I think that if Living Dead was properly addressed and the penalty removed, I would be happy enough for DRK to not have any significant healing effects outside of Souleater/Abyssal Drain. Lifesteal is fun, but it's not a tank essential and is relatively low on the list of priorities. I think they're making a major thematic mistake by making both PLD and WAR into 'lifesteal' tanks, but let those two fight over job identity.

Oblation looks cool and I would have liked it a lot better if it kept to the theme of barrier shields, but the problem is that we presently need TBN to break. What they should do is remove the MP cost from TBN, and make Oblation into a 10% HP shield that gives you Dark Arts if it breaks. Perhaps it gives you an additional bonus if it breaks in a shorter time window.

One problem with Living Shadow using Shadowbringer is that it's probably locked into one part of the fixed rotation, and you can't control when it happens. So it what, boosts the total potency of the Living Shadow window by 150? I would be more interested if something interesting actually happened when you used Shadowbringer with Living Shadow up. We definitely need to do more damage if we're going to be at a utility disadvantage.

By the way, I don't think there's a hard and fast rule about posting in this thread vs. another one. It's nice to not have 500 threads on the same subject, but I sometimes find that I miss interesting subdiscussions in the midst of the general wave of complaints.