Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Keep in mind that it costs the same amount to cast it as it takes to use DA so there's an opportunity cost there. Also, you only get the blood gauge increase if the shield is broken (so 20% of your hp or 10% of your target's hp has to be chunked out within 5 seconds)

Blackest Night is a great utility ability and something that DRK is really going to be leaning on in the coming weeks. The 50 blood is more of a bonus than anything though, Dark Arts is too expensive to be able to rely on it too much especially when you'll be spending Dark Arts on the abilities that Blood allow you to use as well. I can't really equate it to Thrill of Battle since it is not a persistent effect like ToB, it is more akin to Stoneskin.

The cooldown timer isn't a limiter for Dark Arts, though, MP cost is. You can pretty much always have Dark Arts up for any ability you can afford to spend it on as it is; increasing the pool of Dark Arts-able abilities is actually going to be an issue in the longrun as a result of this.

And yeah Delirium is really nice, however it also has drawbacks. You're spending a 520 potency attack in order to use it, which is great when you need MP but is still a pretty heavy associated cost. It'd be similar to having to spend Beast Gauge to pop Equilibrium on WAR (which I'm shocked they didn't do tbh).

Flash for...? Maybe fights with a lot of adds I guess but Flash has never been a good method of picking up adds unless there's more than one. As far as enmity generation, it's going to be a non issue considering the Off Tank can now toss Shadewalker onto the Main Tank and share their own enmity generation with them. Both of PLD's primary DPS combos are now tied to Riot Blade, which is huge. Recovering MP is going to be really easy. The most PLD needs to worry about rotation or resource management wise will be when to pop Interception.

That would be implying that Shadewalker itself wasn't a powerful utility skill before, which it was. It allowed good tanks to forfeit their opening enmity combo in favor of a debuff or a DoT, and an OT can easily be made to generate enough hate to make it worthwhile. I wouldn't mind dropping a single Storm's Path in order to give my MT a Butcher's Block if it helps them push out another Holy Spirit; gaining more potency than I lose.

It'd be awful with a DRK OT, DRK OT never uses its hate combo unless necessary for a swap. Pretty much only useful with a WAR OT, assuming they aren't now going to be spamming only Path when Eye isn't about to fall off.

Course, you could do some funny ***with have two provokes on the bar. Like if you wanted to, you could use one of the provokes as the OT, and then Shirk onto the MT at regular intervals.

Honestly this is nothing new. We have been following this kind of guideline for things like Screenshots for XI and for other huge game and movie releases such as Starwars Episode 7 and Metalgear Solid 4. I'm just taking this time to remind you to please be considerate.

Thanks in advance.

Hey! I'm a proud Bastok Hume! I also had a proud Bastok Galka. and a proud Bastok Elvaan.

Bastok BESTok!