Dark Knight or Gunbreaker

[Shougun]

Another thing you could do is try Deep Dungeons for a hyper aggressive dunk into how they feel to play, look into a content called Palace of the Dead (located in South Shroud - Gridania, Quarrymill). Also may consider checking out PvP- while this isn't really indicative of how they are in PvE content... you can get the flavor vibe from it as well.

Even if one job isn't in a great spot they're all viable

[Swampking]

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

[Rowde]

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

drk just got an update lol

here's the thing "top dps" tank shifts around expansion to expansion and sometimes even between patches during expansions depending on what they adjust
it's more important to try them out and figure out which one was the playstyle that you most enjoy

All the tanks have all the tools needed to clear content

[Avatre]

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

Both are viable up to, and including, Ultimate. It really depends on what you personally enjoy playing. Give both a try, and see which fits you better.

I would also recommend trying a couple of other classes(particularly ones that still have positionals so that you understand why some tanks make those players angry when they spin the boss constantly). You might find one that you enjoy and have that as a backup class to play.

[OdinelStarrei]

Yes, this is my personal point of view from my experience, if you find that there are mistakes I wait for your explanations otherwise it's useless to say that.

I'll do it, real quick like, real sloppy post incoming. I think you're pretty wrong honestly.

Paladin is the best support tank, consistent rotation, low APM. It has 1 extra cooldown designed for party mitigation. It's rotation is mostly fixed, with potential of heavy optimization, giving it a higher skill ceiling than the other tanks. It's personal cooldowns are relatively mediorce, because it's missing one, but in emergencies, and only in emergencies, it can be supplemented with Clemency. Defensives are mostly centered around high mitigations and good on-demand support supplementation. The lack of healing on the physical GCD rotation is still a small problem that is slightly mitigated by the ability to block, but buffed Interventions still make it a top tier co-tank. Invulnerability is hampered by it's incredibly long 7m cooldown, leading to other tanks gaining a usage of their invuln over it in many situations, despite it being a true invuln. It's DPS is adequate among tanks, on the lower end with WAR, but is hindered by it's inability to abuse the raid buffs of the party in full uptime encounters. Paladin does not have the strongest attacks, that's Dark Knight. Paladin has a very CONSISTENT spread with lower peaks, and higher valleys than the others, paired with it's DoTs. Surprising good in multi-target. PvP PLD is very good in the right hands, it's infuriating in Onsall.

Warrior is the easiest tank, burst rotation, low APM. Simple rotation, great cooldowns, an opener to basic builder-spender priority systems on the tank role. Burst DPS is high, but the valley for WAR is low, and the lack of syngery with critical hit buffs from party members leave much of WAR's theoretical damage output stagnated by it's own design (auto critical direct hits being a staple of their burst phase). Players who optimize gauge management can put filler Fell Cleaves inside of burst windows to boost their damage, but the filler rotation outside of burst is weak. Trade that for being pretty much unkillable due to a litany of personal mitigation, the best invuln in the entire game, and with proper use of Bloodwhetting, self-healing potential. Defensively focused on HP recovery after tanking hits, with solid mitigation skills on top. Very good in progression environments. Great AoE at the start of bursts, but falls off quickly like it's other offensive traits. A good starter for tanking in PvP, low skill floor, low skill ceiling, but impactful nonetheless. Really great pick, even after adjustments.

Dark Knight is the burst rotation, high APM tank. Dark Knight has the same generic builder-spender skeleton as WAR and other DPS jobs, but features a significantly higher emphasis on stockpiling resources for burst windows. GCD rotation is very simple, and the lowest engagement of the tanks, but the sheer amount of oGCDs that are placed with 2 minute burst windows will blow apart every other tank in DPS except for Gunbreaker. The highest peak, beyond every job in the game except for NIN. It's DPS is incredible if abused for aDPS, inside of burst windows, with a favorable killtime or in multi-target, as many of DRK's attacks cleave or are noticeably resource positive in terms of GCDs spent at 2+ targets. Living Shadow in terms of potency, is the highest potency per action ability in the entire game at full duration. Defensively, has much more restrictions on what can properly mitigated due to magic attacks not being common in casual content, and TBN requiring an understanding of damage intake, the effect of stacking multiplicative mitigations with an additive shields, proper CD cycling, and also teams that aren't dumb as rocks. Opposite to WAR, defensively we're focused on negating damage entirely. Invulnerability is now #2 after fixes. Great tank in progression environments for it's solid OT/party support, flexible rotation, and more frequent on-demand cooldowns (15s vs 25s + 1 extra 60s with 2 stacks) and THE tank for optimization/farming environments. PvP is like, harder WAR with different CC. Pretty good on contested points/teamfights, and a menace if you fight or are chased by anyone with a DRK supporting them, much like PLD. Smaller niche compared to PLD/WAR in that content though. Better after Bloodspiller and LB tweaks.

Gunbreaker is the consistent rotation, high APM tank, with a little gauge management. A little bit of everything from other tanks, jack of all trades, ace in some situations. High mitigations in the kit, an extra physical based cooldown, magic-based party mitigation, two personal regens, a great on-demand cooldown, a serviceable invuln at 6m, and the highest damage in the game for a tank on a personal level with no team interaction. Bursting happens every 30 seconds, with a heavier burst at the 1 minute. A lot of time on GNB is spent bursting, and it suffers more than any other tank to drifting out of alignment, and for inexperienced players, movement during said bursts. High barrier to entry, but doesn't have a particularly obvious downside or stipulation like other tanks that isn't personal preference. The damage however, is very high, and reasonable to reach just because of the high potencies on each skill with an appreciable amount of oGCDs. Solid in AoE, resource positive like DRK in multi-target. Absolutely broken at Level 70 in comparison to other tanks at that level. I don't play GNB in PvP.

What should you play?

Any tank worth their salt in this game, is an omni-tank, in my opinion. They all do within like 5% DPS of each other, they all have enough cooldowns to do any content you need. Think of the tank role as the class, and each individual tank as a spec, if you will. You play all of them, maybe main one as a preference/comfort pick, maybe play one a lot less because you're not a fan of it (me with WAR). You share gear, no reason not to, right?

[Greyhawk]

Speaking from a healer's perspective: DRK is a lot easier to heal than GNB, because of TBN and the recent update that changed a useless ability into something that is so much better.

My personal experience with this is 'it's the job' because I've seen the same person on both jobs tanking when I heal, and it's always more of a pain to keep GNB up. GNB though does have some really good DPS burst damage, so I dunno WTF that other guy on the first page was talking about where GNB was bad DPS. I'm not the only person who hates healing GNB either.

Speaking from a tank's perspective: DRK storyline is one of the most interesting to go through; it was written very well. Personally, for me, it is more fun to play than GNB. It does very decent damage, has a better toolset for defense than GNB, and who wouldn't want to swing around a huge sword? (It makes for a great NieR 2B character too, haha). Playing GNB, I always feel like I am running out of defensive capabilities, because you get hit by everything. I think GNB could quite honestly gain a boost in defense.

[Jeeqbit]

Dark Knight is regarded to have a "braindead" GCD rotation which involves repeating 3 buttons most of the time, but between that you weave a lot of abilities and sometimes you can do bloodspillers for GCD.

Dark Knight can be really fun with varied abilities to press, especially with enough skill speed, but it depends on what you like. Gunbreaker is much faster-paced at level 90 with a big GCD rotation and a lot of abilities to press between them because of its continuation mechanic.

You have to tank while doing this rotation and that isn't very distracting in dungeons but it can be in other content. You might find a simple GCD rotation makes tanking easier or you might prefer Gunbreaker's busier rotation where you can't delay the abilities as much.

Paladin Rank 1 Best defense, good dps, can heal and have the strongest attacks, can use magic attacks, great at pvp
Warrior Rank 2 Good defense, Best dps, great at pvp
Gunbreaker Rank 3 Good defense, Bad dps, very bad at pvp
Dark Knight Rank 4 Bad defense, good dps, bad at pvp

When you say bad defense, that could be misleading because Dark Knight's mitigation is among the best, with a powerful shield called The Blackest Night which absorbs damage worth 25% of health on a 15 second cooldown. This can be combined with the 2-charge Oblation and all of the standard tank mitigations to effectively increase this percentage before the shield disappears.

If the damage is magic, which a lot of damage is, Dark Mind behaves as an extra Rampart, so it provides more mitigation than other tank's version of it like Camouflage or Thrill of Battle. Unlike paladin, their aoe mitigation, Dark Missionary, can benefit them as well.

Where Dark Knights suffer is self-healing and that might be what makes you feel weaker. The defense can suffer if you are afraid of The Blackest Night not breaking, but you can argue that if it doesn't break, then the incoming damage probably isn't that high anyway.

Warriors just have the standard defenses that other tanks have, but where they are stronger is with self-heals. Their unique focus is on taking damage with Holmgang and then healing it back up or increasing their total HP with Thrill of Battle instead of mitigating.

Gunbreaker is somewhere in the middle between Warrior and Dark Knight because it combines magic shields with self-healing.

They have different levels of mitigation, shield absorb and self-healing, but they are all meant to achieve the same result. Dark Knight just suffers a bit in early EW dungeons with fewer heals in aoe situations, but the recent update to Living Dead helps.

[Zomkei]

I hope I’m not making anyone angry. I’m excited to try dk and gunbreaker but I wanted peoples opinion on jobs. Maybe dk might get a update one day.

that person has no idea what they’re talking about. DRK is top DPS tank with GNB right on it’s tail. however it does not matter. every tank is good with its own str and weakness. play what you want.

(DRK storyline is fantastic by the way)

[XiRon]

If you're looking at which is more fun to actually do stuff with its a toss up. Drk is nice an edgy but its "burst" window is just Warriors without the guaranteed crits HOWEVER its shadow spirit aids its damage output immensely, whereas Gunbreakers kit is extremely fun if you dont mind a drift. Gnb burst rotation recently simplified its button inputs if that was an issue before.

If you're looking at story Id say Gunbreaker is better. You get new racial npcs in Eorzea (poor Sid is trapped in Ishgard and no new jobs have au ra except Warriors 60-70 questline), the Job NPC gets revenge on Garlean filth for destroying is country and family and torturing him and theres no bs "oh but you just disagreed with their facist One Race supremacist ideals ;_;" like Endwalkers story.
Dark Knight WOULD be better but if you dislike player agency being stripped away and how you write or interpret your character being interrupted by other characters telling you who you are, you wont like it. Drk fell off hard for me in its stormblood story like no little elf boy I dont feel the slightest bit bad for killing all the people Ive slaughtered for the msq not one of them was worth keeping alive they were all imperialist thugs please stop trying to guilt trip me.

[NekoMataMata]

Both. GNB has a more friendly endgame though.