Question for fellow DRK's who have played its new Shb iteration.

[therpgfanatic]

I'd say, for me, this is especially infuriating (...) since this is the biggest change of DRK. Sure, we lost the Dark Art skill, and a toggled Darkside, but Edge/Flood is the spam button for damage, and so easily maintain Darkside that it could well be a toggle.
So, apart from a new AoE combo, which, let's be honest, is awesome to use in combat, the focus of the new DRK is the new Delirium.

Edge and Flood are not actually your spam attacks. People get that impression because they have no cooldown but these moves cost MP, a finite resource shared with Blackest Night, and trigger Darkside which is damage bonus buff intended to be kept up 100% of the time.

It's hard to describe but I figured out the intended rotation for DRK. You're not supposed to spam Edge and Flood. You're supposed to regard them as MP dumps, along with Blackest Night. With the way DRK is designed, your main goal while tanking is to try to keep Blackest Night up all the time, only using Edges and Floods as needed to dump excess MP, and triggering Blood Weapon almost every time it comes up alongside Carve and Spit.

DRK's intended burst is Delirium Bloodspiller / Quietus spam and Living Shadow.

You're supposed to keep Blackest Night up as much as is possible to do, and I think this is what a lot of people are missing from the new design.

The thing is, right now DRK doesn't necessarily need to keep Blackest Night up constantly outside of larger trash pulls. But it's certainly possible to trigger it just about every 15 seconds while fighting a boss if you only use Edge / Flood as a dump for excess MP and primarily use it to keep Darkside up.

General trash pull rotation is Plunge, Flood of Shadow, Unleash, Stalwart Soul, Blackest Night, Arms Length, Flood of Shadow, Delirium, Quietus spam until it ends, Carve and Spit, Blood Weapon, Unleash, Stalwart Soul, Flood of Shadow, Blackest Night, spam Unleash + Stalwart Soul and dump excess MP into Floods until Delirium is up again. Repeat. Also use Living Shadow as available.

For bosses, replace Unleash Combo with Souleater combo, and use Edge instead of Flood, and double up Blackest Night with either Dark Mind, Shadow Wall, Rampart or Reprisal for a tankbuster.

With how "dodge this AoE" mechanic driven boss combat now is, this plays pretty well, generally with DRK able to do a burst on bosses in between AoE dancing.

[Reynhart]

Edge and Flood are not actually your spam attacks. People get that impression because they have no cooldown but these moves cost MP, a finite resource shared with Blackest Night

Exactly like Dark Arts was in SB. So, it's a new painting, but it's roughly the same mechanic.

and trigger Darkside which is damage bonus buff intended to be kept up 100% of the time.

Considering the only thing you need MP for is Edge/Flood and TBN, there's no real management required to keep Darkside 100% of the time. Again, really close to how Darkside worked in SB.

Which, as I said, end with Delirium as the biggest mechanic change of the DRK, thus, why people are so upset that this specific change is that close to a WAR skill.