Dark Knight DD or Tank

[Altena]

I just think that there are already plenty of tanking jobs in this game--

How many people make up a party? 8. How many Tanks are required for pretty much all current content? 1.

Why add another class, to do the same role, that only has realistically 1 slot in a party of 8? At the moment PLD is pretty godly for any tanking situation. WAR can fill the shoes in dungeons and a few NM's but why step in, when another job can do it better?

Besides, adding another tank will strike a war between playing on PLD, WAR and DRK. There are already 2 tanky jobs in the game, we don't need a 3rd. Make DRK some form of DD and it won't hurt the PLD and WAR mains in here. DRG and MNK mains (like myself) can deal with it.

[Shougun]

Drks are very tanky in offline games, when i use the word tanky i mean a class that can take hits and not die which both pld and dark can do. Only advantage pld had that it could use Cover. In FF 11 darks was very squishy.

Too bad multiplayer games take a big dump on what is cool in single player games lol. (Not saying that to be mean XD)

Balancing everyone to be useful/desired sometimes means destroying some cool aspect you loved in single player XD

[Sakasa]

On the fact that DRK was originally tanky is a strange statement, because remember back in the early class system the difference was not so much in stats but the abilities because you couldn't directly effect stats once the job has been changed. The special traits like cover made pld a tank more so then the fact it had a big hp pool and access to heavy armor and shields.

But I think DRK should be a DD but unlike how DRG works it should combo ws > spell > ws , ws >spell > spell, and spell > ws > ws . So for instance front cone ws > fire > Drk only spell so DRK will have to manage both tp and mp and gain benefits from spells much more then it did in 11 where shared spells were more fluff.

Also from deriving the job from a class I think it makes more sense to come from MRD then GLA. No so much the two handed weapon thing but just skill names and purposes the MRD seems more brutal and rage war like which the DRK is know for through Cecil. But I believe I am a bit biased on this though because I perceived the second job from GLA to be RDM. But this is assuming they go to the two stone per class system which would get a bit tricky even if they introduced the job specific weapon types such as rapier and greatsword because some classes won't be derived easily. Sure THF>NIN but blue mage and other eccentric classes wouldn't work so well in that regard.

[Hart]

But I think DRK should be a DD but unlike how DRG works it should combo ws > spell > ws , ws >spell > spell, and spell > ws > ws . So for instance front cone ws > fire > Drk only spell so DRK will have to manage both tp and mp and gain benefits from spells much more then it did in 11 where shared spells were more fluff.

This is a very interesting idea. I quite like it.

I don't think it matters what it branches off of, though. They could add a dark knight skill every two levels if they wanted to. GLD skills would still be there, but they would be completely useless. Wouldn't matter because the DRK skills would be plentiful and would trump them.

[Reika]

Hm, i really dont remember my DRK being squishy in groups in XI when I played around with Sword+Shield, which they could do in that game. It was just taboo, like a lot of job-race combinations or weapon choices were. It was fun for when there weren't any Paladins around, but its not like it didn't work out. The main difference that made pld a better choice was that it had healing magic, Defensive traits, and better weapon skills with the sword anyways. But its not like DRK COULDNT do it if it had to.

Drk wore heavy armor too, it was a knight, knights wear heavy armor. If/when they add DRK, it would add another class/job to almost all the plate armor in the game.

Though the main reason why DRK will end up a squishy low HP low Defense DD like DRG is because you could just switch Job to PLD from anywhere, unlike XI, and because you know the majority wants DRK to be squishy DD.

And.... if it came off of GLD it would not be squishy DD, it would be tank >.>

[OrionInerghem]

When you say DRK tanked in XI that was /nin and not FTW.. no DRK/DD tanked anything challenge worthy in XI. I also differentiate between being "able" to do something and doing something because it's a "winning" strategy. If you sacrifice a ton of STR and DEF to ATT abilities/gear to tank on DRK that's just a D rate tank.

1)Meaningful Situational: PLD+/- NIN(AoE=X), MNK(counter/weaker mob, salvage, non AOE)
2) Weaker mob/mostly situational: War, SAM/Seigan, DD/nin (ie: DRK)
3)Very situational/solo/ messing around: Rdm/nin, Smn/Bst pets

I think FF series wise GLD > pld+Drk would make the most sense since they are basically inverses, (equip sword> switch Scythe/GS @job change) You'd need a significant DPS increase to make this work, and XIV GLD abilities wouldn't make sense on DRK, but would have good survive-ability.

Ability wise MRD> AXE would make sense for DRK to use as well, plus the abilities would match up better with DD and could still wear heavy armor. So I think for XIV MRD> DRK would make the most sense.

[Fadigre]

Drks are very tanky in offline games, when i use the word tanky i mean a class that can take hits and not die which both pld and dark can do. Only advantage pld had that it could use Cover. In FF 11 darks was very squishy.

Is this not simply because of their armour class?
Healing in offline games and healing online are totally different things.

Whilst offline you could simply mitigate the health lost from abilities such as Darkness, online it'll just cause hate and MP issues (this is assuming that a Dark Knight has abilities in place to take hate to begin with).

The main feature (harming itself to inflict higher damage) of a Dark Knight is suited towards damage dealing and directly conflicts with anything related to tanking.

I'm not saying it can't tank, I'm sure many have done it before. What I am saying is that on the list of jobs with unique mechanics, Dark Knight's cliché isn't near the top of the list like it is with damage dealing.

[Achtzen]

If drk branched out from gla, i can see it requiring blm for elemental weapons to increase damage vs elemental weakness. It could probably have some damage boosting abilities, special attacks, and also utilize different stats like str for physical damage and int for elemental. Kinda how like stiener was in ff9.

[Velhart]

Like people have said, Dark Knight has usually been aimed towards as a DPS role rather than a tank. If they did make it a tanking role however, it would have to be completely different from PLD. It would focus on DPS with a 2-handed sword and hold hate through damage. A problem with that however is that we already have a tank that depends on DPS to hold hate, which is WAR.

While it is definitely possible to have DRK tank, it would have to have a completely new approach to it from what PLD and WAR do to hold hate.

I think Samurai would be the next candidate for tanking. In FFXI, they were suppose to be a tank that used DPS and parrying to hold hate and sustain damage, but that didn't last long at all, especially due to parrying being a really awful process to level. It was very rare finding someone who actually got their parrying capped. FFXIV could bring this back though, and make sure that role works out for them. Perhaps have Samurai and Ninja derive from one class, and have Ninja focus on DPS and Samurai on tanking.

[Eagleheart]

I like this thread. (o.O)> Although I would comment that (back from the first page) let's not do the whole scythe thing again. Greatswords onry!