Quote Originally Posted by Giantbane View Post
Pretty sure FFXI SAM was *supposed* to have been a tank, they just screwed it up. Kind of like Ninja was not supposed to be a tank, but everyone used it as one because utsusemi was ridiculous. Besides, Samurai are basically the Japanese version of the European knight, which is typically thought of as a Tank archetype. There's no reason the SAM can't follow suit.

DRK, on the other hand makes less sense as a tank. DRK is all about sacrificing his own life in order to wield forbidden power (ie Darkness & Souleater), which is a little more of a stretch (not that they can't, BRD is an archer now, after all).
To be fair on the bard point, Edward from FFIV could use bows so it's not completely unheard of for a bard to use bows.