Possible issue: Disparity with Living Dead and tank max HP

LD usage on Titania made me swap to GNB for subsequent pulls. Two healers couldn't get me up with their OGCDs, which then forced them into GCD's, and even then it was still a 50/50 shot if I was surviving.

And I don't like forcing healers to GCD heal when I could pick a different tank where they don't have to, it's just lost damage at that point.

The only reason I raid on DRK is because I'm biased to a fault in enjoying the rest of the class, and we have a WHM. Even if being DRK locks the WHM's benediction to only me and never anyone else in an encounter. Though if I do use it somewhere unplanned, because the other option is to die anyway, there's 0 chance I'll be brought up enough and I'll just explode to Walking Dead... which doesn't feel particularly good.

Whereas if I was WAR/GNB all I'd need is one OGCD, maybe two pending on incoming damage, and regens can handle the rest. (+ Nascent Flash/Aurora). And WAR/GNB/PLD don't require a specific healer to work.

DRK's LD, by comparison, just sucks in utility like a blackhole and it has no way to mitigate the healing required on its own (no conva anymore, no inherent healing on its own besides the paltry amount from souleater/1 abyssal drain on ST).

Good lord lol. Well I remember it being good in the past but that you have to use so many oGCD is not great :p. I haven't played it as much as I did a long while ago- before the huge hp.

Before it was pretty easy to get healed up to. Since I only, almost, play PUG these days I just avoid the skill since it seems like a good way to die. Although when I had a white mage who was ready it was easy to use and really smooth with good duration, easy activation, and low cooldown.

Would people be willing to add some cooldown or lower duration for a more convenient effect?

Some changes with similar theme maybe:

• If you're not healed to 50% or 75% health by the end you receive weakness debuff instead of death
  
• Or up to X% of your max health will be contained in damage and then dealt back to you over 10 seconds

I can imagine a more simple change, but one that if too strong will make LD too good, is that while under the effect you have increased healing (like warrior with thrill has).

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Good lord lol. Well I remember it being good in the past but that you have to use so many oGCD is not great :p. I haven't played it as much as I did a long while ago- before the huge hp.

Before it was pretty easy to get healed up to. Since I only, almost, play PUG I just avoid the skill since it seems like a good way to die. Although when I had a white mage who was ready it was easy to use and really smooth with good duration, easy activation, and low cooldown.

Would people be willing to add some cooldown or lower duration for a more convenient effect?

Like-

• If you're not healed to 50% or 75% health by the end you receive weakness debuff instead of death
  
• Or up to X% of your max health will be contained in damage and then dealt back to you over 10 seconds

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Seems like something could be done to make the skill better or more useful. My issue with living dead, and seems other people's issues with it, are that it nearly requires there to be a WHM in the party with the DRK.

Living dead isn't really even needed in content below level 70, maybe there are one or two exceptions to this. At that higher level content, healers are usually leaned on to provide some type of DPS with their GCD's so the group can meet damage checks, right? Which leaves them to be using their oGCD's to heal the group. So when the other tank invuln skills work better with all healers in general, it's kind of crappy that DRK leans so much on a WHM.

I don't believe all tanks should be dumbed down to be basic copies of each other, or anything like that, but it would be nice if DRK could somehow deal with consequences of a failed living dead by itself, in some other way than death. As you suggested, a debuff wouldn't be a bad idea. Or maybe giving the DRK a higher potency self-heal, or something, so that living dead becomes a skill more viable to use with the other two healers.

imo Living Dead was always a terrible invuln, because its a black hole for healer's resources. But the extra hp brought with ShB has made it worse.

I think it needs to be changed to require healing equivalent to 75% of the tank's hp. Maybe even just 50%.

I absolutely HATE Living Dead. It's the worst out of all the tank invulns by a large margin and is generally a suicide button unless you have a White Mage with Benediction primed and actively paying attention or knows its coming. Unless i'm tanking Titania EX I remove it from my bar just in case I accidentally press it and wipe everyone.

EDIT: An idea I saw in the tank forums I liked that someone else posted was to remove it's healing requirement completely, and give complete control to the DRK by allowing them to press the button a second time to exit the Walking Dead state before the timer expires or you die. That way it retains its identify as a skill, removes the pressure on the healers, and gives control to the DRK using the skill.

Living dead was always a pain. Short of having a WHM benediction it's always been a waste of healer ressources compared to the other tank invulns. Now, it's really hard to heal up as SCH. Takes at the very least an excog, emergency tactics + recitation + adlo, and a couple lustrates to get anywhere. And if you don't have ressources available, GCD spamming by itself is simply not enough as you only have 4 gcds in that 10s window and currently that's about 100k hp so you're still short something like 30k (and that's assuming you have recitation and ET up). The usual solution is simply to not use it in solo healing content which isn't too hard. And to just grit your teeth through it if you need to use it without benediction in dual healer scenarios.

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Originally Posted by YojimboM

There is no such thing as an "oh shit" button. It's an immunity cooldown. You use them trivial certain mechanics (eating a stack solo, taking multiple of an unsurvivable hit, etc) or to give healers time to do whatever they want or DPS instead of needing to heal the tank. They're really useful for dungeons because there are a lot of situations where a healer might not even have to heal you for most of a pull at all if you use them correctly. The last reason you want to use an immunity is for an "oh shit" situation because that means something went catastrophically wrong somewhere else.

Living Dead has, until recently, always been one of the better immunities since it has a very long duration (over 10 seconds of "immunity" most of the time since the healer knows they can just let you drop), it allows you to move (when Holmgang used to root you), and the condition to resolve it is something that had to be done anyways: healing (minus Hallowed Ground).

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I generally agree with most of what is said here. It is better used in certain circumstances and shouldnt be seen only as an "Oh Ship!" button. However, as an invuln, it is a lot more hit and miss, and that I dont think is good for the type of skill. Unlike Holm or Superbolide, you need to have been healed to your HP equivilant or you die. This does not happen with with the other two. Its all or nothing, unlike the other two mentioned invulns. As a invuln, this makes it extremely unforgiving and deters its use in non coordinated groups due to the likely hood of the tank dying regardless. This gets worse in 4 man groups, because at least in 8 mans you have 2 healers to pump you up (if you dont have a WHM). This all or nothing tradeoff I dont think justifies the length.

Of the invulns, I dont quite agree its the best. It certainly is with a WHM on hand, but not having one makes it a lot weaker IMO.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Living Dead, much like all the tank invuln abilities, are generally planned use, not emergency use like some think they would be.
When your healers know it is coming in advance, it is much easier to react to.

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But this is the core problem in the skill. If its consistent successful use of the skill is reliant on coordination, this is not a good thing for the skill in question. Whether people like it or not, sometimes invulns are used as Oh Ship buttons and in that regards, its one of hte weaker Invulns if it requires good coordination to operate correctly (outside of Bene). If the argument is "Well we're talking about savage" then its a skill that is tuned specifically for a smaller subset of the player base.

Im not saying "Nerf other Invulns." and I dont know how you would address this disparity between LD and other Invulns in this regard. If it's perfectly fine in Savage but difficult to use effectively in more mid tier content, I think that is an issue. This makes it inherently weaker overall compared to other invulns. Take into account that for Savage content, its usually saved for Busters which happen in the course of 3-5 seconds at most. Having hte longer time frame once in LD state isnt ultra beneficial unless you have a WHM where they can use one skill to restore your HP where other casters have to start casting sooner to heal you and dont get benefit out of it from that regard I think. In any case, It might be a simple issue of not making healers heal for what would amount to 100% of the HP pool, but drop that number down to 80%.

One of the other issues with Living Dead is that not only do you need to recover all their HP over the 10 second time period, that invuln goes away the MOMENT they get that healing. So many times I've seen Living Dead used for multi-hit mechanics, we burst heals on them ensure they don't die from it falling off... only to have them get one-shot because we removed it too SOON.

With two healers it's very manageable and it's mostly used in savage and you're prepped for it with a Bene. Outside savage WHMs can heal a DK out of walking dead if they get good crits or if they have PoM up as a defensive CD. AST probably has it easier as a single healer if you're not counting Bene because they have a 40% heal increase with ED, still takes like 3-4 GCDs but it's definitely better than SCH or a WHM without a Bene. I've personally never had to heal someone out of walking dead with only temperance so no comment there.

I switched to PLD for that very reason along with other DRK issues. It pretty much requires you to have a WHM with you or use it in the most dire moments, but lets be real here, not everyone has 50 or less ping so most times you are going to pop it at less than 30k hp.