Living Dead & Superbolide ideas

To start, those two invulnerability abilities are the weakest for obvious reasons, one of them is you are very dependent on others to save you (since you immediately require heals) so the said invulnerability isn't so invulnerable.


Both Hallowed Ground and Holmgang, are independent with fairly reasonable drawback and balance, since HG is just perfect it has the longest cooldown, while holmgang has the shortest with a binding in spot drawback.


I will put my suggestion and hopefully you have yours, keep in mind the balance, we need an independent abilities with fair drawback points.


Living Dead: the same but grants you the ability to self heal from your weapon skills (at x? potency if needed) , you don't have to get to full HP. so whatever damage you do will transfer as HP at the end of the effect.
This way at least the drawback is fair and reasonable, and you won't rely on healers, in my opinion of course.


Superbolide: since it is as of now a stupid and weak HG, I suggest it to be either


- %100 invul for 12 sec however stop your auto-attack and moving will cancel it (like PLD Passage of Arms) with cd shorter than HG a bit.



or


- grants you immunity to debuffs and has %100 damage reduction for the first 3 seconds (like embolden) reduces each 3 second for 12s. ( 0-3s at %100, 3-6s at %90 6-9s at %80 9-12s at %70) with a fairly long cd time.


obviously these are my suggestion while having in mind to have both both fair, balanced with reasonable drawback. I'd like to see yours, thanks for your time.

Living Dead: Remove 100% HP healing requirement.
Superbolide: Apply Invulnerability before losing HP.

To be fair, I've only ever had to really use Superbolide once, and if I hadn't I would've died. I was in Bardam's Mettle yesterday with a healer that couldn't seem to do anything, and despite using all my defensive cooldowns they still couldn't save me, so I used Superbolide right as I was about to die, so lowering my HP to 1 didn't change anything.

Stuff like Living Dead and Superbolide aren't meant to be "oh I just don't want to take damage now" skills, they're "I'm basically dead anyway, so I'd like to stop taking damage for a few seconds" skills. Using Superbolide at the wrong time and draining your health or using Living Dead and not getting healed enough isn't a flaw in the design if the skills, it means the people involved are Bad.

I would prefer it if Superbolide didn't instantly lower my HP to 1, but it doesn't really server a lot of purposes outside "I almost died" anyway, so.

Instead of lowering it to 1 cut current hp by 50%

I feel like they're fine right now but living dead should just cut the hp boost requirement to only need half it's health back at least to remove walking dead. Shouldn't take several big heals or a whole benediction to remove. Superbolide just apply an invincibility effect instead of "can't go below 1". That way, both have a risk at play in trade for their invincibility. Or make walking dead esuna-able.

Living Dead: Require only 50% HP to be healed.
Superbolide: Applies Invincibility for the duration. Reduces HP by 12% of max HP per second (total of 96%) to a minimum of 1.

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Originally Posted by Acidblood

Living Dead: Require only 50% HP to be healed.
Superbolide: Applies Invincibility for the duration. Reduces HP by 12% of max HP per second (total of 96%) to a minimum of 1.

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That first one I said, the latter sounds worse than it currently is. You'd use it at low health and the healer would keep trying to heal you back up to norm only to watch your HP just deplete every second.

What's with people complaining so much about Superbolide ? Didn't they realise that it makes you impervious to most attacks and not just unable to die unlike LD and Holmgang ? That's actually really strong lol. You take no damage at all while WAR and DRK still take full damage, making it way easier to top a GNB off after its invuln than a DRK or a WAR.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

What's with people complaining so much about Superbolide ? Didn't they realise that it makes you impervious to most attacks and not just unable to die unlike LD and Holmgang ? That's actually really strong lol. You take no damage at all while WAR and DRK still take full damage, making it way easier to top a GNB off after its invuln than a DRK or a WAR.

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the thing is, popping LD and Superbolide is kinda a death sentence in itself unless saved by others (for instance LD in solo content for example means you'll die which is not the case for either HG or holmgang, Superbolide fair no better since it puts your health to 1 HP and you'll soon die unless saved or the target died/disappeared). I don't want the skills to be HG clones, but a valuable ones that serves as the job's best cd without the need for others to save your hide.

After using Superbolide "right" (because I had to) I think the ability is fine. For 1 min less recast time, you get a 8 sec HG with the only drawback of dropping to 1 HP (which you would've anyway). You can still get healed during the 8s duration and not lose any HP (means the HP you restore during those 8s will not deplete).

Just watch out something like this doesn't happen :D

LD, I think should be like Holmgang with its current pre-effect. Grant LD effect, apply WD once 1 HP is hit. Reduce duration of WD to 6s or 7s, remove the healing requirement.

Hallowed Ground is overpowered anyway. Yoshi said so, too, in an interview regarding tank invuls.

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Originally Posted by Hopecord

the thing is, popping LD and Superbolide is kinda a death sentence in itself unless saved by others (for instance LD in solo content for example means you'll die which is not the case for either HG or holmgang, Superbolide fair no better since it puts your health to 1 HP and you'll soon die unless saved or the target died/disappeared). I don't want the skills to be HG clones, but a valuable ones that serves as the job's best cd without the need for others to save your hide.

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If this is really your issue with these abilities then why didn't you include Holmgang as well ? It leaves you at 1 HP as well and you have even less time to heal the WAR. Again Superbolide just needs a regen + Aurora (which is a GNB skill), and maybe 1 oGCD heal like Tetra or Lustrate and you're good since you aren't taking any damage for 8 seconds. LD is the only invuln that needs change at the time. Holmgang still has the shortest CD (and is still the best in raid content due to that), HG has its full invincibility with no drawbacks besides its long CD, and Superbolide is a shorter HG that puts you to 1HP but has a shorter CD as well. LD is the only invuln that needs either a crapton of healing or a bene (which is WHM's biggest CD).

The only reason why SB is getting attention is because you can superbulli your healers with it. Now that the recast has been dropped to 6 minutes, it's a fair trade-off with Hallowed. They do need to set it so that the invuln effect happens before your HP gets set to 1, though.

Living Dead is a mess for a number of reasons:
1) The English tooltips are still completely inaccurate.
2) It's the only ability in the game that requires someone else, who doesn't necessarily play your job, to have advance knowledge of how it works.
3) The average player doesn't know how it works.
4) The AI Trust system doesn't know how it works.
5) The UI doesn't show your healer how much remaining healing they need to cleanse the effect.

And even when you take all those logistical issues into account, it doesn't make sense from a balance perspective. If you look at SB and Hallowed, you take on a detrimental effect and a shorter duration in exchange for a minute shorter recast. When you compare Holm and LD, you take on a shorter duration in exchange for a minute shorter recast, the ability to apply a debuff to an opponent (bind), and not having to deal with a detrimental effect on yourself. What? The detrimental effect is on the wrong side of this trade-off. Either give Holmgang this exciting healing minigame, or give LD a shorter recast than Holmgang.

LD has also gotten worse with this expansion. HP totals are increasing. Convalescence is gone, so you can't even help your healers hit the healing threshold. It's just bad.

Honestly, I'm fine with Superbolide.
Sure, it'll give the healer a shock, but it's not difficult to adapt to, you have plenty of invuln. time to heal up.

Unlike Living Dead, with it's specific heal requirement.

I don't agree with Living Dead is weak. The heal requirement allow us to do some tricks which is impossible with Hallowed Ground for example.
You launch Living Dead and for severals second the healer can ignore you.
You fell at 1 hp be undead and the heals can heals you or ignore you if Benediction or if some hp have been already heal (you don't have to have 100% of hp but the total of hp healed need to be 100% of yours). I personnaly hope they will never delete the heal requirement.
They can adjust the amount but the 10 sec before et 10 sec after is really needed to me for some mechanics skipping.

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Originally Posted by Kanashii

I don't agree with Living Dead is weak. The heal requirement allow us to do some tricks which is impossible with Hallowed Ground for example.
You launch Living Dead and for severals second the healer can ignore you.
You fell at 1 hp be undead and the heals can heals you or ignore you if Benediction or if some hp have been already heal (you don't have to have 100% of hp but the total of hp healed need to be 100% of yours). I personnaly hope they will never delete the heal requirement.
They can adjust the amount but the 10 sec before et 10 sec after is really needed to me for some mechanics skipping.

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LD surely has it's perks when played well, but it requires two players to do that.

The Healer doesn't bother healing: You enter Walking Dead too early and lose those 10s.
The Healer continues to struggle to keep you alive: You stay in Living Dead for the full 10s.
The Healer heals you early or too well: You never trigger Walking Dead.
The Healer blows all their CD's on you during Living Dead and has nothing left for Walking Dead: You die.

Only thing they need to fix for Superbolide is having the invuln apply instantly, other than that, there's no issue IMO.

Living Dead on the other hand...

Superbolide is fine as is minus the bug of the invulnerability effect being queued by the server after dropping the player to 1hp so if you get hit at the exact same time as ability activation you actually die before the invuln effect is applied.
Yes it drops you to 1hp but the tank still has control of the situation. Under proper usage it's functionally a better Holmgang or Living Dead where you will get dropped to 1hp, but you also get the same invulnerability to damage that Hallowed Ground does after being dropped to 1hp which makes it much easier to get your health back to where it needs to be, where Holmgang and LD still allow incoming damage. This is balanced out somewhat by the longer recast time.

Living Dead is still just a mess for the reasons that have been repeated here in this thread and many others since DRK was released. They just need to nix the whole healing requirement aspect and allow the DRK to cancel the Walking Dead effect themselves by having the activation of the Walking Dead state light-up a proc on Living Dead/Walking Dead on the hotbar and then pressing it again cancels the effect. If the DRK doesn't cancel the effect and it runs the full duration, then they are KO'd. Exactly the same as now, just now the "or die" aspect is in the hands of the DRK and solves most of the current issues with requiring others or the ai to know how it works, as well as UI and visual messaging issues. Just reducing the healing requirement still has the same problem of being entirely out of the DRK's control and it makes it more likely that the healer could prematurely cancel out Walking Dead when you may still need or want it up for a few more seconds.

My issue with Super is that there doesn't seem to be an advantage to it. HW is super strong but has a long cooldown to compensate. GNB gets the same cooldown, but also it tanks your hp to 1 and gives the healer a heart attack. If it's going to come with a downside like that, maybe give it a shorter cooldown or something? And it just doesn't make any sense as a mechanic, it's like SE was stretching really hard for an idea for a fourth 'invuln' mechanic and slapped it in there.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

My issue with Super is that there doesn't seem to be an advantage to it. HW is super strong but has a long cooldown to compensate. GNB gets the same cooldown, but also it tanks your hp to 1 and gives the healer a heart attack. If it's going to come with a downside like that, maybe give it a shorter cooldown or something? And it just doesn't make any sense as a mechanic, it's like SE was stretching really hard for an idea for a fourth 'invuln' mechanic and slapped it in there.

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But... Superbolide has a shorter cooldown than HG. It's 6min vs 7min.

Basic fixes for now:

• Have Superbolide's invuln effect apply just before the drop to 1 HP and both to trigger more immediately.
• Living Dead can no longer be ended early by healing. Would-be fatal damage now creates "reverse-shield" appearing on the target's HP bar, indicating how much HP needs to be healed. Healing requirement reduced to simply whatever overkill damage would have been taken. A Doom graphic and its timer appear over the DRK's head once its activated. This will go grey and transparent once the healing requirement has been met, indicating that Living Dead is still in effect, but the DRK will not die.

I haven't had any real issue with LD, though one change that might be welcome would be that, instead of killing the DRK, WD instead does X damage to him, where X = DRK total HP - amount of healing DRK rcv'd. That way, if the healer misses the mark by just a little, the DRK would conceivably only take scratch damage.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

If this is really your issue with these abilities then why didn't you include Holmgang as well ? It leaves you at 1 HP as well and you have even less time to heal the WAR. Again Superbolide just needs a regen + Aurora (which is a GNB skill), and maybe 1 oGCD heal like Tetra or Lustrate and you're good since you aren't taking any damage for 8 seconds. LD is the only invuln that needs change at the time. Holmgang still has the shortest CD (and is still the best in raid content due to that), HG has its full invincibility with no drawbacks besides its long CD, and Superbolide is a shorter HG that puts you to 1HP but has a shorter CD as well. LD is the only invuln that needs either a crapton of healing or a bene (which is WHM's biggest CD).

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I didn't include holmgang because it doesn't negatively effect your HP or survivability, and the drawback isn't necessary a dead sentence as with LD. Superbolide puts you in danger right after the invul phase unless you're healed but of course not as bad of a design as LD. (what I hope is that those skills does'nt require another player to save you, but all on you)

my take on superbolide

- cast a barrier to yourself with the strength of 80 or 100% of your max HP for 8 or 10 seconds. long cooldown obviously.

clean and simple, i dont know why i saw GNB brutal shell and this skill as his "ultimate defense" come to mind. lore wise its also good since GNB seems to be on "high tech" side so i just imagine him doing like master chief throwing that shield nade under his foot like in that halo 3 teaser trailer lol

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Originally Posted by Hopecord

I didn't include holmgang because it doesn't negatively effect your HP or survivability, and the drawback isn't necessary a dead sentence as with LD. Superbolide puts you in danger right after the invul phase unless you're healed but of course not as bad of a design as LD. (what I hope is that those skills does'nt require another player to save you, but all on you)

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But Holmgang only does its effect when you're at 1 HP. If you pop Holmgang but don't take would-be lethal damage then your Holmgang was just wasted. When you use it correctly, you go to 1 HP as well but healers have less time to heal you back up and you're still taking damage during that time, invalidating part of their healing. GNB goes straight to 1 HP and is invincible, preventing incoming damage from negating the healer's efforts to bring his HP back up during the invuln that also lasts longer. I mean, Holmgang is very strong don't get me wrong, but it's only thanks to its short recast (which is the most important thing in raid content for invulns). Superbolide is actually the second easiest invuln to deal with for healers next to HG.

I'll agree that Superbolide as it stands is hot garbage, in fact I've said as much on two occasions today alone.

However! I will defend Living Dead to my dying day, it isn't a bad invuln by any stretch of the imagination (in fact its actually quite good.) certainly better than the naysayers would have it. It is just misunderstood.

Living Dead thrives best when used deliberately, when you prepare it knowing you're about to eat lethal damage. Set it, forget it, keep on pushing your rotation. The buff itself lasts about... I wanna say ten seconds? is activated on "Death" and Walking Dead then lasts another ten seconds, provided your WHM doesn't fuck up and Bene you before its soaked everything you need it to. (See Titania EX for example) That is, in all honesty... far from weak.

I don’t think SB is awful the main problem is that is just a crap version of HG. It’s fine YoshiP saying that HG is op but just giving other jobs a crap version is poor design they should do more to balance it the 1 minute shorter CD doesn’t do enough. It doesn’t both DRK and GNB are punished for using their skill but WAR and PLD are not.

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Originally Posted by Dortharl

I don’t think SB is awful the main problem is that is just a crap version of HG. It’s fine YoshiP saying that HG is op but just giving other jobs a crap version is poor design they should do more to balance it the 1 minute shorter CD doesn’t do enough. It doesn’t both DRK and GNB are punished for using their skill but WAR and PLD are not.

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I don't really see how DRK is punished for using their invuln, sure Walking Dead will kill you if it isn't cleansed but thats what the healer is for. They are rewarded ten more seconds to live, ten seconds wherein they can soak any damage and not die, ten seconds for the healer to recover. Its essentially a get-out-of-jail-free-card.

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Originally Posted by Kirisu

I don't really see how DRK is punished for using their invuln, sure Walking Dead will kill you if it isn't cleansed but thats what the healer is for. They are rewarded ten more seconds to live, ten seconds wherein they can soak any damage and not die, ten seconds for the healer to recover. Its essentially a get-out-of-jail-free-card.

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LD is the only invuln that kills you without healer intervention. The other tanks need to take extra damage after the end of the invuln to die, where the DRK just dies. The PLD can use its invuln at full HP, get full benefit from it and still not die afterwards, the WAR can heal some HP by himself fast enough so that he'd survive at least one or two autos afterwards, the GNB, while going at 1 HP, is invincible and thus can get some HP back by himself with Aurora and Brutal Shell before the end of the invuln and survive some hits too. DRK needs to receive a metric f*ton of healing in less than 10sec to prevent the invuln from killing him. I mean, I don't know how to explain better. There's no debate here. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free-card since it essentially either jails the healer or Bene's CD. It just exists so that DRK can cheese tank busters like the other tanks but it's still painful.

People have been suggesting changes to Living dead since day one, one suggesting that it should heal you for 100% of damage received which would basically make you unkillable for its duration...but they havent ever mentioned anything about changing it. I think at this point, these skills are off the table as far as balancing goes.

i think it would be cool if for superbolide you went to 1 hp, and a percentage of the attacks that hit you regenerates your health.

For Superboilde: After the invulnerability, gain a shield equal to the amount of health consumed from activation for 6s.

This would definitely help for the Benediction/Superboilde interaction. This would also give it more flavor than just an invulnerability.

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Originally Posted by Kirisu

I don't really see how DRK is punished for using their invuln, sure Walking Dead will kill you if it isn't cleansed but thats what the healer is for. They are rewarded ten more seconds to live, ten seconds wherein they can soak any damage and not die, ten seconds for the healer to recover. Its essentially a get-out-of-jail-free-card.

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It is not a reward it’s ability which grants invulnerability, and there are 4 jobs with the same ability, only 2 are punished for using it and 2 are not. If all four abilities produced a similar draw back I would agree with you, but in its present application DRK and GNB are left with inferior abilities. They are not useless by any means and when examined independently they might even be balanced but the issue is the disparity. Saying HG is broken and never bothering to fix is ridiculous but if that is the approach surely the other classes should get an equally broken ability.

To clarify, Holmgang and LD only ever mitigate damage if you're at 1 HP. SB and Hallowed mitigate damage from the moment that you activate them.

SB gives you a minute shorter recast over Hallowed. In exchange for this, you give up 2 seconds on duration and having a HP cost attached to activate the action.

LD potentially gives you up to four seconds extra duration over Holmgang, the full duration of which is only possible by burning Benediction. It can just as easily have a shorter duration than Holmgang, if your healer cleanses the effect earlier. In exchange for this questionable advantage, you have a minute longer recast (51 seconds in practice if you precisely time your LD activation), and your healers have to either burn cooldowns or race to heal 120k+ HP on you in 9 seconds (you die on 10) without having any feedback whatsoever on the amount of healing still needed. It's a pretty bad trade-off.

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Originally Posted by VenKitsune

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It is worth noting that with this expansion, Holmgang has changed, Convalescence is gone (from DRK, at least), and a lot of us are sitting in the 120k HP range during trials at the moment.

I think that even if the devs were to insist that the two abilities are a fair trade-off (they're not), you can at least make the case for fixing the English tooltips (which are poorly worded) and at least give your healer some UI feedback on how much remaining healing is required to cleanse the effect.

In the long term, I hope that we'll flat out see a removal of these abilities, but I don't think that's going to happen until we get another tank.

Living dead should be made into a self rez ability. Ive been saying it for years now and feel like it fits in with the lore of Dark.

"Reduces 50% of all damage taken. If HP falls below 1 while living dead is active, you resurrect with 50% HP and MP."

I think thats fair because there is still a penalty and possibilty of death. Also way more usable than the current skill. Still less broken than hollowed ground.

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Originally Posted by Cosaint

Living Dead: Remove 100% HP healing requirement.
Superbolide: Apply Invulnerability before losing HP.

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I think SE can do better with all the invulnerability abilities

Hallowed Ground: Same effect as before, but you will now counter-attack every time your hit. 65 potency
SuperBolide: Instantly restore HP to 100% and reduce damage by 50% instead of invul. Duration 12secs.
Holmgang (Change Name to Bloodthristy): Lock down the target. Taking Damage Now heals you. Over heals grant a shield equaling 30% max of your a hp. Duration 6 sec
Living Dead: Prevents you from dying for 6, increase healing received by 25%. Enemies that hit you will suffer the plague. Plague = 100 potency DOT for 30 Secs.

For their long Cool Downs, all of them should be better than. As they are now, Good tanks and healers dont find much use for them outside of cheesing mechanics and SuperBodlide/Living Dead are a Masochist Dream.