Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[WhyAmIHere]

I agree that TBN is not and should not be our job identify. Paladin does the same thing with sheltron, except that on its own sheltron is increasingly useful and TBN is flat. I feel dark gets its name as an active tank becuase of its potency buffing via dark arts, and now also through TBN. However, I agree it shouldn't be this way with TBN, they need to give us something, and we need a party utility of some kind.

and

TBN right now is the job's core identity.

And all that really does is show how terrible the job is in any content under lvl70.

The mitigation tools outside of TBN need to be reviewed. And i would even throw that TBN needs to be extended in duration to 6 or 7 seconds to accomodate ping and button response.

This is how I feel about DRK. TBN has been shoe-horned into being the big draw of the class. It's the "big skill" you get when you reach the level cap of 70. It's the skill that alongside bloodspiller was teased leading up to SB's launch, and for all its hot air, it's just a big dumb black, hexagonal-tiled balloon. A lot of what made DRK was taken and made into "tank general" skills, showing that SE screwed the pooch in making DRK have too many good things in HW.
Compare TBN to IR and Passage of Arms. PoA is a big, flashy skill that's eye catching and stands out in the party as long as you have party effects enabled. IR is just this big, huge, kaboom of energy and fury, and it's ability is immediately useful, as is PoA. Then there's TBN... just a piddly little ~woosh~, you lift your sword into the air, and go into your safe space that reality breaks as soon as you realize how useless it is.
TBN needs to do and feel more like an end-cap skill, something deserving of being the skill that you get at 70.

Dark Arts has outlived it's usefulness in simply being a +140 potency boost I feel. I posted elsewhere in these forums somewhere in another thread an idea I had to make DA be a skill modifier, akin to how C&S is effectively two skills with or without DA. (Either it's snap MP gain in dire straights, or 9._/10 times a big chuck of oGCD damage.) Tied to that, darkside's blockade of MP refresh skills is an outmoded way of thinking that only hinders how DRK plays in any team composition.
(An aside: I've seen it before here, where DRK is to a party of mages as WAR is to a party of melee, and to some extent I like that vein of thought. Tho the only reason I really can cotton on to this idea is to try and "shake up the meta" as it were, but more when I ran through a dungeon as an AST the other day, both of the DPS classes were casters. WAR effectively only boosted it's own damage in that set up, and while that's not a bad thing, it does point out a glaring issue that many more astute people have brought up with regards to pierce/slash resist down debuffs.)

When I said that TBN is a good start, I really meant it. DRK has a snap form of damage mitigation that can be used on itself, or an ally and, when burst, adds to one of our resources... but why? Does it really need to be used on an ally? Or on us at all? How can that resource generation be made better / an obvious gain? How can it be made to fit into the lore of the self-sacrificing fallen knight seeking to redress the wrongs done to the ignored? Without going largely into "what-ifs" and "what abouts," and even less so "this is what I think the DRK needs;" TBN is, as far as I can see, what we're stuck with at 70. But, in light of SCH/SMN getting back sustain after much outcry, and WAR getting SiO made into a skill that makes DRK obsolete (as well as removing their cost to go from tank-to-offense stance), I feel like it's entirely within SE's capacity to repair the damage done. That's as far as my hope will go, as otherwise i'd likely be setting myself up for disappointment.