A completely stupid DRK idea

[Mekhana]

I'm not personally a fan of SB DRK, especially off the perfection that was HW DRK.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I'm not personally a fan of SB DRK, especially off the perfection that was HW DRK.

Totally valid, both were beasts on their own, however perfection is subjective for both of them. HW DRK was more about being the Parry proc tank (Reprisal + Low Blow) with generally low usage of Dark Arts due to MP drain, but also came with tools like Blood Price that scaled MP regeneration with damage taken. For better or worse, that was a cool mechanic that supported not overmitigating to get the most out of it. The original Blood Weapon though if I read the tooltip right did not come with GCD haste, only auto-attack speed which I find somewhat boring. However GCD Delirium combo as an alternative to Souleater, Scourge as a maintainable GCD DOT and Dark Dance were quite fun.

What they lost in the parry engine (which I personally think was stupid as it cemented DRK into MT for the majority of fights for damage) they made up with the Blood System and TBN -> 50 Blood on break, which could be used on an ally. While not a DPS gain, it was a decently healthy alternative. Dark Arts frequency was really high given the extension of Blood Weapon, reworked Delirium and exchanging the MP drain for removing natural MP regen outside of DRK actions. And Blood Price got murdered, like goddamn it gave 1 Blood per hit and a few extra per server tick while only accessible under Grit. And every hit only gave 5% of a Dark Arts / TBN, you'd need to take 20 hits to get a single use out of it. Overall though, it was very fun to play the Speed Tank.

(I post this mainly as a source of information of others who may not know either of these)