What i would change about dark knight if i had the chance.

Dont get me wrong dark knight is an amazing DD right now .... but i find the job very one dimensional and it lacks a certain versatility and combinable potential with other jobs.

im going to take this much like my monk rundown and break it down into pieces .... the roles i see dark easily filling are as follows ::

Tank
Damage dealer.
Magic damage dealer.

Lets start off on the first suggestion :: Tank

and much like a lot of other posts i have lets start off with a stance ... this would be a new ability to the game i call the stance ::

Shared Misery(lvl 49 or lower) :: unlike paladin or monk instead of negating negative status ailments the dark knight instead reflects debuffs on it to all active enemies (aura) and is immune to complete disables with a cost ... when the dark knight suffers a stun, paralyze, petrify, death, etc. anything that either instantly kills or completely disables or stops action the dark knight is instead slowed stacking with regular slow for the duration of the effect. Shared misery will lockout any other dark knight stance. as with all stances zoning or refreshing cooldown would reset the opportunity to swap stances(corsair). attack is lost while in this stance defense is gained and magic defense (even spread weaker than pld or run in each but adds to both). this stance will also generate extra enmity with all actions.

Under Shared Misery a few job abilities would work differently ::

(Spell) Endrain :: this spell needs to be added at 49 or lower and be % damage based.
(Spell) Endrain II :: this spell needs to be added at higher than 49 (probably 99) and be a higher percent of damage dealt on hit.
Drain spikes :: will now generate enmity on hit and that enmity is enhanced by +enmity
both of these spells drain percentages would be enhanced by shared misery.
and endark JP abilities will include these spells too.

Essentially dark knight will be a "drain tank"

Last resort will no longer cost defense in this stance but its attack bonus will be dependant on how many debuffs you have on you when you activate it.

Weapon Bash :: will dispel one enemy effect in this stance and weapon bash plus gives resistable extra tries.

Dark Seal:: upon activation also makes the next drain, Drain II, aspir or aspir II spell aoe and generate increased emnity. Drain II's duration lasts until the enemy it drained from is killed, the amount is overwritten by a larger amount, or the regular duration whichever is longer.

Diabolic Eye :: Creates three Shadows if the shadows are struck the dark knight counter attacks with a high critical percentage. these counter attacks generate enmity and give tp.

now to equip this set you will need a set that adds DT- for tanking, and maybe a Scythe that has some DT- II as scythe has the better survivability weapon skills. maybe bend apocalypse's stats a little to make it a tank weapon since its pretty much derided as far as a damage dealing weapon.

Next up is Damage dealer ... Dark knight already Excels in this regard .... the main reason we may want to play here is to prevent cross bleed .... if we add other role options to dark knights we dont want them dropping 99999 ground strikes or torcleaver ....

Most of DRK's insane damage comes from synergy with SAM and its really good TP gain for a "Slow attacker" and thats fine its a synergy i often wish some other classes i play had. but we nave to keep the dark tank from doing that ... we are going to want to tone down the bonus and penalty from last resort ... and instead let the stances enhance it in a way that helps keep the ability from cross bleeding.

Next Stance ::
Soul Eater :: While soul eater is in effect every hit takes some of your life force(% of your max HP in damage less than now as its always on). it will be imperative to keep up endrain or endrain II.
the lower in health you are the higher endrain or endrain II are enhanced. this way doing too much too fast will not only lower your health but increase your enmity. attacking with both soul eater and endrain up at any health should be a steady increase of health but weapon skills should definitely push health down as endrain wont proc on them. soul eater is a stance and locks out any other dark knight stance and refreshes on zoning or an ability refresh(like corsair).

Abilities that work differently with Soul eater up ::

Last resort :: Gains an attack bonus based on how low in health you are (%max health)
if used properly this should make up the difference from old last resorts "non stanced" attack power so a DD dark knight still enjoys that beefy attack damage.

Weapon Bash :: steals some TP.

Dark Seal :: Increases damage and accuracy of drain, drain II or aspir or aspir II but reduces the amount rewarded to the player. (AKA you could drain more, but the healing you receive from drain is less, or the monster would lose a lot more mp than you took.)

Diabolic Eye :: The next weapon skill ignore defense like requiscat.

Now on to magical DD i imagine dark knight in "magical DD" mode being more of a mixer in the style like a rdm.

Introducing ::
Arcana Eater :: This stance draws on the latent magic in enemies to empower the dark knights casting. After a WS that closes a skill chain or opens one the dark knight gets an elevated magic accuracy and magic attack buff as well as a single charge of instant casting. after magic bursting a Dark Magic or enfeebling spell the dark knight gets back TP.
In exchange the darknight loses physical defense.

Skills that operate differently in Arcana Eater.

Last resort :: The dark knight gains Magic Attack instead of Attack.

Weapon Bash :: Dispels an effect weapon bash + adds extra resistable dispel attempts each effect dispelled restores a percentage of max mana to the dark knight.

Evil Eye :: adds magic accuracy instead and steals one buff off the enemy targeted.

Dark Seal :: Makes the next drain attribute, elemental debuff, or dark magic debuff AOE.

Final Notes i think the AF could more easily be attuned to the tank set ....with apocalype grabbing some DT- II to make it the "Tank REMA".
The relic is already pretty stand out ish as a natural choice for regular melee DD just drop some of the magic attack and fit in some more DA/TA. Ragnarok and like weapons are already favored for regular DD DRK.
Empyrean when you introduce it seems like a good place to put the "Magic attack" gear for the Arcana eater Stance.

Blood weapon would be obsolete and i think a better two hour would be ::
Wraith Form :: ignores all effects from physical debuffs, and magical debuffs that deal hp damage(DoTs), gains 50% physical resistance and bonus Matt and Macc and Mdef for 30 seconds.

itemization in FFXI is just not setup for DRK to be switched into a primary tanking job. It's not a idea that SE will give much attention to in FFXI. Dark Knight in FFXIV is a tank. For FFXI the suggested job ability changes would be either viewed to be OP or are regressive to the DRK job functioning with physical dps. Soul Eater and Blood Weapon probably need to be swapped to where Soul Eater is the 1-hour and Blood weapon has the 5 min reuse. Dark Seal doesn't need changed. Weapon bash doesn't need changed, absorb-attri is a psuedo-dispel. Absorb-attri base recast timer could and should be lowered considerably to 30 seconds. Square-Enix should uncap maximum merits allowable on merit categories for all jobs, that fixes alot of the "forced-to-choose" problems. Last resort, soul eater etc do not need any sort of changes. Stances are problematic, potentially poorly implemented and have utility issues concerning SE issuing them with recast timers. Hasso wrecked alot of balance jobs had prior to it's introduction, dual-wield jobs have still not recovered from the nerf-through-buff that occured with hasso.

As far as tanking in FFXI goes, the concerns Square-Enix needs to focus on are making additions to PLD to make it equal to Runefencer for multi-target enmity control and MP resource recovery. Ninja needs a job ability added with a suggested recast use of 15-20 seconds that forces any AoE attack taken to only consume a single Utsusemi shadow.

The game isnt healthy in its current state so much content requires players to have paladin or run .... more tanks need to be opened up.

Changing equipment isnt really that hard if the game is designed with an object oriented programming strategy ....

not wanting to change the equipment, just boils down to not wanting to change the equipment .. it isnt really a herculean task.

The idea of making tanking vs dps via splitting them across stances means that dark knight balance for dps and for tank can be tweaked individually making them both easier to balance.

That's actually game design 101 .....
Its why WoW had stances on warrior for tanking and dpsing in different ways.

If you want to dial a class in more than one way make the process of playing it either way mutually exclusive .... you can only use abilities a certain way in the "tank stance" and a different way in DPS stance ... if upon making the separation and unmarrying these two facets of the class its easier to tweak them in ways where they don't effect each others performance.

I have some ideas for ninja ... but i dont play as much ninja so im chatting up a friend who mained it a lot before they became mostly obsolete.

Another thing to note .... is a lot of my ideas are centered around removing "Super tanking." as many jobs that could easily be fitted for or can tank ... actually cant super tank ... as their low options for hate control and inability to effectively tank without engaging... dont allow for it.

I think the game would be healthier if we plan ways for tanks to hold lots of mobs with actual hate instead of "not letting them on the hate table"

I think hand in hand with this paladin probably needs like a way to aoe flash thats viable, and/or aoe holy .... rune fencer as well then add enmity to their spikes like spells ... (reprisal and actual spikes)

I will quote my own post from May 2019 FFXI Digest reply on page 5:


Potential improvements to unadjusted jobs!

Pld > Reduce reuse timers of Sentinel to 180 seconds, Rempart to 120 seconds, Palisade to 120 seconds. Create new divine magic Area of Effect spells: Banishra recast 30 seconds, Banishra II recast 30 seconds, Banishra III recast 45 seconds, Holyra recast 45 seconds, Holyra II recast 60 seconds, Flashra recast 45 seconds, Reposera base duration 15 seconds recast 60 seconds all of which would have +additional enmity properties to them. Reduce reuse timer of Shield Bash to base 60 seconds. Reduce recast timer of Flash to base 30 seconds. Reduce recast timer of Reprisal to base 120 seconds + increase duration to base 90 seconds. Create new spell Crusade II: Duration 900 seconds, Cost 50 MP, Recast 30 seconds.

I chose -ra spell class for the suggested pld aoe divine spells because it would be a 10' {10 yalm} area from the casting character same as the geomancer specific -ra spell class elemental magics. {Quote same thread page 5}

I agree, real tanking all the mobs is better ... Supertanking is a workaround we shouldn't be using ... especially when a lot of our tankier jobs that could easily be tanks need to engage to mitigate damage .... It keeps the player of the tank class more engaged too, makes the job more rewarding, and gives it a higher skill cap.