What about creating an ACTUAL Dark Knight?

[Rakshazi]

Mates, mates! Chill. Structurize what you don't like about the way DRK plays now and make the proposals about every point in the structure, so this tread won't fall in the ANOTHER living dead only conversation, somewhat like this:
- We can't rewrite the lore, so it stays the same: DRK must draw his power from the darkness/abyss type of magick
- What resource he need to utilize his kit that will come to play as the PRICE of said drak/abysall powers?
- What he must do to replenish said resources?
- What the main theme of his skills/spells should be to feel apropriate with resource usage/management?
- How those skills/spells will come in play as TANK oriented?

For example I can bring you this answers:
- Resource: as BLM utilizes a lot of mana in his black magick so must do DRK. I think it will be apropriate to mana be the main resource and with each cast/usage of spel/skilll the next SAME one will need to cost more, just as BLM's "Fire".
- Resource replenish: I think to create a PRICE for usage of the black/dark/abysall powers would be HP. For example - he uses all of his mana for the rotation or some costly skill/spell, to replenish it he will neeed to sarcrifice like... 20-30% of his MAX HP. Ofcourse we will need to have a skill in the rotation, that will give us the meanings to replenish said HP via combat. Thus we will need to manage our DPS output to stay alive and dealing damage, balancing the need for mana and HP.
- The main theme of the skills will not change to much:the power that DRAINS your mana dry if you will not find the way to sip it's power from the others (enemies, but not always). So the DRK will apear more like vampire knight or some. For example we can make him to drain HP from the foe (like now, but add a bit more vapiric touch to the skill rotation) or drain MP from his allyes (yo, bard, I need your mana, boots and bike).
- About tank orientation of the kit: he will, obiously, need the powers to protect himself and the allies in the battle, but this is quite easy to do even with our present enmity generation and shields. Like any other tank he will need the invulnerability, so we come to the Living Dead problem. I think if Living Dead will just allow us to not fall behind 1HP it's OK, but to make it work MORE LIKE the actual DRK (and to follow his new theme) we can make that he will NOT recieve any healing from ANY source, but his own skillsas drain. Make him actualy go full DEAD BERZERK, give him "Haste" and/or "Immunity to CC" during this "Undead rage" so he can DRAIN LIFE WITH EVERY SKILL/SPELL HE HAVE and, if in the end of the LD time he manages to cure some amount of HP he will be alive and recieve the HP of the amount he drained. The SE can even give us some gauge that will show us how much we have drained. This will actualy make DRK look more sinister and DARK (lol) and make his DPS windows a lot more predictable (have the mana - use it till it dry out and then some and if someone will try to hit you hard (LD windows) you will become only stronger and bleed them out).