Disclaimer: This is based off the available information. If it changes for the better before release excellent. I make this post in the hope that more attention to the problems will encourage just such an outcome.

You made DRKs even more boring to play then you did in Stormblood. We have less skills AND less traits then the other tanking classes, we only have ONE primary combo finisher, and we spend well over half our time simply generating resources so we can use the only cool abilities we have because you ripped our primary resource generators apart. No more Blood Price and Blood Weapon is a measly 10s duration with a whopping 60s cooldown and TBN is unreliable at best.

I made a quick and dirty rotation calculator for my main class using the available information about the new abilities and...it's not encouraging. I mapped out what the first minute of a fight would look like as far as DPS rotation went and you spend a good half of your time just rolling through the Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Souleater combo over and over because you don't have the resources for literally anything else.

My calculator for reference: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Feel free to point out any numbers you think are wrong, Internet Citizens but I tried to make it as accurate as possible and even calculated in passive mana regen since I think we get that back now.

On top of that, you made DRK mitigation even WORSE then it was in stormblood while increasing the other tanks. Dark Missionary is just a worse <insert party mitigation ability from any other tank>. Dark Mind is just a worse <insert self 20% mitigation from any other tank>. The only decent mitigation we have is TBN and the shield is actually almost too strong for its duration now and if it doesn't break we've just lost a third of our mana that we could have used to increase our damage output. So we're stuck holding a third of our mana in reserve the entire fight waiting for when we KNOW the shield will break or using that mana for an extra Edge of Shadow and eating the tank buster with our face.

I truly hope the numbers or the abilities that have been revealed so far are wrong because as it currently stands, DRKs will be spending well over half the fight spamming their Souleater combo with nothing to weave between GCDs because they don't have enough resource to use any oGCDs especially after their opener is over with.