after leveling Paladin ... Dark Knight just feels really squishy

[Vulcann]

so mind you this is the leveling of 1-57 for my paladin and obviously 30-51 so far of my dark knight. i'm still a new player so take that for granted as well.

when i saw the dark knight unlocked i knew that was the class for me. i have always played tanks with life drains ... shadow knight in EQ1/2 and Death Knights in Wow. so i have put my Paladin on the back burner a bit and decided to level the dark knight.

the road has been a bumpy one to say the least. in leveling dungeons i feel extremely squishy ... where as i feel like i HAVE to use my cooldowns almost always on everything, where as with my paladins i usually pop cooldowns on bigger pulls.

i feel the biggest problem is that Dark Knights don't get their good abilities till damn near 50 which obviously aren't going to help me when i am doing leveling roulette dungeons. Even souleater is a level 38 ability, to me this should be core and gotten much much earlier. To me this would be like giving paladins access to a shield at level 38 but any dungeon before that they have to unequip the shield.

[shao32]

worse, DRK don't get his main mitigation tool TBN (the blackest night) until level 70, and his self healing on large packs of mods are a bit gutted too bcs of that, so yeah it's more hard and tedious but is loable, just administrate you CD's and use all the role skills you have like convalescence and anticipation to make everything a bit more smoot, when you get to lvl 70 it's feels way better.

[Derio]

Since they broke DRK back in 4.0 it only really works well in lvl 70 content. I hope the 5.0 rework addresses this

[Phoenicia]

If you want life draining tanks, WAR is where it's at. Not DRK. Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone, Equilibrium and to an extent: Storm's Path combine for a lot of healing. 3 of these abilities are obtained by level 40.

It was referred to above, but since Stormblood hit, pre-70 class balance went down the gutter due to reworked stats, redistributed abilities and abandoned system (cross class replaced by Role Actions) that threw off a lot of what the jobs were balanced around. Not to mention most classes got core abilities that they only learn at or near 70 (TBN for DRK, IR for WAR, etc.) that will make you feel like you're playing a gimp class until you do hit max.

Over all, all three tanks have the same armor, health and basic mitigation. Cooldowns is what separates them. If you were not using your CDs on PLD know that you were lucky with better healers on PLD than when you played DRK. DRK has much better up-time on its CDs compared to PLD (and WAR even more so). This will be even more apparent at higher levels when mobs become immune to blind (Flash loses mitigative value) and their damage scales harder and switches from random autos to specific abilities (that random blocks/parries won't matter unless they proc on the right hits).

Regardless, play the tank you enjoy thematically more. All three tanks are balanced at max level.

[Duskane]

All tanks suffer a bit leveling
Paladin has no aoe till mid 40s(and its the only damaging aoe it gets so it's pretty boring with alot of enemies).
Warrior doesn't get dps stance till early 50's.
Darks entire level set is all just oddly placed (was in HW aswell) removal of shadow skin didn't help .

Definitely need some awareness if enemies are magical or not Dark mind can help alot ,
Now that role skills unlocked Anticipation helps a little bit too but still poor design.

[Valdima]

So its not just me? I guess thats a relief but DRK is only tank i like so.. depressing..... fitting?

[Mortex]

Yeah drk pre 70 isn’t very good in dungeons just because you miss the blood to use quintus. But the same can be said about war without inner release pulling big pulls is hard. Dungeon tank order is Drk/war/pld. But the raid order is War/Pld/Drk

[Kalise]

Well... The major difference between PLD and not PLD is that while PLD has a shield to block attacks to provide that extra layer of mitigation, DRK and WAR instead have lower CD's on their mitigation CD's allowing them to use Vengeance/Shadow Wall more often than a PLD can use Sentinel.

To say nothing of being able to use Dark Mind and Thrill of Battle which again have shorter CD's than Bulwark.

So, it's expected that PLD would have to use fewer CD's because that's how they're designed. More passive mitigation but longer CD's so they can't pop skills as frequently.

Leveling up and doing Roulettes, I don't honestly feel much difference between the tanks in terms of defence. They all feel similar, given I manage their CD's properly. That is, until level 52 PLD because then Sheltron is really, really good against bosses. Since it lets you go ham in DPS stance while still letting you block 20-30% (Depending on what ilevel sync is putting your stats at) of the major damage abilities of bosses. Which is never matched by WAR (Unless you sit in Tank stance for Inner Beasts...) and DRK only compares at level 70 with TBN.

Though, this only matters if you don't need to be in Tank stance to keep aggro because some DPS is going ham and doesn't know what Diversion does... Since if you're in Tank stance, not only do you basically not generate gauge ever (Until level 68 when you'll have Requiescat > Holy Spirit spam which generates gauge in Shield Oath) but also you then also have higher base mitigations for the tanks across the board (With Grit also giving damage reduction and self healing from Souleater and WAR having Inner Beast) so the difference between having that block and not isn't as large.

[Noldornir]

If you were not using your CDs on PLD know that you were lucky with better healers on PLD than when you played DRK. DRK has much better up-time on its CDs compared to PLD (and WAR even more so).

I don't think this is the case; OP is saying he HARDLY need to put them on (on pulls) while he does need it on DRK (uptime is not in question if he's not using the skill at all.

I think the shield is the think changing things here;

In FF XIV:

All tanks can Parry (with weapon) (a succesfull parry grants damage reduction on the parried hit)
PALs can Block (With shields) OR Parry (with swords) (a succesfull block grants an higher damage reduction on the blocked hit)

So if 10 enemies are hitting you (as DRK) and you have a 10% chance of parry you'll reduce 1 hit out of 10 (not much)

if the same enemies are hitting you (as PAL) you'll problably block one and parry another one

This works really well with flash (that blinds) especially on low level enemies (not immune to blind). Flash is (indirectly) a def CD if the enemyes are blindable (and you'd use it anyway at least once).


On the opposite side PALs dont get any decent DPS skill 'till lvl 60ish; you could argue that this is not as important as the lack of survival skills (on a tank) but usually fast-killing a boss pays better than the "play safe" from what i could see 'till now

[aqskerorokero]

Exactly, that's how you should feel. Never underestimate the power of random blocks.