Except there was no such thing as a tank prior to XI. It was fast DPS, slow DPS, full healer, semi-healer.
Red Mage is even weaker in armour setting than Dark Knight ever has been.
Now since there is a large emotional attachment to Dark Knight from the FFXI players and it seems that they don't like to look at things from a logical stand point, let me explain a few things.Red Mages typically cast both Black and White Magic and can also wield swords and equip armor that normal Black and White Mages cannot. They are, in essence, among the more versatile characters of the series. However, their versatility comes at a price: their stats are usually low, and they cannot cast higher level spells or use stronger equipment. They can learn many spells, but not the strongest, and equip some heavy armor, but not all of it.
Since, prior to FFXI, there was no such thing as a tank we must look at all previous classes as potential tanks, dps or healers.
Tank - Generally the more beefy DPS from previous games as it's more logical that ones who were known to take more hits, would be ones who would..well, take more hits.
DPS - Every class with the exception of full support was a DPS in some way, even white mage had DPS.
Healer - Pretty much any class who had a low amount of offensive ability will fall into this category
So now that we have that out of the way, shall we look at what classes would fall more into what role?
Note: Should try to make it so that it has some kind of relevance to *why* this class should be a tank
Tank
- Samurai
- Dark Knight
- Viking
- Beserker
- Beastmaster
- Mystic Knight
Healer
- Time Mage
- Dancer
- Calculator
- Machinist (?)
Limbo classes
- Green Mage
- Devout
- Mime
- Memorist
DPS
- every other FF class you can think of
Post limit
Mystic Knight, which would be a tank version of Red Mage, would be the tank and Red Mage would, naturally, be a DPS. Why? They have been known to wear some heavy armour but more in line with medium armour. So it's far more likely that it'd be a DPS rather than a tank. However, I'm sure SE can throw a curve ball like they did in FFXI (lolninjatank).I get you might be objectionable to the concept of a RDM as a tank, but you have yet to say what role they should be?DPS
- every other FF class you can think of
Let's look at Warrior (fighter), Berserker, and Viking. What's common among these classes? High HP, ability to equip heavy armour (and some can use shields). That isn't any different from Dark Knight's previous incarnations, except for FFXI.Yes this is true, but the question comes in on which best fits which class that exsisted previously. I understand the need for this to make sense, and the need for more tanks in the game as I have started leveling non-tank classes. However you fail to acknowledge my OP support, while be if flimsy, and bring up to any evidence to the contrary. With such flimsy support from a wiki it should be easy to knock over it, as all it is, is another perspective on the class not hampered by the bias of a single player.
As I said previously, ever class was meant to deal damage and only damage. Only a few had any "tank" like capabilities namely Paladin/Knight with cover and, after the remake, Viking with provoke. Now I've taken a little look at Dark Knight on the wiki and found this neat skill from Final Fantasy Dimensions (a mobile phone game)On top of this Leon, often considered the first DRK, used two handed weapons primarily, such as the axe and lance (Trolls just look at his proficiencies and don't bother), and his most powerful weapon was a lance. It is a class that focuses on damage above all use. It can not be any simpler than that and thus if they follow previous incarnations.
Dark Knight:
Draw Attacks - Draws enemy attacks onto oneself.
Dark Knight Dimensions
So it's not entirely impossible that Dark Knight could be a tank. As for Yoshida's Gladiator => Dark Knight idea, it was an example to show it's possible to turn tanks into DPS if they really needed to. I don't expect this to happen unless they follow the Sword/Shield construct that gladiator has and even then, Kitru has somewhere, stated that Gladiator has too many tanking CDs that would be useless or broken towards a DPS class.
I only dislike the idea of Dark Knight being a DPS solely on the basis that we can't have too many DPS and too little tank classes.