Quote Originally Posted by Nephyleem View Post
You know, these "high-risk high-reward" tanky jobs that sacrifices their own HP to protect themselves or deliver strong blows?
That literally steals vitality from their foes to survive?
Makes shield out of their foes' blood?
That do ACTUAL DARK STUFF.

Does is speaks to anybody?
Or is that just me? '^'
First I have to say that I have never DRK in FF14, so I am basing my thoughts on what I think it should do. To me it seems that DRK would have been better served as a DPS class that focused on sacrificing life to deal exponential dmg. So that DRK did not have to rely on a healer to function properly, I would think that DRK's rotation would build up to losing health overtime, not as a DoT, but as each skill sacrifices a little bit more HP until the final skill in rotation would actually sap a great deal of HP from the target(s). This is where I think the strategy would come into play: making sure the target(s) have enough HP so that the DRK gets something back. And I mean that if you used this rotation against a dying mob or group of mobs, then their would not be sufficient HP to sap and DRK would not get all the HP they spent back. Other risk would be giving yourself enough time to complete the rotation before getting hit and killed due to having low HP. I may even go so far as suggest that once initiated, the DRK rotation would not allow for the DRK to be healed by any means other than completing the rotation, or canceling the rotation (this way a healer would not be able to play safety net, and the DRK rotation would remain high-risk/high-reward).

I could see DRK being a more viable tank be allowing similar tactics to what I described, except that the gain of the DRK, as opposed to being dmg used by the DRK against mobs, would instead be a buff transferred to the rest of the party (or maybe a target DPS role). I could see DRK becoming a tank that utilizes debuffs as opposed to dealing high amounts of dmg. I think causing debuffs on the enemy (i.e. blind, MP/HP DoT, stun, etc.) would still fit into the tank role of gaining enmity, while keeping away from becoming the "ultimate tank/DPS hybrid" role.


IMO, the Dark Knight as a solo-type role has always been about trading HP for DMG and then having some ways of stealing that HP back again. However as a multi-player type role, the Dark Knight seems better suited to being a debuffer class. Just my thoughts.