Feedback about darkness and a few other things around it

I'll be giving my suggestions first and them I'll be yapping a little on the whys.

1 - Change the nodes from the darkness line to skills that use darkness or make darkness itself be a skill

2 - Change how darkness work with defenses layer like mind over matter or damage taken from mana


First and foremost, I would like to say that I don't think the mechanic is bad, it just doesn't work how I though it would work and it makes it a little underwhelming when compared with the other nodes avaible. I also didn't see much being talked about it so I apologize if it's something that is already being discussed about and I'm just repeating things.

I do feel that spirit skills are too strong right now and maybe that's the problem, but right now the downsides from removing all your spirit is too heavy for what darkness does. Other than level, it's a non scalable defensive layer (and ofensive if you take Grasp of the Void) and we lack any way to interact with it in any meaningfull way.

My main problem with how darkness work right now is this line in specific: "Damage taken is Reserved from Darkness before being taken from Life or Energy Shield"

From this line, I assumed that if I stacked damage taken from mana before life or used MoM I would take mana damage before reserving darkness, which doesn't seens to be the case.

My initial plan with the class was to find ways to keep my darkness as high as possible and instant mana leaching with mom looked promissing, since mana damage is not life damage, but so far I'm always out of darkness but my mana is topped most of the time, so I guess my darkness is taking the hit before mana.

The way it is now it feels mandatory that you stack evasion so you don't get hit as often, and in this case having Wind Dancer, Grim Feast and Ghost Dance are all way better as defensive layers than darkness is right now.

Update - Not sure if it has something to do with the bug fixes but I just noticed my mana was properly protecting my darkness now, thanks devs you guys are awesome.

So, Mana is no longer protecting Darkness when using the Mind Over Matter passive key stone. Please fix this so that Mana is taking damage before Darkness again!