The Rework DRK Deserves

[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.