DRK suggestions from a non-DRK

[Lyth]

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Dark Arts
The difficulty with DRK's design in Stormblood is the rate of MP generation. The MP drain from Darkside in Heavensward was designed to partially offset the MP gain from Syphon, resulting in a gradual rise in MP with each combo. In Stormblood, this MP gain is unopposed, so it happens very quickly. This is why we're required to use Dark Arts so frequently. You can make as many interesting DA effects as you like, but you can't change the frequency with which it is used without addressing DRK's resource generation/expenditure.

The other difficulty is that DRK's total MP capacity, while suitable for Heavensward's rate/expenditure, doesn't work as well with this kind of design. Because you're gaining and spending large quantities of your MP bar every GCD, you have very little leeway to defer spending MP on your next DA move. Of course, if you make the MP capacity too large, then burst becomes less about Blood Weapon/Delirium timing and more about stockpiling resources.

If you want to decrease Dark Arts usage without re-implementing the MP drain from Darkside, then you need more actions that consume MP. oGCDs, like Dark Passenger and Carve and Spit, could be good candidates for this (especially if they moved the DA cost of Carve on to the ability itself, shaving off one DA use every minute). The problem with oGCDs, however, is that they tend to be bunched up together. So you'd either need something on a shorter recast or proc-based, letting you burn off excess MP consistently throughout combat.

One commonly suggested solution is to let Dark Arts activate for X GCDs, or even function as a stance that you can toggle. The difficulty here is that DRK's present MP generation happens in spurts, which is why you need to be able to burn it off in a GCD by GCD basis. You could still make it work, though.

Solution
Here's one possible solution.

1) Give every base combo action (Hard Slash, Syphon Strike, Souleater) a small amount of fixed MP generation.
2) Give the enhanced versions of these a fixed amount of extra potency and blood generation, without any MP generation.

Let's say that you activate Dark Arts, such that it lasts for the next 3 GCDs or so (this could be any number of GCDs, in theory). The main cost of activating Dark Arts would then be to stop your MP generation, in exchange for more blood and more damage.

Either way, it's a fairly complex problem that requires a rework of how our resource generation works. This is before we've even got into a discussion of Delirium, which is a more difficult issue in itself.

Blood Price
Abilities that generate resources on being hit are very difficult to tune. I remember that WoW had a similar issue with Rage generation, in that you often had too much or too little. In the case of Blood Price, if you tune it for single target, it becomes too powerful when you have multiple targets. If you tune it for multiple targets, it becomes nearly useless in single target.

What made this more obvious going from Heavensward to Stormblood was the fact that it was both stance locked as well as being re-tuned for very big pulls. Abilities locked behind Grit generally aren't going to be used to begin with.

I think that if the developers don't like the "resource gain on hit" idea, they should just drop it, rather than keeping it in its present form. If we get another ability crunch going into the next expansion, Blood Price and Unleash are my two top picks for replacement.

Living Dead
The number one problem with Living Dead that you always have to "work around" using it. As long as that's the case, players are going to hate using it. You should be rewarded for pressing the button.

If an ultimate move has a two minute longer recast, I want to see it have a more powerful effect. What would I like to see? I'm open to anything that doesn't involve that doesn't involve the present "heal or die" game. But here's an idea:

Living Dead: Lose all your current HP except for 1. For the next 10 seconds, you can't take damage. All attacks done to you or by you restore HP at a fixed rate (like a Blood Weapon/Price effect).

Would be a bad ability to accidentally fatfinger, but the same is true for any ultimate move.

Either way, thanks for giving your take on things.