The Rework DRK Deserves

[Dtrip19]

Spinning Slash potency is 300

Power Slash potency is 400. Dark Arts potency: 550, Dark Arts effect: Darkside for 30 seconds. Gives you something to spend your mp on at least once every 30s. Potency increase from Dark Arts is also higher than on Soul Eater to make the combo more efficient mp wise while off tanking

Blood Weapon Now restores 500 mp and 3 blood for each time you deal physical damage to an enemy (functions identically in this regard as in 4.x). Recast time reduced to 30 seconds, duration increased to 15s

Salted Earth Potency remains 60, Duration: 21 seconds, Recast: 60 seconds. Generates 1 blood each time is deals damage to an enemy. Very important for this ability to hit 7 times and generate 1 blood each time. This allows the ability to generate 50 blood on it's own in pulls against 8 or more enemies, while also generating 7 against a single enemy which is most likely to leave you at a nice 10 with all the other effects giving 3 blood each.

Abyssal drain is back on the GCD (where it belongs) and reads: Deals damage with a potency of 300 evenly divided between the target and all nearby enemies. Potency cannot go below 150 for any enemy. Dark Arts potency: 500, Dark Arts effect: restores hp equal to damage dealt (cannot use cure potencies on this ability). Mp cost: 1000. The wording on this ability makes it so that it is usable against one enemy for 500 potency in damage and healing for 4000 total mp with the Dark Arts, while scaling up due to the minimum potency against large groups. It's use in single target fights will still be relatively niche unless burst healing is needed, but in that case it's fantastic for the job.

Carve and Spit Delivers a three-fold attack to the target. The potency and effects of this ability match those of the most recently used weaponskill. Recast: 60 seconds.
This can be used directly after and weaponskill replicate it's damage and effects, but is most useful when used to replicate a Dark Arts Power Slash when you're low on Darkside Time, a Dark arts Souleater for even more healing, or a bloodspiller for even more potency (600). Also can be used during blood weapon to restore 500 mp and blood

[Dtrip19]

Bloodspiller remains at 600 potency. Dark Arts effect: Damage over time, potency 30, duration 30 seconds. 300 potency worth of damage for 3000 mp on top of the 50 blood cost. very high exchange rate on potency in comparison to the other abilities but it's over time so it must be maintained. Basically the new scourge.

Quietus bumped down to 200 potency. Additional effect: restores (500) mp per enemy hit. Having no Dark Arts effect on this one at all is pretty important actually, so you can store up a dark arts before using it to refill your mp fully against large pulls

Delirium Probably my favorite change of the rework. Simply gives two stacks of Dark Arts at the cost of 50 blood. (Dark arts can be stacked up to 5 although you'd never want to do that, all abilities consume one stack of Dark Arts rather than fading the effect like in 4.x.) Recast time reduced to 2 seconds. Since it's now on par for power level with bloodspiller and quietus, it can be used whenever you want, giving DRK's full freedom to generate extra effective mp even in single target fights if they don't want to use bloodspiller without the fuss of the 4.x delirium.

The Blackest Night Now gives 50 blood when it pops rather than the "Dark Arts" proc which will now be removed. This is why it's important for Delirium to give stacks of Dark Arts rather than just restoring mp or else you can go on an infinite loop of spending mp on TBN for blood and spending the blood on more mp

Stalwart Soul potency reduced to 150, still generates 20 blood, but now restores 500 mp for each enemy it hits, just like quietus. Dark Arts potency: 250, Dark Arts effect: Darkside for 30 seconds. very important to have darkside on this one so you don't have to do a full power slash combo on every trash pull to get the skill/spell speed

[Dtrip19]

Dark Missionary Refreshes TBN effects on the target, extends their duration to 15 seconds, then spreads that effect to all nearby party members. Recast reduced to 60s. Recast time reduction justified by the resource cost of the initial TBN. the mitigation this skill provides now is just better in every way, it's wonderful.

Living Shadow is getting a huge change, and it would have to be accompanied by a new trait as well which I'll describe first, called Darkside Mastery. The trait would give you one stack of "surging Darkside" whenever you maintain Darkside for 30 seconds, maxing out at 4 stacks. Think of it like a polyglot stack in a way. Living Shadow Would say: Consumes 3 stacks of "surging Darkside" to deal damage with a potency of 450 to all nearby enemies. Additional effect: Increases damage dealt and reduces damage received by 20%. Duration: 18s The idea is based off the DRK in the shadowbringers trailer exploding in purple glory to one-shot innocence, so the animation should match. This ability would replace Dark Mind at level 80 as well. It's interesting to note how the cooldown/resource works on this skill. Since "Surging Darkside" can stack 4 times, but Living Shadow only costs 3, it can be used every 90 seconds, but you can potentially hold off on using it for up to 149 seconds before you generate a fifth stack of "surging Darkside" and begin to lose damage by not using the explosion and damage buff. Additionally, if you hold off for those 149 seconds to use it, you only have to wait 31 seconds before you can use it again, so if done well you can make use of this abilities damage buff while minimizing the amount of time you spend being vulnerable while it's on "cooldown" due to not having access to it's mitigation as well.

[Dtrip19]

Final Thoughts There's a lot that I love about this rework. Mainly it's because it brings back the 4.x aoe rotation of bloodweapon, quietus, TBN, and abyssal drain to restore massive mp and health back to back, while also expanding on it thanks to stalwart soul. The Stalwart Soul combo is great for when you're low on resources and/or blood weapon is down, which will inevitably happen if your party is a little low on dps against large pulls. As for the single target rotation, you now have two buffs to maintain that cost mp and healing that can be done only by spending mp (none of the hp regen effects are free, for a reason), so a fair amount of decision-making must be done to maximize dps while also meeting the minimum healing/mitigation requirements. On top of that, the new delirium, which I love for it's 2 second recast time, allows you to convert blood you get from TBN into even more effective mp thanks to it giving two stacks of dark arts, so using your mitigation well expands the abilities of DRK's in single target fights greatly. I calculated how much mp a DRK will generate per minute using some rough numbers and it came out to around 24000 mp, enough for 8 uses of 3000 cost abilities. For optimal dps, 4 of those will be used every minute to maintain Darkside and Bloodspiller's dot, leaving the other 4 to be used how you see fit either on healing, mitigation, or more damage. I'd love to hear your feedback on this rework assuming you read all the way through, I've pored over it myself quite a few times and I'm having a hard time finding any design flaws in it.

[SakiKojiro]

I like most of this. I wouldn't add a DoT to Bloodspiller. It creates a very specific type of rotation in which you need to spend at very specific points to maintain the DoT, and I'd prefer to not have an entirely DoT-centric rotation just for like 300 potency.