So I want to preface this by saying that I am in no way an expert on DRK nor will I pretend to know what goes into the various calculations done on the subject of class balance. But I was bored at work and thought of a few ways to get DRK out of the current funk it was in and i'd like everyone's thoughts on it.

Firstly to summarize imo, DRK has 3 sore points for me when im playing it, that i believe are echoed throughout the tanking community as a whole.

The first is Identity, simply put DRK doesn't feel like anything, or to be more precise it feels like a 100 piece puzzle that is missing 5 pieces, yes you can kinda get the picture but its not whole.

Second, Synergy, DRK brings nothing to the table that the other 2 Tanks don't bring in either an easier way. WAR brings slashing and a ton of burst DMG along with some pretty hefty party wide shields. PLD is absolutely bonkers when it comes to mitigation and utility and its damage is nothing to scoff at either. Frankly you bring DRK for either a niche or because you don't want to be seen as a person excluding a class.

Third and probably the one i'll take the most flack for is Dark Arts. To make a long story short, both PLD and WAR have rotations that can be complex because they revolve around a damage window, to some degree or another, stance dancing offensive buffs and even certain defensive CD revolve around the fact that you know you will have a certain time during the fight where you can maximize your damage and use your skills effectively. For PLD switching to SwO popping a defensive CD in time with FoF then sliding to finishing with Requiescat -> HS spam means that all your skills have a certain flow and rhythm to their usage. DRK again does not really have this, due to the sporadic nature of DA and the fact that the cost to spam it is generally very high, playing DRK at anything other than a high skill level results in either lackluster damage or a stupid amount of micromanaging.

In light of these 3 things id like to propose the following changes to the DRK kit.

Dark Arts -> rather than a 1 shot use, Id like to change this to an activated stance useable on a 80 second CD, one that when active will slowly drain your MP lasting untill you are below 5% of your total MP and then turning off. All DA potency increases and effects would remain basically the same give or take away a few potency to account for the change in design. I believe that this would give DRK an active damage window and take away the clunky micromanaging feel of using Dark Arts.

Soul Survivor -> similar to Excogitation this would place a buff on either self or others that sits on a timer. It can be actively triggered or passively expire and would provide a magic defense buff based on the amount of HP the target has loss. Example at -80% 2.5% shield at -60% 5% and -50% 8%. This in my opinion would allow for great synergy between a party as well as provide a higher level of complexity than simply "put on target, hope it dies, get some chump change back"

Dark Dance -> Why the eff was this removed? bring it back, fluff damage and mitigation problems solved

Dark Passenger -> (stay with me here) Make this skill usable ONLY when Dark Arts is active remove its MP cost and place it on a 20 second CD, give it falloff damage and ... place a 5% magic vuln up on all targets hit. This is probably the single most important change to the kit imo. Not only does this help PUG parties that don't have w/e the eff the "meta" comp is, this allows for caster compositions to be focused around a DRK giving it more variability with the dominant phys composed parties. If for example you have a party that has a heavy phys presence but one of your members loves to play BLM or RDM or SMN then you as a DRK are not punished for being a DRK and they dont have to think "well I guess I'll switch to BRD or MCH since i don't want to hold the party back" It fits well with the identity of a magic knight class and adds some MUCH needed versatility to casters.

MP regen under darkside this has always been a silly thing for them to restrict. With this new build you could have casters/ranged who can focus on trying to maximize the up time on DA and allow for the Tank to stay dealing damage for longer.

Living Dead -> tbh i have no clue what to do with this, you either love it or hate it.

These changes, I believe could benefit both casual and hardcore players alike. As was shown with WAR, making the class easier to play doesn't have to take away from the challenge of mastering it. Allowing DRK to be less focused on arbitrarily press DA before every relevant skill, this would make it so that you need to rotate your MP regeneration and Damage output in order to squeeze as much time out of Dark Arts buff as possible.

I would love to hear thoughts and opinions on what I've come up with and see if there are any other ideas that are more along this track rather than the SE bandaid fixes of "you can have 10 more potency and that should fix it"