What if we designed other Tank's abilities like they were made for WAR?

[Oizen]

If it's both fast AND hard-hitting... isn't that ultimately just "High(est) DPS"?

"Expanding" on that "high burst damage... very quickly" motif would otherwise necessarily require siphoning from one or the other. For every additional attack you have per minute, the more those (especially, non-CD-locked / non-"burst") attacks descend towards pool-noodle status.

Not quite. This isn't about highest damage over all, this is about high burst damage and doing it fast. Unlike the identity of highest damage which isn't really a good identity for reasons talked about, highest burst damage is way more palpable as an identity. And in context of current balance DRK is already doing this at some level, its opener is still the strongest by a fair margin, and then the others will catch up and surpass throughout a full fight. I just think we should lean more into this high apm burst style.
You could even use it to justify fun stuff like giving Dark Missionary a Expedience effect or something like that to give it use in content that isn't magic damage centric. Would be a pretty unique utility for a tank imo.

And this from the job wielding, on average, the heaviest weapon in the game... (Yes, more so than Warrior.)

Its a bit too late to care about that given how many times the job is already skipping animations with double weaves.
Besides that never really stopped Cloud.

Don't get me wrong. I miss Blood Weapon's Haste, but in part that's also because it granted some sort of sense to the interactions between DRK's weapon and powers and offered variance to its pace.

At that time, that red aura meant your aura was affecting reality around you, including the weight of the blade (see Scourge, Souleater, relative to Hard, Spinning, Syphon, and Power Slash), while any other faster attack was CD-locked. At the time, it was less about "DRK = Fast" as "DRK manipulates (nearby reality and thereby) its own speed".

I don't really care about how you justify it, as stated before unless we decide to go full on from the ground up rework we're not going to see a DRK where it weilding a slow weighty weapon makes sense anymore.

[Shurrikhan]

This isn't about highest damage over all, this is about high burst damage and doing it fast. Unlike the identity of highest damage which isn't really a good identity for reasons talked about, highest burst damage is way more palpable as an identity. And in context of current balance DRK is already doing this at some level, its opener is still the strongest by a fair margin, and then the others will catch up and surpass throughout a full fight. I just think we should lean more into this high apm burst style.

So just about hitting all the things once per minute and going near-comatose the rest. Fair enough. We've still got a few oGCDs not being popped under raid/buffs or BloodDeli with which you can further stuff our 20s of burst per 120s, leaving the remaining 100s that much more barren.

Seems neither desirable nor an identity to me, but... /shrug.

Its a bit too late to care about that given how many times the job is already skipping animations with double weaves.
Besides that never really stopped Cloud.

Which was unique, in that game's universe, to Cloud and his fellow Soldiers (and certain non-humans/super-humans). Because the dude was on lifestream/materia-roids.

If you want to make a job about juicing materia for super-strength, sure, you'd have precedent for that. But, that also wouldn't be DRK. It'd be a Soldier.

DRK has instead used (primarily Void-)magic to influence reality around it, so it's in its interest that its use of its weapon reflects that rather than just making reference to characters whose powers are altogether different.