Was bored and had thoughts about LD

So LD isn't that great, million topics about it, so here's another.

I propose two potential "solutions".

1) When Walking Dead is activated, the player is granted 5 Walking Dead stacks. These stacks need to be healed off, and each stack is 20% of the player's maximum HP. This would make it so that they DRK wouldn't need to heal bombed in the lack of bene but instead could be healed one (or a few) stack at a time.

2) When Walking Dead is activated, LD button becomes Transfuse. When transfuse is used your blood gauge is set to 0 and you are healed by the same percent as the blood gauge consumed (20 Blood Gauge = 20% max health restored) and the effect of Walking Dead is removed. Careless use of transfuse could lead to the DRK not having enough health to survive upcoming damage and would take some forethought to use correctly.

Just some ideas I had and would love to hear any and all feedback.

The first one is exactly how it works now.
You don’t need to be healed to full, you only need to be cured for the amount of your max hp.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

The first one is exactly how it works now.
You don’t need to be healed to full, you only need to be cured for the amount of your max hp.

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^this

The second suggestion has all kind of problems too. Tie your survivability into your damage resource and nobody will like it.
That said, I'd gladly pay 10 or 20 blood to end the effect without it outright killing me because that's the change I want for it anyway; for it to just not kill me. I don't care if it''d leave me at 10 % either if there was no immediate incoming damage and if that's the case then that's the healers problem.
That's a very complicated solution for just removing the healing requirement to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

The first one is exactly how it works now.
You don’t need to be healed to full, you only need to be cured for the amount of your max hp.

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It's difficult for AST and SCH though, or well it is for me on AST. 1 -> 140k HP, D:

That's about 6 casts of Benefic 2, assuming both EDs are down.

Honestly just give it a 50percent heal requirement, or a mantra like effect where healing is increased from all sources and actions by 20 to 30 percent. Solved. Not very impressive or creative but it works.

Or, have a DA proc be able to instantly dispell it by having the LD skill change and if you have a proc it lights up like BS does when you have 50 blood, it's a 500 potency loss but I mean, it's there if your healers are total derps and you are PFing something, it's a guaranteed, "you will not die situation".

LD needs a convalescence effect or a way to remove the debuff by yourself

The lowest impact "solution" is to just simply remove the "you die" part and keep everything else the same.
It would then basically be just like Holmgang with a longer recast, an up to 10s buffer at the beginning, but with the caveat that if you receive front-loaded burst healing that equals 100% of your HP pool you could cut the duration short by dispelling Walking Dead.
Give a little wiggle room to the activation period while taking some from the deactivation period.

Boring but at least it should be easy to implement and it gets rid of the biggest issue with LD.

While a "Convalescence" type effect being added to LD lessens the healing strain, it still has two major drawbacks. First it doesn't really solve the "you die" situation, it makes it easier to avoid but that spectre of doom still hangs over your head. Second, the easing of healing then comes with the trade-off of making it easier to prematurely cancel the Walking Dead state.
So on one hand it helps, on the other it hinders. Whether the helping part outweighs the hindering part, well that is up for debate.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

... That is what the issue with living dead boils down to, so the simplest fix would just be to make it work like holmgang ...

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As I said above, all they really need to do to make it basically like Holmgang is to remove the death aspect and keep everything else the same. The other aspects like the 10s Living Dead before Walking Dead buffer plus the Walking Dead effect being removed if 100% healing is reached should be enough to differentiate LD and Holmgang.

The problem with LD is just that it requires input from someone else other than the user, the DRK has no way to heal through walking dead on their own it HAS to be the healer who potentially doesn’t even know what living dead is since levelling DRK is completely optional to playing healer. This game is not designed around moves like this.

From level 1-50 there are NO moves that require you know another jobs kit and in the entire game there are only 2, divine veil and living dead. Nothing about this game suggests that you need to learn the move set of another job. In divine veil’s case it’s not so bad, the PLD can proc it themselves if need be and if it’s not proced you’re just wasting the CD and not getting a shield, no big deal. In the case of living dead it is much more severe, your main tank DIES.

That is what the issue with living dead boils down to, so the simplest fix would just be to make it work like holmgang, can’t drop below 1hp for 10 seconds (the trade off being the extra minute on the cooldown).

Yes homogenisation blah blah blah blah.... But frankly I’d rather have a move that’s the same and does a decent job than a move that’s unique and is terrible. They can figure out how to make it unique in the future while actually making it a good move, but until that day comes, give us something functional.

Edit: as for my personal thoughts on what living dead could be. Living dead: 5min cooldown, 15s duration. For the duration the user’s HP cannot drop below 1. The user can’t be healed by outside sources (the healer, potions). All the user’s weaponskills restore 100% of damage dealt as HP for the duration. (Stacks with souleater).

And even this idea I recognise is not perfect, in situations where you can’t attack the target you’re putting yourself in a lot of danger by removing the ability to be healed entirely which will leave you at 1 HP when it wears off (ruby weapon comets).

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

As I said above, all they really need to do to make it basically like Holmgang is to remove the death aspect and keep everything else the same. The other aspects like the 10s Living Dead before Walking Dead buffer plus the Walking Dead effect being removed if 100% healing is reached should be enough to differentiate LD and Holmgang.

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You have to look at it from SE’s perspective of “balance” the 10s duration of WD is offset by the 5min CD, the 10 second leeway to activate it is offset by the risk of death and apparently the removal of the effect from a full heal (or not triggering at all due to never hitting 1 HP) is not considered as a positive or negative.

So, if they remove the death penalty then a boon has to go too. And I’d rather lose that activation leeway than the longer duration on the effect.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

You have to look at it from SE’s perspective of “balance” the 10s duration of WD is offset by the 5min CD, the 10 second leeway to activate it is offset by the risk of death and apparently the removal of the effect from a full heal (or not triggering at all due to never hitting 1 HP) is not considered as a positive or negative.

So, if they remove the death penalty then a boon has to go too. And I’d rather lose that activation leeway than the longer duration on the effect.

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I get where you are coming from, but I would argue that it is currently not balanced and that removing the death penalty and not adding any other negative would actually be more balanced compared to what we have now and that the whole death part is really just excessive in comparison to the other tank invulns.

By simply removing the death penalty, you potentially get extra time at the beginning due to the up to 10s of Living Dead before Walking Dead is activated with the trade-off losing time from being healed too quickly.

Let's look at the extremes of this.
- You somehow time Living Dead perfectly and get ~9s of buffer time.
- You pop LD right before a buster and get ~1s of buffer time.
- Your healer times their heals and maximizes Walking Dead's uptime giving you about 9s of its effect.
- You go into Walking Dead and immediately get Bene'd and only get ~1s of it.

Now you could get get the ~9s buffer and the ~9s of Walking Dead, just like you could ~1s of buffer and ~1s of Walking Dead. Realistically it's going to most often fall somewhere between those and approximately balance out to being about the same as an ~10s Holmgang.

Also that up to 10s buffer is really not that different than just timing your Holmgang well. If the damage is coming in slow enough that you would be getting ~10s of Living Dead before you hit 1hp and Walking Dead activates, you can probably pretty easily just wait until you get low on hp before popping Holmgang. In fact you have more flexibility with Holmgang in this regard compared to Living Dead. With Living Dead you pop it and are locked into the 10s buffer, don't take enough damage in those 10s and the ability is wasted. With Holmgang you could just wait a little longer and then pop Holmgang, surpassing the 10s limitation of Living Dead.

Essentially Living Dead is automated but more restricted, while Holmgang is more flexible but requires more skillful execution.
That's the trade-off: a 60s longer recast in exchange for an ~2s longer effective duration and being harder to mis-time, versus a ~2s shorter effective duration and requiring more skillful timing in exchange for having a 60s shorter recast.

That seems better balanced than what we have now.

That and only an extra 2s of not dropping below 1h just doesn't seem like enough to warrant a whole extra minute of recast imo.

I'm also pretty convinced that the whole dying part of Living Dead is not really a "balance" thing but a conceptual flavour thing. The way that they seem so reluctant to change that aspect just smacks of it being a flavour thing because in my experience I have found game devs to be much more reluctant to change a flavour aspect to something than something they deem as just a balance issue. There just tends to be more emotional attachment to the "style" of something than the numbers behind it.

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Originally Posted by Lammas

^this

The second suggestion has all kind of problems too. Tie your survivability into your damage resource and nobody will like it.

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Nobody seems to have a problem with TBN being tied to our damage resource.

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Originally Posted by xItsValk

Nobody seems to have a problem with TBN being tied to our damage resource.

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TBN is DPS neutral or if Darkside is carried into raid buffs it can even be a small gain. If you had to pay blood to drop LD's death threat it would be a straight loss. There's quite a difference there.

Also LOL. There's plenty, and I mean plenty, of people who have complained about TBN being tied to a damage resource. I guess they've quieted down over the months but saying nobody has a problem with it is a huge understatement.

If TBN doesn't break, that's a 500 potency loss.

I want you to think, for a moment, if Nin's Shadeshift was part of it's rotation, and if the shield wasn't consumed, you'd miss out on a Hyoshu Ranryu. That's how massive this is. 500 potency lost is around 25k ish average damage that just ceases to exist. It's 3k mana, that's an ENTIRE bloodweapon's worth of mana lost...for no reason.

TBN needs to be 9 or 10 seconds in duration. I can't tell you how many times I pull in Ramuh and it DOES NOT break. It's annoying.

They need to get rid of the “dead if not healed for your total amount of health in ten seconds” clause. I can’t think of one time (ok maybe once or twice) where I popped LD, I dropped to one HP, and then proceeded to NOT die from that debuff.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

They need to get rid of the “dead if not healed for your total amount of health in ten seconds” clause. I can’t think of one time (ok maybe once or twice) where I popped LD, I dropped to one HP, and then proceeded to NOT die from that debuff.

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Or at the very least drop the requirement to 50% of our total health instead of 100%.

Said this before.

Giving DRK lifesteal/drain on attacks during the "Undead" state might go a decent way in helping out the healers.

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Originally Posted by Aurelius2625

If TBN doesn't break, that's a 500 potency loss.

I want you to think, for a moment, if Nin's Shadeshift was part of it's rotation, and if the shield wasn't consumed, you'd miss out on a Hyoshu Ranryu. That's how massive this is. 500 potency lost is around 25k ish average damage that just ceases to exist. It's 3k mana, that's an ENTIRE bloodweapon's worth of mana lost...for no reason.

TBN needs to be 9 or 10 seconds in duration. I can't tell you how many times I pull in Ramuh and it DOES NOT break. It's annoying.

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Not the topic, but isn't this going to get worse as more gear comes online?

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Originally Posted by xItsValk

Nobody seems to have a problem with TBN being tied to our damage resource.

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Kinda late to the party on that... Though better late than never I suppose...

Why not just have fatal damage induce a granular debuff?

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Borrowed Time
Grants the effect of Death's Dance. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Death's Dance, instead of becoming KO'd, all would-be overkill damage generates Mortal Coil.
Mortal Coil effect: Would-be overkill damage postponed for 10 seconds. Must be removed via healing before its duration ends or the bearer will die. Additionally, generates damage reduction based on % of HP stored in Mortal Coil, e.g. 100% damage reduction when the Dark Knight has absorbed as much fatal damage as they have maximum HP.

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My biggest problem with LD is the amount of effort it takes for a non-whm to save the DK. When the tank is a DK, the healer is a WHM, and the content is something actually challenging like savage, the WHM instantly knows that the DK might LD at some point and will save benediction for that moment. Or just go ham with the healing because they have stupid-awesome healing output.

SCH would burn through lustrates, recitation, ET + Aldo, and Fey illum just to save the DK. Not sure about AST since I don't play them.

My point: if LD had a built-in convalescence, I would be less annoyed, as a SCH main healer. Or if DKs could somehow clear it themselves, that would be fantastic. At least WARs have ToB and equil after using HG.

PLD: You're immune to damage for x-seconds
WAR: Your health cannot go below 1 for x-seconds
GNB: You're health is now 1 and... you're immune to damage for X-seconds
DRK: You have no immunity and no damage mitigation and now need to be healed up to your full health or you're dead

It seems to me like the logical fix is to just copy WAR or GNB... Or you could just use something from The Blackest Knight: You can't go below 1 health and the damage you take beyond your total health is converted into a Dark Arts proc if it exceeds 25% of your health.

That said I dislike that PLD's is the clear winner in all of these. It seems like 3 of them need a buff, or 1 needs a nerf and one needs a buff.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

The first one is exactly how it works now.
You don’t need to be healed to full, you only need to be cured for the amount of your max hp.

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I think the point is, under the current system, if you're healed for 99% of your HP, you die.
This works in 20% increments, so if you're healed for say 50% of your max HP, or 2 stacks, you only have 3 stacks remaining or 60%, and when the 10s is over, you suddenly lose 60% of your max HP.
This could mean you still survive.

Personally I just think LD should not kill you, just give you instant weakness, as if you had died and been resurrected.

Not sure if this would be unbalanced but it SHOULD just make you have super leech for the duration of LD/WD as it would solve two things.

1. Reliance on a Healer

2. Dark Knights still would have the most dangerous cooldown, but would have the chance to be able to remove it themselves via HP leech.

Healers CAN still heal you to full, but won't necessarily eat a benediction or multiple healing gcds/ogcds. Your survival would (in most cases) be completely up to you and how skilled you are at Dark Knight, maybe have it be a bit of a requirement for a DRK to know their rotation with some competency. Fray/LS Wouldn't be required to save yourself in a bad situation, but having fray active during it would definitely help, or maybe even make it so if you're that desperate for a handicap you can proc TBN and instead WD will eat 25% of the HP from TBN instead of turning it into a shield.

It would definitely make DRK more fun to play, being able to gamble on it yourself on your ability to survive instead of being at the mercy of your healers is more engaging. The super vampiric leech effect would even help with job fantasy, something i feel some jobs lack. DRK has definitely got alot more job fantasy added this expansion, but a bit more wouldn't hurt.

Living dead has to be the worst Invulnerability in my personal opinion. The more HP our DRK gets the more I'm gonna have a hard time trying to heal nearly 170k. I'd honestly be happy if it was just heal to half to remove the debuff instead of the full 100% hp or give it a increase 20% healing of all sources. It is painful for AST and SCH.

Both suggestions are terrible. LD only requires to heal the health amount when you pop it.

Really just change it to where all incoming attacks heal you for 10s.