What could DRK have learned from FFXI?

[Seku]

Except DRK has always been a Vanguard type heavy armor front line job with a massive hp pool. Also known as a tanky job. This isn't XI so just stop with DRK should take damage to do damage it doesn't work like that in a game that focuses around the trinity system.

In FF III it just used dark swords and was a gimpier ninja. Tactics it sucked hp and mp from its targets to stay alive when it took damage sounds a lot like drks soul eater on xiv.

Heavy Armor and massive hp pool doesn't = Tank.

Taking hits for party members, reducing damage, and keep the monster's attention / attacks on you = Tank.

By your logic monk and Samurai are also tanks. Monk has High Hp and Samurai normally sports high defense as well as good armor set. Their also both front line jobs. Samurai also fits the bill better as a few of their moves holds evasion. But we don't associate Samurai with being a tank. Why is that? Samurai thematically has no way of re-directing damage to itself.

Also in FF4, Dark knight Cecil has the lowest magic defense. As I stated earlier, the only true tank that has existed in any Final Fantasy has been Paladin / Knight - based on the fact that it's been the only job to force an enemy to attack them as far as stand alone games go.

I already mention soul eater. I also mentioned Abyssal Drain.

In original FF 3 yes, because it's identity did not exist. In the remake you know what it did? Hurt itself to do damage.

In tatics, you know what it also did? Focused on Hurting itself to do damage. It also gave up it's defense to do more damage.

You know what else Drk did in 11? Aspir...which drained mp from it's target. It also hurt itself to do damage, as well as enfeeble.

You know what Dark Knight doesn't do in any other final fantasy? Focus on reducing magical damage, focus on bolstering it's defense.

Starting to see a theme yet?

[EpicOverlord85]

Don’t be a carbon copy of another job

[kazzel120]

Heavy Armor and massive hp pool doesn't = Tank.

Taking hits for party members, reducing damage, and keep the monster's attention / attacks on you = Tank.

By your logic monk and Samurai are also tanks. Monk has High Hp and Samurai normally sports high defense as well as good armor set. Their also both front line jobs. Samurai also fits the bill better as a few of their moves holds evasion. But we don't associate Samurai with being a tank. Why is that? Samurai thematically has no way of re-directing damage to itself.

Also in FF4, Dark knight Cecil has the lowest magic defense. As I stated earlier, the only true tank that has existed in any Final Fantasy has been Paladin / Knight - based on the fact that it's been the only job to force an enemy to attack them as far as stand alone games go.

I already mention soul eater. I also mentioned Abyssal Drain.

In original FF 3 yes, because it's identity did not exist. In the remake you know what it did? Hurt itself to do damage.

In tatics, you know what it also did? Focused on Hurting itself to do damage. It also gave up it's defense to do more damage.

You know what else Drk did in 11? Aspir...which drained mp from it's target. It also hurt itself to do damage, as well as enfeeble.

You know what Dark Knight doesn't do in any other final fantasy? Focus on reducing magical damage, focus on bolstering it's defense.

Starting to see a theme yet?

Since when did drk in tactics ever hurt itself to do damage? Its 2 best attacks did damage and healed hp or mp it used heavy armor. 2 games did drk ever hurt themselfs to do damage IV in the jp version only and xi with souleater thats it. You could say x-2 but again the drk had so much hp it didnt matter and you paired it with a chemist spaming hi potion.

Drk cecil only had one fight that was mildly even challenging in Milon. Just because his damage was terrable because undead and his dark element swords. And even that fight was easy with palom and porom because twin plus fire done.

[Seku]

Since when did drk in tactics ever hurt itself to do damage? Its 2 best attacks did damage and healed hp or mp it used heavy armor. 2 games did drk ever hurt themselfs to do damage IV in the jp version only and xi with souleater thats it. You could say x-2 but again the drk had so much hp it didnt matter and you paired it with a chemist spaming hi potion.

Drk cecil only had one fight that was mildly even challenging in Milon. Just because his damage was terrable because undead and his dark element swords. And even that fight was easy with palom and porom because twin plus fire done.

1. You pair it with a Ragnarok accessory and you don't take damage from darkness in 10-2. But typical game play style requires you do take the damage.
2. For tactics you have abyssal blade and Unholy sacrifice. You also have Vehemence which increases your physical damage and lowers your defense.

[kazzel120]

1. You pair it with a Ragnarok accessory and you don't take damage from darkness in 10-2. But typical game play style requires you do take the damage.
2. For tactics you have abyssal blade and Unholy sacrifice. You also have Vehemence which increases your physical damage and lowers your defense.

So the tactics remake. Because gafgarion and cid never once took damage from their sword skills. In the original.

And i said if you count x-2 as one of the versions where DRK took their own hp to deal damage. All other drk renditions never did any of that. Except for original jp hard mode iv and even then darkness was such a weak skill cecils normal attacks did more.

[Cabalabob]

Heavy armour does not make a job a tank. DRKs throughout the series wore heavy armour to compensate for the fact they were consuming their own hp to deal more damage. There was nothing tanky about them. Sure they could tank by giving up their identity as a DRK (e.g. NOT consuming their own hp), but at that point you might as well be using a knight/paladin (something even Cecil realised).

The point here is that unlike most DRKs throughout the series, FFXI DRK didn’t just not use its skills to tank, it had skills that actually let it tank as mentioned in the OP. Yet none of these skills made it into FFXIV.

In other words, the only iteration of DRK in ff history that had tank-like skills was not drawn from for a tank iteration of DRK.

You can say “oh well ffxiv is doing its own thing”. But you could give a job a club, cloth armour and time magic and call it dragoon. But that would be dragoon in name alone since it doesn’t bring anything that identifies it as a dragoon.

The main problem is that several DRK related skills in FFXI had already been given to other jobs before DRK even existed.
Reflect damage back ? Vengeance
Absorb damage as HP ? Bloodbath
Putting you at risk to do more damage ? Blood for Blood
etc...

That's probably why it's hard to keep the iconic identity of DRK.

Counter attacks I’d say belong more on WAR. The reducing defense and consuming own HP however I think they avoided that because a tank that consumes its own hp would be a healers nightmare.

That left drain tanking as the only thing that could really fit as a “DRK theme” but like you said when DRK released WAR also had a monopoly on that with skills like bloodbath, storm’s path and inner beast. And this left DRK in kind of an identity crisis because it didn’t want to copy WAR.

Fast forward to today and how ironic. WAR has lost a lot of its drain identity to be more of a dps tank. And DRK is now, go figure... copying WAR.

[kazzel120]

Heavy armour does not make a job a tank. DRKs throughout the series wore heavy armour to compensate for the fact they were consuming their own hp to deal more damage. There was nothing tanky about them. Sure they could tank by giving up their identity as a DRK (e.g. NOT consuming their own hp), but at that point you might as well be using a knight/paladin (something even Cecil realised).

4 main title games have had Dark Knights only 2 of those said Dark Knights sacrificed hp to do damage. Xi's with soul eater and Dark Knight Cecil thats it period and guess what Darkness Cecils one skill that they removed for the American release was so weak it wasn't even worth using.

And outside 2 to 3 total fights in the ds remake you used it only once per those fights thats it.

But boy darknight had "always used hp to deal damage" no it hasn't lol.

[Seku]

Heavy armour does not make a job a tank. DRKs throughout the series wore heavy armour to compensate for the fact they were consuming their own hp to deal more damage. There was nothing tanky about them. Sure they could tank by giving up their identity as a DRK (e.g. NOT consuming their own hp), but at that point you might as well be using a knight/paladin (something even Cecil realised).

The point here is that unlike most DRKs throughout the series, FFXI DRK didn’t just not use its skills to tank, it had skills that actually let it tank as mentioned in the OP. Yet none of these skills made it into FFXIV.

In other words, the only iteration of DRK in ff history that had tank-like skills was not drawn from for a tank iteration of DRK.

You can say “oh well ffxiv is doing its own thing”. But you could give a job a club, cloth armour and time magic and call it dragoon. But that would be dragoon in name alone since it doesn’t bring anything that identifies it as a dragoon.



Counter attacks I’d say belong more on WAR. The reducing defense and consuming own HP however I think they avoided that because a tank that consumes its own hp would be a healers nightmare.

That left drain tanking as the only thing that could really fit as a “DRK theme” but like you said when DRK released WAR also had a monopoly on that with skills like bloodbath, storm’s path and inner beast. And this left DRK in kind of an identity crisis because it didn’t want to copy WAR.

Fast forward to today and how ironic. WAR has lost a lot of its drain identity to be more of a dps tank. And DRK is now, go figure... copying WAR.

Yep which is why I'm saying that they can
1. Make it into a DPS job (not going to happen).
or
2. Find a way to over fill it's normal health bar (like warrior did) while keeping the same damage reduction abilities and then allowing it to use said HP to deal damage. It would be like making another version of TBN. Call it Drain (or w/e). You deal damage to the enemy, you get a increase of hp (which is what TBN does effectively, as you gain 25% of your health but in a shield variation) and then use said new HP to dish out more damage.

They could re-work Dread Spikes, but it would end up functioning like vegence or w/e from warrior. Or invincible +1. In short, warrior is actually probably acting as a typical Dark Knight would without the HP consumption.

Other than that, there is no way to really make a true Dark Knight in FF14 as they already messed up by making it a tank and then before it even arrived they had given all concepts (that I can think of) that it could have used to Warrior. With their current trend of balance, it's highly doubtful they will allow for it to gain enfeebles due to fear of it becoming a tank that is desired above all others.

11 focused way more on strategy and customization rather than pre-defined fights and class builds. Which is what made it unique.

So the tactics remake. Because gafgarion and cid never once took damage from their sword skills. In the original.

And i said if you count x-2 as one of the versions where DRK took their own hp to deal damage. All other drk renditions never did any of that. Except for original jp hard mode iv and even then darkness was such a weak skill cecils normal attacks did more.

Cid is a swordsaint and Gafgarion "dark knight" later was translated into Fellknight. Obviously so that SE could make the difference. They also both happen to be NPC's that you don't keep in your party. Also, in the IV remake, darkness takes 10% of your health to double your attack for 3 turns. So...yeah it does take damage to increase damage.

Any how, I'm done arguing with you as you've not brought any counter argument or real counter evidence to prove your point - which is that Dark Knight is "tanky".

[kazzel120]

Cid is a swordsaint and Gafgarion "dark knight" later was translated into Fellknight. Obviously so that SE could make the difference. They also both happen to be NPC's that you don't keep in your party. Also, in the IV remake, darkness takes 10% of your health to double your attack for 3 turns. So...yeah it does take damage to increase damage.

Any how, I'm done arguing with you as you've not brought any counter argument or real counter evidence to prove your point - which is that Dark Knight is "tanky".

Hmm i didn't know that you couldn't keep Cid take his Excalibur then bench him. But yeah i must have played another version of Tactics that you didn't.

I have proved exactly what i have stated there's 4 main title Dark Knights all use heavy armor all use swords all fight in the front lines all have high HP only 2 of them have ever used hp to do damage XI's DRK and DRK Cecil. The latters who's skill was so weak his normal attacks hit harder. And im not referring to the DS remake either.

Everyone has it in their head that DRK has "always sacrificed hp to do more damage" in every game when this is not even close to truth. Get over it XIV DRK isn't ds Cecil and xi drk. Its a tank and the job story actually tells you why they call themselves Dark Knights.

[Cabalabob]

Everyone has it in their head that DRK has "always sacrificed hp to do more damage" in every game when this is not even close to truth. Get over it XIV DRK isn't ds Cecil and xi drk. Its a tank and the job story actually tells you why they call themselves Dark Knights.

I’m sorry but wow. I had a good chuckle at people trying to argue classic DRK is a tank, but trying to argue that souleater/darkness is not their iconic ability? Try to say that to anyone who knows FF and the reaction will be “HAHAHAHAHA... wait you’re serious?”.

Basically every main line entry that has had drk except FF2 (abilities weren’t a thing) and the original version of FF3 (added in the remake) has given them souleater or darkness. DRK simply has not had as many main line appearances as other jobs, not appearing in 5 or 9. If you expand the criteria it appears a lot more frequently, X-2, tactics-WoTL, ff-explorers, bravely default and here’s the description of the dark knight job from ff record keeper “A warrior who wields the power of darkness. Sacrificing his own life force to crush his enemies. The dark knight excels in an offensive role”.