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.

[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

[Phoenicia]

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

It's not that simple. The fact that when OP pulled he HARDLY needed to put them on can be attributed to many things, none of them is: "PLD mitigates more than DRK/WAR without CD". They could have simply had better healers while on PLD.

First of all, you can't block AND parry. Since this game hit-table checks for misses, then crits, then blocks, then parries, a PLD will parry much less than WAR/DRK (their parry chance is reduced by the same chance% of their block). So in your example, if you block 10% of the time, you'll only parry 9%. But in reality, parry is negligible without a CD that forces it. Tanks have base parry chance of 5%. If PLD has 20% chance to dodge, they're already at 4%. My PLD which is in BiS has near 40% block chance (I have 100% chance to block with Bulwark up now), so my parry can't be more than 3% unless I abuse Anticipation usage, and even then, Anticipation gives my PLD only 22% chance to parry instead of 30% of total attacks. WAR and DRK will parry more than a PLD ever will. As a matter of fact, you should disregard parry's existence as a PLD. I mean even DRK and WAR do lol.

Second, RNG mitigation is available to other tanks. WAR gains more parry from its gauge, DRK can AoE blind with Dark Arts Dark Passenger. DRK and WAR also have abilities to heal through their damage to make up for any mitigation lost. For a PLD to heal, they drop their ability to block by casting Clemency.

Third, RNG mitigation is NOT reliable. As I mentioned in my earlier post, damage shifts from many attacks that add up to many smaller attacks that add up and certain abilities to watch for, and should your RNG mitigative tool "fail" to mitigate the one hit that matters, you will take very nasty damage.

Last but not least, the fact block is stronger than parry is already balanced by having longer CD on all their defensives. Bulwark is twice as long as Raw Intuition and 3 times as long as Dark Mind for example. Sentinel is 50% longer than Shadow Wall and Vengeance, and lasts only 66% as long as the latter. Hallowed Ground is limited to 1 usage per fight as opposed to "abuse for half the nasties" that Holmgang allows you to. List goes on.

One additional thing: Due to lack of good AoE damage options, AoE pulls with a PLD simply take longer than they would if you had WAR or DRK. Stretching periods of high damage longer than necessary. This alone makes PLD simply the worst tank in AoE scenarios.

For more details, there are many posts scattered here on the forums by me and other better tanks that show the major differences between the tanks' sources of mitigation, DPS and utility.

[Kabooa]

It's not that simple.

Things rarely are, but Paladin as a baseline is more durable than the other two. That much is that simple. It's through active cooldown use where everyone ends up about even, but Dark Knights don't get their complete mitigation kit until 70, which is why this topic came about.

In short, shields OP.

[Noldornir]

It's not that simple. The fact that when OP pulled he HARDLY needed to put them on can be attributed to many things, none of them is: "PLD mitigates more than DRK/WAR without CD". They could have simply had better healers while on PLD.

Indeed, i'm presuming OP tested many times (with many variables changing) before submitting

First of all, you can't block AND parry. Since this game hit-table checks for misses, then crits, then blocks, then parries, a PLD will parry much less than WAR/DRK (their parry chance is reduced by the same chance% of their block). So in your example, if you block 10% of the time, you'll only parry 9%. But in reality, parry is negligible without a CD that forces it. Tanks have base parry chance of 5%. If PLD has 20% chance to dodge, they're already at 4%. My PLD which is in BiS has near 40% block chance (I have 100% chance to block with Bulwark up now), so my parry can't be more than 3% unless I abuse Anticipation usage, and even then, Anticipation gives my PLD only 22% chance to parry instead of 30% of total attacks. WAR and DRK will parry more than a PLD ever will. As a matter of fact, you should disregard parry's existence as a PLD. I mean even DRK and WAR do lol.

I think one should NEVER disregard something that's free (like the passive chanche to parry) especially early on. All the calculation you are making are good but based on the "long run" (overall chanche that something will happen) . WAR and DRK will indeed parry more (cause they can't block it FIRST). The only think not accounted is that parry chanche is "just another thing" that COULD happen in case you could not dodge/block:

let's say enemy as a base chanche to hit you of 100% (won't account crit/dh) and gives you 100 hits on both:

A PAL (20%dodge + 30%block + 10%Parry) (Clarification: i'm using random nambers)
A WAR/DRK (20% dodge + 10%parry)

let's also presume both tanks are not using any cooldown to raise such percentages (OP is not saying DRK is weak he's just stating it NEEDS CD always on while PAL doesn't); they'r just getting hit like a dummy target.

On the PAL:

-20 Hits will miss: 80 will land
-of these 80 the 30% (24) will be blocked= now we have a total of 56 hits remaining
-of these 56 the 10% (5.6) will be parried= 50.4 Hits Remaining

Total:

51 (rounding 50.4) Standard Hits
20 MISSES
24 Blocks
5 (rounding 5.6) Parries



On the other tank:

-20 Hits will miss: 80 will land
-of these 80 the 10% (8) will be parried= now we have a total of 72 Remaining hits.

Total:

72 Standard Hits
20 MISSES
8 PARRIES

As you can see, even with diminishing returns (which will always happen in a damage reduction calculation based on percentages) the double chanche is something not to take lightly. In truth the difference between chanches is minimal (the PAL parried 3 hits less than the other BUT also blocked 24)

Second, RNG mitigation is available to other tanks. WAR gains more parry from its gauge, DRK can AoE blind with Dark Arts Dark Passenger. DRK and WAR also have abilities to heal through their damage to make up for any mitigation lost. For a PLD to heal, they drop their ability to block by casting Clemency.

AoE Blind is available to PALs as well (Flash); PALs can't use clemency/holy spirits in the levels he's talking about (they can't DPS at all as well). While DPS->SelfHeal can be too little early on on levels to be noticed (no substantial damage)

Third, RNG mitigation is NOT reliable. As I mentioned in my earlier post, damage shifts from many attacks that add up to many smaller attacks that add up and certain abilities to watch for, and should your RNG mitigative tool "fail" to mitigate the one hit that matters, you will take very nasty damage.

I feel that you are a very strong and experienced player (from the things you say) but you are not accounting that the original statement have been made with a situational dogma in mind: OP IS STILL LEVELLING.

What you stated is true in a bossfight, you can't rely on blocking a Death Sentence (you use an active ability when you want to be SURE) but in a pull with 6+ enemyes hitting you passive RNG mitigation starts to get better; in fact block/parry/dodge is much more efficient on 10 low pwr hits than in 1 heavy pwr hit (in the latter as you say one should not rely on it, you cant just "hope" to block the tankbuster

Last but not least, the fact block is stronger than parry is already balanced by having longer CD on all their defensives. Bulwark is twice as long as Raw Intuition and 3 times as long as Dark Mind for example. Sentinel is 50% longer than Shadow Wall and Vengeance, and lasts only 66% as long as the latter. Hallowed Ground is limited to 1 usage per fight as opposed to "abuse for half the nasties" that Holmgang allows you to. List goes on.

It IS balanced, as you say, in fact OP is stating "I can't do it without DEF CD while with PAL i can". Pal will not even use a CD in a pull most times (PALs save it cause they can't use em so frequently)

One additional thing: Due to lack of good AoE damage options, AoE pulls with a PLD simply take longer than they would if you had WAR or DRK. Stretching periods of high damage longer than necessary. This alone makes PLD simply the worst tank in AoE scenarios.

For more details, there are many posts scattered here on the forums by me and other better tanks that show the major differences between the tanks' sources of mitigation, DPS and utility.

Now you are wounding me deeply

You are correct, Due to lack of good AoE damage options, AoE pulls with a PLD simply take longer than they would if you had WAR or DRK

AoE Pulling with a PAL while exping is a PAIN especially in a random with ppl random targetting enemies/running in front of you/fucking up in general; before LvL 30 a PAL needs to flash 2-3 times in order not loosing aggro (with maybe a combo or two inbetween - NO MORE) pulling with a WAR/DRK is SO MUCH BETTER.

Killing an almost dead boss when your party wiped with a DRK/WAR at lvl 30-50 is MUCH MORE easy than doing it with a PAL (you could survive eons sure, while comboing Rage of Halone on him cause you can only do that).

These differences tends to fade off at 70 due to all tanks having their complete toolkits.

In short:

A low-LvL PAL is more tough but will loose aggro pretty easily if overnumbered
a low-LvL DRK will have an harder time to survive but is unlikely to loose aggro

Later on skills such as The Blackest Night to improve a DRK resistance overall and Goring Blade/Royal Authority-Requiescat+Holy Spirit to give PALs something to attack with

[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?