Future Jobs branching from Tank Classes

[Exstal]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-How-I-d-Do-It

DRK

Uhhhh... No?

If you actually look at the various incarnations of Dark Knights over games other than XI, they've actually been a very tanky class:

• The very first Dark Knight is Leon from FF2 who is a one of your most durable characters, with high hp and defense. The only "damage dealer" kind of thing he gets is access to Black Magic, which is no more anti-tank within the confines of the classless FF systems than PLD getting White Magic.
• Cecil, in FF4, is *still* super tanky while a Dark Knight, what with high defense, hp, and heavy armor. The only "damage dealer" aspect he gets is the whole sacrifice-hp-to-increase-damage/deal-damage thing, which still doesn't preclude his tankiness given the fact that he is still your most durable character *and* it's another of the FF games where you don't have anything resembling a trinity construct so even the durable characters are supposed to be throwing out as much damage as possible.
• In FFX-2, Dark Knight is, once again, a highly durable class: high hp and high defense. The same explanation of hp-sacrifice as applied to Cecil applies here.
• In FFT (which the devs seem to be drawing a lot of their inspiration from), Dark Knight is *explicitly* a tank class: heavy armor, shields, knight swords, and an at-will hp regain ability that makes them virtually impossible to kill. Gafgarion is one of your best tanks outright.

The only incarnation of DRK that is an explicit damage dealer rather than following the model for tanks that the devs have been drawing from to turn into tanks for ARR is FFXI, which is nowhere *close* to "all games". At worst, DRK was a tank that used BLM instead of WHM. In general, it was a tank that had the option to sacrifice hp to become a damage dealer for a short period.

It's important to keep in mind that in every single Final Fantasy, with the exception of XI, *there was no trinity*. Everyone was expected to deal damage and take hits. If your only definition of "tank" is "has cover" then the only tank that would be around would be PLD, which is a *terrible* idea for an MMO since having only a single option for a role is boring as hell. When you're pulling classes from games that don't have a trinity and assigning them roles to fit *into* a trinity, you have to look at attributes other than "takes damage for other people" (especially given the fact that oftentimes the characters aren't actually meant to be balanced against one another); you look for high defense, high hp, and a lower than average damage dealing capacity compared to the explicit damage dealers (Cecil as DK compared to Edge or Yang; DK dressphere compared to Gunner or Thief; Dark Knight in FFT compared to monk, lancer, archer, or ninja).

Now, as to what classes actually fit this mold, there are a few of them: Berserker (high hp, high evasion; as a tank, likely based off of PGL), Samurai (self-buffing, parry/evasion; likely based off of new class entirely), Dark Knight (hp draining, high defense, high hp; as a tank, likely based off of new class), Spellblade/Mystic Knight (self buffs, magical sword attacks; likely based off of new class, potentially treed off of the same one as Red Mage), and Templar/Defender (heavy armor, high hp, self buffing; likely based off of LNC).

Considering how many potential jobs there are in the FF series overall and the need to maintain a decent tank/DPS/healer class ratio in *this* game, I find it unlikely that most of those would be implemented as anything other than a tank, since it would be severely cutting into the number of prexisting FF-jobs that could actually make sensible tanks (and, no, Ninja is not a "sensible" tank; FFXI is so anomalous compared to the rest of the FF series that you can safely ignore everything that it did with its jobs because so many of them depart so very heavily from the original implementations). The same holds true for finding new healers, since it's not like there are a lot of them other than White Mage in previous implementations: if it's a job that was designed providing support, it'll likely be brought in as a healer even if that class didn't originally have any real healing capability. DPS is likely going to be a role that gets assigned to a job when it can't feasibly be turned into a tank or healer.

SAM

Do I have to do this again? I swear, it's like people don't even *try* to actually look at the historical iterations of a class before they go claiming that it *has* to be a given role.

Samurai has 7 major implementations:

• The first was in FF5, where Samurai was a high stamina physical class with Gil Toss, an instant-kill attack, a stun attack, and a high evasion passive.
• The second was Cyan in FF6, who has crazy high strength, defense, and hp while baseline equipping shield and all of the heaviest armor in the game. He's got Bushido which is just fancy sword techniques.
• The third was in FFT, where Samurai had balanced physical stats, an *insanely* strong evasion passive, and an ability list that included a lot of self buffs/heals, enemy debuffs/status effects, and some relatively generic attacks.
• The fourth is Auron who is strange but qualifies in some senses since he wields a "katana" and has "Bushido" as his limit break; his abilities focus upon specific stat reduction and he has 2 separate versions of Cover as well as the highest hp, Strength, and Defense amongst the entire group.
• The "fifth" is Yojimbo who fits the samurai mold, but he's got some wonky constructs thanks to being a summon (and further conflated by requiring Gil to be spent on him). He's got the insta-gib and generic beatdown otherwise.
• The sixth is from FFX-2, where Samurai has the insta-gib, a bunch of debuffing/purging abilities, a slew of excellent self buffs, Gil Toss, and a stat allocation with moderate strength, good defense, high agility, and high evasion.
• The seventh was in FFXI, where Samurai was originally intended to be a tank focusing upon parry but turned into a damage dealer.
• The final was in FFT:A2, where the Paravir fits the Samurai mold, with katanas, unleashed sword skills and the insta-gib. It's got crazy high physical attack and low defense but high evasion and high hp.

As such, the fundamental aspects that are occur most often with the Samurai are Gil Toss, the insta-gib, high evasion, and high hp. With the exception of the Paravir, it's exceptionally tough: it either has outright high defense and high hp or decent defense, high evasion, and high hp. It often gets a lot of substantial self buffs that serve to make it more durable as well.

If you're going off of how Samurai has actually been implemented historically, it's a tank: either an evasion tank or a parry tank, depending upon how you interpret Blade Grasp/high evasion in games without partial damage, with pseudo-mystical sword techniques and some monk-like abilities. The only real "DPS" Samurai are one that isn't even *named* Samurai (and, even then, you can get pretty damned tanky with it given the right loadout) and a metagame evolution of a class initially intended to be a tank that turned into a DPS (similar to how Ninja was originally intended to be a DPS and became a tank), which isn't really very reliable evidence.

This isn't to say that is impossible for SAM to get put in game as a DPS job, but it's doubtful given the historical role of the samurai throughout the series coupled with the design metagame not really having as many viable tank options as DPS options.