DRK being compared to past FF games.

[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.

[Raucent]

the sword and shield on dark was pathetic skill wise for dark compared to G.sword or scythe.
Scythe skill at 99 (w.o skill gear) 424
Great Sword 417
Sword 388
shield 0 (w/o sub job benefit)

[BlaiseArath]

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

A little of Yes and no. While not every job was confined to those 3 roles... those 3 roles WERE in the game, it was just more lenient due to the sub job system... though not as lenient as 1.0 XIV >_>. So in XI while some jobs could fill unintended roles due to the guile of the community, it didn't mean they were that spectrum of the trinity. A WHM and RDM could DD decently, but weren't DD classes for example, and SMN while having access to avatars and DD potential, were mostly lame healers.

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.

I'm not going to quote the rest because, and I really actually do apologize for sounding rude here, but this is just horrendously false. Having access to some heavy armor in XI didn't make you a tank, and even as the years developed and actual low level tanking armor was added (Eisen gear, PLD/WAR only, no DRK there), DRK was left off most tanking armor. You can take a look at a job in XI designed to be a tank (PLD), and check out its job abilities.

Sentinel: Reduces Damage taken, heavily increases Enmity
Rampart: Reduces Magic damage taken and increases DEF for party members
Cover: Its cover.
Palisade: Increases Shield block Rate
Reprisal: Increases block rate and adds reflect damage to shield blocks
Phalanx: Decreases damage taken
Protect/Cure Spells
Defense Bonus Job Traits
Shield Def. Bonus Job traits
Shield Mastery Job Traits
Enlight; Increases Acc/Adds Light damage to swings.
Flash: Greatly increases Enmity
A+ Shield, A- Parry

Almost everything PLD does and can do involved increasing their DEF and MDEF and keeping hate. Outside of Enlight and sub jobs they have no real natural offensive abilities.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Dark_Knight

DRK, on the other hand, has the highest Attack Bonus job trait available to any job, access to several job abilities that sacrifice their survival for enhanced damage, Endark which raises their attack and deals dark damage, a slew of black magic spells (some with utility like Drain and Aspir), and not a single defensive ability to their name (Save Dread Spikes, added years later). Even WAR, who can be a DD or a tank, has that in their Abilities. Defender and Berserk, Attack Bonus and Defense Bonus, Shield skill and 2-handed Weapon skill. They are clearly multi-purpose, DRK is not. While DRKs abilities did generate a lot of enmity, this was because of how powerful they were offensively, it was meant to "constrain" the DRKs and be a set-back to their high power... it was a high risk job with amazing offensive potential but very dangerous in that it could pull hate and die.

Now Kraken Club zerging was something create by the community, but thats not why DRK was considered a DD, it was just one very broken aspect of the job.

DRK can equip a very limited amount of shields, but they have 0 shield skill, and Skill was everything in XI. They also had mediocre sword skill, a C in evasion, and an E in parry... and were much more proficient (and depicted in every official artwork with a Scythe or GS). Plus, and this is straight from the Devs, check the released "Job Manifesto" that SE released on the jobs, in every single one of them, DRK is described as a Damage dealer. DRK on shields and some otherwise PLD only armor is there strictly due to lore purposes, as Dark Knights and Paladins were both considered "Knights" on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Dark KNights the offensive Knights with black magic, and Paladins the defensive knights with white magic.

I'm sorry, in offline games maybe you have a point, but in XI, DRK is clearly a DD job, it may be able to use some heavy armor, but a lot of jobs could, and its not like XIV where "Heavy Armor" means tanking, in XI a lot of things weren't held to the norms of other games. WHM had access to the most defensive body piece in the game for a while (Holy Breastplate)... So you can't apply "heavy armor = tanking" logic to XI, thats not how it worked...

Edit: Oh and PS in case it was lost, I don't actually care if DRK is going to be a tank in XIV, As long as Black Magic in incorporated into the job and it stays true to the lore of the job itself, I'm cool regardless of the roles it fills.
Edit2: and to give DRK credit, it was "capable" of tanking to some degree with the addition of Dread spikes, access to a decent amount of PDT- gear, and Apocalypse... but almost every job in XI could "Tank", which is why PLD wasn't really popular in a lot of events once people figured them out... hell I think in XI's ~13 or so years of service, DD's have filled more tanking roles than PLD... with MNK, WAR, and SAM being the big 3 "DD tanks".

[zcrash970]

I see a lot of people bringing up Dark Knight from FF:Tactics and saying it only had drains, but not mentioning the remake of the game on the PSP FF:Tactics War of Lions....
You know the remake where they renamed the old dark knight, I forgot his name, to a Fell Sword and made DRK a job which anybody could attain.

The job where you sacrificed a ton of HP to decimate your enemies (i.e Unholy Sacrifice and Abyssal Blade.)
If you guys are going to try to reference one game, you probably should use its most recent version.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/D..._%28Tactics%29

PS: Is it safe to use XI as an example seeing how that game lacks any kind of balancing especially the jobs.

[Animarelic]

I for one did not enjoy DRK game play in FFXI. It will be interesting to see if they can at least make the risk more interesting this time around.

[Grey_Cain]

PS: Is it safe to use XI as an example seeing how that game lacks any kind of balancing especially the jobs.

FFXI is the game where job identity went to die. Nobody should be using it for examples except for what not to do, but there are a ton of people that think it's the way jobs have always been because they don't know the history of the whole series. (Fun fact, there had never been an official in-game tank, healer, or dps role in any FF before ARR, not even in XI or XIV 1.23; those are just terms and playstyles brought in and rigorously enforced by players of other MMOs who wanted XI and XIV to be just like the MMOs that they were already familiar with.)

[BlaiseArath]

I have to disagree that "Trinity" roles did not exist in offline titles. White Mage is a clear healing role and existed since the first game, and while it had Banish/Holy in some games, Holy being a powerful spell (weaker than Flare though), or abilities to damage undead, they were clearly utilized and intended to be a healing role in a group, I'd also argue that Black Mage in the same way was intended to be the damaging one of the group, since its entire purpose is to blow sh*t up and not much else.

Its true, most iterations of the Final Fantasy series post ~4 or so removed the idea of Tank/healer/DPS roles and most characters just had different and fun ways to blow stuff up, but in the games that did possess a job system of sorts, there were clearly jobs designed with a strong purpose in mind... Those purposes aren't entirely a part of the "Trinity" MMOs adapt, for instance a PLD in offline titles having high defense doesnt mean hes a tank, but simply he can be a support for other weaker classes, with Cover and high defense and such. So in single player Final Fantasy games, a Tank doesn't really exist, though some later Final Fantasy games/remakes include abilities that increase the chance of enemies hitting you instead of others, so you can accurately say a "Trinity" system didn't exist, as those games were almost entirely "DD" and "Healer" jobs, with a healthy mix of hybrids and others. Personally I enjoy RDM in a lot of those games... Double Cast right.

Your argument can be valid, or have some bits of validity, for some numbered titles, but not every single one of them. If anything, its simply an odd choice that a job known for sacrificing its own HP to deal higher damage, and usually known for excessively high attack power, is being turned into a Tanking class. It can work obviously, They could add Drain/Aspir/Absorb type abilities and have it still work as a tanking role.