Quote Originally Posted by cactuarzzzz View Post
Is this because TBN+Dark Mind in TEA?

Btw I wasn't going to ask for tbn nerf any further, merely explain why it can cause imbalance but I'm still open for constructive suggestion from other people of how it should be.
Here's a detailed explanation why your combination of nerfing TBN and changing BW is a certain damage nerf. I made this post shorter, hopefully it gets read.
On DRK, you need to pre-pull TBN the person whoever is pulling the boss. During most encounters where damage is important, that shield will break in 2-3 auto attacks, and grant a Dark Arts. Because you are starting the fight at 7000 MP, two things happen.
1. You immediately start regenerating passive mana ticks, but more importantly
2. You can use Blood Weapon on the first GCD hard slash before you reach the boss and attack WITHOUT overcapping your mana, and you can have Living Shadow active by the first Soul Eater.
(Because of Living Shadow's delay, you need it up after the first Soul Eater so it hits with the raid buffs.)

Dark Arts being granted by TBN breaks lets us STORE that 3000 mana for later usage in bursts. This is critical to getting off 12000 MP worth of EoS damage under raid buffs. If you were to design a theoretical opener on DRK with your changes in mind, it would have one less edge because you didn't give BW any MP regeneration. That's 550 potency after Darkside that would have been boosted by raid buffs that you are deleting without compensating by increasing the potency of any GCDs. You gave the blood, when arguably it's the MP on BW that's more important. Stockpiling mana using BW-DAs is not possible because of how quickly you need to activate Darkside in the opener. That's why people are saying you are nerfing damage. You removed the ability to stockpile mana with TBN and schedule heavy EoS usage under buffs, or at the very least, one less EoS.

In my first post, I said change BW to Bunshin or revert it

DRK slaps in TEA by the way, insane. I'll not clear it anytime soon, if ever, but it carries like nobody else can on the tanking front.

Quote Originally Posted by Martine View Post
I can get behind this change to BW. It would likely change up the meta as we wouldn't need a certain amount of SkS to comfortably fit them in.
Unfortunately, you'd still need 2.38-2.42 to comfortably fit in five Delirium Bloodspillers. If Delirium was changed to gain MP, decrease the cost of EoS, or something that wasn't locked by GCDs, you could see alternate SkS builds for sure. But Delirium really locks us down into those SkS thresholds.