Quote Originally Posted by Freyyy View Post
What nonsense is that ? The current Darkside is more active than it ever was... In SB it was just toggle and forget. In HW it used to drain your MP but it was still pretty much toggle and forget. Not losing it was solely based on achieving a very basic level of MP management... Just like how it is now, but instead you directly and actively give the buff to yourself and extend it by using an MP-spending ability. It's much more active than both SB and HW. Is it any harder or more complex ? Compared to SB Darkside, yes it is. Compared to HW, it's pretty much the same level of complexity, which is pretty low. Is it really that important ? I don't think so. Devs didn't need to create a new gauge for it but that's not a big deal. Darkside has never been the center of DRK's gameplay.
HW Darkside allowed you to bank mana for future fights at the cost of its 12% damage bonus. This was common towards the ends of AoE pulls, when down to too few mobs for your AoEs to be worth its mana cost against so few, at which point you'd start readying for the next mass-pull by dropping Darkside and Syphon-comboing (be it into SE or Delirium). You could also drop it for any periods of pure downtime 3 or more server ticks long. Given that you ShB DRK essentially cannot drop it, it allows no such banking, and it encourages little to no downtime-awareness, I have no issues calling HW Darkside more complex or active than ShB's.