A bit late for me to jump into the discussion, but...
Quote Originally Posted by Cabalabob View Post
First off was bio, a DoT that also lowered the enemies attack power, of course bio is taken in FFXIV but there are other spells this could have been like umbra.
In a vacuum it sounded like it was useful, but Bio was always eclipsed in usefulness by Dia (something that was not helped by their being mutually exclusive; a mob could have only Bio or only Dia active). In the context of tanking, I would work this into the design by making a DoT that while active does something to the DRK. Could be increased skill speed, parry rate, or maybe increased parry threshold (I'm assuming parries are still capped at 20%). As a bonus, the people that miss Scourge might be getting it back if we went this route.
Next was the absorb line of spells. DRK had access to an exclusive set of black magic spells that let it absorb the enemies stats to enhance its own, for example it had absorb VIT which let it steal the enemy defence while raising its own and absorb STR which let it lower the enemies attack while raising its own.
This could work if Reprisal did not exist. You could have had DRK with a cooldown called "Absorb Fortitude" that reduced the target's damage output and increased the DRK's damage, with the same caveat as Embolden (the buff becomes weaker over time).
Finally DRK had access to a very powerful spell called dread spikes, a spell that put a shield up on the DRK that when struck absorbed the damage dealt as hp, if the enemy hit the DRK for 500hp the dread spikes absorbed 500hp essentially working as an invulnerability.
This is the one I've very rarely seen mentioned since the job was implemented. Dread Spikes could work as a tanking tool for tank busters, though the damage drained would need to be tweaked (I'd change it to something like "drains attacker's HP equal to 60% of damage taken by the next attack"). Of course, in the current design that means giving TBN the boot.