Think Dark Knight will have any HP-sacrificing abilities, for Solo or Off-tank roles?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Um, one thing people are missing about EQ1 and EQ2's design for Shadowknights is that classes were given a very "all around" purpose.
Most fights only required a single tank, maybe some off tanks to handle adds. EQ1 especially had a habit of giving out spells like candy, eventually reaching a very real issue of spellbooks being too full, more than 10 years ago.
Then after they found their feet, they found that there was a need for the tank classes to have some damage versatility due to the damage sponge nature of bosses.
XIV doesn't have this issue. It's a much more focused game that builds towards a role. Sacrificing HP to deal damage would be suicidal, though sacrificing MAXIMUM HP, as sort of a reverse Defiance, IS possible.

Sacrificing health would be worse then sacrificing max HP. Much MUCH worse. This coming from a healer. I would much rather have a tank sacrificing their HP when they were topped off then lowering it completely. Depending on the situation.

Of course, I wouldn't do it for hurr durr more dps, but for other reasons.

Sacrifice 25% of total life to give yourself 30 seconds of regeneration. (Mana and Health!)
This would be an amazing ability for a tank, not only does it increase your threat a ton, it also helps your overall sustain through the fight and you have to be careful how you use it.
Sacrifice 50% of your total life to increase your damage reduction by 75% for a duration.
This would be an amazing ability for a smart tank, imagine if you have 10% of your life left. It would only take 5% of your life to cast it and when your healer uses a big heal you have a large amount of damage reduction for literally nothing. Of course if you used this at 100% health it would take 50% of your life to cast.


Lowering your max health though? That is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE, bad. You want as much max health as possible.

[Asierid]

Worked

Except that SK excelled in solo/duo play. Warrior was better in larger group content which is what 14 is balanced around. Two different overall concepts, though the same rule applies to raiding, which is the core of 14.

Passive mitigation will always be better in a progression raid setting then reactive abilities that require you to take damage to act. This is why 2.0 WAR sucked. 3k inner beast heals were awesome, but it doesn't help when the mountain buster that hits for 2k already killed you. Meanwhile, PLD just popped his cooldowns and can eat it with no issues.

The same problem will happen to DRK if they choose this route. That's cool, pop your HP sacrificing stuff, then the boss gets a crit on top of his tank buster and you're dead. It doesn't and -won't- work in raid content, period.

[kyuven]

Lowering your max health though? That is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE, bad. You want as much max health as possible.

I'm actually opposed to giving ANY class ANY ability that futzes with their own HP. Convert and Blood For Blood cause enough problems.
Yes, you want as much HP as possible, but tanks already have more HP than they need in nearly every fight except t13.
Letting them tick their own HP down with an ability like the ones in EQ1 and 2 example just creates more work for the healers, since that WILL kill them if not attended to (many Shadowknight guides say "Never ever use this ability except under such and such circumstances". An ability similar to cleric stance that swaps VIT and STR would merely put them at the same level as the melee DPS, which is what they would be doing anyway. But this won't likely happen.
Again, I don't think anything that messes with HP is a good idea for a tank class at all. There's a reason the only abilities that let you sacrifice survivability for damage are exclusive to DPS classes. It took a VERY long time for SKs in EQ1 to be taken seriously as legitimate tanks in part because of those spells. Fortunately for SKs, though, they eventually got the tools they needed. And in EQ2, EVERY class got abilities that let them fill multiple roles (Fighters were Tanks and DPS, Priests were Heals, Damage, and Support, Scouts and Mages were Damage and Support. The newer Channelers and Beastlords were a bit different.)

Except that SK excelled in solo/duo play. Warrior was better in larger group content which is what 14 is balanced around. Two different overall concepts, though the same rule applies to raiding, which is the core of 14.

Passive mitigation will always be better in a progression raid setting then reactive abilities that require you to take damage to act. This is why 2.0 WAR sucked. 3k inner beast heals were awesome, but it doesn't help when the mountain buster that hits for 2k already killed you. Meanwhile, PLD just popped his cooldowns and can eat it with no issues.

The same problem will happen to DRK if they choose this route. That's cool, pop your HP sacrificing stuff, then the boss gets a crit on top of his tank buster and you're dead. It doesn't and -won't- work in raid content, period.

Preach on.
SKs in EQ2 were...interesting...to say the least.

[Kotemon]

This was done in FFXI to boost the damage done by Dark Knight. However it can bring Hp down to a point where you're dead really fast, or you are unable to drain enough hp back to make certain ability combos into weapon skills survivable. Especially if there's an random aoe around the corner. For a tank, giving up hp to increase attack or feed abilities is suicidal. Dark Knight would be better off as a DPS if that were the case. If what I read in Reddit was any true about a Japanese Q&A. They looked at trying something similar to FFXI with making Dark Hp based and like FFXI it cant tank any better than Dragoon.

So if it is true that Dark Knight is said to be MP based and mitigating damage and boosting damage/enmity is based on MP consumption. It'll leave a pool of Hp for staying alive like the other tanks. However I still can't comprehend gear (current tank sets) and stat allocations. Since it also had a comment about being a different kind of tank and recommending to save up on Piety materia. Especially since only the high level craft gear can have materia melds. If that darkness aura buff does magical damage wouldn't that be modified by int? Right now I'm waiting for the next live letter to hopefully clear some things up about it. However if it's true and based on Mp. Then I can see it having Hp in the middle of War and Pld. Then a tank stance would reduce HP to Pld levels to boost Mp to surpass a Paladins MP pool.

[Lemuria]

Let's be honest here, the upcoming job is only a Dark Knight in name alone. They probably could have called it something else and people would be all excited about the job rather than bemoaning the loss of Darkness or other HP-sacrificing skills. And in my opinion that's what they should have done. After all, we have Machinist and Astrologian, neither of which really have much of a precedent in previous games (I think tactics is the only other place they show up).

I've come to call them Dark Paladins, since the name fits closer than Dark Knight. Still, we'll see how well they fit the moniker Dark Knight when they're finally playable. I anticipate disappointment and excitement in roughly equal quantities, but at this point I'm levelling every job just so I can draw solid conclusions.

[Kaethra]

The same problem will happen to DRK if they choose this route. That's cool, pop your HP sacrificing stuff, then the boss gets a crit on top of his tank buster and you're dead. It doesn't and -won't- work in raid content, period.

So don't use it before a mountain buster? Sorry but you're going to be hard to convince me its going to be impossible to balance when many games before FFXIV have had similar mechanics and those tamks did just fine.

Believe me, I don't see it as a class defining ability. But I don't see how its impossible either.

[Asierid]

So don't use it before a mountain buster? Sorry but you're going to be hard to convince me its going to be impossible to balance when many games before FFXIV have had similar mechanics and those tamks did just fine.

Believe me, I don't see it as a class defining ability. But I don't see how its impossible either.

You assume every boss is going to be a scripted exercise like titan, which has already been confirmed to not be the case in the coming expansion. What do you propose, sitting on tank defining abilities while trying to forsee the next tank buster ability? That makes for good game play right there...

As mentioned in my earlier post, "just fine" is subjective. SK were worse than warriors. 2.0 WAR was worse than PLD. Full reaver in Rift was worse than Paladin or even a Champ in anything but adds. Ice tank or go home in DC universe.

Could they do it? Sure. If you wanted your healers to rip their hair out in the process.

All of those mentioned tanks worked on passive defense and cooldowns. Their leeching counterparts were always the weaker link due to poor game design, and use of bloated reactive abilities. The very nature of sacrifing/leeching hp -as a tank- makes no sense and would either be extremely broken, or under whelming. Blood DK (A self healing tank for those not in the know) in WoW is a perfect example of this. The class is either too good compared to the other tanks, or the worst of the lot.

Again, hard to heal yourself when you're dead because RNGesus.

[Nihility]

the self sacrifice thing is just one of the several dark knight themes that have appeared throughout final fantasy

utilizing darkness as a weapon has probably been the only real connecting thread across them all. Even in ffxi it was soul eater was using darkness to do more damage but it would hurt it's wielder as well being dark evil uncontrollable power and all
Always being a heavily armored figure that tends towards a large weapon instead of a defensive one is a common theme as well
Being magically capable is a reoccurring theme
draining the enemies life force and sapping their strength is a common thread as well

final fantasy doesn't really have a lot of tanky classes if you really think about it. Samurai/dragoon/magic knight have always been kind of paper tigers, ninja was only a tank in FFXI by accident
fighter, paladin, warrior, viking, gladiator, templar, etc are all kind of accounted for in what we already have

dark knights have always been kind of tanky for what they were and the game is sorely in need of tanks so it makes sense to use them and having a tank that is kind of magical and saps the enemies strength and leeches it's health fits the game and fits dark knight well

There is also the issue of classes being tied to weapons.
It would be hard to have a hoplite tank that uses spears because dragoon already uses spears and lancer doesn't really have anything tank oriented about them

The only reason it works with summoner and scholar is because it was a class built from the ground up to be able to go either way which unfortunately pugilist, lancer, and rogue just aren't

I'd say just give it a little faith, The guy that designed it was able to turn a steaming pile of crap into one of the most successful MMO's out there. He is clearly way more skilled at designing these things than any of us and at least deserves that much until proven otherwise imo

[Belhi]

I'm seriously against the idea of HP sacrifice in any notable way, particularly for tanking. Why? Because in the end of the day its going to fall on the healers, not the tanks to accommodate for the HP loss and many, particularly inexperienced, tanks will over use it and expect the healer to take up the slack.

Characteristics of a class should be the responsibility of that class, not someone else. That's why MP works and HP doesn't.

Further, there are balance issues. If healing sacrifice is offset by healers either the advantages of the sacrifice are effectively negated opening the potential for them to be overpowered or the advantages are the same as other tanks mitigation making DRK harder to heal leading them to be inferior to the other tanks who offer the same mitigation without the same level of pressure for the healer.

Simply put, having a HP sacrifice mechanic in any meaningful way is a bad idea.

[Asierid]

I'd say just give it a little faith, The guy that designed it was able to turn a steaming pile of crap into one of the most successful MMO's out there. He is clearly way more skilled at designing these things than any of us and at least deserves that much until proven otherwise imo

The same guy who told the audience of TGS in 2013 that WAR was "strong", then (begrudgingly) gave in and fixed them. He also said that DRG was fine and did not need any buffs, that was also (begrudgingly) fixed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the guy turning a once dead game into something that pulled SE out of the brink of bankruptcy, but his balancing process needs quite a bit of work. They need to get this right the first time, otherwise we're stuck with another release scenario where the other tank classes are better, we get told DRK is "fine", then he doesn't get touched until months later.

It doesn't matter what supposidly fits the class or what the theme was in previous FF games; that may or may not work in this game. DRK was always a DPS class. Health sacrificing abilities would work on a DPS class that is not supposed to be taking damage anyway. DRK is now a tank though, that train of thoughtis counter intuitive on a archetype that is meant to keep their health in order to protect the group.

What is a more common sense approach to this change for the Dark Knight? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that DRK will be a more "let me steal your powers (debuff you, buff me/group)" type tank instead of the traditional DRK we have seen in previous FF games. Of course, it will come with a long CD cooldown, and a semi-short tank buster mitigation like the other two tanks.

They'll also end up being the new add tanks instead of WAR. Calling it now.