Thoughts on Tanks so far in Endwalker

[ArthurATDayne]

With an almost silly amount of threads on DRK, I thought it would be cool for players to also get to know how tanks are doing in general, me included!

How are the tanks performing for you guys? In levelling and end game.
How is their:

Damage
Sustain
Mitigation
Feel
Rotation

Would really love to hear everyones thoughts.

I personally have only touched WAR so far in any great depth. It is so good, the healing is madness, more a less solod last boss tower of zot without a healer, because they died, and still kept up the remaining dps. Love WARs.

Despite the horrendous 5000+ queues I was able to level up DRK to 87 through 11pm-5am PST windows using Daily Roulettes and MSQ and without mentioning any spoilers my impression on DRK so far is it performs decent enough provided you have a healer that is at least Trust Healer competency and willingness to quickly heal you.

And when I say "decent enough", I mean not dying and wiping more than once on dungeons. DRK's HP Sustain rests on 1-2-3 Single Target Combo and Abyssal Drain that is usable once per 60s and requires at least 4+ mobs to be meaningful. Like I have to really save it until my health drops below 50% to use it because once it's on CD, you aren't going to get another chance to use it again in fight and all you have are TBN HP Bubble and Reduced Damage Taken Mitigation to slow your damage intake and all that lost HP still needs to get healed up.

I always find myself going 1-2-3 Single Target Combo to restore HP when Abyssal Drain is on CD on 3+ mobs instead of the usual 2 Pre-EW. Everything seems more painful after this stat squash and the amount of incoming damage even on synced down content seems overwhelming even with a dedicated healer spamming heals, more so than I remembered. So on both current level and synced down content I have to 1-2-3 Soul Eater Single Target Combo spam on 3+ mobs occasionally to maintain some HP Sustain because defensive options aren't going to restore that lost HP.

What happens in mid fight on mob packs while rotating through Reduced Damage Taken Mitigations is I usually hold off on that Abyssal Drain until TBN is like few seconds away from being ready because that's when 25% Max HP worth of damage intake stops and I get breathing room, Hit that Abyssal Drain to get some immediate HP back and hit TBN ASAP. 1-2-3 Soul Eater Combo for a bit of HP & Mana/Blood restore while using oGCD Flood of Shadows or Salted Earth for maintaining mob pack aggro. Also helps to pray that heals from healer will be incoming soon... I hope.

It would be nice if the 2 hit AOE Combo that restores mana/blood would have some healing potency added to it like 200 Potency at least per Combo so I can stick with using just the AOE Combo on 3+ mobs without losing out on what little HP Sustain DRK has. Single Target HP Sustain is somewhat bearable with just the 1-2-3 Soul Eater Combo because it's 300 Heal Potency per Combo but I'd be holding back if I didn't say it feels like shit.

On the Damage aspect, it doesn't feel all that different from what I'm use to, which is to say DRK is really quick, controllable front loaded burst with all those oGCD Edge/Flood of Shadow, Carve & Split, Salted Earth & Darkness pop etc and Bloodspiller/Quietus for GCD blood spender, feels fine to me for most part. I'm satisfied so far with DRK Damage.