Use your MP!

Dark Knights frustrate me.

No, that's not entirely true. People who do a poor job of playing Dark Knight frustrate me.

The job has a lot to offer and I've seen a notable improvement in party performance when I get a Dark Knight who knows what he's doing. However, more often than not I'll get stuck with someone who refuses to tap into the full potential of the job. There's this nice juicey MP pool for them to draw on all night long and they won't even look at it.

I don't understand it at all. You've been given an awesome toolbox full of goodies, but all you want to do is hit auto-attack? For shame.

You wouldn't believe how often I've seen a Dark Knight sit there on a full MP pool who won't bother to Drain back some HP after they get hit. The option to sustain yourself is there, so why would you not make use of it? Why take the chance that your healer might run out of MP or not get to you in time before you wind up on the receiving end of a particularly nasty attack and bite the dust.

Let's not forget Stun. Stun is such an awesome tool to have at your disposal. Most Damage Dealers have little to offer in the way of supporting their party, but Dark Knights are blessed with the ability to do more than just kill the enemy. Is the Ninja tank having trouble putting Utsusemi shadows back up because he's taking a few too many blows to the face? Stun it to give him some breathing room so he can recast with ease. Is the mob about to perform a devasting move that's going to wipe out half of everyone's HP? You can stun that if you've got good timing. Just make an effort, that's all I'm asking. I don't expect Dark Knights to be single-handedly fixing everything that goes wrong on the front line, I just want to see them make an effort to use Stun when it can help the party.

What really gets under my skin, as a Red Mage, is watching those full MP pools. Fairly often I'll see that a Dark Knight has been making use of his spells, as evidenced by a less than full MP pool. Thinking that I've finally found one who will be making good use of his spells I cast Refresh on him, so as to slowly replenish his MP.

This is quickly followed by me beating my head against a wall repeatedly.

After applying Refresh, all spellcasting from the Dark Knight immediately halts. You were down ~50 MP so I thought I'd help you maintain your spellcasting and how do you reward me? By wasting my MP! If I give you Refresh it is because I expect you to continue continue casting spells. You're not doing me any favors by stockpiling MP and you're certainly not helping by letting me waste Refresh on you so you can watch it sit on your buff list while providing not benefit at full MP.

I try to help Dark Knights and it just screws with my own efficiency. To date, I've only met one Dark Knight who's made it worth my while to supply him with Refresh. He also happens to consider Red Mage as his main job, go figure.

I have no problem with Refreshing Dark Knights, I'd just like to see a little return on my investment is all. Is that really such a bad thing?

From Mediocre Mage

Ok, that was a lot of complaining, so here's a pretty picture to make up for it.