Living Dead suggestion

make it last 60 seconds on activation, and then trigger that 10 second effect it currently has when you actually reach 1 hp, and then lose the effect after the 10 seconds.

so if it takes 30 seconds for you to actually reach 1 hp, it triggers and works exactly the way it does right now from then on, and you lose it after the 10 seconds.

its pretty awkward timing it currently, you either use it when you didnt actually need it, or lose some fraction of the total active time because you pretty much can never activate it perfectly.

60 seconds is a hella long time.
I've never had problems with the timing so I'm struggling to understand the issue. Can you give examples of times when you find the window awkward?

Its not "you cannot die" for 60 seconds, its just "if you reach 0 hp during this 60 seconds, the 10 second immortality begins" timer. the actual buff is still 10 seconds, it just auto activates at 0 hp while the 60 second buff is active.

And I usually press living dead when im around 10-20% hp. during big pulls I can lose potentially that remaining hp in less than a second.

however often times, i press it with a mere 15k HP left, and I end up never actually reaching 0 HP. healer heals, i get healed/shielded, etc, and my living dead simply doesnt activate and it goes on cooldown. I mitigate this problem by trying to press it as close as possible to dying, which can end up getting me killed because I waited too long.

Its just needlessly difficult to use in comparison to hallowed ground or something. in fact this same suggestion can be used for holmgang too.

If they don't want to touch it to rework it, then they should just make it where if the Zombification procs due to health going below 0 then heal amounts should be increased like convalescence would do back in the day. Yea it doesn't make any logical sense that a zombie would be more amenable to health being healed in the wider FF franchise logic-verse just like DRK being a tank didn't make logical sense as far as the FF job-universe went. But it would allow the job to not feel so clunky during a very vulnerable and clutch moment, because as the DRK in that instance (being zombified after popping your invuln) there is no play that you could do to pull yourself out of it you are dependent on an outside actor to get you out of it which on its face is fine but it could stand to "feel" better to play the ability and I think buffing heals upon zombification with a convalescence-like effect could go a long way towards that unless you want to adjust the buff icon itself to provide more feedback for the DRK's healer(s).

Super Bolide does not suffer from this because the change of conditions is immediately visual, HP drops to 1 and any healer keeping an eye on bars will see it, Living Dead instead changes its buff icon from Red to graveyard gray, which, its a nice design but it leads to deaths because its unnecessarily subtle and given how hard it is to mouse over things on console (a not so insignificant chunk of the playerbase) it doesn't communicate much on its own, if it started pulsing red and gray it would look more alarming and thus convey a sense of urgency to the healer, what we have at present doesn't go the distance in my view.

Edit: but aside from my ranting of my perceived shortcomings of living Dead, I suppose the timer can be extended a smidge given how it is currently, a lot can go wrong with this panic button compared to the other Tank panic buttons and if they're gonna sandpaper the tanks down to be more uniform then issues like these tend to stand out more and should be addressed.

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Originally Posted by Xilim

make it last 60 seconds on activation, and then trigger that 10 second effect it currently has when you actually reach 1 hp, and then lose the effect after the 10 seconds.

so if it takes 30 seconds for you to actually reach 1 hp, it triggers and works exactly the way it does right now from then on, and you lose it after the 10 seconds.

its pretty awkward timing it currently, you either use it when you didnt actually need it, or lose some fraction of the total active time because you pretty much can never activate it perfectly.

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This is both excessive and unnecessary, to extend Living Dead's initial window. If you're having timing issues with the easiest tank invuln to time, then it's very much a you problem.

Hallowed Ground and even Superbolide are by far more difficult to time. Pressing Hallowed too late in a tight timing situation, like third Akh Morn from Golden Bahamut in UCOB and that's pretty much a wipe.

Superbolide, in TEA I've seen my co-tank die to auto-attacks before cleaves from Living Liquid and Hand, because it drops you to 1hp for a brief moment before applying the invuln, receiving any damage in this window and you're dead.

Living Dead's initial window needs no adjustment. The only adjustment that is required is to Walking Dead, once your HP has reached 1.

What is dead may never die.

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Originally Posted by Xilim

-snip-

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No bones, this is the weirdest change ever. You should only use it when you intend to use it, and if you're intending to use it you know it'll go off. If you use Holmgang and you never hit one that's not the ability's fault.

Also, LD on a 60s cd is all that's needed fellas.

The part of Living Dead that most people object to is the heal or die part. It takes agency away from the player and is unnecessarily complex.

Here's an example that I suggested elsewhere:

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Shadowform Lv. 50 (Replaces Living Dead)
If an attack would reduce your HP to less than 1, you are rendered impervious to it. Damage prevented in this way triggers Dread Spikes. Duration: 8 seconds. Recast: 360 seconds.

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Basically, a spin on Hallowed that only kicks in on attacks that can do enough damage to kill you. Smaller attacks continue to tick down your health. There are plenty of variations on this theme that don't require any penalty games.

Awww yeah, sexy blindfold is back. I like the sound of Shadowform.

But yeah, as far as increasing the duration on Living Dead goes, 60 seconds would be far too excessive. You'd basically be asking for a recast increase to its cooldown by doing this, making it less effective for fights that really matter. That and having to time it so you could get a couple in for maximum use, you'd have to remind your heals more than now to not heal you when the duration is ticking down and the damage hasn't quite come yet lol.

Basically you just need to accept the fact that if you use Living Dead, and Walking Dead never triggers, that you've done all you can, and if you die after that it's not on you. I mean, unless like you stand in stuff, or your healer is new/sheepish and you did a heckin' chonk of a pull anyway.

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Originally Posted by Xilim

Its not "you cannot die" for 60 seconds, its just "if you reach 0 hp during this 60 seconds, the 10 second immortality begins" timer. the actual buff is still 10 seconds, it just auto activates at 0 hp while the 60 second buff is active.

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No, I understood that.
But boss fights average 7-9 minutes so having it watching you to see if you drop to 1hp for 60 seconds feels like super overkill.
That's most of the length of a pull too.

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Originally Posted by Xilim

And I usually press living dead when im around 10-20% hp. during big pulls I can lose potentially that remaining hp in less than a second.

however often times, i press it with a mere 15k HP left, and I end up never actually reaching 0 HP. healer heals, i get healed/shielded, etc, and my living dead simply doesnt activate and it goes on cooldown. I mitigate this problem by trying to press it as close as possible to dying, which can end up getting me killed because I waited too long.

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This sounds like the issue is the healer doesn't notice you used it and doesn't know they can chill on the healing for a bit... or doesn't care.
If it's the latter theres nothing anyone can do and changing the window to 60 seconds won't change the fact the healer was able to keep you up and you didnt actually need your invuln.
If it's the former, well... living dead won't be changing until at least 6.0, so in the meantime I'd consider macro-ing it to try and make your clerics notice it. I use:

/macroicon "Living Dead"
/ac "Living Dead"
/p Living Dead active! <se.10>

so it notifies the cleric you've used it and that instead of healing they can prepare to heal you up during living dead.

I think Living Dead should turn you into a semi Vampire (you know since they are known as the living dead) for it's duration. Making you immune to damage and granting you a regen or healing effect on your attacks.

as I did post else-where(at the least, my "new" posts may or may not draw attention to these Dark Knight threads? X'D), my personal idea for Living Dead is to trash its current design, just burn it to ashes and give up on it, and re-birth Living Dead into its function being different.

first, a question. invulnerability aside, what is the actual purpose of these skills? immune to all damage?

no. the point is to "avoid KO", and "survive what would KO you".
as for the actual idea, my first thought is to re-name Living Dead, because my intent is for Living Dead to function in a very different way, while my actual thoughts are that Living Dead could be a ability that activates a permanent passive self-buff that just sits on the Dark Knight like a Tank Stance and does naught with itself. its special effect will come into play when the Dark Knight is about to be KOed, as its passive effect would be:
"on receiving damage that would reduce your HP to under 1, the damage is negated and (new name of the ability or name of its passive effect) is removed, while your HP is immediately recovered to 50% of maximum HP, and (new name of the ability or name of its passive buff) is then replaced with (name of a different passive effect, like how Living Dead becomes Walking dead), which reduces all damage taken by 50%, for (??)seconds."

other than, obviously, having a big CD that starts when the permanent passive self-buff is turned on, the ability would also have a large initial MP cost(5000?), as this is a "investment" to the skill paying the Dark Knight back later, when the Dark Knight would have been KOed, but instead was able to stay on their feet; and "cost" 100 MP per 5 seconds, as the permanent passive self-buff would be slightly eating away at your MP a bit, as the "price" for/of its "permanence".

what do my fellow current Dark Knight hater - old Dark Knight lover Dark Knights think of this? would this be a good KO-avoid skill and also "fit with" Dark Knight?
in the case that any person may be wondering, the inspiration of this idea is that Dark Knight uses "Blood magic", along with their Dark magic, and this KO-avoid ability is a "Blood magic" spell.

side-note: none of this is final, and subject to change. in another thread about Living Dead, I already received feedback and I am now thinking about improvements to this initial lazy idea, to make it better, as well as brainstorming any possible alternative effects, for a different approach to the same outcome.

go and take a look in the Dark Knight Thread "Living Dead Must Change", there are several good ideas in there, and I also posted a new(second) concept to re-design and re-invent Living Dead, that is(I would like to think) much better than the old lazy idea that I did post here.