What about creating an ACTUAL Dark Knight?

[Reynhart]

In short, if it was able to go to the front row, it was a tank.

No, because being in the back row also reduced your melee damage. So the rule was "if you're a melee job, you're in the front."

[ADVSS]

No, because being in the back row also reduced your melee damage. So the rule was "if you're a melee job, you're in the front."

End game was usually cecil, kain, edge in front for me and rosa, rydia in back, idk how other people did it, that was just the formation that made the most sense to me.

[Absimiliard]

End game was usually cecil, kain, edge in front for me and rosa, rydia in back, idk how other people did it, that was just the formation that made the most sense to me.

That was literally the only option until the remakes allowed you to swap characters at endgame. Even fully geared, Rosa and Rydia would survive between three and four hits from strong trash mobs if left in the front row. Granted, Edge's defense was garbage as well, but his melee attack at least gave you an excuse to leave him up front.

[ADVSS]

That was literally the only option until the remakes allowed you to swap characters at endgame. Even fully geared, Rosa and Rydia would survive between three and four hits from strong trash mobs if left in the front row. Granted, Edge's defense was garbage as well, but his melee attack at least gave you an excuse to leave him up front.

there was the adamantium armor, but legit farming that was not something anyone sane probably should try to do, not for full party. But yeah, I mean even in the back row those two could get 2 shot from regular mobs on the way to zeromus lol

[Reynhart]

End game was usually cecil, kain, edge in front for me and rosa, rydia in back, idk how other people did it, that was just the formation that made the most sense to me.

Yes, does that make Dragoons and Ninjas tanks, yet ?

The concept of "tanking" doesn't really exist in other games outside of FFXI, so what job fits what role is largely up to your imagination.

Provoke and Cover are skills designed for you to take hits instead of you party member, that's the concept of tanking outside of MMO, and it existed since FF III.

In FFXIV, Paladins are historically trained as bodyguards who swear oaths in service of the Sultanate. Dark Knights, on the other hand, swear allegiance to no master. Their only duty is to follow their hearts, to protect the weak against injustice, and to punish evil as they see fit.

Which makes DRK much closer to the usual lore related to Paladins. While you roam with Sidurgu trying to protect a little girl from a corrupted church, Paladins are running around Eorzea to measure the size of their...sword.

[MaraD_]

Yes, does that make Dragoons and Ninjas tanks, yet ?

In the context of FF4, yes.
Blink was broken as heck, and Jump allowed Kain to survive Big Bang in playthroughs where you were severely under leveled.
DRGs are the most tanky jobs in all FFs with their ability to have higher than average HP, good armor, and a 100% evasion skill that also does dmg.

Put either kain or edge in the back row and they then take -50% melee dmg, while also doing dmg in the back row. (edge does more dps, due to jump taking up a turn, lowering the actual DPS. but DPS doesnt matter in a 1 on 1 scenario w/o a DPS check. As the turns in which a boss wastes attackign nothing, equate to the turn having never happened.)

Put cecil in the back row, and he's just a bad healer. (i tried this for my low level play through, he could survive big bang on occasion, but was too useless back there.)
Kain and Edge were beasts as tanks compared to cecil, when maximizing potential.
Cecil is just more straight forward, and "easier" to just take hits, since there's no set up for him.

Provoke and Cover are skills designed for you to take hits instead of you party member, that's the concept of tanking outside of MMO, and it existed since FF III.

Provoke yes, though useless outside of FFX. Cover, not so much, since its too rare of an occurrence, which cant be properly controlled. Its better suited for offense.
put on a slow character with massive attack power, given counter attack, then put in a MNK who can easily get to low HP. (like FF6)
It COULD act as an actual means to protect allies from damage in the future games, like it does in XIV.
But you'd protect the squishies far more by sticking them in the back row in FF4. Putting non squishies in the front row. Thats the most effective tactic for protecting them from dmg.
tanking fundamentally from game design, is the job of being defensive. healers and tank are technically the same role, from a game design perspective.
but like how melee and casters are sub roles of DPS, tanks and healers are sub roles of defense.
so simply lowering dmg others take, is the equivalent of tanking (as its mostly mitigation, and someone being dedicated towards mitigation. while healers are less about mitigation, but HP going back up.)
So While Cover and Provoek are "tanking methods" its not from directly mitigating dmg, but indirectly mitigating dmg.
The spell of Protect counts as mitigation and "tanking" and so does having to force someone to the front row, where row slots are a limited resource.

So in the end, yes NIN and DRGs tank.
(also depends on the game too, as both are more than qualified to be designed as such. Just like most jobs)

[Reynhart]

DRGs are the most tanky jobs in all FFs with their ability to have higher than average HP, good armor, and a 100% evasion skill that also does dmg.

The first attribute of a tank is to focus all attacks on him, what MMO call enmity. In that regard, DRG are the absolute worst tank precisely because they force the ennemy to hit somebody else.

Put cecil in the back row, and he's just a bad healer. (i tried this for my low level play through, he could survive big bang on occasion, but was too useless back there.)

Put Cecil in the back row, and he only take scratch damage, far lower than his capacity to heal himsel, which is why a Cecil solo run is just a piece of cake.

Provoke yes, though useless outside of FFX.

It was always useful to make sure weaker characters don't take hits.

Cover, not so much, since its too rare of an occurrence, which cant be properly controlled. Its better suited for offense.

In FFIV, you can manually decide who you want to Cover, on top of automatically Covering anyone with critical HP, again, ensuring that weaker target don't take too much hits.

It COULD act as an actual means to protect allies from damage in the future games, like it does in XIV.

It does, it always did.

But you'd protect the squishies far more by sticking them in the back row in FF4. Putting non squishies in the front row. Thats the most effective tactic for protecting them from dmg.

Back row characters still take damage. If they're at critical HP, they would still die if not covered.

[MaraD_]

The first attribute of a tank is to focus all attacks on him, what MMO call enmity. In that regard, DRG are the absolute worst tank precisely because they force the ennemy to hit somebody else.

that is a rule you created, and isnt actually a requirement.
It is a very common standard though.
Allowing the group to win is the #1 priority. If letting the group die, allows you to win, but winning wouldnt be possible otherwise, then it doesnt matter.

You can make an RPG with only offensive options, and no defensive options.
Make the groups total DPS high enough, and you win.
But then its just like the card game war.

This is why "Defensive" options exist. But in the end, it still ends up being a game of war, but 1 exta layer, to make it look less simplistic.
You could make an MMO where the "DPS check" was when everyones HP reaches 0, and HP never goes up.
But you can constantly throw out mitigation on top of mitigation, to extend how long the fight will last.
But you will quickly be able to tell if you'll win or lose a fight, at the very start of a fight.
This is why healing is used to make a tug of war.
Its much harder to judge if you're going to win or lose a fight, adding tension, even to decent players, and giving false hope to bad players.

In short, your options are offense to the win condition, or defense, to make it a more complex tug of war.

DRGs jump ability is mostly a defensive option, even more so since its a DPS loss.
But that DPS loss is backed up by helping the "tug of war" element that "Defensive play" adds to the game.
Survive long enough to heal.
Protecting party members from dying is to prevent a wipe/game over. if everyone dies, but 1 person remains to finish the fight, thats still a win.
in this case, the DRG lives to revive everyone else.
In short, its like giving everyone else holmgang, while you drop threat and gain hallowed ground.
If such a move existed, it would still be good enough to accomplish your task.

Put Cecil in the back row, and he only take scratch damage, far lower than his capacity to heal himsel, which is why a Cecil solo run is just a piece of cake.

It was always useful to make sure weaker characters don't take hits.

any character playing solo gains x5 the exp. this is the primary reason it works. the next reason would be the lack of healing items scaling with your current HP pool, where as a cecil who is nearly double the required level will finally heal more than what enemies do in dmg. (not so much him being in the back row. I soloed the game with him in the front row just fine.)
Also, i never disagreed to putting him in the back row, so long as you didnt force a caster in the front row. My 1st play through, i put him in the back row multiple times as well.

In FFIV, you can manually decide who you want to Cover, on top of automatically Covering anyone with critical HP, again, ensuring that weaker target don't take too much hits.

It does, it always did.

Back row characters still take damage. If they're at critical HP, they would still die if not covered.

im a bit confused here, maybe im miss-remembering FF4, but thought cover only worked when they were at critical hp, and not at full HP.
then again, maybe its a difference between SNES/GBA/DS versions, as some things got changed, and im thinking of a different build.

but on a side note, im not suggesting PLD cecil isnt a tank, so much as the way SE designed the game, all melee were capable tanks by the standards SE set up, but not necessarily by the standards MMOs eventually set up.

"Tanks" arent really an archetype like people tend to think.
There is a trope that gets copied into tanks, but mostly due to how certain games functioned, and they were built to take advantage of the games mechanics.
Most MMOs copied those features, so even in games like FFXI, where they wanted all melee to take turns tanking, and not just simply 1 person tanking, people still made a singular tank, due to FFXI retaining the same features that caused people to make this stereotypical tank in the 1st place.

Mitigation, to lessen healers workload, or save them MP.
Threat control, to force all damage to be filtered by them.
Dealing damage, usually used for threat multipliers.

All 3 of those can be given to other roles.
Threat doesnt need to go to "tanks" but its more defensive, than offensive, so threat control can be slapped onto a healer.
Mitigation can also be slapped onto a healer.

Lets make a game where you grab 10 DPS, and 1 healer.
The healer controls threat, either entirely, or in short bursts.
But lets say they dont control threat. Instead, they redirect most of the damage to another target of their choice. this way no mater who gets hit, they know who to target.
Now the "tank buster" comes out.
They can mitigate that person for the TB.
They can slap on a buff to increase how much they heal that person, also adding a reason to redirect dmg towards them.

with this design, there is no "tank" as anyone can be the target of the healers moves. just simply a partner to the healers moves.

I agree Cecil is "more" tanky than most of the group, both in survivability, AND the ability to protect the group.
but since tanking is far more complex than that, there's other ways to "tank", since tanking is just a play style within the game design of "Defense".
(Which is the more accurate way to describe tanking imo, as it makes it far more clear why DRG shouldnt be considered a "tank" as it implies a gameplay style, rather than gameplay design)

[Reynhart]

that is a rule you created, and isnt actually a requirement.

It's as much a requirement as having a tank in the party, which may not be necessary if you can indeed burn the content faster than you die. Fun fact, I did FF I, III, VI and VII as an "Attack only" challenge, meaning you only can do normal attack over and over in combat (Limit Break are allowed for VII since they "remove" your attack command). And yes, in those games, it works, so you can skip having a "tank". It's still the primary role of a tank.

im a bit confused here, maybe im miss-remembering FF4, but thought cover only worked when they were at critical hp, and not at full HP.

I've double checked and even in Final Fantasy "II", Cecil had a Cover command. The critical part is a passive trait. In FF III, the Knight has only the passive Cover for critical HP.

but on a side note, im not suggesting PLD cecil isnt a tank, so much as the way SE designed the game, all melee were capable tanks by the standards SE set up, but not necessarily by the standards MMOs eventually set up.

Except that again, other frontline characters weren't able to do any "tanking", and DRK Cecil had comparatively low stats, making this job clearly not a "high def, high HP" job...on top of slowly killing himself. But again, I don't say that this concept couldn't be used for a tank, just that, before XIV, no DRK had actually real tank attributes/mechanics compared to other jobs from the same game.

Most MMOs copied those features, so even in games like FFXI, where they wanted all melee to take turns tanking

They didn't. FFXI was very restricting in the tank department when it launched. Only a PLD/WAR could tank properly since PLD was the only one that could survive at high level, and WAR was mandatory for Provoke. in Zilart, they tried to make SAM the next tank but they didn't realized how broken they made Utsusemi, so NIN took the role. Only years later, you ended with almost all melee that could tank, because 1) Damage enmity was absurd and 2) healers were overpowered. Fun fact, when they crippled enmity from damage, it almost killed every tank except PLD/WAR. (Yet again, it might have changed since, it's been years since I didn't play XI)

[MaraD_]

No, because being in the back row also reduced your melee damage. So the rule was "if you're a melee job, you're in the front."

I already said that.
Also, you had ranged attack options as the others.
Yang had Kick, not hindered by back row, edge had throw/ninjutsu, kain had jump, DRK cecil had darkness.
but your quote also doesnt counter either of us.
ranged only characters couldnt go to the front, not because the game forbid it, but because there was no benefit to it. they didnt do melee dmg, and they had no method to lower physical melee dmg.
(Also i put edge in the back row usually for bosses (using throw), and kain in the back row for xeromous, so when he used big bang, everyone would die, except kain, and he'd rez everyone back up.)