Thread: A DRK Rework Suggestion for 7.0 (or beyond)

Originally Posted by Aluja89

That's not really fair is it?

The point I was making is that even in the games you mentioned, it was a damage specialist. All as part of my original argument that it historically wasn't meant to be a tank, so no kidding it had little precedent as a barrier tank like you insist.
That's A to B to C, what part of that is unfair?

No, you said DRK was never meant to be a tank in past FFs. Yet it had a ton of mitigation tools and boons from getting hit, which is also a tank trait. Calling out its sustainability in a single player game is just bad faith.

Again, how?

It's an extremely fair question -- especially when the central conceit of the argument is, once again, over what kind of tank Dark Knight should be. You got Paladin as the damage blocker with healing support, you got Warrior as reckless attacker that boosts EHP, and heaven knows what's going on with Gunbreaker. I'm arguing Dark Knight's prior sustainability was based on leeching, you're arguing... that it had mitigation that got stronger as it took damage, as precedent for being focused on... barriers?
There isn't even correlation between your thesis and your examples.

Even in the single-player games there are any number of jobs that had self-healing and life-leeching, any number of jobs that focused on evasion for multiple turns or negated damage entirely.
And even among them, very few had gameplay loops centered around rapidly spending their own surplus health as a resource for their unique skills. Black Mage didn't even do that, and it could replenish its own MP with Osmose.
So if you didn't have your pocket White Mage, how was your Dark Knight supposed to recharge his Darkside? Or in the examples you listed, his buffs, once they ran out and he was left without all of the health from damage he took to stack them in the first place? It's not like he could just mitigate damage to recharge them -- the effects specifically state how much health he has to lose to charge them in the first place.
So once he shoots his load, how does he reload? Especially if you expect him to pull double-duty of getting beat on to protect any remaining back-row squishies?

In Bravely? He didn't. He needed external healing. If you wanted to go with a Barrier Tank example, he could have used some exploitable substitute to take the damage for him and charge his effects, but that wasn't an option.
In games where he had Blood Weapon or some variant of Drain? He used those, which formed a self-sufficient gameplay loop. Yes he still needed a healer if enemy damage was high, but he didn't just Darkside to death.

I mean, the Bravely DRK even has Living Dead basically.

You mean he put Doom on himself to increase all stats. Ignoring that Living Dead is getting reworked in 6.1 so this example will age like milk, it's been so bad we've been begging for it to be reworked for years (yet another point in the doc in the OP) and Bravely's version is actually worse, since "increase your defense stat by 50%" isn't even the same as "50% mitigation", and is a far cry from invincibility until the Doom takes you.

But that also goes back to my point of "not having a tank [or any job, really] who sacrifices his HP for damage." Because having a job focused on killing himself is a nightmare for cooperative gameplay and is a big reason BLU is limited.