Quote Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim View Post
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.