If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[InfiniDragon]

I imagine the DRK's kit is a mish mash of PLD and Samurai concept idea's all thrown in together and the only thing even vaguely DRK related is Dark Arts and the aesthetic look of skills. Samurai were known for dodging and parrying/countering attacks. So here you got Dark Dance, Reprisal and what have you.

It's just evidence of what happens when you decide not to release Samurai as planned and decide to somehow gut the kit you had for that and plop it on and butcher the iconic Dark Knight class.

Except to my knowledge, Yoshida never planned to release Samurai as a tank. He's said several times he always envisioned his Samurai as a DPS class. Tanaka's Samurai may have been parry based but I highly doubt Yoshida took ideas from that for DRK since he scrapped his own changes in 1.23 for jobs and reimagined them for a third time when 2.0 was released.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Except to my knowledge, Yoshida never planned to release Samurai as a tank. He's said several times he always envisioned his Samurai as a DPS class. Tanaka's Samurai may have been parry based but I highly doubt Yoshida took ideas from that for DRK since he scrapped his own changes in 1.23 for jobs and reimagined them for a third time when 2.0 was released.

Yoshi-P actually said that he personally saw the Samurai as more of a DpS but did not deny that it was a potential Tank. He also mentioned that both Samurai and Dark Knight were considered for the tank slot for HW, but they decided on Dark Knight due to the "Japanese" Ninja having just been added and Dark Knight fitting the more European feel of the expansion.