I think Maurader/Arcanist would make a fun Dark Knight job

[Strawberrycocoa]

You would probably need to remove the use of the pet and give a few DK-Specific passives for it to function (for example, causing Strength to fuel Magic Attack Potency, probably a passive potency buff on the spells to make up for no pet damage), but I think it'd be fun for a melee-spellcaster DoT damage role.

[TouchandFeel]

I could see Maurader+Arcanist being a very viable class combo for a Dark Knight job as it would bring both some drain abilities and poison themed DOT's to the table which work well for the DRK theme as well as having a good sized HP pool from MRD which would work well for playing off of the classic Soul Eater ability where DRK could sacrifice HP to do more damage.

If DRK extended from MRD (MRD lvl.30, ACN lvl.15) then the ACN pet would not be an issue since DRK would only really pull from ACN for cross class skills and I doubt that summon would be included for them.

[Boots-365]

are they planning on bringing in a DKN

[XanderOlivieri]

are they planning on bringing in a DKN

Its one of a few classes specifically mentioned a few times in various interviews. Though its always been mentioned as a Gladiator Job.

I'd personally like to see them make a new class to fit the Dark Knight more than use an existing one.

[Nahara]

are they planning on bringing in a DKN

The short-hand for Dark Knight is and will be DRK, as it was in XI, since both XI and XIV use the same three-letter short-hand notations for jobs (as evidenced when you look at a piece of gear that's available only to certain classes).

That said, I want to reiterate what I said about this in another thread: What makes people think pairing a martial class (be it GLD or MRD) with a magic class makes for a good DRK? A Dark Knight's identity, the thing that sets it apart from other classes, has always been Souleater, the ability to consume your own HP in order to deal damage to your enemy. Sure, DRK had spells in XI, but those were mostly just filler and laughably weak given which stats DRK wanted on their gear. Leave the spell-casty knight to the Mystic Knight/Rune Fencer/whatever, because that's a much better fit than Dark Knight.

And even if you could somehow convince people that DRK really should come from ACN (or another popular example being THM), well... congratulations, you're now stuck with Ruin, Physick, Virus, and Eye for an Eye as one half of your cross-class abilities. DRK will almost assuredly be a melee DPS, and those abilities do nothing to help them do it better. DRK would benefit a hundred times more with the cross-class abilities from LNC and PGL, since those give you Invigorate, Blood for Blood, and Internal Release (and possibly even Mantra, since it's off the GCD and helps the healers bring your HP back up, since you're dealing damage to yourself).

[h0neybadg3r]

What about a Steiner-esq character (FF9)...GLD 30/THM 15...might also be able to find a use for apocastasis too (change from increasing elemental resistance to increasing elemental damage)

[Kitru]

What about a Steiner-esq character (FF9)...GLD 30/THM 15...might also be able to find a use for apocastasis too (change from increasing elemental resistance to increasing elemental damage)

The stuff you'd get out of THM would still be basically worthless to GLA or any melee class, in fact. PLD already gets almost nothing out of CNJ (the only real thing that they benefit from is Stoneskin). Hardcasting in melee doesn't work since it stops you from moving and the entire reason why mDPS is allowed to rule the roost is because it has to move all the time (which ends up reducing its DPS). Back in beta, BRD used to have CNJ as one of its CC classes. That was abandoned when players complained and recognized that, even if it were thematically appropriate, nothing that CNJ could provide was of use to BRD. It's also why THM is sub-ARC instead of some other class, since ARC actually provides useful DPS functionality (ACN really just provides Virus and EfE, which don't do much for DPS even if they're awesome for utility).

Also, apocatastasis is a BLM ability, not a THM ability, so it wouldn't be available to anyone else.

[Shikiseki]

Well considering the dark knight from FFX-2, they had debuff-spells etc, meaning that Virus would fit to this category quite well. Eye for an Eye would be a nice utility for a dps.
Of course their soul eater will be their main source of damage, I'd say that Marauder (Even if he has an Axe and not a great-sword) would fit much better as base class than Gladiator due to the Power/Blood theme.
The second cross class tree could easily be lancer, the pugilist one wouldn't fit too much because of Mantra.

[Boots-365]

you could make all the acn abilities sword related life/tp based

[Giantbane]

The problem with this is that MRD has nothing that supports spell casting. It has the lowest MP pool of (i think) all classes, all of its abilities are physical, and no way to regen that MP. So it requires a lot of shoe horning to get the MRD skill set to work with casting spells.

On the other hand GLD already has some basic support for use of magic. It has a higher MP pool, flash as an MP ability it already uses, and the riot combo to regenerate MP. If they were to make a melee/magic DPS hybrid, I would think it's much more likely to be based on the GLD.

However, I don't think that should be the DRK. The big thing about DRK has always been Souleater (as has been stated), the ability to sacrifice life for increased power. And this can function entirely as a physical job. It makes much more sense to base this off MRD (as bloodbath and storm's path can be used to restore life lost from souleater).

On the other hand, I think GLD/ACN+THM could make a very capable RDM (DPS).