The Ultimate DRK Rework

[TouchandFeel]

So a few thoughts on the proposed rework.

1) The Dark Arts changes actually messes up the baseline defense of DRK by making a separate GCD combo and incentivizing it over Soul Eater. The heal from Soul Eater is an understated but important part of DRK and is the job's unique form of "passive" defense; akin to the heal from Storm's Path on WAR, shield blocks on PLD and the heal+shield on Brutal Shell for GNB. They are all there in the background creating that base level cushion of mitigation or sustain to help keep the tank alive and they only work like that because they are constantly happening, constantly in play. Remove that piece of the puzzle by having DRK focus on a different, higher dps combo and you have removed an intrinsic element of the job's defensive kit, essentially nerfing it in comparison to the other tank jobs. There is a reason why the tanks that have two combos have them designed with one that you use the majority of the time and the other it just used occasionally to keep something up like a buff, that way things like resource gain and sustain can be attached to the one combo that will be used most of the time and therefore be a relative constant.

2) I honestly don't understand the need for DRK to have another combo-ender like WAR or PLD, pressing one button different in your combo rotation approximately every 30s isn't really any more fun or interesting. The only somewhat interesting part of the second combo-ender for WAR and PLD is not the fact that there is a second combo-ender, but the effect of them which are both centered around maintaining and maximizing up-time on something, a buff and a DoT, while minimizing the amount of times that combo-ender has to be used. Give DRK a combo-ender that is a buff to keep up like you did, just like WAR. Give DRK a combo-ender that is a DoT, just like PLD. Give DRK a combo-ender that is a debuff like it used to have and ... wait those were all intentionally removed and aren't coming back. Apart from those options you are left with little to nothing to base the second combo-ender around asides from just having one simply to have one.
Now look at the new tank that so many like to gush over, Gunbreaker. It technically doesn't even have a second combo like WAR or PLD, instead it breaks things up a number of different ways such as having faster resource gain so that a resource-based GCD attack can be used with every combo, or two every two combos, to break up the combo rotation and a burst period with a relatively short cooldown that is executed as a combo.
So why does DRK have to have a second combo-ender? Why can't it take more inspiration from somewhere else, like how Gunbreaker breaks up some of the 1-2-3 combo monotony? Why not look at increasing Blood gain to increase the frequency of Bloodspillers to break up Soul Eater rotations more? Why not come up with ideas that utilize an ability to enable or unlock another combo or something like it in the rotation? You could integrate something like that into Blood Weapon, or Delirium or even both. You could tweak Blood Weapon's numbers and have it be available every 30s instead of every 60s as well to make it match up with Gnashing Fang or approximately how often you would be using a second combo-ender.
There are many ways that DRK could have it's rotation spiced up and trying to introduce a second combo-ender just to have one is uninspired and boring.

3) The Blood Weapon change, being physical damage only, makes it virtually worthless in AoE.

4) Changing TBN from granting a Dark Arts and moving it back to giving Blood just simply brings back the ambiguity of TBN breaking being a loss, neutral or a gain which are arguments that I grew sick of seeing in the past and really don't want to see come back. The apples for apples, 1 to 1 trade dynamic of the current iteration where you gain something that is the exact same cost of the same resource as TBN was a smart move and was done for a good reason.
Additionally, creating a trade off of resource types like that can and likely will have ripple effects towards the rest of the kit and would ultimately result in either a very lop-sided kit where one resource and it's associated abilities would be deemed of much greater value and the other resource was just an annoying extra step you have to go through and get so that you can then trade it for the resources that you actually want; or both resources and their abilities would have to be restricted heavily in design and effect so that they are equitable and neither resource ends up being superior which would just end up making their associated abilities very similar and quite frankly bland and boring.
Separating out the resources and making each of them their own encapsulated thing allows much more freedom of design to do interesting things with and within their own sub-system, which is exactly the direction that the developers took MP and Blood in with ShB.
Could the current implementation use some improvement? Yes, very much so. However, moving backwards in such a way is not the solution and would end up being counter-productive.

5) The Delirium change poses the same problem as the TBN giving Blood change in regards to the inherent problems of resource trading that I have already gone over.
In addition to that problem, the proposed version of Delirium gets rid of DRK having a defined heavy burst period to line up with raid buffs, which not having was a huge complaint in Stormblood. Making it an attack with a bit of potency is a small change, but it is essentially the same as the StB version which was criticized for being underwhelming and boring. Sure the current iteration of Delirium is also criticized as being boring, but at least it gives DRK a defined burst period like every other tank and really it only needs some tweaks or additions to make it not seem like a copy/paste of Inner Release as opposed to completely redoing it.

6) The slower rate of resource gain from the rework not only reduces the frequency of Dark Arts usage, which is what you intended, but also reduces the frequency that TBN can be used which is a huge problem. Right now TBN can be used around, to slightly more frequently than the other tanks can use their frequent use defensive cooldowns. Since so much of DRK's defensive capabilities revolve around using TBN as much as possible, reducing the frequency that DRK can use TBN is a serious nerf to DRK.

Overall, the proposed rework seems to be not much more than just trying to take DRK back to a psuedo-StB state and I really don't mean that nor see that as a positive.