DRK mechanics speculation

I am very excited and thrilled that we are going to have another tank class!

Since I don't have much prior experience with FF franchise and FF's dark knight specifically, I want to ask you guys:

"How do you think Dark Knight will tank? What kind of mechanics?"

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I personally think DRK will be spending health to use skills to generate aggro/raise defense all the while having the ability to fill their health back up - but this doesn't differ too much from WAR tanking mechanics..

They already said that Dark knight will be a caster tank.

I think it can be much more self healing than warrior. And I came up with a decent ability. Before anyone screams OP, Hallowed Ground is in this game.

A dark knight can sacrifice 20% to take zero damage for x amount of seconds (6-10 seconds). It can be on a slightly shorter cooldown than Hallowed Ground. Anyone like it?

unfourtently i cant share more then half of your excitement bieng a drk in ff11 as pure dps and somewhat squishy im disapointed with enix that they had decided to convert it into a tank class speaking from ff11 experience "yes yes two different games etc" ninj was way more of a tank class. that bieng said il still be playing drk knight after i have fun with ninja. im pretty sure the shooter class is corsair and that bieng a healer class made me lol so im pretty happy i wont be the only one suffering i enjoy watching people suffer with me :)

as for the mechanic wouldnt have a clue XD

No, I do not like that.

DRK has always been one of my favorite jobs. Especially in FFXI. Traditionally they've had some kind of ability that sacrificed HP's to deal damage, often times in an AoE capacity, but they also tend to have life draining abilities as well.

As a tank they'll probably focus primarily on Parry, with Dodge and flat-out damage mitigation being secondary defenses, much like a Paladin (Which focuses on Damage mitigation first, and uses parry and dodging as secondary defenses).

Been thinking a lot about what kinds of skills they'll have, and while I loved their ability to use Black Magic in XI, they probably won't take that route this time around, instead focusing on the Darkness/Draining aspects of the Job.

When tanking, they'll have a standard DPS rotation of three attacks, Hard Slash > Spinning Slash > Resolution? (I'm actually hoping for a double rotation like DRG. I think that's a lot more fun!) and bolster their enmity generation with HP sacrificing abilities like Souleater or Last Resort (Names from FFXI skills. They'll probably change these). Meanwhile they'll have abilities that deal damage to the enemy while draining them to offset some of their own masochistic abilities, like Drain (Which I'm hoping to be an instant-cast, 30 second cooldown mini-nuke that returns HP to the user) and Dread Spikes (Which, in FFXI drained the enemy for the amount of damage it dealt to you. The harder it hit you, the more damage it did to itself.)

Something to consider about this, while one of Dark Knight's earliest related mechanics was "Cast From HP" style abilities, in some entries they also possess the ability to drain enemy health. As a few examples, Gafgarion's Night Sword (I think, can't remember the name of the one that drained MP) was added to the Dark Knight class in FFT's remake, Dark Knight in FFX-2 and FFXI can cast Drain, and in FFXI they also gain a unique "Spikes" spell that drains enemy HP to them every time they're hurt by a melee attack.

Just so we're clear on this, what I'm proposing is quite different from what Warrior does. Dark Knight would augment their tanking ability not through self-healing, but rather through draining enemy HP. I suppose they could also gain some HP sacrifice abilities, but I see that being more useful for soloing or off-tanking, or perhaps in fights where its impossible to properly tank the boss anyway, like Giruveganus.

But yeah, that's just my two cents on the matter. If they do that, I could still be happy playing Dark Knight, knowing they still kept the job at least marginally close to its tradition.

im guessing drk will have abilitys similar to dread spikes that stack and give a hp bonus back. or maybe something like that but with phalanx stacking instead, or both simultaneously is my best guess!