Why is Quietus so weak?

[Xenosan]

..

My impression is more that Quietus was intentional: to replace old Blood Price ( like, as if they knew what they were doing ) - They wanted old BP dead, so use Quietus and Delirum to reverse engineer the kit. Then it snowballs into 'Oh let's double Grit'd Siphon MP restore because BP is shite now for MP and double BP+DEL duration because AOE DRK will need the Blood.'

Ironically - Quietus, like old Blood Price, still scales with the amount of enemies fought - DRK just doesn't technically have to tank them. So they really still failed at their base intent even with all the back bending that went into it.

I think a good start for improvements would be Enhanced Unleash to proc from all spells, and do more damage or restore MP - that way DRK has a baseline AOE rotation to start with, and synergies with later actions. Then ffs with Blood Price make some changes. and lastly imo the +10 Blood from Souleater should be taken off and sprinkled on other oGCDs so DRK has consistent blood generation regardless of which GCD actions they're using.

But now I'm in the rabbit hole !_!

[Valdegarde]

I think a good start for improvements would be Enhanced Unleash to proc from all spells,

I know I sounded like I had glowing praise for how Dark Knight's AoE feels (relative to other classes), but I'll be the first to admit there's still huge problems with it and the rest of Dark Knight's kit in their integration...and unfortunately Unleash is a great example of this. While your idea might be nice, I feel like how they've neutered Unleash is a huge waste and I hope that it's one of the first skills on their chopping block to be excised come the new expansion and just allow Abyssal Drain access at that level and maybe reduce the MP cost for it or something.

Syphon Strike is also, as you mentioned, something that feels like it's a bandaid fix filling a gap created by lack of foresight in Dark Knight's overall Stormblood design. Quietus seems to reek of this too, however I do appreciate its current function. I'd rather it be expanded on than abandoned at this point.

[Hierro]

Ironically - Quietus, like old Blood Price, still scales with the amount of enemies fought - DRK just doesn't technically have to tank them. So they really still failed at their base intent even with all the back bending that went into it.

Failed? I think that was a success. Consider how one of the goals for SB was to make any tank good in any position, whether MT or OT. old BP required you to actively tank them, while Quietus doesn't. A12S's breif add phase left you feeling bad if the co-tank WAR stole aggro, and you got no BP procs. Gone are those days! Hop into O5S and spam quietus with blood weapon, enjoy all that MP!