Should Dark Arts Come Back in 6.0? If so, What Should the Skill Do?

[currentlemon]

6.0 is coming this fall and I want to get this discussion going for DRK players new and old.

Should Dark Arts make a comeback in the next expansion?

I never had the chance to play HW or SB DRK. Only Shb. But man, from what I keep hearing, I missed out. On a lot. But regardless on the state of the job in older expansions, I firmly believe that Dark Arts SHOULD make a come back and replace Inner Release... I mean, Delirium as the job's staple skill.

But what should the new Dark Arts skill do though? Players, casual and hardcore, didn't really like spamming the skill over and over again. So perhaps something can be done to appease the masses? Perhaps have it cost blood gauge instead of MP? Maybe allow Dark Arts be used to open new combo routes for the job?

I'd love the skill to make a grand comeback in 6.0, but what can be done so that Dark Arts can appease everyone and prevent the massive "spam" backlash that occurred in Stormblood?

Edit: Here is what we have gathered regarding Dark Arts should it ever return to the game. Hopefully, SE will read this and bring back the popular skill that most DRK players want back. Special thanks to Rosenstrauch, Shao and Anahlise for the help.
Edit 2: More suggested changes!
Edit 3: Suggested changes after feedback from other players.

The skill Dark Arts is obtained at level 40 alongside Edge of Darkness. This will introduce new players to the Dark Arts mechanic.

Dark Arts will play along with the Darkside timer. The timer will slowly fill up the DRK's Blood Gauge (will explain later). If the Darkside timer is up for at least 30secs, the DRK will gain a charge called, "Blood Rune". These "Blood Runes" work similar to Black Mages Enochain and Polyglot system. As long as the DRK's Darkside timer is up, DRK will eventually receive these "Blood Runes" which they can use to cast Dark Arts.

What will Dark Arts do?

• It's an oGCD.
• Applies a self-buff that lasts for 15secs.
• While DA is active, it will "alter" DRK's GCD combo.
• While DA is active, a handful (but not a lot) of oGCDs will receive DA bonuses.
• Applies a Haste buff on the DRK

What of the traits?

• Level 50: Obtain Dark Arts Practitioner - Upon entering an instance activity, DRK will have one "Blood Rune" ready for use.
• Level 60: Obtain Dark Arts Practitioner II - Receive a second "Blood Rune" charge.
• Level 70: Obtain Dark Arts Mastery - Upon entering an instance activity, DRK will have two "Blood Rune" ready for use.
• Level 90: Obtain Dark Arts Mastery II - Receive a third "Blood Rune" charge.

Upon activating Dark Arts will grant a new GCD combo. They won't be new skills you add to the hotbar; but rather, these skills will temporarily replace the GCD skills that DRK currently has while DA is up. These skills are:

• Soul Eater becomes Power Slash.
• Syphon Strike becomes Scourge.
• Hard Slash becomes old 3.0 Delirium skill renamed, Spinning Slash.

Will you get these skills right away?
No. You earn them by levelling.
At level 50, Soul Eater can become Power Slash if Dark Arts is used. If Soul Eater has 400 Potency when using the GCD combo, then Power Slash will have a potency of 450. Basically, at early levels, you'll be spamming Power Slash for 15secs while DA is up until you receive the next GCD ability.

At level 58, DRK receives Scourge.
At level 66, DRK receives Spinning Slash

What are the tool tips for these new GCD skills?
Power Slash delivers an attack with a potency higher than hard slash.
Scourge is a DoT ability.
The old 3.0 Delirium skill delivers a high potency attack with a 3% magic vulnerability down debuff on the enemy.

The new GCD combo will be this: Power Slash > Scourge > Spinning Slash (3, 2, 1)

As for the oGCDs affected by Dark Arts
Dark Mind receives a 20% mitigation bonus for Physical Attacks
Dark Missionary receives a 10% mitigation bonus for Physical Attacks
Carve and Split will recovers HP
Abyssal Drain will recover MP

Other Changes.

I mentioned the Blood Gauge earlier in my post. Simply put, I do not like the Blood Gauge mechanic. In my opinion, it really doesn't do anything for DRK aside from using Bloodspiller, Quietus, and Living Shadow. I think the Blood Gauge and Darkside timer should MERGE into one mechanic. That way, DRK won't be so similar to WAR.

As for the skills that rely on Blood Gauge? Here are the changes I recommend.
Living Shadow will simply be an 90sec oGCD skill
Bloodspiller and Quietus are simply GCDs that can be comboed into.

Let's take Bloodspiller for example. I'd like to see Bloodspiller as a 4th GCD skill that can be used after Soul Eater and Spinning Slash.

The new GCD combo for single target will be like this:
Hard Slash > Syphon Strike > Soul Eater > Bloodspiller (1, 2, 3, 4)
Power Slash > Scourge > Spinning Slash > Bloodspiller (3, 2, 1, 4)

Bloodspiller will do a high potency damage if used in a combo. For example, if Bloodspiller alone does 500 potency, then if the player does the GCD combo, the potency will be increased to 700.

Won't this affect the current Delirium skill?
No, not really. The current Delirium will remain the same, only this time the "stacks" you receive from the skill will allow the DRK to use Bloodspiller with the bonus potency damage without doing the GCD combo.

What about DRK's AoE?
I... haven't really thought about that yet. Need more time to think that one through.

TBN needs to be brought up since it's losing Dark Arts as a trait.

Suggested Change:
- If TBN breaks, DRK will gain the trait Dark Rune
- Dark Rune reduces damage taken by 15% for a duration of 12secs
- Restores the DRK's HP with a Cure Potency of 500.
- Costs no MP.

[Absurdity]

I would like to have it back as well, it's a nice skill, certainly better than current Delirium.

As for implementation, basically anything that doesn't include spamming it every 2nd GCD should work.

[OdinelStarrei]

Well, technically, Dark Arts still exists, both in name and in execution. The TBN break glowy thing on the job gauge is called Dark Arts. And Edge/Flood are just old Dark Arts without the altering skills bit and more expensive to use. You can't bring back Dark Arts or change Edge to have the same amount casts per minute (high 30s low 40s) because people are just going to complain again, whether they understand how DRK works or not. Skill floor being too high is a big no no. I do not think "buffing" Dark Arts can ever return without a massive blowback, despite HW's version existing. Popular opinion tends to twist things in difficult ways. That being said, I'd love it if it just came back as it's HW version, only on Souleater and Bloodspiller, but also if it drained Darkside instead of MP.

Anyway, ShB DA is a bit bland though as only a TBN refund, a lot of people only see it as a "free" Edge cast, but I really think there should be more to it than that. Then again, I look at how many times I use TBN and save that Dark Arts for the next Tech Step or Trick Attack, so maybe it's not all bad. It's the last echo of HW DRK with it's Low Blow/Reprisal Parry procs, and as such, I wonder if it'll ever get expanded on at all. I know people floated around the idea of having Edge/Flood via Dark Arts always Critical Hit, but I doubt SE would do something that incentivizes getting hit outside of WAR's Vengeance. Low Blow and Reprisal got changed, and Blood Price and Shield Swipe got outright deleted. Can you imagine just TBNing healers on every raidwide for 100% free crits? Probably way too strong, it'd be madness, AND optimal. Maybe just a flat potency increase instead? I'd personally be a fan of it if Edge's potency was nerfed a little to compensate or we just weren't Bloodspillering out of our minds all the time. Maybe you can have multiple stacks of Dark Arts rather than just the one? Having trouble thinking of ways to expand on this implementation, not gonna lie.

What you "missed out on" isn't Dark Arts itself, but rather the speed of the job I wager. But you do realize that Delirium is partly responsible. Delirium being changed has a big part of slowing the job down to what it is right now. They can literally do anything with the skill and it will be better than what it is right now. Reduce the cost of Edge of Shadow for a set duration/usages, give buff that reduces GCD recast like Hypercharge, keep Bloodspillers free but reduce the amount given, and give more MP instead, go back to SB Delirium and have it extend Blood Weapon again, take it off the 90 sec CD so it's not just IR-lite, have Delirium just reset all your cooldowns (this is busted actually don't do this one), change it back to a GCD combo action that consumes Darkside for higher damage, so you have a trade off option vs spamming 123 forever, make it do something with Living Shadow. New combo routes is not a bad idea, but it's similar to GNB's Continuation, and I don't want to be like any other tank, even GNB. What's crippling DRK is Blood Weapon and Delirium, not Dark Arts being replaced by Edge/Flood and the term repurposed for TBN breaks.

Just saying "BRING BACK DA" is simplifying a much larger problem of lack of engagement, absence of job kit synergy, clunky job mechanics, and unnecessary homogenization, in my opinion.

Honestly, you should be glad you never played HW or SB DRK. This is the worst the job has ever been, but for you, the job has always played like this, so it's not as painful. It gives you a much less biased perspective. Imagine playing a job you now hate like an idiot, but refuse to drop out of spite. Outside of literally not being able to equip the job stone on launch and being unplayable, I struggle to think how DRK's design can get worse in 6.0, it's only up from here.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Anyway, ShB DA is a bit bland though as only a TBN refund, a lot of people only see it as a "free" Edge cast, but I really think there should be more to it than that. Then again, I look at how many times I use TBN and save that Dark Arts for the next Tech Step or Trick Attack, so maybe it's not all bad. It's the last echo of HW DRK with it's Low Blow/Reprisal Parry procs, and as such, I wonder if it'll ever get expanded on at all. I know people floated around the idea of having Edge/Flood via Dark Arts always Critical Hit, but I doubt SE would do something that incentivizes getting hit outside of WAR's Vengeance. Low Blow and Reprisal got changed, and Blood Price and Shield Swipe got outright deleted. I'd personally be a fan of it if Edge's potency was nerfed a little or we just weren't Bloodspillering out of our minds all the time. Maybe you can have multiple stacks of Dark Arts rather than just the one? Having trouble thinking of ways to expand on this implementation, not gonna lie.

Blue Mage got 2 new spells that seem to be tests for 6.0 tank abilities (Cold Fog and Chelonian Gate). Both function on a cast spell to get buff -> get hit/take damage -> get another buff -> original spell turns into a powerful counter attack ability. I wouldn't be surprised if DRK got a new ability where when you have a Dark Arts stack TBN turns into a powerful counter attack gcd weaponskill or spell.

Part of the reason Low Blow, Reprisal and Shield Swipe are no longer attacks is because they forced DRK and PLD to MT into order to maximize dps. TBN+DA on the other hand works because it can be used when MTing or OTing.

[Hierro]

If you want to appease the masses, keep it as is. The player base just wants to use a great sword with no effort, and the previous versions required effort, as surprising as it seemed (all you had to do was press buttons faster than normal). it's a shame we lost out on such a beautiful kit, really.

I remember how much this forum fought me for correctly calling them out on their hidden desire to play WAR with a glamored axe, because that's exactly what all the complaints were about. As soon as we went to WAR 2.0, the majority of the complaints stopped.

[Lyth]

There are many things that require effort, but are neither skillful nor enjoyable.

Faster button presses don't really have anything to do with Dark Arts vs. Edge/Flood. All you need to do is to bring back Blood Weapon's speed boost and make it baseline. That and to bring back a few of Heavensward's revenge proc actions.

...

I think this is a really good way to make tank gameplay stand out from melee dps. The problem is that the game designers seem to be afraid of revenge style abilities leading to big differences between MT/OT play.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I think this is a really good way to make tank gameplay stand out from melee dps. The problem is that the game designers seem to be afraid of revenge style abilities leading to big differences between MT/OT play.

Which is why I'd expect them to link those abilities to the protection cooldowns (The Blackest Night, Cover/Intervention, Nascent Flash and Heart of Stone) and the short mitigation cooldowns (TBN, Sheltron, Raw Intuition and HoS). Add in something like Chelonian Gate's "target takes at least 30% their max hp in damage" transformation trigger and you end up with both the MTs and OTs actively protecting themselves and others for increased dps while trying to avoid stacking to much mitigation.

[Lyth]

We had a lot of resistance from certain players about making TBN dps neutral during Stormblood, let alone making it a gain. Oh no, will I have to use my defensive abilities on recast to maximize my dps?

Remember, this is the same group of people who complained that Crit/DH RNG was making it difficult to get their perfect run, and thus every attack should Crit/DH.

Would revenge abilities be fun? Definitely. Do I see certain parts of the playerbase willing to support them? No.

[shao32]

I would love if dark arts come back especially with the original combo system DRK use to have in HW, and throw inner delirium to the trash can.


About how to re-implement it well, can be many routes of course, for example having a short recast timer like lets say 20s and a duration of 10s until you use any skill with a dark arts effect will be handy and could allow a interesting interplay.

Other option could be costing MP and being the MP option that grant Darkside timer so you use Edge/FLood when you don't need darkside time, this will need to be suported with a MP economy incrased to grant a constant use of MP skills, basically enough to keep you using them across the rotation and no more MP spam windows but not to much to become spamy, a HW rate more like.

The third option i can think is consuming Darkside time so it's about generating darkside and consume it constantly but again need a more constant MP generation to fix the problem of the heavy downtimes and make Dark arts and Edge being used like 3 times at least for every 10s of gameplay.


At the end of the day considering the TBN new proc system it won't never interfere since you could sustitute any MP skill anytime with TBN and get a refund when it pops allowing a comfy use of his mitigation toolkit, so i hope the Dev team consider that and allow the job restore his MP management gameplay and please raise the APM of the job.

[Piarkire]

Two alternatives I can think of:

1) Leave Dark Arts as it is but introduce a new combo, much like GNB, that instead costs a portion of the Darkside timer (15 seconds is my estimate) and has a recast time of 30 seconds. This should be a bit stronger than the usual combo and can reward Dark Arts at the end if Darkside is still active.
2) Add a new trait that allows 2 stacks of Dark Arts and give Carve and Spit a 50% chance to grant it; Dark Arts itself can be changed to power up Edge/Flood of Shadow by 10% per stack in addition to making the next use free which costs all stacks.