Dark Arts Adjustment

[Februs]

To be honest, I don't see how its likely to help with Feast either. Even with its oGCDs, DRK isn't much of a killer. And even when attempting to burn someone down, the only offensive option worth using is DA-CS and DA-SE, which takes 3 GCDs to re-prep anyways. A mana cost reduction in PVP would have gone a lot further to help DRK's situation.

This wasn't the only change made to Dark Knight that Yoshi announced. The full list for Drk is as such:

Dark Knight

We received a great deal of feedback from players who felt that dark knight was lacking in both offensive and defensive capabilities when compared to paladin and warrior, and to address these concerns we will be making the following changes.

• Dark Arts
  Recast Time: 5s → 3s (PvP and PvE)
  
  
• Tar Pit
  Potency: 200 → 250 (Enhanced Tar Pit II: 240 → 300)
  Recast Time: 150s → 120s (Enhanced Tar Pit: 120s → 90s)
  HP Absorption: 20% → 150% (Enhanced Tar Pit III: 40% → 200%)
  
  
• Carnal Chill
  Recast Time: 120s → 90s (Enhanced Carnal Chill: 90s → 60s)
  Damage Penalty: 10% → 40% (Enhanced Carnal Chill III: 20% → 60%)
  Duration: 20s → 6s

Tar Pit should now function as a self-preservation technique, and Carnal Chill as a way to quickly lower the damage dealing capabilities of opponents. Also, while Carnal Chill’s duration has been shortened, recast times for these abilities have been reduced, which should enable players to employ them more effectively. These changes are intended to make dark knight function as a tank that can protect himself and his allies through debuffs and health absorption.

That's also just a drop in the bucket to the mass amounts of other changes being implemented. You can read the rest here, if you're interested.

Drk was made far more viable with several of these additions. Further, in PvP, burst potential is everything. With a shorter Dark Arts cast timer it is possible for Drk to extend their total burst for a longer duration with a higher potency at the expense of going completely broke on Mp. That sounds utterly ludicrous from PvE standpoint, of course, but in PvP it's a viable option and tactic when that extra bit of dps can make all the difference. It kind of puts Drk's in the same position as Pld, in that they'll have to make a conscious decision as to if the burst is worth the sacrifice. Another thing to remember is that Darkside already has a dramatically reduced mana drain effect in PvP settings (effect is reduced by 1/3 in PvP), so their Mp is already much more sustainable in the arena. I totally understood where these decisions came from for PvP ... It was the PvE part that seems a bit odd to me.

From what I can tell, it really does seem more like a QoL adjustment than anything else. I mean, IF SE implemented a stronger mana regen, or just flat out reduced the cost of Grit and Dark Arts, then I could kind of see this making a difference to our overall dps, but without those additional changes it just seems more like an ease of use kind of thing. That said, I really don't know if any additional changes are coming to Drk in that patch. The post was PvP specific. No further job adjustments were detailed outside of PvP announcements. I really don't think they're changing anything else (I figure they would have said something by now if they were), but that's not to say they never will (a man can hope).