"War Clone"

This is something that is thoughtlessly parroted ad nauseum.

Apparently what constitutes to a class being a straight up copy of another class is their weakest burst CD being the same mechanically to another class' strongest burst CD and identity.

Ignoring that DRK is still fundamentally a resource based/ogcd class that has *always* had the simplest GCD decisions since its inception; Souleater or Bloodspiller. Ignoring that DRK has it's true primary button being Edge/Flood of Shadow(Or simply Dark Artsv2) being the largest chunk of it's damage as well as it being the most flexible damage kit of all classes to date.

But yeah, lets strip down and ignore every other more note worthy aspects of DRK so we can continue to mindlessly yell "WAR CLONE" because a single skill had an unfortunate and uninspired design change in a game where 2 other classes also suffer from this "press buff, press butan 5 times" design but aren't parroted as WAR CLONE.

I can sympathesize with people who miss certain aspects of the old designs such as; Dark Arts having more varied usage, the mechanic of an oGCD buffing GCD, or the pure alchemy of SB DRK AoE gameplay with Blood and MP interplay. DRK has undergone the most changes of all classes and is the only victim to having skills constantly be butchered into role action skills with no substitutes. It even suffers the most from having lost so many animations.

There are certain aspects like the GCD speed boost from Blood Weapon which I miss but don't mind it being gone because we're instead substituted with a quad double weave window that feels much better as a power phase than pressing 1-2-3 10% faster.

The primary complaint of Dark Arts spam was definitely addressed and instead of a weak piddly 140 potency oGCD that makes our character have a seizure every few GCDS with no strategic usage due to constant threat of overcap, we instead now have a, in my opinion, much better form of it in the vein of an actual 500 potency heavy swing that hits harder than every GCD save for Spiller, looks fantastic when woven in with our general strikes and has the flexibility to be used leisurely whenever our tactically within burst windows the best.

But at the end of the day, I frankly enjoy ShB DRK the most of all its past iterations because it is the only tank design with such a heavy and fast burst phase that actually utilizies properly built up resources to explode into any and all party buffs that I elect to, the best of all classes even.

Side note idea: The only reason I'm generally against Blood Weapon regaining its speed boost is really just the cooldown of it conflicting with DRKs double weave burst window. If it were say to serve it's primary function of giving DRK a burst in resource gain with a cooldown of 50 seconds, I'd be all for it. Blood Weapon facilitates DRKs identity of stealing resources from enemies and should definitely be designed around that. Perhaps to make it more interesting it could even be like Embolden where it would start at a 50% speed boost that decays over the duration, thematic in that the DRK activates an unholy berserking state to desperatly devour more mana/blood and tires over time from swinging such a massive weapon.

TLDR Delirium still sucks. Delirium has never been more important than Edge/Flood and should've either given 4/5/6 free Dark Arts to be used for Edge/Flood(the real Fell Cleave equivalent and power buttons of DRK).