A completely stupid DRK idea

[Malthir]

So I got to thinking, how do DRKs, or things VERY MUCH LIKE Dark Knights, tend to work in fantasy in general. Yes yes, DPS, I mean besides that. Thematically and class fantasy-wise.

DRK, like all the Tanks that aren't PLD, heals by naturally performing their 1-2-3 combo. While this is standard, it really doesn't make much sense for any of the three that do it - WAR, DRK, or GNB. OF THE THREE, DRK probably makes the most sense because of leeching life being one of their themes, but I feel like the standard 1-2-3 is the most boring and not impactful FEELING ways to do this possible.


What if DRK had an ability specifically for sucking life out of enemies and controlling that life? But that actually felt a bit like magic.

DRK is supposed to be the Darkness/Shadow counterpart/inverse of PLD. Where PLD is Holy and Order and Light, DRK is Darkness and Chaos and Shadow. But it doesn't feel it.

DRK is a Dark element spellsword to PLD's Holy element spellsword, but feels much less the spell.

Moreover, in line with the Darkness theme, the archetype (which also shares with things such as WoW's Death Knights, FFXIV's RPR, and FFTactics Dark Knight) has a history that involves things like leeching and manipulating life.

Here's the thing, they were like that in Heavensward. There kit was a mess and didn't synergise well but Dark arts would add additional effects to moves such as adding in blinds, I believe a damage down on one move and a defence debuff for enemies. They had more dots than the other tanks and they had parry which was essentially unique to the Dark they had reprisal which I believe could only be used on a parry. They had a buff which gave them increased parry rate too they basically acted as the opposite of a paladin with parry the opposite to the paladin block and the dots and debuffs the counter to the paladins heal and buffs. When they pressed Darkside their mana pool would constantly drain so you had to make you mind up when you were gonna use it to burst, then cancel it to go back to recharging mana.

Imo although their kit was trash and didn't really make a great deal of sense it was the most enjoyable Drk build we've ever had, you always had buttons to press you weren't trapped in 123 hell. It was enjoyable, the world was at peace, and the the stormblood expansion attacked. They got rid of TP and then uniformed mana so we all had the same amount, this didn't really effect the other tanks as they only really used TP and not mana except the one time a paladin healed and everyone laughed at how bad it was. For Drks it was crippling, they completely removed most of our abilities got rid of powerslash at the end of the expac :'(, they never really figured out how to balance the cost of our abilities so we feel impotent mana to zero after like 4 attacks, great. We lost our dots and debuffs, all our unique cool stuff was taken away and spread amongst all tanks, like reprisal. We were forced into being terrible WAR clones from then on. This is the Darkest of timelines.