DRK being compared to past FF games.

[Ultimatecalibur]

A job that has always sacrificed its HP to cause massive damage does not make sense as a tank. That is the traditional role of the Dark Knight, and in an MMO, that is clearly a dps.

It's signature ability does sacrifice hp to deal extra damage, but that doesn't mean its role in the party was primarily damage.

Final Fantasy traditionally has 4 roles:

Heavy Frontliners - High Hp, Heavy Armor, medium/high repeatable damage
Light Frontliners - Medium Hp, Light Armor, high repeatable damage, often with utility abilities or limited medium multitarget damage
Casters - Low Hp, Robes, Primary source of resource consumptive high multitarget damage
Healers - Medium/Low Hp, Robes, Primary source of healing and holy damage

Heavy Frontliners primary duty was to sit in the front and take hits while also doing much of the damage in random encounters.

Dark Knights have always been Heavy Frontliners with what could be considered a trash cleaning multitarget attack to speed up random encounters. Darkness/Souleater is never used safely in boss fights.

To say that there were not healers, tanks, and damage dealers in non-MMOs is wrong. Take the Knight job from FFV, for instance. Its job command is Guard, allowing it to prevent incoming physical damage, and its passive ability is Cover, to protect its allies. This is a tank. Yes, it can do fairly large amounts of damage, but thematically, the job is a tank.

Knight, Mystic Knight, Dragoon and Samurai are all Heavy Frontliners in FFV. Knight is the first one unlocked.

You can also see the difference in Cecil in FF4. As a Dark Knight, he sacrifices HP to unleash a devastating attack. This is the Dark Knight's only defining trait. Its role is to deal damage. After his change to a Paladin, he gains Cover. This allows him to use his own body to take attacks in place of another party member. This is a tank.

Cover made Cecil a better tank but the enemy AI would naturally attack the 2 or 3 characters in the front row the most often. This led to Cecil (both as Dark Knight and as Paladin) + Kain/Yang/Cid defaulting to tanks in FF4.

[Tupsi]

It's signature ability does sacrifice hp to deal extra damage, but that doesn't mean its role in the party was primarily damage.

Let's be honest - Every time you used a Dark Knight in FF games you didn't invite it for healing or to "tank". Any Dark Knight in any other Square based games like BD you didn't invite for Tanking either - you did so because the grand majority of the time (almost all the time) you did for the damage it could output.

Just like you didn't use White Mages because they were stronger nukers than Black Mages and vice versa you didn't invite Black Mages for their healing capabilities. Think back on the tactics game as those are the closest to "formations" you use in MMOs, they're almost always in the 'DPS' role.

Maybe it's a western thing, but I don't really recall the concept of "killing yourself to do more damage" = being a Tank that's meant to keep the party alive lol. I don't play many western rpgs, so I might be missing something actually.

[Krr]

Let's be honest - Every time you used a Dark Knight in FF games you didn't invite it for healing or to "tank".

If you actually look at the history of FF games, and Square games in general, this is historically untrue. Dark Knight isn't much different from other heavily-armored, 'Tanky' frontline warriors aside from a slight offensive bent and a preference of offense-maligning debuffs over protective abilities. They still serve the same 'purpose' in the team as a Knight or Paladin or 'Warrior'-type class, just in preference of a party playstyle that prefers a little more recklessness.

FF3 - DRK is actually just the tanky Knight class with the ability to cast magic and use "Dark" weapons. In the DS remake, they gain Cecil's signature "Darkness" attack, but not much else.

FF4 - Cecil is a Dark Knight. Well, until he becomes a Paladin. He's actually one of the stronger physical damage dealers, but he isn't actually any stronger in terms of attack power than the 'Tanky' paladin Cecil aside from his ability to use the Darkness attack - which actually does worse damage than whacking away at single foes in the exact same way Paladin Cecil does.

FFT - Gafgarion is the only Dark Knight in the game, and leaves the party rather quickly. The Dark Knight job is actually a narrow mirror of the Holy Knight job Agrias uses; which derives its stats in turn from the tanky non-magical 'Knight' class. Both jobs use special sword techniques that inflict status effects; one of the Dark Knight abilities is notably unique in that it drains HP to keep the Dark Knight alive longer.

FFX-2: The next game wherein a Dark Knight appears. It turns out it's actually a fairly rare class in lore! This Dark Knight actually has among the strongest defense stats in the game and has bar-none the highest HP. It is actually a little broken - Darkness deals not Dark but 'non elemental' damage which causes it to do more damage than any other attack to most enemies, completely ignoring defense. This could probably be boiled down to an oversight - Darkness just plain isn't an element in the FFX games, and damage is either one of the four elements, physical, or non-elemental. Aside from this mis-designed special attack, they have one ability, Charon, which causes the Dark Knight to literally explode for thousands of non-elemental damage and then inflicts a 'Banish' type effect on the Dark Knight. The rest of their attacks are status effects that make it harder for enemies to hurt the Dark Knight or their party, and Drain-type spells that help the Dark Knight stay alive while using her HP-expending attacks. Actually probably the first incarnation of the 'offensive' Dark Knight, but they have a number of tanky characteristics as well.

FFXI - Dark Knight is a job that has a multitude of attacks that make it deal more damage in exchange for HP or becoming more vulnerable to damage. Interestingly, they also have multiple attacks that generate considerable bonus aggro when used, and one of their abilities even gives them as much hate as Provoke! They also wear heavy armor and have decent HP; however, the community (not the designers) adopts them in the metagame as melee damage dealers.

Then there's the Tactics Ogre series, which actually inspired FFT and is made by the same writer and game designer. In the most recent remake, TO:LUCT, Terror Knights (the Chaos-aligned advanced Knight unit) have better attack than their Knight and Paladin counterparts, but not quite as much as Berserkers, Ninjas, or other 'lightly armored' offensive fighters, but have a Rampart aura designed for 'tanky' classes and inflict Fear and other status effects to keep them alive. They make excellent supplements to an army focused on units designed to 'break' the front line quickly and effectively, but they aren't really the damage dealers themselves - they're fight initiators, debuffers, and opportunity-makers for the other classes. Essentially, a tank.

It's also worth noting that Final Fantasy has its roots in classical DnD, where the 'Tank' was not simply a meatshield, but the party member most adept at physical combat, and was competent at the frontline. They were big, durable, re-usable, and hit hard and hit close, and were damn good at breaking things, and most certainly not defined by a lack of damage. This carried into Final Fantasy's design where the 'Tank' classes - Paladin included! - were still capable of hitting big and hitting hard - they just also lacked the same tricks that Mages had, or the flexible utility that Thieves/Rangers/Ninjas/et al had. Dark Knight has always been in this 'Tank' category - A simple, hard-hitting frontliner distinguished from other heavily armored classes by a smattering of flavor gimmicks. One of these just happened to involve spending HP to do a little extra damage.

[chococo]

It's also worth noting that Final Fantasy has its roots in classical DnD, where the 'Tank' was not simply a meatshield, but the party member most adept at physical combat, and was competent at the frontline. They were big, durable, re-usable, and hit hard and hit close, and were damn good at breaking things, and most certainly not defined by a lack of damage. This carried into Final Fantasy's design where the 'Tank' classes - Paladin included! - were still capable of hitting big and hitting hard

Keep in mind though that this is an MMORPG. You can't have tank classes dealing big numbers. Otherwise why would you need any other job. Just bring DRKsx6 + healers. A gimped DRK that can't damage but can tank does not resemble DRK as much as a DRK that can do dmg but can't tank.

Most previous games lean towards the latter (a bit more dmg, a bit less tanky) instead of the other way round.

[MomomiMomi]

Interestingly, they also have multiple attacks that generate considerable bonus aggro when used, and one of their abilities even gives them as much hate as Provoke! They also wear heavy armor and have decent HP; however, the community (not the designers) adopts them in the metagame as melee damage dealers.

If you're implying that the hate generation on Souleater is a sign that it's a tanky job, you're being absurd. It's simply a part of the risky nature of Dark Knight's design: increasing your damage with increased risk to your own safety.

Also:

FF3 "Dark Knight" is not even the same job. It only shares the Dark Knight name in English.

Dark Knight does not have the highest HP in FFX-2. That would be Berserker.

[Krr]

If you're implying that the hate generation on Souleater is a sign that it's a tanky job,

I'm implying that FFXI had a completely bonkers metagame and jobs were not "designed" to do anything but resemble classical Final Fantasy characters until very late into the game's lifecycle. The community chose DRK to be a high-risk high-reward DD, not the developers. Just like they chose NIN to be a tank and all the other ridiculous role assigments we've seen as the game evolved.

This is a bit of a stretch, as what creates the distinction between DRK and PLD Cecil is the fact that DRK Cecil has an offensive special command (Darkness), while PLD Cecil has a defensive special command (Cover).

That's true, but compare both versions of Cecil to other members of the party - both of them do less (but more consistent) damage with their attacks, have higher HP, better armor, and better defensive. Dark Knight Cecil was hardly a damage-dealing powerhouse in the face of what Yang, Edge, or the game's various mage characters could do. It's hardly a stretch of the imagination.

As for Gafgarion, he had the same stat, gear, and even attack skill progression as the other Knight classes in the game, which were front-line tanks.

Simply put, the idea that Dark Knights come into the party for their damage abilities and that their heavy armor and high HP aren't relevant is a community projection mixed with personal opinion, not the reality of the mechanics of any game they're in - except Final Fantasy XI, where NIN, MNK, and even THF had moments in the metagame where they were tanks. Beyond lifedrain and lifeburn, the relatively recent iterations of Dark Knight typically have a theme of abilities that maim, cripple, and otherwise debuff his enemies with Black Magic or similar 'dark forces', and I honestly don't doubt that we'll see a mechanic where they're empowered by taking damage from the enemies they're taking or placing themselves in other 'risky' scenarios.

And even then, there's nothing saying we can't have a lifeburn mechanic for OT DPS, so long as it's not something you can spam to the point of griefing your healers, or a couple of life-draining attacks, so long as they aren't the only way the class can defend itself.

Sure, thematically, Dark Knight is an offensive counterpart, and the other side to the Paladin's 'coin'. A mirror, however, is not wholly an opposite, and the two jobs have always had mechanical similarities that make both fill a role as heavy, frontline warriors.

Except in Final Fantasy XI which for some people 'round here may as well be the only Final Fantasy game, I guess.

[Aegis]

I'm implying that FFXI had a completely bonkers metagame and jobs were not "designed" to do anything but resemble classical Final Fantasy characters until very late into the game's lifecycle. The community chose DRK to be a high-risk high-reward DD, not the developers. Just like they chose NIN to be a tank and all the other ridiculous role assigments we've seen as the game

I see they point you're trying to make, but this is just silly. Dark knight had not asingle defensive buff (until dread spikes). It had nothing that generated significant hate that didn't also do damage. It had several abilities that either debuffed or directly hurt yourself to increase your damage DRK was a DPS by design, not by community usage.

Souleater - guillotine. Tell me that's a tank.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I see they point you're trying to make, but this is just silly. Dark knight had not asingle defensive buff (until dread spikes). It had nothing that generated significant hate that didn't also do damage. It had several abilities that either debuffed or directly hurt yourself to increase your damage DRK was a DPS by design, not by community usage.

The Dark Knights debuffs spells were its defensive "buffs." A debuff that decreases damage dealt is the offensively applied mirror of a buff that decreases damage received. It also has the earliest access to the spell "Drain," an offensively applied self heal, of any class.

Last Resort(38/256 increase in damage inflicted/taken, bunch of Enmity) is a combination of a toned down Berserk (64/256 increase in damage inflicted/taken) combined with Provoke(bunch of Enmity), skills from a class you were expected to have at 30 before you unlocked Dark Knight.

Dark Knight looks to have been intended as an Offensive tank. In theory, a tank that takes ~33% more damage but makes the fight 25% shorter is balanced with a tank that takes 25% less damage but makes the fight 33% longer.

Souleater - guillotine. Tell me that's a tank.

That is a damage combo that Silences and inflicts +40% your hp in damage to yourself and the target because Souleater triggers on hits not actions. Was Souleater+ Kraken Club an intended combo?

[Krr]

It had several abilities that either debuffed or directly hurt yourself to increase your damage DRK was a DPS by design, not by community usage.

Nothing in FFXI was consciously designed around trinity. That's the point.

DRK was a heavily armored class with the ability to use either big swords and scythes or a sword and shield (though the community found this a useless feature, not the designers designing it) that could situationally (due to, let's face it, the long-ass cooldowns on every JA in FFXI) harm itself to deal more damage. Thanks to FFXI's flexible job and subjob system, the community (and no one else! no one actually making the game!) figured out how to break this to make DRK capable of outputting high damage with its high-hate abilities without actually drawing said hate. If DRK in FFXIV is a heavily armored job with a large weapon that can use lots of debuffs and situationally harm itself for benefits then it hasn't sacrificed any "thematic" it had from FFXI other than the ability to make Epic Big Numbers appear in the combat log.

[Duelle]

FF4 - Cecil is a Dark Knight. Well, until he becomes a Paladin. He's actually one of the stronger physical damage dealers, but he isn't actually any stronger in terms of attack power than the 'Tanky' paladin Cecil aside from his ability to use the Darkness attack - which actually does worse damage than whacking away at single foes in the exact same way Paladin Cecil does.

This is a bit of a stretch, as what creates the distinction between DRK and PLD Cecil is the fact that DRK Cecil has an offensive special command (Darkness), while PLD Cecil has a defensive special command (Cover).

FFT - Gafgarion is the only Dark Knight in the game, and leaves the party rather quickly. The Dark Knight job is actually a narrow mirror of the Holy Knight job Agrias uses; which derives its stats in turn from the tanky non-magical 'Knight' class. Both jobs use special sword techniques that inflict status effects; one of the Dark Knight abilities is notably unique in that it drains HP to keep the Dark Knight alive longer.

The drains were more thematic in purpose, and somewhat OP in the eyes of the original developer team (hence why Gafgarion was the only DRK in the original FFT). They did give him a "pest" factor by the fact that his Dark Sword skills could undo most of the damage your units did on him unless you ganged up on him. I guess his natively lower attack could make him "tanky", though to me that's a bit of a stretch.

FFXI - Dark Knight is a job that has a multitude of attacks that make it deal more damage in exchange for HP or becoming more vulnerable to damage. Interestingly, they also have multiple attacks that generate considerable bonus aggro when used, and one of their abilities even gives them as much hate as Provoke! They also wear heavy armor and have decent HP; however, the community (not the designers) adopts them in the metagame as melee damage dealers.

The high enmity was there to create a risk factor in using cooldowns. Heavy armor in FFXI did not necessarily mean "tank", either. XI's DRK had no defensive traits, mediocre proficiencies in sword and shield (which prompted me to keep asking why the devs even bothered to put DRK on shields it had little use for) and little in the way of tools to hold aggro. It also lacked mechanics to make it versatile enough to gear for tanking or gear for DPS. Granted, XI's defense stat is near useless and gear swaps cause enough trouble as is.

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As I've said in another thread, there are thematic concessions that will have to be made for this DRK to work. HP drains are out of the question, as that model did not work and the last thing we need is DRK becoming the same as WAR back when ARR launched. Sacrificing HP is also out of the question because you're increasing your chances of death by going in that direction. The only thing left is going entirely by the darkness thing. Dark/fel energy-themed abilities that make it possible for the DRK to withstand damage and generate aggro. You'd get a working tank, and one that can be called a Dark Knight, but it would not have any of the elements that FF fans are familiar with. It'd be a different spin on the job (similarly to how BRD has been approached), for better or worse.