Dark Knight needs serious help

[Rithy255]

I think in terms of defensive values that tanks offer, should be changed up not exactly nerfed or buffed across the board, what would be interesting is having more unique ways to mitigate without making a tank Useless. I do personally think the DPS side of tanks is the biggest Issues but both are really boring and uninspired at this point.

I'll list what I view as my "Ideal" of every tank (In terms of mitigation differences).
Paladin - Strong defensive Value, Amazing group/party support, Good targetable healing/sustain. but having Slightly lower damage on average (very small difference) but if some fights actually had more time away from the boss then it's range advantage could actually be useful, keep it having Longest Invul aswell.
Warrior - Higher max HP (15-20%), Fastest Invul, Great self sustain but in exchange Maybe has to choose between sustain or mitigation (similar to SHB), Less mitigation/team support on average, make it more selfish and less about healing the team (which much suits something like a paladin anyway).
Dark Knight - Pretty good defensive value & team support, specialises in Barrier protection, perhaps DRK could be more high skill celling and more risky then other tanks, high AP
Gunbreaker - Allrounder at most things not the best or the worst, harder to play (similar to DRK)

I just think having neat differences between how the tanks mitigate or what a tank could bring to the table in general could go a long way... Even changing up the 20% and 30% mitigations would be interesting, Instead of having a generic 20% maybe some tanks would have something that does something different? perhaps it's weaker but it's 30% would be stronger ect. That or we could literally remove Rampart as it doesn't really add anymore depth to tanks anyway.

IDK in general I just want tanks to both have different mitigations without one being OP... to me it seems like something that can be done, but it's just way easier to make everything the same currently... at the very least I'd want rampart deleted as it's just so boring and un-needed, they could even make your 3rd CD (Bulwark, DM, Camo, Thrill) stronger if they removed Rampart, 30% Mitigation could become on a faster CD As well. Tanks have too much mitigation that is similar & takes up space you could use for more intresting DPS buttons.

I'd also want tanks to have more reason to actively protect players with skills such as TBN, Cover, Intervention, HOC, Ect. Other then just being used on the MT.

[Colt47]

Somehow, I don't think the community understands what it really wants here because the healers want more complex damage rotations when new people have enough trouble already wrapping their heads around how to operate a scholar and astrologian, while at the same time people want tanks to be more dependent on their mitigations / weaker when we have a good example of this with DRK, and it is a complete crapshoot running that job in the dungeon content when the healer is just getting their paces. I literally experienced this first hand having to use Hyper potions on a DRK just to survive The Final Days of Amaurot with a struggling scholar.

The reason the two sides are going this route is probably because of...

A) people are taking this from the perspective of end-game and/or the most commonly used healers like WHM being paired with all the tanks in current content.
B) At this point it's been years since most people have taken Shadowbringers MSQ content seriously and few remember the problems of learning jobs after coming back several months later.
C) Most folks have become somewhat complacent in their positions forgetting that gear power creep is a thing in this game, especially when we are at patch 6.55 where the entire game breaks like a pretzel stick.

[Mayhemmer]

Somehow, I don't think the community understands what it really wants here because the healers want more complex damage rotations when new people have enough trouble already wrapping their heads around how to operate a scholar and astrologian, while at the same time people want tanks to be more dependent on their mitigations / weaker when we have a good example of this with DRK, and it is a complete crapshoot running that job in the dungeon content when the healer is just getting their paces. I literally experienced this first hand having to use Hyper potions on a DRK just to survive The Final Days of Amaurot with a struggling scholar.

I can say for certain the thing I, personally, want most out of DRK, PLD, and WAR is more interesting and creative design direction. Not (just) adjustments to mitigation; I want the devs to give them actual mechanics that go deeper than just get gauge > spend gauge, with almost no interaction with the rest of their kit. It baffles me why they just refuse to experiment with new job mechanics in general, let alone doubling-down on job identity and fantasy, the latter of which we've slowly been drifting away from, imo. I fear Dawntrail will just be Endwalker part 2 in terms of bland, stale, unevolved job design.

No, Yoshida, I DON'T want another round of press-and-forget, disconnected cooldowns sprinkled throughout 91-100 that don't interact with one another or your job gauge. I want deeper and more creative job gameplay. I want tanks to not be reskins of each other anymore. I don't care for ultimate optimization, I care about jobs being fun.

[Supersnow845]

The problem is designing everything single job for the lowest common denominator and giving none of them any sort of skill expression, this has been their entire philosophy that’s messing up the support roles

Yes there is someone out there who can’t figure out why spamming physick on SCH is “enough” when their tank is a WAR but not enough when their tank is a DRK, does that really mean we should both make the healers more boring to accomodate them and make the tanks even more immortal so that person can’t fail even on a “harder” healer like SCH

[mallleable]

Could having skills that cost MP, and HP be a potential solution to allow DRK to safely spend their HP on skills in PVE? It could even steal from RDM, and include a mechanics where you want to makes sure both bars are somewhat balanced.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Could having skills that cost MP, and HP be a potential solution to allow DRK to safely spend their HP on skills in PVE? It could even steal from RDM, and include a mechanics where you want to makes sure both bars are somewhat balanced.

HP spending is an okay mechanic, but warrants a fair bit of lifesteal and recovery.

For it to feel healthy your HP spending per minute needs to be met with about 130% in HP recovery and lifesteal to build around that coat and have bonus survival benefits.

Example: PVP Dark Knight works this way and is both strong and engaging.