Dark Knight Megathread

[TouchandFeel]

Honestly, Final Fantasy as a series already has a solution to the self-sustain issue for DRK.

Blood Weapon

Blood Weapon (ブラッドウェポン, Buraddo Wepon?), also known as Sanguine Sword, is a recurring ability in the Final Fantasy series. Often a form of Limit Break, it grants the user the ability to drain an opponent's HP to heal themselves when attacking, similar to the Blood Sword and other blood equipment weapons.

[Seku]

Honestly, Final Fantasy as a series already has a solution to the self-sustain issue for DRK.

Blood Weapon

They gave that to warrior. Maybe not in name. But in concept.

[TouchandFeel]

They gave that to warrior. Maybe not in name. But in concept.

The life-steal/heal with attacks concept is far from unique to or the sole province of WAR, even among the tanks; for example PLD heals with Holy Spirit and Holy Circle.
Might as well say that WAR can't have Vengeance and DRK can't have Shadow Wall because PLD had been given Sentinel and so strong base % mitigation was their thing.

Besides the life-steal game-play niche wasn't originally "given to WAR", they just used to be able to cross-class Bloodbath, a lancer/melee dps ability.
So even historically it wasn't really just a "WAR thing"; and the precedence of Blood Weapon being the predominant life-steal ability in the series as a whole and it often being an ability found on the Dark Knight job is a strong enough reason to consider it having its classic effect in this game as well, especially considering the current player requests to give DRK more self-sustain.

[Marxam]

The life-steal/heal with attacks concept is far from unique to or the sole province of WAR, even among the tanks; for example PLD heals with Holy Spirit and Holy Circle.
Might as well say that WAR can't have Vengeance and DRK can't have Shadow Wall because PLD had been given Sentinel and so strong base % mitigation was their thing.

Besides the life-steal game-play niche wasn't originally "given to WAR", they just used to be able to cross-class Bloodbath, a lancer/melee dps ability.
So even historically it wasn't really just a "WAR thing"; and the precedence of Blood Weapon being the predominant life-steal ability in the series as a whole and it often being an ability found on the Dark Knight job is a strong enough reason to consider it having its classic effect in this game as well, especially considering the current player requests to give DRK more self-sustain.

2.0 Inner beast used to heal you for 300% of the dmg dealt. WAR was always about healing yourself after taking a hit. The problem with 2.0 WAR was it couldn't survive tankbusters in the first place so healing was pointless if you were dead. 2.1 turned WAR into a beast and 3.0-4.1 kicked into man mode.

However WAR is still unique in that its self healing is synergetic with its tool kit, even though PLD and GNB got self sustain of their own. EQ benefits from ToB, BW/NF can proc crits from IC/CC/PR, SiO can be buffed by sacrificing other cds, etc. DRK's toolkit just seems disjointed and only revolves around TBN. It's literally the Flex Tape of tank cds cuz when TBN is not up, I take a lotta damage. I like the idea behind TBN, where you take no damage but its just one potency away from being broken in raids to meh in dungeons.

IMO, TBN should proc another TBN but that point why even bother with MP cost since it becomes redundant after the first use. A defensive cd should not be tied to your dps. Personally I would like to see TBN moved to two charges and recast increased to 25 secs. It would match perfectly with Oblation and they won't need to buff it. On shield break, it can give MP or reduce recast of TBN by 5 secs.

[Satarn]

Besides the life-steal game-play niche wasn't originally "given to WAR", they just used to be able to cross-class Bloodbath, a lancer/melee dps ability.
So even historically it wasn't really just a "WAR thing"

This is blatantly incorrect. Bloodbath has never been a Lancer ability. Not to mention WAR could never cross-class from Lancer - the job took skills from GLD and PGL(like Mantra and Internal Release).

Bloodbath itself was originally a MRD ability, which is why 1) the original icon had a bloody axe head in it and 2) it was cross-classed frequently by the other 2 tank jobs. MRD even had a trait called Bloodshower which upgraded Bloodbath above what other jobs could get from it. It wasn't until Stormblood when the entire cross-class system got replaced with the role skills and Bloodbath was stolen from tanks for the melee dps.

Other than that, like Marxam has said, Inner Beast was originally a lifesteal weaponskill with no mitigation attached. In fact the only damage mitigation cooldown WAR had in 2.0 was the crappy defense increase(not dmg decrease) in Foresight.

Initial concept of WAR in ARR was absolutely the life-stealing, high hp tank, it just didn't work well with their content design at the time.

[Shurrikhan]

Besides the life-steal game-play niche wasn't originally "given to WAR", they just used to be able to cross-class Bloodbath, a lancer/melee dps ability.

You're thinking of Blood for Blood. Bloodbath was always a Marauder ability, for which they also gained extended duration via a Marauder trait.

Warrior, on the other hand, could not cross-class Blood for Blood, which led to Marauder being the preferred tank for much of ARR's 4-man PvP, since it could stack B4B, Raging Strikes, Internal Release, and the like while crushing undaunted into the enemy's healer or squishier dps.

Initial concept of WAR in ARR was absolutely the life-stealing, high hp tank, it just didn't work well with their content design at the time.

Which, to be fair, was merely because it was undertuned for raid content.

Foresight, for instance, multiplied Defense stat rather than offering direct mitigation, and by a pitiful percent ultimately worth only, what, less than 5% mitigation? And that was somehow treated as an equivalent to Rampart.

Vengeance, their Sentinel-like, originally offered zero damage mitigation.

Their tank stance increased HP but not sustainability since they didn't increase healing intake; that instead relied on Wrath stacks (now Beast Gauge), which even then only affected healing spells, not healing, and to less than the equivalent effective rate offered by Shield Oath (as you'd need 25% more healing to compensate for taking 25% more damage [or, not taking 20% less damage]), and was then consumed the moment Warrior healed itself via Inner Beast, which likewise wasn't affected by that healing modifier.

And even then, people were able to clear Binding Coil 1-5 with it, since at least Infirmity likewise didn't debuff Inner Beast's self-healing and Lustrate was, at the time, a %HP heal, a Infuriate double-self-heal could be powerful for Caduceus, and the added AoE damage and Bloodbath self-healing therefrom (PLD had none save Circle of Scorn at the time) was significant in T4.

[TouchandFeel]

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That is correct, I was misremembering and jumbling up a number of different things in my head.

Regardless, I don't feel that it is right to just flippantly dismiss the potential for having life-steal/self-healing on Blood Weapon, something it has always classicaly had in the series, just because WAR is predominant in that niche. It's welcome to keep the life-steal crown, but that adornment shouldn't be a stranglehold choking out other tanks from getting in on that action if even to a lesser degree.

I'm not saying either of you are doing that, I've just seen far too much of that kind of mindset and sentiment over the years.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

What you are quoting is from a post from last year, was already admitted to be incorrect due to mixing up some different abilities and you even responded to it back then saying basically the same thing that you just said now back at that time on this page.

Are you refer to these?

As was stated above, that is a months old post from last year being dredged up and was already addressed in subsequent posts at the time. I have no idea why you decided to respond to and quote it now while also not taking into account any following discussion from the time, but it kind of comes across like trying to stir up some sh*t. If this wasn't your intent, please just be careful to check when a post was made before responding directly to it and check any discussion or other posts around that post so you have a better understanding of the context of the post.

[WhyAmIHere]

Honestly, Final Fantasy as a series already has a solution to the self-sustain issue for DRK.

Blood Weapon

I'm still praying for SE to add in Minus Strike. Have it drain all of your blood gauge, and have bonus potency the lower your MP is, and apply TBN as an additional effect. Give it a minute recast on a weaponskill like others are now.