Except this is the worst time to vote for Evening Sky despite what you are claiming. The temple is still a thing we must overcome. Have you forgotten how we have been barely scraping by? As for us out scaling Apocryphal Curse, that might be true in the world outside the temple but in the temple itself? There are still powerful fucks and bad match ups it can throw at us with minimal effort.
Sword Praxis is also partially an potential based EFB, once we have sufficiently developed it, than we will talk.
If we're nowhere near the ability to tackle the Temple, even given the absurd and unexpected gains we've gathered over what was supposed to be our "vacation" period, then we were always fucked no matter what, and we should just simply walk away. Yes, we barely scraped by Vanreir. Actually, we've continually barely scraped by, even with the Apocryphal Curse off, no matter what we've taken. Why would you believe that this means splitting our focus will increase our safety? The other two picks here both require deliberate development and focus to be more useful, even if they superficially appear to offer greater stats.
You can't claim that Sword Praxis is a reason not to take InkSky. Literally all of the available elements require deliberate development and focus to be more useful, which takes away from spending time on the potential side of our new EFB. Of them, only Inksky offers a completely neutral defensive upgrade that doesn't immediately require a bunch of time to master, and only Inksky offers more actual safety. Going much faster, in a mist you have to lay down yourself, which is vulnerable to being blown away is not that safe. Learning to internally channel a specific element takes up time that could just be spent on Sword Praxis.
Yeah, we are not under a threat of the Apocryphal Curse because we choose a different danger instead - the Temple. And we have absolutely no assurances that we are even close to outscaling that one. So yes, I am choosing the option that gives us more short-term power because we are still facing a lot of short-term threats.
Okay, but you realize that not all threats are short-term, right? It's perfectly possible for you to optimize towards the local temple threats in a way that drastically decreases our long term safety. The safest long term route is to not split our time between learning an element and learning Sword Praxis, and simply taking InkSky and dropping picks into it's proportionally efficient defensive advancements.
I would argue that this is an effective short-term strategy too, even if it's not the
most effective. Optimizing for value isn't just about picking the immediately safest path. Sometimes you have to take more risks now to take less risks overall, instead of simply ignoring that we'll have to keep playing in an unfriendly universe
even if we beat the Temple.
Is it really superlatively good, though? What does it actually give you, and what do the alternatives give you? Under which parameters is it superlatively good, and are those parameters appropriate to your build and its situation?
It's a superlatively good
Evening Sky upgrade, yes. It's hard to imagine getting another chance to make Evening Sky relevant. Even if protection is really good (seeing as relying on recovery simply means that we encounter a disproportionate number of enemies that leave significant unhealable maluses in their wake), we won't take it without significant incentive, which has just been even further tanked by the Uttermost -% value.
The way I see it, taking this now is necessary, or one of these days the number of complications we have will stack up into an inescapable death spiral. Assuming that Cut Through covers our offensive parameters, Pillars+Ruling Ring can handle a significant amount of the necessary utility, and that recovery is fundamentally incapable of doing the job on its own, protection is the big hole in our build.
Both of the alternatives are good, but they don't patch the problem. They simply toss more stats on top of the strengths we have already, while taking time directly away from our primary offensive direction (Cut Through) for any further development of utility or strength.