Should Dark Arts Come Back in 6.0? If so, What Should the Skill Do?

[Ultimatecalibur]

Anyway, ShB DA is a bit bland though as only a TBN refund, a lot of people only see it as a "free" Edge cast, but I really think there should be more to it than that. Then again, I look at how many times I use TBN and save that Dark Arts for the next Tech Step or Trick Attack, so maybe it's not all bad. It's the last echo of HW DRK with it's Low Blow/Reprisal Parry procs, and as such, I wonder if it'll ever get expanded on at all. I know people floated around the idea of having Edge/Flood via Dark Arts always Critical Hit, but I doubt SE would do something that incentivizes getting hit outside of WAR's Vengeance. Low Blow and Reprisal got changed, and Blood Price and Shield Swipe got outright deleted. I'd personally be a fan of it if Edge's potency was nerfed a little or we just weren't Bloodspillering out of our minds all the time. Maybe you can have multiple stacks of Dark Arts rather than just the one? Having trouble thinking of ways to expand on this implementation, not gonna lie.

Blue Mage got 2 new spells that seem to be tests for 6.0 tank abilities (Cold Fog and Chelonian Gate). Both function on a cast spell to get buff -> get hit/take damage -> get another buff -> original spell turns into a powerful counter attack ability. I wouldn't be surprised if DRK got a new ability where when you have a Dark Arts stack TBN turns into a powerful counter attack gcd weaponskill or spell.

Part of the reason Low Blow, Reprisal and Shield Swipe are no longer attacks is because they forced DRK and PLD to MT into order to maximize dps. TBN+DA on the other hand works because it can be used when MTing or OTing.

[Lyth]

There are many things that require effort, but are neither skillful nor enjoyable.

Faster button presses don't really have anything to do with Dark Arts vs. Edge/Flood. All you need to do is to bring back Blood Weapon's speed boost and make it baseline. That and to bring back a few of Heavensward's revenge proc actions.

...

I think this is a really good way to make tank gameplay stand out from melee dps. The problem is that the game designers seem to be afraid of revenge style abilities leading to big differences between MT/OT play.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I think this is a really good way to make tank gameplay stand out from melee dps. The problem is that the game designers seem to be afraid of revenge style abilities leading to big differences between MT/OT play.

Which is why I'd expect them to link those abilities to the protection cooldowns (The Blackest Night, Cover/Intervention, Nascent Flash and Heart of Stone) and the short mitigation cooldowns (TBN, Sheltron, Raw Intuition and HoS). Add in something like Chelonian Gate's "target takes at least 30% their max hp in damage" transformation trigger and you end up with both the MTs and OTs actively protecting themselves and others for increased dps while trying to avoid stacking to much mitigation.