A DRK Rework Suggestion for 7.0 (or beyond)

[Aluja89]

Again, how?

It's an extremely fair question -- especially when the central conceit of the argument is, once again, over what kind of tank Dark Knight should be. You got Paladin as the damage blocker with healing support, you got Warrior as reckless attacker that boosts EHP, and heaven knows what's going on with Gunbreaker. I'm arguing Dark Knight's prior sustainability was based on leeching, you're arguing... that it had mitigation that got stronger as it took damage, as precedent for being focused on... barriers?
There isn't even correlation between your thesis and your examples.

If the game doesn't have a visual aid for barriers what do you suppose those mitigation effects are? BARRIERS! This is what I mean when I say unfair. In FFXIV there are visual ways to show the HP of barriers and they literally make use of it in this version's DRK and you're still trying to talk around it.

Even in the single-player games there are any number of jobs that had self-healing and life-leeching, any number of jobs that focused on evasion for multiple turns or negated damage entirely.
And even among them, very few had gameplay loops centered around rapidly spending their own surplus health as a resource for their unique skills. Black Mage didn't even do that, and it could replenish its own MP with Osmose.
So if you didn't have your pocket White Mage, how was your Dark Knight supposed to recharge his Darkside? Or in the examples you listed, his buffs, once they ran out and he was left without all of the health from damage he took to stack them in the first place? It's not like he could just mitigate damage to recharge them -- the effects specifically state how much health he has to lose to charge them in the first place.
So once he shoots his load, how does he reload? Especially if you expect him to pull double-duty of getting beat on to protect any remaining back-row squishies?

In Bravely? He didn't. He needed external healing. If you wanted to go with a Barrier Tank example, he could have used some exploitable substitute to take the damage for him and charge his effects, but that wasn't an option.
In games where he had Blood Weapon or some variant of Drain? He used those, which formed a self-sufficient gameplay loop. Yes he still needed a healer if enemy damage was high, but he didn't just Darkside to death.

Because you still don't understand what tanking actually means, you think Adversity doesn't keep scaling? That you don't heal your DRK ever? It keeps popping all the way to 150% Just like the AI, people also focus on "weak" targets first. Have you played the old version of League of Legends' Poppy? She'd get stronger mitigation buffs the lower her HP got and every single time the enemy group would jump on a Poppy and fail to kill her wasting all their CDs, leaving themselves defenseless. Tanking isn't just about sustain, it's not that simple or linear.

[Archwizard]

If the game doesn't have a visual aid for barriers what do you suppose those mitigation effects are? BARRIERS!

No, mitigation effects (including percentile boosts to Defense or Armor, or just bracing for impact) translate into mitigation effects.

If you wanted a precedent for barrier skills in previous FF games, you would look at examples like:

• Completely negate some type of damage for one turn (Absorb MP/Runic like you listed)
• Negate up to a fixed amount of damage (Stoneskin)
• Temporarily raise maximum HP (Bubble)
• Reduce incoming hits by a fixed (non-percentile) amount, nullifying weak attacks

But also, and I need to stress this: You are cherrypicking examples of games where Dark Knight had consolation survivability to ensure it had time to utilize its stacking effects, and not examples that are common or iconic to the job across the series.
Yes, potentially, it could be made a barrier job unique to XIV. But I'm arguing for lack of precedent in this regard, especially due to the job's iconic abilities across the series making it a glass cannon.
Because its most iconic tools for its own survivability are Drain effects like Blood Weapon, so it can recharge its Darkside skills.

We're talking in circles at this point.

Because you still don't understand what tanking actually means

I'm beginning to suspect this is projection.

One, I didn't say "you don't heal your Dark Knight ever." I asked "If you don't have your White Mage, how does he recharge his unique job skills?"

Two, tanking is quite simply:

• Hold enemy attention so that squishier allies don't die
• Survive as long as possible

And I keep pointing out to you that the example you gave of Dark Knight, whose skillset is focused around churning out damage from low health, is counter to the second point without some element of sustainability. Unless the devs decide to go the Poppy route (for something other than an Immune skill), who judging by the use of "old version", I assume was horrifically overpowered and got nerfed in the end?
And also, I assume that her damage output wasn't reliant on her having some amount of health to spend, rather than just sitting on 95% mitigation at 5% HP?