would have an exaggerated idea about the state of tanks and the 'consensus' of it. Primarily because Drks are the loud group on the forums. If they had come in at 4.0, it would have been "Forums will make you think War is much worse than it is because they are obscenely loud about their grievances". Replace 4.0 and War with X.0 and Y Class at any point in any game and any class/faction/thing. It will hold true. If characterizing the vocal minority as making more noise and exaggerating their grievances is to 'broad' a stroke then so be it. Ill stand by that 7 days a week.