In your darkest hour: DRK's identity crisis

[Lyth]

Some points:

Cloud
It's hard not to draw a connection to Cloud. Our /bstance, /vstance, and the male DRK /cpose are all homages to him, much like other jobs reference well-known characters in the series.

The Mystic Knight reference comes from an uncited section of the unofficial FF wiki. I'm not sure of its validity. That being said, it's worth noting that there has historically been a lot of similarity between Mystic Knights and Dark Knights. The key difference is in the choice of resource (MP vs. HP) and the theme (elemental vs. darkness). As a matter of fact, FF3 historically listed Mystic Knight as one of its jobs, and it was later replaced by Dark Knight in the remake. To make matters more complex, FFXIV's DRK straddles the line between the two, using MP and blood to power dark magic, while stealing HP, MP, and blood. But no two Final Fantasy games are completely identical in their implementation. There are no absolute rules, only themes.

If you'll think back to Cloud's fighting style across different media portrayals, it's again hard not to see parallels. Souleater is a stylised Climhazzard. A lot of the later scenes of Advent Children feature him drawing in purplish energy into himself before launching into a flurry of strikes. Rewatching the scenes, I wonder if we couldn't see Omnislash implemented someday as a sort of wildfire style burst window which counted up your DA sword strikes.

DRK's playstyle not an unusual aesthetic for later FF games, especially in the wake of the original Playstation era, to be sure. You see it in XV's Noctis as well. My point here is that it carries nostalgia value, and nostalgia plays an important part in drawing the player in. This is not any MMO. It's a Final Fantasy MMO. I'd love to see more emphasis placed on that.

Greatswords
Two-handed swords have a long legacy in Final Fantasy. FF6 makes a visual distinction between larger 'Knight Swords' and traditional one-handed swords based on the swing animation (horizontal vs. vertical), but doesn't really elaborate on it further. FF7 made the aesthetic mainstream, and interestingly enough, FFT and the world of Ivalice was where they really came into their own (in no small part due to the magic swordsman aesthetic). It became standard practice for every iconic end-game sword, be it Defender, Save the Queen, Apocalypse, Ragnarok, and Ultima Weapon, to be a two-hander. The terminology varies slightly from game to game, but it's functionally the same.

Balance
As much as I like the idea of a Deus Ex style balance in which there are multiple approaches to the same problem, there are some fundamental obstacles. Take Hallowed, for example. It completely negates all incoming damage. There isn't an alternate way to achieve the same effect. But if you made it into a role action and made it universal, the job would lose something that made it unique.

I think it's okay for tanks to have weaknesses. It's okay to find yourself wishing in the moment that you were on a different tank to deal with a tough situation. I'm not a fan of this mentality that "X has an ability, so I need to have that ability too". The problem is that the exchange of abilities has been a one-way relationship. There are definitely occasions where you will definitely miss having a WAR or a PLD. You don't really get that sense with DRK anymore, after Stormsblood.

[Reynhart]

Have you played FFIV? Or did you just look up the stats? DRK Cecil, until he stops being a thing around level 20~ is unmatched defensively and second only to Yang offensively. He has by default the highest effective HP up to that point and only Yang

Again, at that point, your party members are all mages except Yang, so having the highest HP, the best defense and the second highest offense is not such a tremendous feat. When compared to every other physical fighter, DRK Cecil is the weakest.

It's hard not to draw a connection to Cloud. Our /bstance, /vstance, and the male DRK /cpose are all homages to him, much like other jobs reference well-known characters in the series.

It's called wolverine publicity and the reason why every melee DPS draws a Buster Sword for their LB2, even when fighting bare-handed, long before DRK was created in XIV.

[shao32]

Again, at that point, your party members are all mages except Yang, so having the highest HP, the best defense and the second highest offense is not such a tremendous feat. When compared to every other physical fighter, DRK Cecil is the weakest.

DRK Ceil is the stronger job in every aspect in that part of the game, ffiv is a linear game,DRK Cecil dont need to scale properly bcs you cant complete the game as a DRK, in fact none of the jobs outside of PLD cecil, kain, rosa rydia and edge have a proper and fair stat progresion bcs only those 5 chars need it at the end of the game, Cecil DRK is worse that PLD cecil bcs DRK Cecil is only relevant on the begining of the story and he is pretty strong enough compared to yang, tella and palom- porom.

[Chrono_Rising]

I agree with just about everything you say. Basically a middle of the road tank is the concept which is proving to be fatal to dark knight. In HW we were a strong defensive MT who could dish out healthy damage, now we are doing less than either role. We need a dark knight abilities back, but with the recent Yoshi P interviews I doubt they will change much before 5.0 unless there is a strong community backlash.

Balance
As much as I like the idea of a Deus Ex style balance in which there are multiple approaches to the same problem, there are some fundamental obstacles. Take Hallowed, for example. It completely negates all incoming damage. There isn't an alternate way to achieve the same effect. But if you made it into a role action and made it universal, the job would lose something that made it unique.

I disagree that there aren't alternate ways to do this with Hallowed Ground.

A Dark Flair: Switch MP and HP Pools, mp pool cannot be reduced below 1. After 10 seconds MP and HP Pools switch. Effect basically gives you a smaller pool of HP, but shelters your main pool.

A Warrior Flair: HP hits 1: Damage taken converted to HP restored.

[Shurrikhan]

Balance
As much as I like the idea of a Deus Ex style balance in which there are multiple approaches to the same problem, there are some fundamental obstacles. Take Hallowed, for example. It completely negates all incoming damage. There isn't an alternate way to achieve the same effect. But if you made it into a role action and made it universal, the job would lose something that made it unique.

I think it's okay for tanks to have weaknesses. It's okay to find yourself wishing in the moment that you were on a different tank to deal with a tough situation. I'm not a fan of this mentality that "X has an ability, so I need to have that ability too". The problem is that the exchange of abilities has been a one-way relationship. There are definitely occasions where you will definitely miss having a WAR or a PLD. You don't really get that sense with DRK anymore, after Stormsblood.

Why would another immunity need to achieve non-conditional damage nullification? (Note that both LD and Holmgang also achieve complete damage negation, although conditionally -- only after hitting 1 HP.) They need only act as a way to prevent death, and their cooldowns can (theoretically) be the balancing point to their disadvantages. That doesn't make any more sense to me than would saying that every damage-dealing ability would need to have the same potency and recast time.

If Hallowed Ground still uniquely prevented debuff affliction, that would create immense swing in its balance on a fight-by-fight basis, more so perhaps than even Defensives-to-Mechanics Alignment, and would leave it overtuned in some fights or undertuned in all others, but that's only been the case in maybe two fights since Ultima Ex's release. Most since have remembered to allow passage of the debuff regardless of whether damage was dealt, or only nullify it when the damage was fully averted in the presence of a shield (not just by a nullifying buff).

Now, with the latter paragraph I agree completely. And while I feel like the "shit, where's <x job-unique ability>?" moments aren't the best indicator of balance, they are at least one of job presence and a meta-layer sort of identity. DRK lacks that identity -- to outside view, of course, but perhaps even worse internally. And I worry at how obvious the external gap will have to grow before any internal improvements are made. (Not as much as I worry for Monk, but definitely second only to Monk.)