How fun/hard are DRKs to play?

[Giryu Seishin]

Hey everyone. I really want to become a DRK/WAR in FFXI. Its been my dream since day 1 when I heard about the job system.

I was just wondering, to all those BETA and importer DRKs, did you have fun playing or have a really hard time? I know its an odd question, but with all the hate that you can gather and weak defense I'm hearing about, do/did you have hard time playing FFXI? The question refers to party invites, freq. of dieing, and the HATE gathering issues.

Thank you for any help that comes this way. Don't worry, no matter how diffcult it maybe to play DRK, im still gonna do it, no matter what. =p

[Hisdon]

well, as in fun, the most fun I ever had in beta is when I first got Stone at level 5 and my Deathbringer Sword (which is a very easy to get weapon for DRKs) and ran around nuking and hitting for 50, yeah it was fun as I leveled up, I got even more powerfull and got Drain and Bio, my favorite spells which I had a blast casting with.

Hard? Well, if your pt leader is a dumbass that expects you to tank, yeah, it'll be hard. Other than that if you don't provoke, it isn't too hard

[Aldo]

LV1-15 is godly, with Deathbringer and drain/aspire you can solo more easily than most any other jobs. At later levels however, you will get less and less invites, mostly due to the large large amount of other melee jobs. But, if you are dedicated you can make a very good combination of melees that show you how good drk is, just become a good leader and make your own pts. Other than that, theres not too much to drk, its the best of both worlds imo, you get to attack in the frontline and cast offensive black magic at the same time, its a very fun job to play, and you look godly when you solo stuff

[Hisdon]

I'm a good pt leader anyways so it doesn't matter to me...

[SAVAGE]

Yes Deathbringer OWNS lol, i loved that sword, but solo with it is hard, specially with teh DEF-8 it gives you. Solo is hard no matter waht after LVL 10.
But as for DRKs they summed it up, getting to be the strongest Melee as well as cast Blackmagic is so much fun. My favorite spell is Drain and Bio2, bio2 would actually do damage and helped alot.