DRK changes that would make it really fun to play

[Mikey_R]

It just doesn't feel viscerally like a Dark Knight. And as someone who didn't pick up the job until Shadowbringers, I can't even say if it ever did.

Unfortunately, if you define DRK as draining HP to deal damage, then that really isn't going to work well when it is a tank, I won't go into details here, but it should be easy enough to at least understand why.

This is why DRK has mainly used it's MP to cover a similar role, so, instead of reducing HP, you reduced MP. Going right back to HW, Darkside was a permanent buff to DRK, as long as you had MP. Back then, it would slowly drain your MP, so you had to use your tools to keep yourself healthy. This is also where things like Dark Arts and Dark Passenger helped to keep you engaged as they both required MP. Dark Arts was especially good as it did change properties of some moves, Carve and Spit losing the MP recovery, but it done more potency (and was the best potency gain for it), however, the best thing that was lost, in my opinion, was the interaction with the combos. DRK had 2 combo chains (not counting the enmity combo), Delirium (being comboed off of Syphon Strike and applying a INT down debuff) and Soul Eater. Dark Arts only affected Soul Eater of these 2 chains and it allowed it to do more damage , with the potency ratings going Soul Eater < Delirium < Dark Arts Soul Eater. This meant, with proper planning, you could increase your damage and it required some thought.

SB DRK was just a worse version, DA affected more things, MP came in much quicker, they lost the Delirium combo and that is why SB DRk was generally disliked over HW. There wasn't much thought put into the rotation as it was generally just spam Dark Arts just so that you didn't overcap your MP (where Darkside no longer drained your MP). Then ShB happened.

I'm sure, if DRK went back to a HW root, with more recent QoL updates, it would make it stand out as a more unique tank. You can even take the more recent action additions and see how they could fit them with the HW DRK. I don't really want to go into too much of my thought here, however, I hope that small insight into HW DRK helps you to understand how it was different and even then, I have only just given a slight intro to how it played. However, HP reduction still isn't the way to go.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Unfortunately, if you define DRK as draining HP to deal damage, then that really isn't going to work well when it is a tank, I won't go into details here, but it should be easy enough to at least understand why.

I get you and understand the general sentiment why "it wont work".

Counterpoint: It CAN work, using the following characteristics...

1.) To combat HP spending additional is implemented (think in availability similar to Bloodwhetting)
2.) To combat overturtling, damage distribution will put emphasis on HP spenders or attacks comboing from those (ergo you will be weaker than PLD if you never spend)
3.) To combat overspending, require a minimum HP threshold before it gets disabled. More ideal spenders gated by additional means (MP, Blood, Darkside duration, cooldown)

It offers a lot of room for optimisation and furthermore lets healers drop excess heals they may have on the DRK as a raid dps gain.

HP spender tanks arent impossible, they are just difficult to design well, especially in a game where your community will vomit and cry over every possibility of "loss from using action at bad time". Yes I speak of TBN.

[Mikey_R]

I get you and understand the general sentiment why "it wont work".

Counterpoint: It CAN work, using the following characteristics...

I only have question, how will you determine how much HP is spent for an action?

If you make it a fixed value, does that then mean you get stronger and stronger as you get better gear through a raid tier or through an expansion's worth of gear? Bear in mind, this is additional resources for spenders so that you can use them more, as opposed to every other job who gain no such benefit. Would this entail SE needing to nerf the job or buff the rest through the expansion? If that is the case, If that is the case, how would this affect the players playing the job as they are levelling later in the expansion? You are now weaker relative to where you should be just because you need to balance around the top gear. This is one of the reasons why MP was changed to be a fixed 10K after all.

So, we can go onto the other option, percentage HP usage. This means, over the course of an expansion, your actions will cost more and more HP as your gear gets better. This would also necessitate that your HP regens also scale at a similar rate. However, how do you balance that out? If you give them too little healing, you cause healers to have to heal you more than other tanks, too much and you can essentially become self sufficient. However, there is still the case of when you regen that HP. Is it something that happens on all GCDs? Is it more of a burst heal at specific points? Both of those come with pros and cons. This is even before we have even considered content where the tank and healer aren't even in gear. If the healer is at the lowest ilevel and the tank the highest, the healer is going to have more problems keeping you alive due to weaker healing, reverse it, and you can end up doing more because your healer can heal you for alot more of your HP with the same spell.

Even then, this is before a discussion of using HP spenders at the wrong time (eg. before a tank buster) can impact a fight and how the healers have to give you special attention. I would say, with a very very high certainty, that a tank like this would not be played, or at least not bought into a hardcore raid setting, unless it was absolutely bonkers in DPS compared to the other tanks and that is something noone wants.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...]

HP spending would in fact be proportional to Max HP, which scales on a similar level as Strength, which will be your primary stat for heal boosting from HP recovery abilities. The spending values would also probably be different for various abilities and for simplicity, a minimum threshold before you can spend should be >=50% HP (if we want a safe guard).

The MP = 10,000 change has been introduced as it fundamentally made no difference for non-Healer jobs with very minor exceptions such as Black Mage, as the MP costs got scaled with their current max MP (except Healers who had maxMP Piety available at the time). The main interaction between different MP pools came from Mana Shift, which granted different MP values depending on the Caster. All of this got neutered however and MP got simplified to 10,000, making MP cost balancing (and actually implementing) less stressful for the devs.

HP however has always been scaling as a survival threshold to ensure you obtain newer gear or equip the correct gear (pre-VIT-on-Accessories). To answer on the amount though, it would essentially depend on what damage numbers will be considered "expected" and what rotation are considered "expected play".

Based on the HP drain of such expectation, you take HP recovery of this +10-30% of leeway, depending on how the HP recovery is applied (burst vs over time). Warrior is currently a great job at displaying burst vs (semi-)over-time healing, so we can take inspirations. Otherwise, something like Bloodbath with lower gains but longer durations would also be possible.

So, within expected parameters the tank should be self-sufficient on his spending, with only minor gains to actual survival, making a Healer still essentially in charge of your HP pool for trinity puproses. Since this is essentially high risk/skill, damage numbers would need to be highly rewarding, however the scaling needs to be very delicate, otherwise we may see 2x DRK here because it does too much damage, as you said. I won't say it is impossible, but I admit it is difficult. In fact, sometimes tanks have been chosen for progression more on how their defensives interacted over damage a lot of times, with Abyssos being a recent example of the latter.

However, if we consider "what if we spend HP at a bad time", this is fundamentally no different from using your defensive cooldowns at a bad time. Though I suppose the difference is that more players will sooner hold cooldowns than not have them, since almost none of them provides damage gains (except Vengeance).

[...]

Correct, however Convert and Blood for Blood were DPS abilities. DPS are fundamentally not designed around withstanding excessive amounts of damage as part of their damage rotation, if they were they would basically be pseudo-tanks minus enmity. Making HP spending a tank thing and giving them the fitting tools to fuel it is not only safer to do around raidwide attacks, but is also generally more logical as they can use excess HP before healing hits them that they would get anyways, even if they only need a fraction of it (example Medica II).

MP management was indeed the compromise and generally the safer venue - however, they have truly mishandled MP interactivity by removing MP-Blood interaction (Stormblood: Delirium, Quietus, TBN, Blood Weapon/Price) and made it extremely bland in an attempt to make it more accessible. The irony is that more people prefering accesibility will still flock to Warrior. A dilemma to me, as it essentially cost me a ton of fun and interaction with my kit.

But as you say, letting such a design (HP spender-drainer Tank) loose on the playerbase would spell an initial wave of people clashing as they figure out what is acceptable and what is essentially being a liability to people. On the flipside, having this gap means there is a lot more room for team optimisation and using excess tools otherwise held, making more use of the tools of the party this way.

I however do not consider toxicity a factor, as we have some folks getting all antsy over like a SGE giving his WAR a shield and the WAR getting pissy over it. If they made every decision in this game purely to eliminate factors of toxicity occuring, we would be playing a very bland game.

Anyways for everyone reading this, I'm sorry for the massive wall of text. :sweat:

[ForsakenRoe]

HP spender tanks arent impossible, they are just difficult to design well, especially in a game where your community will vomit and cry over every possibility of "loss from using action at bad time". Yes I speak of TBN.

The reason they didn't do HP spending DRK is indeed 'loss from using action at bad time'. Not 'loss of damage' though, 'loss of last HP and you die to the raidwide/TB'. It's the same reason we eventually had the HP sacrificing effect removed from Convert (the BLM thing that gives MP back for the funny Flare meme combo), and why Blood for Blood changed to Lance Charge and had it's 'you take more damage for a bit' effect removed. People will 100% spend their HP in a 'it gets me more damage' way, even if it means they die for it, and SE didn't want to deal with the backlash of it all.

MP management was the compromise, a resource you spent and wanted to make sure you made the most of, without spending it all. In FFXIV terms, MP represents aether, and certain forms of aether are synonymous with 'life energy', so in a sense, it's kinda similar. The difference here though, is that you wouldn't have some tryhard getting toxic to the healers because they spent their HP for more damage, one second before White Hole checked if they were full HP, and petrified them. Running out of MP as DRK in the old days hurt nobody but the DRK, and even then, it was just a case of 'generate some MP with Syphon Strike, press Darkside, get back into the rhythm'. Not quite as disruptive as 'overspent HP, died, mobs are running rampant, TBs are hitting everyone but the tank, etc'.

HP spender tanks aren't impossible designwise. But when the design leaves the paper and reaches 'live version', the playerbase will quickly prove how impossible it really is.

[Archwizard]

Unfortunately, if you define DRK as draining HP to deal damage, then that really isn't going to work well when it is a tank

However, that's not actually how I defined it. You'll note I said "use of health as a resource" and "becoming more powerful as health gets lower", both of which can broadly fit the Dark Knight archetype without necessarily having to literalize "drain your HP to deal damage". Hell, damage doesn't even have to come into it.
For instance, you could have DRK gain skills that increase in effect the lower their HP is when they use it, or based on the damage they receive in a given period -- self-healing along the lines of Essential Dignity or Macrocosmos for instance, or a burst of damage reduction that snapshots their missing HP, giving more mitigation the lower their HP is (like the Hellblade's Last Resort from the Bravely series).
Alternately, you could rework Living Dead to be a Full Immunity skill that drains a percentage of HP over time in lieu of the "all or nothing" Doom clock.
Since 14 emphasizes Barriers in DRK's kit, you could have them convert some percentage of HP into a barrier that raises their effective health, or add a cooldown that fills in all of their missing health with a barrier while giving them life leech until the barrier breaks. The possibilities are pretty much endless.

I previously wrote up a skill idea for DRK I called "Martyr", intended to be its sort of Passage of Arms. It would let the DRK channel a high potency barrier, but at the cost of transferring part of the damage taken by nearby allies to the DRK.
I played around with its MP consumption to ensure it would be best used as a group mitigation rather than just an extra strength TBN, but that's not really relevant to this topic; the point is that it uses the DRK's health pool as a resource for the whole raid.

And even if we do bring damage into it, you can also see in the PVP version of DRK that it plays with the "drain HP to deal damage" concept without necessarily needing to invoke it in a way that compromises the DRK's survival. Shadowbringer can be used at the cost of HP, but this cost is negated by Dark Arts, effectively doubling the survival value of TBN.
It actually wouldn't take that much effort to clone something like that into PVE, and would make a very effective way to remove TBN from MP (should the need ever arise in some rework).

Combine any number of ideas along these lines and you could create a tank whose entire kit is based on Risk vs Reward.
But right now the only RvR skill in DRK's kit is Living Dead. And speaking as a healer... a lot of people still misunderstand the "Risk" element of it.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

And even if we do bring damage into it, you can also see in the PVP version of DRK that it plays with the "drain HP to deal damage" concept without necessarily needing to invoke it in a way that compromises the DRK's survival. Shadowbringer can be used at the cost of HP, but this cost is negated by Dark Arts, effectively doubling the survival value of TBN.
It actually wouldn't take that much effort to clone something like that into PVE, and would make a very effective way to remove TBN from MP (should the need ever arise in some rework).

Combine any number of ideas along these lines and you could create a tank whose entire kit is based on Risk vs Reward.
But right now the only RvR skill in DRK's kit is Living Dead. And speaking as a healer... a lot of people still misunderstand the "Risk" element of it.

The PvP kit works because healing is intrinsically a limited resource in PvP, and 90% of the healing is controlled by the DRK itself, leading to the DRK having majority control of its own gameplay flow.

in PvE, such a kit would be ridiculously hard to balance, dps wise. Do you balance for the fact healers can theoretically vomit tons of heals into the DRK to continuously let them use higher power potency skills with no risk the entire time for greater overall damage than if the healer was spending those GCDs to dps, or do you balance around an expected number of uses of those skills per minute assuming healers aren't healing more than necessary? Because in the former, you make the DRK kit severely underpowered if your healer doesn't want to play personal healbot, and in the later, severely overpowered if your healers are willing to play healbot. Not to mention the arguments that will no doubt arise in DF/PF from DRKs demanding personal healbots in the care of the latter. This entire balancing methodology is precisely why the devs made old darkside prevent MP infusion from outside sources, since mana transfer skills/songs could be used to inadvertently give DRK more power than the devs wanted it to have. That way, with MP locked exclusively to the DRK's actions, the system became entirely self contained.

There's also major problems with any tank that wants to be low on HP for any reason, since it literally runs counter to the healer role's modus operandi. Making its mit be based on how low or high your HP is completely robs control of your own ability to use said mit in an effective manner, since it robs personal control from you based on what the healers do (In fact, this is precisely one of the reasons old living dead was reviled so much - you had zero control over it as a mitigation tool and were entirely at the healer's mercy). If there's a mechanic like solo Ahk Morn towers or taking Cauterize w/o invuln, or taking a double buster solo which requires incredibly high levels of mit to survive, having one or more of you defensive options fall into the range of 'if your HP wasn't low enough when you used them, you auto die to this mechanic because the mitigation on them is now too weak to survive the hit(s) even at full HP post heal' just because you got an infusion of cure 1 + tetragrammaton right before you used your mit button(s), then you just kneecap DRK's survivability and make its defensive kit wildly inconsistent.

Even beyond that, there's just the issue of how you'd balance the actual mitigation values contrasted to the other tanks. Since you either end up in a situation where DRK's mit is weaker than every other tanks 90% of the time and only equal if the DRK is at low HP to prevent its mitigation from being overpowered, resulting in a tank that is far more cumbersome to utilize in a group setting compared to just picking literally any other one, or you make their mits equal in 90% of situations to maintain parity with other tanks, but then make them OP when the DRK is at lower levels oh HP, resulting in DRK being wildly out of whack and a mess to balance since it would easily trivialize tougher mitigation checks or basically have infinite invulns with proper setup.

There's literally only one case in the DRK kit where lower HP could be a conditional flair, and that's its personal healing. Having soul eater & Abyssal Drain have modular lifesteal based on missing HP wouldn't break anything, so long as the potencies are capped off at reasonable levels.

It's why MP is the perfect substitute to keep the general flow of 'resource bar go up and down rapidly, but you can potentially put yourself in a bad situation by overspending' that the HP gimmick of DRKs in past games utilized on. It's a self contained system that the DRK possesses full control over, and doesn't run counter to both the tank & healer role's entire modus operandi.

TL : DR: The PVP kit works because of the environment its designed in. There's far too many additional factors in PvE for such a kit to work without having massive balancing issues, positive or negative. For Health scaling damage/mitigation to work in PvE, the differences between minimum & maximum %s/potencies/etc would have to be so small to maintain parity with other tanks in 95% of situations that you'd simply run into the issue of 'why even bother in the first place?'

[Archwizard]

in PvE, such a kit would be ridiculously hard to balance, dps wise.

I think you're misinterpreting the point I was trying to make.

I'm not saying "we need a 1:1 copy of the PVP Shadowbringer" because that would be ridiculous since, as you pointed out, PVP has an entirely different scope and context than PVE. A DRK dies in PVP and only he suffers; a DRK dies in PVE and your group just lost their tank. The PVP version of Shadowbringer is spammable as long as you have the resources, making it available significantly more often than you can use the accompanying TBN and allowing you to dump HP until you're at a critical level. Obviously, we can't afford something that high risk.

Rather, the point I was trying to make was focusing on the use of Dark Arts to subvert that cost, negating any such risk for a tank in PVE under normal circumstances. Presently, the existence of Dark Arts doesn't "reward" proper use of TBN, but rather refunds the cost TBN had in the first place in order to induce a "counterattack" narrative via Edge/Flood.

Were something like PVP Shadowbringer to be introduced in PVE, tuning knobs such as a cooldown and charges could be set in place to ensure that it's only used roughly as often as you can acquire Dark Arts, with the raw HP cost merely providing you an alternative to casting it when you don't get DA so that your mitigation and DPS won't negatively impact one another. Same flavor of Dark Arts we have now, but it actually rewards you rather than just refunding.
In an extreme (and however unlikely) case, you may even use such an HP cost as sort of a magic wand to charge up some of the other effects I previously listed, giving you a small measure of personal control over your HP as TouchandFeel noted we lack. I'm not trying to advocate this route specifically, I'm just noting the open possibility to make and connect such tools.

Overall though, the reason I brought it up at all was to highlight that DRK's history and flavor provide plenty of opportunities for creative tanking tools (especially with PLD intentionally being straightforward and WAR not having any thematic magic or gadgetry), which is part of what makes its current position so underwhelming.

There's also major problems with any tank that wants to be low on HP for any reason, since it literally runs counter to the healer role's modus operandi.

God if I don't know it from DRKs screaming at me to stop healing them 'cuz they popped LD at the top of a pull with two HoTs, an external DR and a barrier on them.
(Like, I don't know what you want me to do there, bud. I'm on SGE, if I sneeze too hard it heals you. Learn how to use your invuln.)

Of course, I'm also convinced the 6.1 LD buff was just a holdover for a future rework, since they did the same thing for skills like Acceleration or the entirety of MNK's kit last expansion before bigger reworks in EW. The literal layers of complication on it now (in lieu of just... removing the Doom timer) have that certain vibe, y'know?

Even beyond that, there's just the issue of how you'd balance the actual mitigation values contrasted to the other tanks. Since you either end up in a situation where DRK's mit is weaker than every other tanks 90% of the time and only equal if the DRK is at low HP to prevent its mitigation from being overpowered, resulting in a tank that is far more cumbersome to utilize in a group setting compared to just picking literally any other one, or you make their mits equal in 90% of situations to maintain parity with other tanks, but then make them OP when the DRK is at lower levels oh HP, resulting in DRK being wildly out of whack and a mess to balance since it would easily trivialize tougher mitigation checks or basically have infinite invulns with proper setup.

And I also suggested that a Macrocosmos-esque effect that charges up as you take damage would fit too, rather than just snapshotting while you pray you hit the mit before Bene goes off.
... And even that couldn't be any worse than Oblation.

The list I threw out wasn't comprehensive, nor end-all-be-all. At the least, it was my attempt to illustrate the versatility of the theme besides just "Dark Wave go brrrr"; at most, an effort to get creative juices flowing.

[Mikey_R]

Rather, the point I was trying to make was focusing on the use of Dark Arts to subvert that cost, negating any such risk for a tank in PVE under normal circumstances. Presently, the existence of Dark Arts doesn't "reward" proper use of TBN, but rather refunds the cost TBN had in the first place in order to induce a "counterattack" narrative via Edge/Flood.

That's the thing though, you don't want to reward the use of a defensive buff with more damage, otherwise the defensive will be used for offence and will feel bad if if absolutely had to save it to use it for an actual defensive purpose. You can just look to HW and, IIRC, SB PLD for an example. Sheltron/Bulwark were useful tools to get a Shield Swipe proc and were often used for the purpose. Sheltron even had MP regen attached to it in SB and, with how tight PLD's MP economy was then, you bet Sheltron was used to help restore MP so that you could get all 5 Holy Spirit casts in.

Rewarding defensive play with offence just does not work.

[Archwizard]

That's the thing though, you don't want to reward the use of a defensive buff with more damage

Rewarding defensive play with offence just does not work.

Have you met my friend, The Blackest Night? I think you two would hate each other.