Quote Originally Posted by CKNovel View Post
Think about it, if you replaced LS with a 120s CD, costing 50 blood gauge and inflicting a dot, it would be the exact same as Living Shadow, minus the flashyness of the skill.
There's a couple important differences there. The first is that a DoT would be missing Living Shadow's AoE damage, which is still very considerable despite the 6.2 nerf. The second is that DoTs snapshot according to what buffs and debuffs are active when the DoT is applied, and Living Shadow actively gains and loses buffs as you do.

The AoE is pretty self-explanatory, but the snapshotting is also pretty important to consider. DRK's burst window is so busy that it's a specific upside to the current version of Living Shadow that you can use the skill before raid buffs go out; if it were a standard DoT then that would no longer be the case. It's good that DRK's burst window is as busy as it is - it's fun! - but it's also pretty much at-capacity, and you would definitely do harm to the class's design by adding extra things to it without a really good reason.