Quote Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai View Post
... another great thing about original Dark Arts was that it was even not a "purely offensive" ability, as it also buffed defense skills, and helped with resource(just MP at the time)... it would be great to have the original Dark Arts remastered to fit with current Dark knight, though it better be remastered to still have damage, defense, and resource benefits... a damage-benefits only Dark Arts would just be a disappointment.
They tried this.. didn't work.. years of complaints on this forum can be read through.. The result is one of:

The defensive bonuses are unnecessary, promptly ignored for more DPS channeling.
The defensive bonuses ARE necessary, thus DRK takes a DPS hit in order to execute them.

Do the other tanks have to dip into their offensive resources/cool downs in order to strengthen their defensive CDs to adequate performance?

No. All that is done is gimping DRKs defense kit. Our current DA proc for consuming TBN is already close enough to the edge. No other tank has to concern themselves with their on demand mitigator potentially costing them DPS. They're just free. What is DRKs reward for this risk, that GNB/PLD/WAR do not share in? Nothing.

Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
If it's always worth using Dark Arts on Dark Dance, for instance, it just makes Dark Dance feel unnecessarily unresponsive ("bloated") since it'd require precasts to reach what feels like the "normal" effect.
If it's almost never worth DAing, that feels vestigial (once again "bloated"), too.
Thank you. I think the rose-tinted glasses are coming in hard in this discussion. Edge/Flood Darkside is such an improvement over where we've been. Looking back, if the absence of complexity is an issue, it's the removal of HW's Dark Passenger, which took priority over DA due to its higher pot, every 60sec, and HW/SB DAC&S, which also took priority over other DA effects just the same. Since those oGCDS were bound to cooldowns, and you want to fit as many of them as possible into an encounter, you wanted to prep MP for them as soon as they were available. That MP management is gone and it was also strictly for DPS optimization.

DA effects to increase a CD from 10% to 30% magic DR, or bonus enmity gen, or opening up a HP life-steal.. all things that the other tanks adjacent skills do for free.. no thanks we've moved on