Trying to understand the complaints about DRK

[Marxam]

DA spam is just not interesting nor doing anything but being a 25% MP for 140 Potency crutch on most of the actions that use it. Its gimmick doesn't add a layer of reward, but its a layer of unnecessary button bloat. Which "supposedly" was what they were trying to cut down in SB.

At its core, DRK was a paper tank that needed to take three steps to what its peers achieve with different methods. As is, it now needs only 2 steps.

All in all, DRKs Blackblood gimmick and MP usage isn't as interwoven as you'd think.

^ Pretty much this. It's a way to compensate for the lack of a third combo tree while giving DRK it's "gimmick". As a WAR main since 2.0 beta even I feel like I press too much buttons for a tank and I've been through the BIR combo days where you needed 9 gcds in Berserk with off gcds timed properly. This can easily be fixed by making DA a duration buff and any skill used under it will receive said buff during its duration for 5.0. I'd even go so far as to make it drain the Blood gauge so its actually useful outside of 3 moves. However the recent 4.3 buffs has made DRK a lot more manageable for me and I find myself playing it more.

[Tint]

This can easily be fixed by making DA a duration buff and any skill used under it will receive said buff during its duration for 5.0.

it's actually not that easy. so i activate Dark Arts, spend some mana and have now the Dark Arts buff in place for the next couple of seconds. Great! but now i overcap my mana and have no way to dump it since Dark Arts is already active...

to change the giant stream of incoming and outgoing mana the DRK has to handle you have to basically rebuild the whole job from scratch. increasing the mana costs of dark arts or recuding the incoming mana to balance out that you don't use dark arts that often anymore leads to other problems with your aoe attacks and TBN, wich also depend your mana.