DRK Redesign

[SyzzleSpark]

My current thoughts:

Problems:

1. Dark Passenger is all-but useless. In terms of usability, its pretty much a Shake-it-off that costs 2400 mana.
2. The job's resources pull from one another without resulting in a net gain. The Blood Gauge and Dark Arts mechanics are poorly balanced, and you aren't rewarded for maximizing them, only dumping them.
3. Our mitigation suite is over-reliant on TBN, and the blood gauge it provides is not a DPS gain, only a consolation prize for its insane MP cost.
4. Dark Arts is standardized outside of C&S at 140 potency and lacks impact based on the choices you make.
5. Dark Mind is underpowered now that PLD can block magic and its DA effect is inefficient as soon as you get TBN.
6. Grit is the most punishing tank stance to activate without any real benefit to make up for this.
7. Shadow Wall's recast time:damage reduction:duration ratio is awful.
8. We lack a weak cooldown with high uptime for mitigating fluff damage and TBN is both bad and expensive for this purpose.
9. Blood Price is awful on single target.
10. Living Dead is the most punishing tank invuln and does not offer a true middle ground between Hallow Ground and Holmgang, and the synergizes horribly with it considering our self-healing capability is hands down the worst of all the tanks.
11. The DPS ceiling is ridiculously low and the DPS floor is ridiculously high.
12. Delirium's recast time is very long for what it does.

Fixes:

***Balance TBN so that popping it is a significant DPS gain, even if you need to lengthen its recast time. Increase the duration increases on Delirium so that using it when it is available is a significant and immediate increase over Bloodspiller regardless of Grit. A good way to do this would be to have TBN provide 25 Blood Gauge up front, and the remaining 25 when it pops, and when it pops, have it proc a DA effect. If its recast time must be increased to make this a fair tradeoff I think most of us wouldn't mind.
***Introduce new DA effects that are different from eachother while still having parity. Dark Artsing one ability could result in a simple potency increase, while another could result in a guaranteed crit, direct hit, or crit direct, or a short duration DoT or weak damage dealt buff. Basically they could turn the SE combo into a multi-effect combo chain. DASS-SE could be just a bigger hit on SS, SS-DASE could be a DoT, and DASS-DASE could be a damage dealt buff.
***You have to make DM worth using DA on, and you need to make it worth pressing in the 90% of content that doesn't feature magic damage (dungeons, physical bosses, fluff damage). The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply make it work on physical damage as well. If its effect needs to be dialed back slightly (10%, DA 20%, etc.) to compensate, this is understandable. Its duration should also be increased.
***Remove Grit's MP cost, or move it off the GCD. For it to cost MP and a GCD to turn on is insane considering the buffs to WAR in 4.05. Similar changes to PLD to balance this out may be necessary.
***Either reduce Shadow Wall's recast and increase its duration, greatly reduce/increase one or the other, or introduce a new mechanic. I recommend having DA cut its recast time by 2 seconds per use and having Delirium increase its duration by 5s. These neat recast time-reducing mechanics were handed out like candy to various jobs in SB and with all of DRK's off-GCDs and frequent DA usage, this makes sense.
***Rework Living Dead entirely, the community has demanded this for 2 years. We hate it. In organized groups you can maximize its effectiveness but that's just the problem, the ability is too heavily gated by the skill of your team mates. Alternatively, introduce more effective self healing. An interesting idea would be to have two consecutive DA casts result in the second cast costing no mana and instead restoring 20% of your maximum HP and consuming the original DA effect.
***Revert the Souleater and Syphon Strike potency buffs, revert DP to its 3.x state, and instead, have DA and TBN reduce the recast time on Dark Passenger and Carve and Spit by 1 second per cast. In this way you provide a similar but more interesting DPS buff, and more frequent checks to see if you are managing your mana properly, making the job satisfying to play well.
***Every time a TBN pops, reduce Delirium's recast time by 5s, or have Delirium extend BW by 10 seconds and BP by 20 seconds.