DRK feels weak

[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.

[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

[TouchandFeel]

First off, we should all avoid comparing any of the other tanks' defensive capabilities, especially self-healing, against WAR in the context of large dungeon pulls. WAR is arguably immensely over-powered to the point of being broken in this scenario and does not make for a good point of comparison. Don't point to an outlier when you are trying to make an argument of how something compares to the rest.

For me personally I had no noticeable trouble with doing wall to wall pulls in dungeons while leveling DRK to 90 and for the most part the capability of being able to comfortably do that didn't seem all too different compared to when I leveled PLD to 90.

Going into leveling DRK, I really wanted to see for myself how bad it was defensively in dungeons since that is what some people were saying and so I was very meticulous about my approach; making sure that I always went into each dungeon at min level, always did one initial run using the Trust system to get a consistent base-line of performance per dungeon, and then did at least 4 runs back to back to have some amount of a sample size to average out to compensate for variable party competency.
Only during the largest pulls using a Trust party or if the party finder healer was so bad they could learn a thing or two from Alphinaud did I ever have any issues, and this is no different than when I was leveling PLD.

So the argument that DRK is "fine" in terms of basic defensive competency for large dungeon pulls is true. However, the differences in opinion come in because of differing definitions and expectations for what "fine" means.

Using the context used above to define "fine", that of basic competency in a range of average situations, DRK will perform approximately the same as PLD and GNB, or at least has the potential to.

The caveat to this is that I noticed that in this situation, DRK is a bit more involved or busy when executing it properly. I felt that a bit more thought and consideration was needed when determining how to stack/layer my defensives with TBN and how to best fill the gaps between TBNs. You are also inherently pressing defensive buttons more frequently with TBN having a recast of 15s and you wanting to pretty much always use that as often as you can. With pretty much everything revolving around TBN and how frequently it is available, you end up having to pay more frequent attention to the decisions that you make which can feel frantic and/or frenetic, leading you to very much love or hate the way it feels.
With PLD, defensive usage feels way more just like a cyclical rotation where you are more focused on the bigger longer recast defensives (Rampart, Sentinel, etc.) and then just layering in Holy Sheltron as it's available. It feels incredibly straight forward to the point of almost not needing to think about it as you do it. The only real level of thought you need to do, which is still minimal, is making sure to use your Requiescat + Holy Circle burst during periods of peak damage which always tends to be towards the beginning of a big pull so is really easy to remember and do.

The other side of this disagreement though, is if in your definition of "fine" you are including the ability to adjust to situations that have gone a bit off the rails, such as if you have a really bad healer, the dps keep dying forcing the healer to spend too much time on them, or the healer themselves die. Now while these kind of situations are normally few and far between, they do happen and I ran into instances with both PLD and DRK. The strong self-healing on PLD and especially having Clemency for emergencies gave me more flexibility to deal with these kind of situations, while with DRK I didn't feel quite that level of flexibility to keep myself sustained in a protracted engagement without a functional healer since there isn't as strong or constant a level of self-healing.

If you also factor in the invulnerabilities, yes Living Dead is definitely the worst of the bunch and especially so in party finder dungeon runs where it is can actually be dangerous to use. So the other tanks do have one extra strong defensive tool that they can leverage in dungeons over DRK. I personally feel that all the tanks are defensively strong enough that the invulns aren't even needed, but if you have them and they don't cost anything to use, make use of them.

So in conclusion ...

If your definition of "fine" is that DRK can perform well enough in large dungeon pulls to not be in imminent danger with an averagely competent party, then yes you are correct and DRK is "fine" by those standards and absolutely not the dumpster fire that some are making it out to be.

If your definition of "fine" is that DRK is equitable with the other tanks overall in all defensive aspects and all potential situations, then no DRK is not "fine" by those standards because there are discernible aspects and situations in which DRK lags behind the other tanks and could use some changes or adjustments to address those weak points.

These two things are NOT mutually exclusive and in the end both are true.

[NyneSwordz]

They are strong

[AC9Breaker]

They are strong

this guy gets it.

[Danelo]

You two above need to make your case for why it is good, not just troll. Saying something is strong without backing it up is not worthy of a forum meant for discussion and open dialogue. Please stop trolling.

[Ultaniku]

To the above, yes offensively they are strong. Great dps is always nice to have, but it doesn’t take away from the elements that make the job feel clunky or less satisfying. DRK is my main tank, and while I love seeing beefy dps numbers it doesn’t detract from Blood Weapon not feeling good, or Oblation having to be paired with another CD to feel even slightly useful. Then there are the other issues that it possesses that could use some work. Strong doesn’t equal fun and satisfying. At least not for everyone.

[Danelo]

To the above, yes offensively they are strong. Great dps is always nice to have, but it doesn’t take away from the elements that make the job feel clunky or less satisfying. DRK is my main tank, and while I love seeing beefy dps numbers it doesn’t detract from Blood Weapon not feeling good, or Oblation having to be paired with another CD to feel even slightly useful. Then there are the other issues that it possesses that could use some work. Strong doesn’t equal fun and satisfying. At least not for everyone.

No doubt, everyone agrees DRK is offensively strong. Just saying they are strong is not very clarifying was the point. The troll messages are less than helpful in the eyes of those that have played the job a long time and would like to see it improved for a bunch of reasons.

[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.