There's no reason for a dark Pokémon to inflict sleep. That would have been far better for psychic, which became Mystery energy.
It would be better for
Mystery Energy but that ship has sailed. Also remember that the TCG is
not the video games; while it draws inspiration from them it does have some leeway... like for the obvious connection between darkness (...not the Type, but the lack of light) and sleeping (not the Special Condition, but actual sleep). After all if we were slavishly keeping to the video games, there would be no Energy cards in the first place (I guess PP could have been represented with a different color of counter...).
I suppose ignoring all effects on the defending Pokémon would be okay, but if we want to avoid repeats then we should remember Wonder energy (the fairy special) already does this.
You have it backwards:
Wonder Energy prevents the effects of attacks other than damage done to the Fairy-Type Pokémon to which it is attached; I am suggesting the effect seen on attacks like Shred, where the attacking Darkness-Type with this hypothetical Energy would be able to ignore the effects on the Defending Pokémon.
So why not just repeat what has already been done with dark energy before every other type (bar steel which came out at the same time) followed suit?
1) Potential game balance issues.
2) S'boring
3) Was there a good reason for
Darkness Energy to boost damage in the first place other than being the opposite of the original
Metal Energy?
No other special energy requires discard just to be used and I don't think it fair that darkness should require it. The only time special energy gets discarded is either a forced removal, knock out, or if that Pokémon's type changes. I suppose it could be some compromise of this one, where perhaps the effect only kicks in if the defending Pokémon has more energy attached to it than the attacking Pokémon...
You realize the card doesn't even exist, yes? I threw it out there as a quick example of "doing something different", not a Create-A-Card. For the record
some Special Energy cards do discard themselves. A recent example would be
Double Aqua Energy and
Double Magma Energy. A classical example would be
Boost Energy. This is included to help balance very powerful effects, and discarding an Energy attached to the opponent's Active would be a
very powerful effect.
I want Energy that is neither overpowered nor under powered and I am really tired of the designers seemingly locking themselves into no-win scenarios because of what changes they will or will not accept (though perhaps it is those above them). ¬_¬ If they cannot violate the current template that seems to exist for Type specific Special Energy... well that is a good sign of why we won't be seeing a Darkness-Type specific one anytime soon.
Double Dragon Energy already breaks precedence by being worth two Energy
and by providing multiple Energy-Types (though this seems suited to Dragon-Types). If we were to get a for-Colorless-Types-only Energy (
Double Colorless Energy works for everything and unfortunately keeps being reprinted) then an updated version of
Boost Energy would be welcome... provided it did keep the Type-requirement part of the current template and still discarded itself at the end of the turn (as in the old version).
Personally I wouldn't be surprised of the [D] energy is a version/reprint of the original Special Dark Energy, as the Shield Energy was a Metal Energy reprint. So basically a [F] for [D] types.
Would I be surprised? A little, because if this was the plan then
Strong Energy could have had a different effect. Plus
Shield Energy is not the same as
Metal Energy; similar but not the same. It also is one of the worst of the Type-specific Special Energy. =/
