A DRK Rework Suggestion for 7.0 (or beyond)

[Shurrikhan]

It wouldn't do to have a tank who sacrificed most of their HP dealing damage, after all.

So long as it can make up for the HP spent, that'd actually do fine. It'd be another thing that could go wrong (like mistiming CDs), but equally another thing that could go right (additional burst damage before damage lulls or ways to improve healing-received efficiency during damage lulls, and/or a way to more granularly prepare for damage spikes -- essentially banking HP during lulls for later burst damage taken).

though this is probably as an artifact of once having an MP-consuming Drain spell.

I have to agree. Such made BW far less susceptible to drift, as you could build resource at almost any time and every form of potency afforded by MP at least had some sustain value attached. Back then, it was a smart choice. It just stands out now that we can't spend MP on Sustain... which, honestly, your AD/Bloodspiller would rectify, if not for the slight damage loss of using them when you need healing rather than solely during raid buffs (which brings us right back to the old HW DA issue of maximizing direct potency over rDPS-when-accounting-for-healer-GCDs-saved... though that also comes down to healers having been largely changed since then to have very little GCD healing).

[Archwizard]

So long as it can make up for the HP spent, that'd actually do fine. It'd be another thing that could go wrong (like mistiming CDs), but equally another thing that could go right (additional burst damage before damage lulls or ways to improve healing-received efficiency during damage lulls, and/or a way to more granularly prepare for damage spikes -- essentially banking HP during lulls for later burst damage taken).

Oh don't get me wrong, I've thought about it (like having an X% of remaining HP cost on Delirium), or even compromising with effects like a "incoming healing is negated up to X% health" debuff.
(I really wanted this to be the flavor of TBN in particular, to sell this idea that the DRK cannot normally toss out barrier effects and is shielding you at the cost of his own health, which would also create further incentive to use Spikes unless offtanking.)

Trouble is, whether it's for damage or defense, this leaves you in a really awkward position as either the main tank (especially on Savage raids where autoattacks hit as hard as a tankbuster in Normal, or during W2W pulls where you're already melting) or when tasked with splitting damage with the other tank -- and either way continues the trend of being the hardest tank to heal, unless you have enough self-healing to counter those effects... which would then make you easily the hardest tank to kill if you chose to ignore them for survival purposes. And I don't want to create another Bloodwhetting WAR.
Literally no middle ground so long as the healing demands are relevant, you're either a ragdoll or a juggernaut, which makes it a nightmare to balance. And if the demands are irrelevant, they would exist purely for flavor, and be on the chopping block for being unnecessary.

So I just focused on the element of "The DRK already sacrifices his HP in the course of being repeatedly lashed by his enemies." Mitigation skills give bigger MP returns (yay Blood Price precedent) and Living Dead gets easier to deal with, depending on the damage you were fed by the enemy.

Not to mention that would go against the "pragmatism" of this design. Much as I enjoy the idea of risk-reward based on overcoming self-inflicted penalties (just look at Martyr), such double-edged swords should be relatively rare or outright situational so that they have minimal impact on encounter design or overall tank balance, rather than be central to the playstyle like... oh, gambling whether or not to stack mitigation on current TBN so as not to waste damage?

[Aluja89]

That's more because Dark Knight was never meant to be a tank in past FF games, not because of the presence or importance of lifesteal.
It wouldn't do to have a tank who sacrificed most of their HP dealing damage, after all.
Historically though, absorbing the life force of opponents was the only self-sufficient way Dark Knight had to recharge Darkside. XIV is the only case in the series to have Blood Weapon not even act as a healing effect, though this is probably as an artifact of once having an MP-consuming Drain spell.

Meanwhile if we are going on series precedent as you have, there's a sheer lack of barrier effects for Dark Knight due to that usually falling under White Magic, which is Paladin's domain. "TBN is what it's known for", and even its anti-magic bent, is unique to XIV.

First of all, you're not understanding the tank fantasy. Being a "tank" has nothing to with how their abilities work but how they look with their equipment and what sort of role they play in combat. Tanks are those that look like the biggest threat and fight at the forefront, the reason tanks deal less damage is because tanks are the ones that engage with their opponents head-on clashing with their weapons while everyone else pokes from behind.

But, you're also wrong on the barrier and general tank stuff. There are a few cases where something akin to it is employed.

Bravely Default/Second:
Adversity:
For three turns, your P.Atk, M.Atk, P.Def, and M.Def all rise by 10% each time you accumulate damage equal to at least 25% of you maximum HP.
*The upper limit for P.Atk, M.Atk, P.Def, and M.Def is 150%.

Absorb Magic:
Triggers at the start of the turn.
Nullify damage from magic attacks during that turn and restore your MP by the amount of MP used to attack you.

Life or Death:
Your P.Atk, M.Atk, P.Def, and M.Def each rise 50%, but you suffer doom status.

Bravely Default 2:
Strength in Adversity:
Every time you take 25% HP damage, attack, magic attack, defense and magic defense increases by 10% for 3 turns.

Last Resort:
Physical and magical attack power increase as HP is reduced.

FFX-2+Last Mission:
They can have passives for nullifying debuffs/ailments.

[Archwizard]

First of all, you're not understanding the tank fantasy. Being a "tank" has nothing to with how their abilities work but how they look with their equipment and what sort of role they play in combat. Tanks are those that look like the biggest threat and fight at the forefront, the reason tanks deal less damage is because tanks are the ones that engage with their opponents head-on clashing with their weapons while everyone else pokes from behind.

... What does this have to do with anything I said? How does it counter anything I said? Hi yes hello I know what a tank is. The point I was trying to make is that Dark Knight specifically has little precedent as a tank in previous FF games.

Yes, it was a frontline fighter, but so were all melee jobs in the early FF games, so Monk and Dragoon were too. Didn't make them tanks.
The early FF games didn't have any concept of "threat", just the back and front lines -- and many enemies would just fire randomly into the crowd, especially if they had any sort of ranged attacks to reach the back line too.
If you didn't have some sort of Cover or Provoke option, your White Mage was just as likely to be murdered first as your Paladin. The concept of "tanking" was pretty nebulous until the MMOs, which are an entirely different genre of gameplay.

But when you take certain elements from the strategy game and translate them to an MMO, things like "job centered around manipulating its own health pool" has to become a tank candidate in order to translate that element faithfully, or you end up with a DPS who is constantly examining the floortiles.

So the argument you're making is... what, that Dark Knight's actual identity doesn't matter, just the glamour? Slap Cecil's helmet on a Gunbreaker and call it a day?
In which case, why are you here...?

But, you're also wrong on the barrier and general tank stuff. There are a few cases where something akin to it is employed.

You really had to scramble for examples there. Ones that leave me quite confused as to your central point, actually.

For starters, as I explained above,

So I just focused on the element of "The DRK already sacrifices his HP in the course of being repeatedly lashed by his enemies." Mitigation skills give bigger MP returns (yay Blood Price precedent) and Living Dead gets easier to deal with, depending on the damage you were fed by the enemy.

This is pretty much the compromise between "sacrifice HP to deal damage" and "absorb damage so other people won't have to."
We agree on this aspect, this is an element I held onto. The difference is I also included the synergy of being able to climb back out of those stages once you have the boosts you want, which is necessary for a sustainable tank. A weakness of the current iteration of DRK.

Second, you have more examples of attack power being raised there than defensive power, and even on the ones that do boost defense, it's an "all stat" booster. Looking at the Bravely Dark Knight they came from as a whole, the defenses are largely incidental.
But also, I never once argued against a tanking job having mitigation. That's kind of a necessary thing for dealing with... taking damage regularly? Every tank has role actions and a 30% mit.
The specificity was whether DRK's tanking style should be based on barrier effects that raise EHP to absorb/negate damage, or on leech effects from the damage it deals, and none of the examples you give cover how it would sustain itself once it's been pushed to cripplingly low HP for moderate defense boosts. Because in the examples you listed... it's not meant to be sustainable by an MMO metric.

Now to your credit, the example here that DOES jump out to me as escalating your point is Absorb Magic. (Which is basically a Magic Knight's Runic skill by another name, but fine.)
So there's two interpretations to this:

• The literal one -- the one you emphasized before as "DRK needs to be a magic shield tank" with... somewhat ambiguous syntax -- is giving effects that target magic attacks specifically. Which is sort of Dark Mind's deal, except it doesn't give MP, but even if it did it would still be considered niche. In good faith I will assume you didn't mean this.
• The spiritual one, where you have a barrier effect that refunds MP, which we have with TBN. Okay. What's Bravely's Dark Knight spend that on? Well, aside from a CC effect on demons...
  

  Minus Strike - Level 5 - Command - 16 MP - Damage one target by an amount equal to the number of HP you have lost. [Single-target] *Damage is capped at 9,999 when not using Bravely Second.
  ... Ah, more damage to complement spamming Dark Bane.

Bravely's Dark Knight is a job that sits on low health for as long as possible so it can deal damage -- not exactly the pinnacle of reliable tanking, solid example of a DPS that drops from relatively durable to glass cannon though. Based on its optimal setup for maximum stats, if a non-spellcaster looks in its direction, they could sneeze too hard and kill it. Now luckily, its stat boosts are snapshotted based on damage taken and last for multiple turns, so it doesn't have to stay at low HP -- but it needs supplemental HP for the defensive buffs it receives to actually matter. And to replenish them once they run out.

I mean don't get me wrong, if your idea was to have a tank who substitutes 75% of his health for barriers so that he can exploit a buff that gives him increased damage while he's at low health, that would be... a nightmare to balance but at least a cohesive interpretation of the smattering you've tossed out here. Except there's nothing you've written here that goes towards such a charitable interpretation of "barrier tank".

[NightHour]

New raidwide defensive skill: “Martyr”, transfer incoming raid damage to yourself to regain MP

If it's got a cap on the amount of damage it can transfer then it'll be good.

We don't need tanks 1 shotting themselves because they used a defensive against a raid buster.

[Aluja89]

You really had to scramble for examples there. Ones that leave me quite confused as to your central point, actually.

I actually replayed all 3 games not long ago.

But the kicker is, the demands of a single-player turn-based strategy game are different from those of a real-time MMO.
Turn-based strategy games don't have to follow the Holy Trinity. You can have debuffers, suicide bombers, turn manipulators, jacks-of-all-trades, all sorts of jobs that would be overpowered/underpowered/impossible to translate into competitive jobs in an MMO, and jobs that would be frustrating to play alongside in a cooperative manner if the whole party isn't being controlled by the same person.

Bravely's Dark Knight is a job that sits on low health for as long as possible so it can deal damage -- not exactly the pinnacle of reliable tanking, solid example of a DPS that drops from relatively durable to glass cannon though. Based on its optimal setup for maximum stats, if a non-spellcaster looks in its direction, they could sneeze too hard and kill it. Now luckily, its stat boosts are snapshotted based on damage taken and last for multiple turns, so it doesn't have to stay at low HP -- but it needs supplemental HP for the defensive buffs it receives to actually matter. And to replenish them once they run out.

That's not really fair is it?

But also, I never once argued against a tanking job having mitigation.

No, you said DRK was never meant to be a tank in past FFs. Yet it had a ton of mitigation tools and boons from getting hit, which is also a tank trait. Calling out its sustainability in a single player game is just bad faith. I mean, the Bravely DRK even has Living Dead basically.

The point was, use past FF DRKs to form a tank identity in 14 and a DRK that's unique to 14.

[Archwizard]

That's not really fair is it?

The point I was making is that even in the games you mentioned, it was a damage specialist. All as part of my original argument that it historically wasn't meant to be a tank, so no kidding it had little precedent as a barrier tank like you insist.
That's A to B to C, what part of that is unfair?

No, you said DRK was never meant to be a tank in past FFs. Yet it had a ton of mitigation tools and boons from getting hit, which is also a tank trait. Calling out its sustainability in a single player game is just bad faith.

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.

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.

I mean, the Bravely DRK even has Living Dead basically.

You mean he put Doom on himself to increase all stats. Ignoring that Living Dead is getting reworked in 6.1 so this example will age like milk, it's been so bad we've been begging for it to be reworked for years (yet another point in the doc in the OP) and Bravely's version is actually worse, since "increase your defense stat by 50%" isn't even the same as "50% mitigation", and is a far cry from invincibility until the Doom takes you.

But that also goes back to my point of "not having a tank [or any job, really] who sacrifices his HP for damage." Because having a job focused on killing himself is a nightmare for cooperative gameplay and is a big reason BLU is limited.

[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?

[Aluja89]

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.

I don't remember any FF game where you could completely negate damage other than a Dragoon jumping for a turn or Draining a element. I'm just saying I understand why FFXIV's DRK is a barrier/magic defense tank because of the things I listed and I don't understand how I'm cherry picking when I used all the relevant DRKs in FF in terms of gameplay. The only one I didn't use was FFT, that one just has Drain and that's about it. No Cecil isn't relevant for obvious reasons, but if you're going to deny that then I know you're just arguing semantics.

Also, I'm suspecting you haven't played the Bravely games. Each job has elements that can be built around so if DRK has mitigation tools you can practically make it a undying tank if that's what you want to build.

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?

Now I know you haven't played it. Bravely default and Second work on a party order, meaning your entire party acts first then the enemy's party, if you want a DRK you build it around the fact you're going to hit till you're 1HP then heal that and bolster its defense for the enemy's turn. You don't just stay at low HP the whole fight, your whole party has to be built around sustainability otherwise it simply doesn't work, at least be upfront on what you're arguing about instead of talking in circles.

Poppy was one of the first champions on League so she needed a rework. She still has that passive but the game has too much outgoing damage now and HP based percentage damage so old Poppy wouldn't work either.