On Discord (The Balance for endgame stuff, PVPaissa for PVP, etc). There's also threads outside the /xivg/ on 4chan you can read. /xivg/ is more of a containment thread for the ERP'ing troons and weirdos that got XIV threads soft-banned in the first place. Now that WoW janny is currently sneeding about the state of his game and can't instantly shitcan threads because Hiroyuki likes XIV due to it being LE SUPERIOR NIPPONESE GAME, you can probably find normal threads on /v/, /vrpg/, and /vm/ again.
In-game, just join a non-pozzed free company or linkshell.
I wouldn't recommend The Balance. They're run by crazy trannies (As discussed in previous pages) like Skye and Lyra Rose, many of the moderators/mentors are LGBT retards. There are words you are not allowed to say, and steering your opinion in the wrong direction will get you banned/ostracized.
/xivg/ is probably one of the worst generals on /vg/. Way too much ERPing, way too many ebins, way too many discord cliques trying to start bullshit in the thread.
Lemme ask, not for the sake of defending Dark Knight, but out of curiosity: What exactly is it that makes Dark Knight suck so much compared to the other tanks as of now?
It does feel a bit on the archaic side of things, which is unusual for the poster class of the expansion (Shadowbringers), almost like they wanted to hang onto stuff from Heavensward and Stormblood that just really doesn't work with the way the other Tanks are balanced. I feel like Blood Weapon definitely needs to go, same with Dark Mind (sure, it's unique in that it resists Magic but that doesn't feel like it's mattered since Heavensward), Salted Earth – despite being a damage option – is pretty outdated, they might as well get rid of Abyssal Drain altogether since it's delegated to being a 60 second cooldown and probably gets forgotten outside of really niche uses, and the new functionality of Dark Arts seems kind of dumb.
So, do those qualities end up dragging Dark Knight's damage output/utility down compared to the others? Because I could kind of see where that would be the case, but I also feel like Dark Knights have plenty of options for weaving in rotations that it shouldn't theoretically kneecap their output. Especially since I've heard it said that Dark Knights should never ever let their resources be full – that MP bar should never be at 100% and that Blood Gauge should never hit 100% because if it does, it means you're not using your kit, which is a damage loss.
Dark Knight does about 3% less damage than Gunbreaker at 75 percentile. Gunbreaker is the highest tank dps in the game. It's a 300-400 dps difference into 13000 dps. Dark Knight sucks because terminally autistic people said it does.
The hardest dps check in the game currently is Eden's Promise (E12S Part 1). It requires 126,000 DPS to clear. From fflogs' rankings from 5.5 (Pre-echo), if everyone pulls in 50 percentile, it will look something like this:
Dark Knight - 13,000 dps
Gunbreaker - 13,350 dps
White Mage - 11,180 dps
Scholar - 12,000 dps
Samurai - 22,800 dps
Ninja - 22,380 dps
Red Mage - 22,100 dps
Dancer - 20,600 dps
This nets you about 137,410 dps. This is likely without counting limit break, which accounts for about 2000 dps, bringing the total up to 139,410. Even going by 5.4 rankings, you'd still clear with this composition and 50 percentile, which would be considered "pretty bad" by some. If you can't clear, that's because someone needs to pull their weight, not because someone is playing a specific job. If you're not playing in a week 1 clear static, which is the grand majority of raiders, you shouldn't care about this shit at all.
It's not like Gunbreaker doesn't have the same "dumbed down" stupid shit Dark Knight has. Gunbreaker has a 60 seconds cooldown aoe ability called Bow Shock, it has an ability called Bloodfest that gives it resources to use Burst Strike or the Gnashing Fang combo that requires that resource. Gunbreaker also has Sonic Break that also has a 60 seconds cooldown. Dark Knight brings The Blackest Night, which is the best mitigation tool in the game, it also has Dark Mind.
The only things I think are silly are how you are required to use Blood Weapon and Delirium as late as possible to scum an extra attack out of them, but Gunbreaker has the same problem with No Mercy which is on a 20 seconds duration.
General rule of thumb with 4chan is their generals are either crazed bullshit like the XIV one or one of the most candid discussions on the game you can get. Which it is will fluctuate wildly depending on who is around at the time. With FFXIV it's just always horny loons, so I'm sorry to hear you saw that. There are plenty of horny roleplayers and the like but they're not the majority of players, they are the ones that generate insane bullshit to share though.
The game has extremely extensive guides and a good number of excellent youtube guides for fights and the like as well. Also as you mentioned later this thread isn't too bad for information or looking for help on some things.
The /xivg/ general is so out of control that they need both a /trash/ and an /aco/ thread to try to contain the degenerate ERP, but it's still not enough.
The game has some good guides. I like Rainesama's raid guides a lot, they're to the point and without the BS. As for jobs themselves, it's easy to figure out on your own, you can get an opener to help you, but outside of that, it should be obvious what you should use before what.