Dark Knights are an absolute joke and I'm tired of pretending they're not

[Padudu]

i swear DRKs are just about the whiniest tanks i've ever seen

[Duskane]

100% agree with everything you said except "That's a fault of the job design"

It's the fault of the healer.

So many healers complaining they are bored and have nothing to do, yet here we are, talking about DRK's being weak and dying all the time again. Doesn't add up.

If your healer is no good, you will struggle. As it should be. Sounds like good game design to me.

And I don't want to hear "what about WAR..." that is WAR'S strength, self sustain, in the same way a DRK can prevent a healer hitting the floor from an incoming mechanic in high end content (or any boss for that matter) every 15 seconds, that's it's strength. Variety is a good thing!

Like I said, stick with it, nail your CD rotation and you won't be having any issues unless you have abysmal healing backing you up, which does happen from time to time. But that doesn't mean the fault is with DRK.

what are you even on about

There is a clear difference with Dark kit and other 3 in terms of defensive kit,
any healer can heal Drk fine and Drk can do Wall to wall as well
but this isn't the metric if a job is good or not
WHM can clear and heal just fine but it is in need of some serious help right now as well.

DRK easily is the worst of the three defensively
"b-b-but DRK trades defense for offensive it does 1% more than gnb see!"
this has never been an intended design philosophy for tanks in this game and just because Drk by some sheer miracle it has a fraction of DPS higher than other 3 means it not in need of help,rework or overhaul/QoL.

"So many healers complaining they are bored and have nothing to do, yet here we are, talking about DRK's being weak and dying all the time again. Doesn't add up."
a healer being paired up with a DRK doesn't suddenly make healers have fun and engaging gameplay.

[OdinelStarrei]

Everything just has to lead back to Xeno doesn't it...

It's a pretty difficult argument to make, defending DRK, once you start comparing just how insane WAR is, it's such an unfair comparison that it's not even worth making in my opinion. That goes for the other tanks as well. WAR is just that busted in dungeon AoE self-healing, something almost 100% of the playerbase has to deal with, unlike something silly like a DPS check.

Honestly, it's much worse from a healer perspective. Unlike the other tanks, (WAR esp), Healers have an ACTIVE responsibility to assist the DRKs mitigate. This is why you see so many new SGEs be totally unable to heal DRKs, because they play it like a WHM or Eos-less SCH. I leveled all the healers to 90 recently, and got quite a few DRKs, both bad and good, and here's what I've noticed personally, a bit of a ramble, but whatever.

WHM
Wow, WHM's really did get the short straw this expansion, YIKES. The first thing I would do is tell the DRK in the party to use Living Dead. Most DRK's expressed genuine surprise and this, one even saying that he didn't even have the skill bound on his hotbar due to how trash it was. That should be a sign, Square Enix. 1st mob pack was ignoring all my responsibilities as a healer and going straight damage with PoM and Holy, forcing the DRK to LD or die. Wait out the timer, benediction as late as possible, then throw out the Asylum, Regen, Benesion, and if high enough level, Aquaveil to increase the strength of TBN and Benison. Solace as needed to generate Misery, Tetra early in case the pull drags on too long. Second trash packs, pull out Temperance, Thin Air + Medica II as we're walking up to the pack for huge regens, throw down Lilybell, and hopefully Misery as soon as possible.
DRK healing on WHM was never really a problem, even if I had to save Benediction for LD. As long as they used mitigation, and the DPS did comparable or higher damage than myself pulls would end far before they ran out of resources or I was forced to Cure II. A solid experience.

SCH
Now this is where it gets really good actually. SCH by FAR took the least amount of effort. Why? Because SCH has like, infinite tools. I have an answer for literally everything. Starting an pull? RecitExcog. That's the default, every pull will have one. By the time it wears off, you'll have a regular excog ready to go. Protraction at the start to make TBNs stronger. Sacred Soil at the start for regens, and to make TBN stronger. Fey Illum and Whispering Dawn off Eos for more regens and to give her something to do. Art of War is really great here, can weave in a lustrate or whatever oGCDs necessary. As the last enemy is dying, I usually dissipate to get those free aetherflow stacks, pray for a crit adlo as we are running to the next pack, and that's where Expedient, Fey Blessing/Union and Seraph would come in, making the 2nd pull much smoother than the first. After this point, there's an overabundance of Fairy gauge, so I found SCH exceptionally easy to steamroll dungeons on as long as I repeated this pattern. I would almost never have to resort to Aldo spam, and of course Physick remained firmly off my hotbar. Very enjoyable experience to heal DRKs with this one.

AST
Pretty similar to SCH really. AST's cooldowns are so short, every single pull I'd have a wide suite of oGCDs to keep the DRK alive. This is where I was punished the most for DRKs not using mitigation though, as I wouldn't be able to sustain a high amount of throughput without neglecting my other responsibilities without Lightspeed, like proper carding, or astrodyne set up. Couldn't pump out as much damage as WHM, but I gave DRKs melee cards on their two minute bursts and saw pretty agreeable results from it. I would request them to use LD on the 1st pull after every boss if they could, since Macrocosmos gets the most value there than anything these paper tigers of boss fights can do. I would start every pull incredibly strong, CU, CO, Intersections, I had a lot of options, but I feel like I ran dry a bit more often, possibly due to overextending on Essential Dignities, I'm not a very good AST. On AST I had to dip into Benefic II way more often, since I didn't have auto-healing like with SCH/SGE or stunning firepower of Holy spam WHM, with situations possibly devolving into a Synastry + Benefic II spam when DPS really couldn't be bothered to do damage, and myself as AST being unable to make up the difference outside of Gravity II with 2 sealed Astrodynes.

SGE
I'm pretty sure a good SGE and a good DRK combination is absolutely busted. You get the DRK damage, you get the SGE damage, and you get the sturdiest TBNs. With the massive amount of oGCD, self-reapplying shields SGE brings, things like Kerachole, Holos, and Taurochole combine with Oblation, all of those oGCDs having short recasts that further amplify Haima, Panhaima, and TBN. The only thing I would ever have to alternate between pulls were Panhaima and Haima, everything else was easily handled by these other incredibly powerful oGCDs, with me spamming AoE the entire time, applying Soteria once the Panhaima/Haima shields fell off. Even on first pull where I would use the weaker Panhaima, it was more than made up for by a Krasis+Physis II and Zoe+Pneuma combo once I let the DRK get a little bit low after I had used the initial suite of damage mitigation. It's not like I needed weave slots, or that any of these had particularly long cooldowns. SGE is a true maverick in this department, and I not only performed the best using it, I had the most fun working together with general tank mitigation for mutual benefit. Seriously, this comp is brutally good if both players are playing at their peaks, I cannot recommend it enough.

You know what the problem is? I had to use my entire kit on all healers to heal a DRK in a way I thought was comfortable for both sides. Since I'm of the mindset, "Perfect practice makes perfect" I would play dungeon pulls like I'd be in an extreme trial or something. Use your entire kit, ABC, space out mitigation properly, do as much damage as possible, eat food (since it's so easy to make now/EXP), etc etc etc. This was MANDATORY. The same thing was demanded of the DRK, even when I play it. Reprisal, AL, doing actual damage, the works. It was actually quite enjoyable and easy when I found the right tank.

But when I healed the other tanks? I still did all those things, but it didn't feel nearly as needed, and if the DPS were slacking, as long as the tank pressed even a handful of mitigations, I don't think I'd be any the wiser. The high skill floor for basic adequacy on dungeon DRKing is not conducive to players who are not willing to put forth the effort to not be at a bare minimum competent in their dungeons on each party slot. If you get a Cure Iing WHM, or a Diagnosis-only SGE, or a single-targeting anything, you as a DRK are going to die, painfully, there is nothing you can do about it. Just take the penalty, it will be a lot less annoying.

When I had good DRKs, DRKs that would play like I would in dungeons, it was easier to heal them than all of these bandwagoning WARs who think that 1 Bloodwhetting is the only CD they need to press in an entire dungeon pull. For the casual player who doesn't press all of their buttons, healing DRKs or tanking as a DRK must be an absolute nightmare, which would explain the discrepancy in experiences. I've never had any problems healing DRKs or being healed as DRK if both parties were capable of playing at even an acceptable level. But you need all parts of the team to be doing that to really get the most out of it in dungeons, while other tanks are running around soloing things all day, carrying people with literally nothing inside of their skulls, no problem.

So that once leaves us with the tried and true DRK problem that we are all familiar with. Noticeably more effort for the same overall result as other jobs in the role, now extended to the entire light party. I don't really care if they adjust this, since I like being challenged, I'm just pointing out what I've observed now that all my tanks and healers are at 90. BiS DRK is going to shred Smileton and Sigma pulls to pieces though. With damage CDs, I'm already slicing some packs down in less than twenty-five seconds with a decent group, the damage is already pretty obscene with a i600 greatsword. I'm not justifying this, I'm just saying Living Shadow and two Shadowbringers/SaD/Floods are enhanced multi-enemy deletion devices.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

...Drk by some sheer miracle it has a fraction of DPS higher than other 3 means it not in need of help,rework or overhaul/QoL.

Are you ignorant or are you just deliberately misrepresenting reality?

What does "fraction of DPS higher" even mean, and why do you lump the other 3 tanks together as if they're doing close to the same DPS?

...something silly like a DPS check.

Yeah, clearing the currently most difficult content in the game is pretty silly.

[OdinelStarrei]

Yeah, clearing the currently most difficult content in the game is pretty silly.

Dang, I knew I shouldn't have used sarcasm.

Elaboration, dungeons everyone has to do, therefore the things I appreciate about DRK, like awesome raid buff contribution have a proportionally lower value the easier the content is. I'm not calling it silly in context of saying ," No one does this, who cares", I'm saying it in the context of "Why doesn't Square Enix actually implement DPS checks more often, because it's straight up non-existent in casual play." Thing like that makes comments like "DRK does the highest damage!" seem superfluous if you're not actually trying to push content like we're trying to. They AREN'T, of course, because damage is a critical metric, but someone who doesn't care about playing properly isn't going to see it that way, and are just gonna look at invincible tanks that aren't DRK and come up with wrong conclusions. And their sub money/opinion is just as good as ours in SE's eyes.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Pretty much all of the game balance is superfluous outside of the actually difficult content, though I'm willing to admit there are some sore spots for DRK in leveling dungeons.

[OdinelStarrei]

Pretty much all of the game balance is superfluous outside of the actually difficult content, though I'm willing to admit there are some sore spots for DRK in leveling dungeons.

I would LOVE to agree with you, because I feel exactly the same way. Dungeons don't matter, they're far too easy.

However, I'm looking at it from a broader perspective. The things I really want to get fixed on DRK, Blood Weapon, Living Dead, the skill distribution, all of these things are aspects of the job that directly affect both dungeon, and more importantly, raid. I don't need more sustain during Curtain Call! Souleater is enough! There are fixes that people have been asking about for years. I want Dark Missionary in UCOB, FFS.

But if vocal portions of people are so obsessed with "self-sustain" and "making dungeon DRK as good as WAR" when you reasonably CAN'T compare WAR to anything in the game's life except for maybe SB DRK in dungeons, all it serves to do is dilute the feedback further, and make the message get jumbled. I care way more about having functioning, cohesive job mechanics over "the healer and I have to try in dungeons sometimes". Dungeon DRK unplayable is an over-exaggeration I can easily see them over correcting on, and washing their hands of all the feedback that has been given about legitimate grievances, and then everyone will turn on DRKs again saying, "Oh wow! You guys got buffed in 6.1 and you're STILL complaining!? You're just like the jaded SCH mains!"

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Don't get me wrong, DRK definitely needs QoL stuff like Blood Weapon stacks. It just doesn't really need any power increases (I wouldn't count adjustments to Living Dead to make it more healer friendly as a "power" increase, mind).

[Elleia]

The only healer I've leveled past 80 so far is SGE so it's likely different for the others, but I definitely struggled more with DRK than any other tank.

The last two pulls in Tower of Zot was always 50/50 chance of a wipe when I had a DRK tank. I remember having to use all of my CDs on the 2nd to last pull to keep the tank alive, then ending up having nothing left for the last pull and just not being able to keep the the tank up. No issues with any other tanks in there.

It could have been that the DPS were bad making the pulls take too long, or the DRKs I ran into were not good at mitigating, but I don't know. Either way I definitely groaned whenever I loaded into an 81+ dungeon and saw the tank was a DRK.

[RyuDragnier]

Don't get me wrong, DRK definitely needs QoL stuff like Blood Weapon stacks. It just doesn't really need any power increases (I wouldn't count adjustments to Living Dead to make it more healer friendly as a "power" increase, mind).

I don't think any DRK worth their salt wants more power. We want an actual fun kit, and would trade with PLD to be the lowest DPS if it meant we had a kit that was fun to play with.