I think we should complain about how poorly implemented Living Dead is a little more

And Holmgang while we're at it. Because this https://i.imgur.com/kgJbFBg.jpg is making me want to use the ability less and just let my healer believe it was his fault. For context, this log takes place within the span of about three seconds. The animation had finished and the icon was already on my bar for a full second before i was killed.

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Originally Posted by Iwillnevertell

And Holmgang while we're at it. Because this https://i.imgur.com/kgJbFBg.jpg is making me want to use the ability less and just let my healer believe it was his fault. For context, this log takes place within the span of about three seconds. The animation had finished and the icon was already on my bar for a full second before i was killed.

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Living Dead is honestly a poster child for tanks everywhere in that it is literally a scapegoat for dozens of mistakes that culminated in its own perceived failure in situations like this.

Tank dies, or loses aggro, instantly its the tank's fault.

Was the healer shielding? Was Virus or Disable or the like used? Did people Quell? Did the NIN Shadewalker? Was the tank topped? Was their co-tank being irresponsible with enmity?

None of this is to say the tank for certain did not make a mistake, but there is shared culpability here. Its all a team effort.

Same thing with LD. LD goes off, tank dies, instantly its LD's fault.

What cooldowns did the tank use or not use prior to LD? What was the nature of the damage that required LD to be used? What was the healer doing that LD was a necessity in the first place? Why weren't the mobs dead already? Was LD being used with a macro causing input delay?

Court's in session, lets investigate. \o/

I see from the chat log that a Blood Price tick returned only 106 MP, so its safe to say this was not a level 60 instance, but the fact that LD was usable at all indicates that it was certainly level 50 or above. The hit that killed you was 365 damage. For a hit that pitiful to kill a tank at level 50 or above indicates that numerous things were already going wrong prior to LD's usage. Perhaps most damning is the fact that, for a hit of 365 damage to have killed you means that you chose to wait until you had less than 365 HP or less to use LD. Bluntly, but respectfully, the fault is with you, not the ability.

Therefore, I submit that what happened to you cannot be blamed on LD, and that LD works as intended for what it is designed for and that is neutralizing massive, scripted damage with proper team coordination. Honestly, a lot of playing DRK well requires team coordination. That is a recurring theme with the job, at least for now. I'd accept it and just suck it up for the next 40 days at least.




EDIT: Upon looking a second time, you were defeated by the steersman, whereas the lodesman was the last one to register damage on you. The steersman hit you immediately prior to that, and also prior to you using LD. Without more information, my suspicion is that the steersman killed you in the same fraction of a second that you used LD, but after the lodesman's attack and damage was queued by the server, causing it to to appear to have hit you after the actual killing blow.

This means you literally waited until the server was in the middle of flagging you as dead to use LD. =/

TL;DR the guy that killed you landed the killing blow before you actually used LD. Ipso facto, it was not LD's fault.

it is a striking flaw with the game but abilities have worked like this for some time now and they have not been changed. change would be good, but many players play the game with abilities as they are right now so it's not to say that they are not dependable.

Living Dead has a pretty lengthy duration and because of that it should be used proactively. If you are noticing you are getting low and taking more damage than you are being healed for then you should use it at that moment. Yes, you may waste it this way sometimes but at least you won't be dead because you used it too late.

It looks like you used LD, got KOed and the healer didn't heal you enough to prevent the autodeath.

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Originally Posted by Legion88

It looks like you used LD, got KOed and the healer didn't heal you enough to prevent the autodeath.

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They never gained the effect of Walking Dead so this didn't happen.

Sorry I don't play in E, so some effects are not well known to me from the name.

But you can read in the log, that the killing blow hits before "You use Living Dead".

I was in Sastasha (Hard) on the trash pull before the boss. 9 enemies each doing 300-400 damage to my 9449 healthpool. I waited so long because i was confident in the healer. Suddenly, my health is dropping faster than i expected it to, even with Shadow Skin. I waited until i was at 2000 health to pop Living Dead. By the time the animation was through, i was at 1000 health. By the time the buff appeared on my bar, i was at 500 health. By the time Living Dead had ticked to 9 seconds, i was at 0 health.

Funny character limit.

I won't pretend to know how the developers intended the ability to be used because i am not one of them, but from the description it gives, while the buff is on the player and their health reaches 0, they will be put into a state where they must be healed or they will die. That description does not imply its intended use is to negate scripted sequences of damage. If that were the case, then what is even the point of giving the player the ability outside of these sequences? If that was their intention, then that is poorly implemented when considering the rest of the game.

I think that it is very clear from the tooltip that it requires coordination which is not something you can really expect by default in a dungeon. The fact that it requires healing = coordination. The fact that it puts you in a prepared state of Living Dead during which your death procs the actual buff/debuff = use it for scripted damage. Its entire design screams "you should use this when you KNOW something bad is coming in the next 10 seconds and other people need to know that you're using it so you don't die". Its design screams "use this to neutralize scripted damage with coordination from your team mates". So you see, it may not say that literally, but it implies it pretty heavily. It doesn't say that... but it kinda does.

Lots of things are useful for 1 situation but not for others. Most PLD's don't use Flash in a boss fight with no adds, so why does SE even give them Flash outside of dungeons/boss fights with adds? =/

Idk, I'm just going off of what I saw in that screenshot. LD isn't really a pug friendly ability and DRK isn't really a pug-friendly job. There are some jobs in this game that are just utterly fail-proof and its just not one of them. Its been out for 2 years though and in that time there've been probably hundreds or close to hundreds of threads complaining about it and yet in coordinated groups it proves to be very powerful time and time again. Idk what went wrong that you just suddenly started taking more damage or what but I know LD isn't a dungeon or pug-friendly ability, I just never use it in dungeons. Tbh I've never had to. The only dungeon friendly tank ultimate is Hallowed Ground which to me is only fair since everything else about PLD is crap for dungeons (their lack of AoE for instance).

In any case I don't believe that the shortcomings of LD are wholly responsible for what happened to you.

Living dead's perks are only....................................................... it lasts longer than Holmgang and it's a shorter recast than Hallowed Ground..... It's most optimal use is with a whm healer that can use benediction. Oh one other semi-perk, you have more prep time!! for example all of you that are dying due to activation issues have poor timing or extremely disgusting lagg! you get a full 10 sec to die and still gain the effect of walking dead; the animation and gaining the status effect (both sequences combined) doesn't take 10 sec!! Even if it took 6 sec (lulz impossible............) you'd still have 4 sec of prep time for that OH SHIT I'M GONNA DIE NEXT HIT attack(s).


Nevertheless outside a whm mage the skill is subpar to the other tank immunities. I'd like to see a very simple fix. Still make it require 100% restoration, BUT while walking dead you take 0 dmg like Hallowed ground! This will make it less of a fight for healers to pump out an HPS much higher than your inc dmg.

The order of healing difficult for the immunities will remain Hallow > Holmgang> LD and I think that is a fair trade off given the recast timers and flexibility (activation timing)

note: Holmgang requires more precise timing than the other 2 if you want to optimize usage