DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

[Shinkyo]

I used to feel that DRK was lacking CD until I got TBN. I mean TBN is amazing, it's literally an oGCd Inner Beast you can use in both stance!
Yes you want to save rampart and shadow wall for Tank busters but we still have convalescence, anticipation, your selfheals and dark mind to some extent.
I don't feel that DRK is lacking in CD with TBN.
for my pov, TBN is better than Inner Beast which is already an amazing mitigation tool.
It's hard to complain when you have that.

[Chrono_Rising]

I used to feel that DRK was lacking CD until I got TBN. I mean TBN is amazing, it's literally an oGCd Inner Beast you can use in both stance!
Yes you want to save rampart and shadow wall for Tank busters but we still have convalescence, anticipation, your selfheals and dark mind to some extent.
I don't feel that DRK is lacking in CD with TBN.
for my pov, TBN is better than Inner Beast which is already an amazing mitigation tool.
It's hard to complain when you have that.

I believe the issue here is that though TBN is nice, it does come at a hefty amount of mana especially if it doesn't pop but I agree it is an nifty skill. We have a self heal in soul eater but spend a large amount of time locked out of it depending on stance and where we are in a combo, we do have abyssal but the mana cost is huge and on single targets has abysmal returns.

Depending on the situation inner beast can mitigate more, vengeance far out classes shadow wall with 5 more seconds, 1 minute less on cooldown time and deals damage back. Warrior also has a a self heal in the form of their gcd, which is not stances locked and is part of the dps rotation.

Clemency has some very nice returns which can be buffed up to 44% in an emergency, and sentlnel mitigates more overall than shadow wall. Paladins also have the advantage of more passive mitigation as well as on demand blocking with no dps loss or risk.

TBN is great, but it's definately not a powerful selfsustain. Given that we have less mitigation than paladin and less self sustain and dps I think it's a fair assessment that we need to be broguht up to level.

[Falar]

I believe the issue here is that though TBN is nice, it does come at a hefty amount of mana especially if it doesn't pop but I agree it is an nifty skill. We have a self heal in soul eater but spend a large amount of time locked out of it depending on stance and where we are in a combo, we do have abyssal but the mana cost is huge and on single targets has abysmal returns.

Depending on the situation inner beast can mitigate more, vengeance far out classes shadow wall with 5 more seconds, 1 minute less on cooldown time and deals damage back. Warrior also has a a self heal in the form of their gcd, which is not stances locked and is part of the dps rotation.

Clemency has some very nice returns which can be buffed up to 44% in an emergency, and sentlnel mitigates more overall than shadow wall. Paladins also have the advantage of more passive mitigation as well as on demand blocking with no dps loss or risk.

TBN is great, but it's definately not a powerful selfsustain. Given that we have less mitigation than paladin and less self sustain and dps I think it's a fair assessment that we need to be broguht up to level.

There is a high amount of risk associated with it. I know I am terrified of using it and not having to break to the point I only use it under 2 circumstances:

1. A Bona-fide tankbuster
2. Large trash pulls

Using the STR right side really helps make it pop more consistently.

[SyzzleSpark]

There is a high amount of risk associated with it. I know I am terrified of using it and not having to break to the point I only use it under 2 circumstances:

1. A Bona-fide tankbuster
2. Large trash pulls

Using the STR right side really helps make it pop more consistently.

This is basically the issue, is that to actually get mileage out of it in between tank busters, it has to be used during multi-hit raid busters, during which the healers are already AoEing which kinda renders it moot, or it has to be precisely timed to catch two auto-attacks. Given that these tight timings come up every 15 seconds and the job already has extremely high APM in between its GCDs, a good chunk of TBNs can easily go to waste.

[Arek]

There is a high amount of risk associated with it. I know I am terrified of using it and not having to break to the point I only use it under 2 circumstances:

1. A Bona-fide tankbuster
2. Large trash pulls

Using the STR right side really helps make it pop more consistently.

Terrified ? Seriously ? You are terrified to use your best skill ?

Personnally, I'm using it ALOT. I've wasted just a few sometimes when I'm not totally used to a combat. But In Susanoo, it needs just 2 Auto-attack to break it, even if I'm main tank, and since Reprisal comes back for every tank buster, I can time how many TBN I do before keeping it for tank buster. (And I'm using VIT accessories)

In Omega story, same easy to break, just have to know the fight or pattern when Boss are doing there "no damage" skill. It's a bit harder on 3rd and 4th but I did those fight only once yesterday.

It's even more easier when you put it on someone else than you (main tank or DPS/heal with a target) and really up how many Bloospiller you do and so your DPS.

I'm also using it on pull and have 50 Blood right away to extend either Blood Price or Blood Weapon. It works really well.

And if it doesn't break, well it means you are taking 0 damage during 5sec against your ennemies. (Or the boss is changing phase or doing no damage. :P)

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

You definitely have to use it a lot, because for 70 seconds out of every 90s it is literally your sole source of mitigation in physical fights. And now its at least a surefire DPS gain so long as it pops, so there's that.

Someone earlier in this thread mentioned folding Dark Dance's effect into Dark Mind, and it gave me an interesting thought:
Basically, remove DM's current DA effect, since 15% is often sufficient, and make its new DA effect to add a -15% physical vulnerability down. So if you DA it, it doesn't get stronger percentage-wise, but it becomes usable on physical damage as well as magical. I would take this over an additional 15% magic mitigation that frequently isn't needed any day of the week.

[Falar]

Terrified ? Seriously ? You are terrified to use your best skill ?

Personnally, I'm using it ALOT. I've wasted just a few sometimes when I'm not totally used to a combat. But In Susanoo, it needs just 2 Auto-attack to break it, even if I'm main tank, and since Reprisal comes back for every tank buster, I can time how many TBN I do before keeping it for tank buster. (And I'm using VIT accessories)

In Omega story, same easy to break, just have to know the fight or pattern when Boss are doing there "no damage" skill. It's a bit harder on 3rd and 4th but I did those fight only once yesterday.

It's even more easier when you put it on someone else than you (main tank or DPS/heal with a target) and really up how many Bloospiller you do and so your DPS.

I'm also using it on pull and have 50 Blood right away to extend either Blood Price or Blood Weapon. It works really well.

And if it doesn't break, well it means you are taking 0 damage during 5sec against your ennemies. (Or the boss is changing phase or doing no damage. :P)

If it doesn't break its a major screw up (like we never had in our rotation before) and I can't stand mistakes. Losing a whole DA is a loss.

[SyzzleSpark]

I want to revise my list of changes from the OP here, factoring in the fact that SE is very unlikely to actually add or replace whole skills outside of the expansion's initial patch. They've never done this before so I don't expect them to add Scourge back or give us a new defensive CD. So realistically, with that in mind:

Defensive:

Dark Mind:
Reduces magic vulnerability by 15% for 10s.
Dark Arts effect: Reduces all damage taken by 15% for 10s.
-This makes DAing this ability extremely worthwhile. For magic tank busters, you can probably keep it unboosted, but in between tank busters it becomes a really good cooldown for tanking out of stance, mitigating cleaves and AAs, etc. and still comes at a cost of DPS to balance it out.

Shadow Wall:
Reduces damage taken by 30% for 20s.
-As stated in the OP, this makes Shadow Wall unique and gives it its own strength compared to Vengeance and Sentinel.
-Alternatively, if we wanted to make it more like Vengeance (shorter recast, weaker, but with a DPS benefit...)
Shadow Wall:
Reduces damage taken by 30% for 10s. Recast time 150s.
Dark Arts effect: Gives 50 Blood Gauge.

Blood Price:
Restores partial MP when damage is taken for 15s and reduces damage taken by 10% (or increases parry rate by 40%)
Additonal Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 1 immediately and another 4 over time while in battle.
Can only be used while under the effect of Grit.
-Since Blood Price is now locked behind Grit there is very little reason why it should not have a defensive benefit in the same way that Blood Weapon has an offensive benefit. If people feel this is unbalanced, I would be fine with them having the two skills share a cooldown to add an additional trade-off mechanic to the job, especially when factoring in a Blood Weapon change I've outlined below.

Abyssal Drain:
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 120 to the target and all enemies near it.
Dark Arts effect: Restores 1000% of the damage dealt as HP, divided by the number of targets hit.
-This makes Abyssal Drain an excellent Clemency equivalent. It cuts into our DPS just like Clemency does (or how Equilibrium does due to being Defiance locked) but provides us with snap-sustain. If this feels too unbalanced, it can keep its original 100% heal on every target while out of Grit, and lock the distributed 1000% effect behind Grit.

If these defensive buffs seem like too much in light of TBN, I would be okay with them increasing TBN's recast to, say 20 or 25s to make it less spammable. I feel like this would be a good QoL thing as well to reduce APM bloat. The power of and over-reliance on TBN right now makes our entire defensive cooldown suite feel incredibly lop-sided. The job doesn't feel good anymore defensively. It completely lacks the ability to smooth out incoming damage consistently and is extremely stop-start-stop-start with its mitigation as opposed to being able to level out the damage evenly and in a way healers can properly account for. TBN's stop-start nature makes our damage-taken unnecessarily spikey. We'll take the full brunt of incoming damage on our bare ass for 10s and then take no damage for 5s, as opposed to our HP just gradually falling slower in a way that healers can predict and deal DPS around.

As far as DPS....

After some thought, I don't think damage over time should be added to Bloodspiller or unboosted SE, because it would make our rotation unnecessarily rigid in terms of when you can use these abilities in terms of not clipping the DoT, so here is what I thought of instead.

Dark Passenger:
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150 to all targets in a line before you.
Additional effect: Damage over time with a potency of 70 for 15s.
No Dark Arts effect, MP cost returned to 1200.
-Because of the defensive buffs above and the fact that the blind still somewhat clashes with Blood Price, I decided to remove the Dark Arts effect. In exchange, the ability is now returned to its old MP cost, same recast time, and has the same total potency as Scourge. (150+(70*5)=500)

This would bring DRK's DPS up to an acceptable level to keep it competitive with PLD given its lesser utility.

Alternatively, they could do either of these instead:

Blood Weapon:
Additional effect: Increases Damage dealt by 15%.
-or-
Delirium:
Additional effect: Extends the timer of Blood Weapon by 8s and increases damage dealt by 30% for the duration.

Both of these would be roughly a 5% increase. (15% * (15s / 40s) = 5.6%) or (30% * (23s / 120s) = 5.7%)

These I feel are more interesting changes, but alternatively, they could simply buff several of our GCDs/oGCDs by 50-100 potency (as well as their DA effects, if applicable, to keep DA priority the same), or increase Darkside to 25%.

If it doesn't break its a major screw up (like we never had in our rotation before) and I can't stand mistakes. Losing a whole DA is a loss.

I think a possible solution to this is to have it return a % of Blood equal to the damage that was absorbed even if it didn't pop. But honestly, I like trade-offs, and the existing TBN mechanics are acceptable to me. People are complaining a lot about the job's low risk/reward and I feel like the risk of TBN not popping is an acceptable instance of that kind of risk/reward playstyle that still is present with the job.