DRK feels weak

[Dracosavarian]

If you have "...no more buttons to mash to keep enough meaningful mitigation up." you might be doing something very wrong. Dungeon speed-runners average about 33-40s per pull and that's not including the 13-15s to gather up the next wall-to-wall pull. Your average Duty Finder group does about 40-55s per pull. You'll have at the most three uses of TBN per pull. This also gives you about one Abyssal Drain use per pull as well and you obviously want to save it for when you need it each pull and not spend it immediately (you don't understand how many times I've seen this). The rest of your mitigation tools should be spread out accordingly.

I get the very strong feeling that you have not leveled Dark Knight at all after Endwalker’s launch.

[Almandaragal]

I get the very strong feeling that you have not leveled Dark Knight at all after Endwalker’s launch.

You'd be correct. Anyone who starts off a post with "I feel like DRK is very strong defensively." in the context of a thread noting that DRK feels weaker defensively in Endwalker is either inexperienced with the job at 90, or likely trolling. When they throw in "but self sustain doesn't count as mitigation" as if self sustain isn't part of a defensive kit, well, I can't help but wonder if they actually tank dungeons at all, or are just tanking 8 man content where incoming damage is mostly a joke in comparison.

Overall their posts give off an air that they don't seem to understand how survivability for tanks in dungeons works. Somehow Thrill doesn't count as mitigation because 20% more HP doesn't reduce damage taken (despite literally giving you the equivalent of a temporary shield that can be healed) but TBN counts as mitigation because... 25% more HP? For 7 seconds instead of 10, shield not healable, doesn't increase amount healed, and is a DPS loss if not fully diminished?

I mean, I get it. TBN is a great skill in a vacuum. It has pros and cons, potential versatility, etc. However, it doesn't hold a candle to the new tools literally every other tank got, and it seems like some people are still hung up on it being one of the better tools of the prior expansions, not realizing that it's sub par now. Or that it had to make up for two of DRK's cooldowns being magic only, or that it's invuln was garbage comparatively, and so on. DRK doesn't need to be the "best" tank. However, I would like for it to have similar self sustain even if that comes at the cost of some of it's damage.

I dunno, maybe the job balance team just forgot that I can't spam my Abyssal Drain on the global cooldown anymore-- for two expansions, and thinks we're still fine.

[ThorneDynasty]

And let's hear your reasoning why the healing effects of Bloodwhetting, HoC and Sheltron don't count, should be good.

[pastry777]

And let's hear your reasoning why the healing effects of Bloodwhetting, HoC and Sheltron don't count, should be good.

If you're referring to my argument, it's simple. Self-sustain =/= mitigation. Lets hear your reasoning as to why they should be counted?

[Annihilism]

When Yoshi was asked about possibly adding more meaningful DPS kits to healers his reply was basically "LOL just play SGE, wtf?" So when the time comes to address the DRK issues in dungeons don't be surprised if SE answers with "Well uh, certain tanks are a better choice for certain content..." In Yoshi's defense DRK in 8mn content is very fun to play, but during trash pulls not so much. Honestly the quickest fixes they could do for DRK in short term is maybe something like changing Abyssal Drain into a WS that would be 3rd step of our aoe combo that still retains the healing element (nerfed slightly) and of course redesigning Living Dead.

Disclaimer, I myself have no issue healing DRKs but when I play DRK myself I dislike the over reliance on the healer during trash. The stark difference between DRK and WAR in dungeons needs to be addressed. You could argue that DRK is the expert mode of tanks because you have zero safety nets unlike PLD that cannot die in dungeons but still DRK's kit seems jank as hell in dungeon pulls unlike the very synergistic kits of WAR and PLD.

Sigh, I miss stormblood DRK...

[ThorneDynasty]

If you're referring to my argument, it's simple. Self-sustain =/= mitigation. Lets hear your reasoning as to why they should be counted?

If hit points aren't mitigation, then temporary hit points aren't either. TBN mitigates exactly 0%.

[pastry777]

If hit points aren't mitigation, then temporary hit points aren't either. TBN mitigates exactly 0%.

I'll requote myself:

"Mitigation = Incoming damage reduction
Mitigation =/= Self-Sustain"

TBN actually soaks damage before the rest of the damage applies to your HP. Temporarily changing your maximum HP doesn't "mitigate" or "reduce" the incoming damage inflicted to your HP.

[Weetzlo]

So if I have 100,000 HP, use thrill to get to 120,000, and then take a 20k damage attack leaving me at 100,000 health, I have not reduced that mount of incoming damage at all? Crazy how backwards I had it this whole time

[Ryaduera]

I'll requote myself:

"Mitigation = Incoming damage reduction
Mitigation =/= Self-Sustain"

TBN actually soaks damage before the rest of the damage applies to your HP. Temporarily changing your maximum HP doesn't "mitigate" or "reduce" the incoming damage inflicted to your HP.

Mitigation is literally how much effective HP you have. Shields, damage reduction, and raw HP values are all factors. If you have 80000 hp and you use Ramparts your eHP becomes 96000. If you use TBN it becomes 100000 eHP. If you use TBN with Ramparts your eHP is 120000. If you use Thrill of Battle your eHP is 96000. If you use Thrill with Ramparts you have 115200 eHP. If you then heal after taking damage, your eHP increases by the heal value multiplied by the mitigation value, so if you heal for 3000 (which WAR does several times (per target in the case of dungeons) over the duration of a single cooldown) then your eHP increases by 3600 after the heal has taken effect. The only time TBN is better is when damage bypasses your maximum eHP. This scenario does not exist outside of tools every tank already has because the balance team will never make a single job absolutely necessary for any content because that creates imbalance. Over a longer duration, every other tank has a much greater eHP value even after diminishing returns of percentage based mitigations are taken into consideration. The best mitigation is a combination of HP/Shield values (and yes they are interchangable because in terms of damage calculations they are exactly the same) and outright damage reduction since that pairing does not suffer diminishing returns, so TBN isn't technically bad, what is bad is the lack in actual percentage decreases compared to every other tank with WAR technically being close (still greater than DRK though) but at least WAR can bring themselves to full HP the instant they drop, meaning in the duration of a fight, they have far much eHP to burn through. Nobody thinks TBN is bad, but we do think it doesn't deserve to take up such a colossal amount of our defensive skill budget. A heal over time or actual damage reduction on shield break would fix every issue.

Healing is a reactive form of mitigation. This is why drain tanks exist in several games.

[EDIT] PLD also has less active uses of damage reduction in terms of percentage values but having a passive shield to RNG block damage makes the math significantly harder to work out unless an actual block rate percentage were presented to us, instead we can only extrapolate and infer from what we see, but to my knowledge I don't think anyone actually has charted out block rates, so it's pretty hard to tell how much eHP a PLD has, but it's definitely more than DRK. PLD healing is deeply flawed in my opinion since it is tied to a burst window, but it receives less complaints because at least the job is coherent.