#BringBackHeavenswardReprisal

[Crater]

I think it's a good thought process, I just don't see how it actually plays out. Set aside if you're MT for a second. If you are OT'ing and need to reprisal a large raid-wide, then you're sacrificing DPS by spending mp for TBN shield to break and proc reprisal. Is the extra 210 potency going to make up for lost dark arts attack?

The "DPS loss" of using TBN on the main tank as an OT is pretty much negligible as-is; because you get 50 Blood in exchange for your 2400 MP, it's the same situation as ever, where there's a technical average loss over time of somewhere in the area of 3-4 potency, which can easily be turned into an outright gain of potency if it means getting an extra Bloodspiller inside of any sort of raid buff. The problem with the skill currently is that the defensive effect of an OT TBN is pretty questionable, and rarely justifies taking the risk if any loss, even one as small as 3-4 potency.

Under this system, both sides of those issues are addressed: First, the "DPS loss" is offset by literally 50-70x, because the 3-4 average potency you lose by converting 2400 MP to 50 Blood is immediately dwarved by Reprisal itself, for a whopping 210 potency gain. And second, the defensive effect of an OT TBN is no longer "You put a shield on the main tank for a couple thousand HP, which almost never makes a difference in terms of tanking or in terms of healing". It becomes that same shield, but is then followed by 20 seconds of taking 10% less damage, which will tend to add up so some substantial help for your co-tank/healers.


Edit:

Another scenario to consider, that I think is actually really important, is one like the sequence in Neo Exdeath where he casts Aero III, and follows it with Earthshakers. This spot is a perfect illustration of where DRK's current defensive kit fails it, because the Aero and the Earthshaker are placed 10 seconds apart. That means that not only can DRK not use TBN to mitigate both of those (pretty hefty) hits, because of TBN's 15s cooldown, but zero of DRK's native cooldowns will do the job. Shadow Wall has a 10s duration and therefore can only catch one of those hits, and even if the Earthshaker were magic, neither could Dark Mind, for the same reason. In practice, DRK tends to want to burn Rampart to cover both of those hits, and use Dark Mind on the Aero, and use TBN on the Earthshaker. Meanwhile, all of a Warrior's cooldowns will cover both hits, and a Paladin can cover both with Bulwark, or use Rampart and Sheltron both of them, or even let a healer take aggro, use Cover on the healer, Sheltron both, and save Rampart.

This is one specific example, but you actually see DRK getting screwed by it over and over and over again, where hard-hitting attacks come exactly 10s apart, and nothing DRK has can deal with the mitigation even remotely efficiently, forcing the use of 2-3 separate cooldowns.

If you could TBN the first hit of something, and then know that you'd have a 10% mitigation tool in Reprisal to cover anything else that happens in the following 20 seconds, DRK would be in a much better place to deal with this specific attack timing in an efficient way.