A living dead rework suggestion

It's well known among the tank players that LD is the most hated of all the invulns, mainly for the playerbase because both: A) it involves the player dying and B) this happening without any input from the tank player itself, who is solely dependent on their healers.

Setting aside the discussion of whether o not any other tank would survive post invuln without external aid (we can all agree that they wouldn't, or would, but not for very long), i wanted to to make a suggestion on the OF that i heard outside of it (idr the name of the original poster unfortunately), of a change that keeps it in line with its current goal, and deals with these two problems, in a few steps:

1 - Keep the effects of Living and Walking Dead, but make Walking Dead a true invuln;
2 - After the effect of Walking Dead expires, the DRK player deceives a DoT on him (idk, name it "Call of the Dead" or something like that), that will tick for 25% of their max hp every 3s, including when the dot is placed on them.

That way, both the time to mitigate it is extended, which relieves pressure on healers, and the drk player can actively interact with their invuln via TBN (for 25 or 50% of it, if timed properly), which keeps it in line lore wise, and playstyle wise, no other changes required.

So a DRK with 66k HP would be dead after 4 ticks / 12 seconds. So it's a "Get eaten alive by maggots" effect.

Always thought the core issue with Living Dead was that its not useful at all unless You have a support who's actively paying attention for it.

Meanwhile Holmgang does not kill you and WAR has the tools to heal themselves, on a lower cooldown.

Or just make it so when the Walking Dead effect triggers, it grant full immunity for 10 seconds. There doesn't need to be a downside to hitting your invulnerability (ignoring Superbolide). You'll still need heals since you'll be at 1 HP, but you won't just crumple over at the end because you didn't get healed to 100%.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Oizen

Always thought the core issue with Living Dead was that its not useful at all unless You have a support who's actively paying attention for it.

Meanwhile Holmgang does not kill you and WAR has the tools to heal themselves, on a lower cooldown.

---

Which makes one wonder why the hell they haven't swapped Holmgang and Living Dead, since at least WAR has the ability to heal themselves out of it.

Why not just have it body swap you with Fray and make it so it's him taking the beating and not you?

Basically creating the summon like the damage cooldown does and transferring all damage taken by you to Fray, who has a health bar of his own.
If Fray dies, you start taking damage again as normal but Fray can't be healed.

Example being if you turn it on to survive a a hit that would do 100k damage, that gets diverted to Fray, who dies instantly, thus ending the effect.

It doesn't need a drawback outside of it being potentially ended early if sustaining a heavy enough hit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Oizen

Always thought the core issue with Living Dead was that its not useful at all unless You have a support who's actively paying attention for it.

Meanwhile Holmgang does not kill you and WAR has the tools to heal themselves, on a lower cooldown.

---

It's good design tbh. FF14 is a team game. I say leave that in, but make Living Dead good in other aspects.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinimas

It's good design tbh. FF14 is a team game. I say leave that in, but make Living Dead good in other aspects.

---

It's bad design because only one healer (WHM) has the capacity to pull off quickly and easily. All other healers have to struggle to do the same thing. That isn't good design, that's bad design.

Good design would be if Walking Dead was a true invuln that blocked all incoming damage, but also healing, and the DRK had to attack to gain back a portion of their max HP per GCD used (preferably up to 60-75%). THAT would be a better designed invuln because the DRK themselves have to put forward the effort to keep themselves alive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Oizen

Always thought the core issue with Living Dead was that its not useful at all unless You have a support who's actively paying attention for it.

Meanwhile Holmgang does not kill you and WAR has the tools to heal themselves, on a lower cooldown.

---

Agree with this 100%. It’s this issue as well as a few more key points, that illustrates how bad Living Dead is.

I’ll do my best to make these points succinct:

1: Is the only Invuln that has convoluted rules that govern how it works. Other tanks are fire and forget. ( They benefit from theirs immediately. )

2: Is not even guaranteed to work to begin with. Resulting in wasting your invuln entirely. ( Example: Healer freaks out when you press it and does not know how it works. So they immediately begin to heal you. Thus: You never go Walking Dead to begin with. Hence, invuln wasted. )

3: Is literally the only invuln that actively punishes both the Tank and the Healer. Tank is punished because Dark Knight has zero ability to recover out of Walking Dead state, and thus can die from their own ability. Healer is punished because unless they are a White Mage, they then have to devote serious resources to helping the Dark Knight not die.

4: Is the only Tank Invuln that outright REQUIRES a healer. Other tanks can use their kit to invuln then heal up.

5: Is the only tank not guaranteed to get the full benefit of their invuln. The other tanks always get the full duration of theirs. We lose our invuln as soon as Walking Dead is cleansed from us. Meaning our invuln can last literally 1-2 seconds in its entirety. ( This happened to me A LOT during fights against Hades Ex with my group, as I have my trigger macroed for LD and communicate over discord as soon as I enter Walking Dead’s state. )

6: Is an Invuln where some healers ( Not all ) feel that it is a far more efficient, and far better way of dealing with Living Dead is to just Swiftcast + Raise because it’s far less of a intensive drain on both mana and gcds, and time, to overcome the problem. To the point where it’s pretty much become a meme among some.


I could go on, but, yeah. Living Dead is horrible.

I outlined a list of the issues with Living Dead a few months ago. Here's the thread. There was also some discussion of it on reddit at around the same time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

Here are the key problems with this ability:

1) Implementation.
Walking Dead requires you to receive an amount of healing equal to your total HP to remove the effect. There is presently no way to track this requirement in game. This is not the same as healing to max HP. So your healers are either forced to use Benediction on it, or throw heals at it until the debuff icon disappears. At bare minimum, this needs to be communicated in the UI, with a HP overlay to show how much healing is still required to cleanse Walking Dead. You could have a black bar that sits over both your personal and party HP bars that progressively shrinks as you receive heals. It's a bit odd that we have job-specific UI elements for relatively unimportant things, like the duration of Living Shadow, but for not basic features required for survival.

It's also worth noting that the mouse-over tooltips for both the Living Dead ability and the Living Dead debuff have been incorrect on English localization since 2015, which is why there are surprisingly many players that think that you need to actually reach 100% HP like the standard Doom debuffs.

2) Synergy.
Living Dead really is on the wrong tank.

On balance, DRK has the worst self-healing capacity of any tank in single target. That was true this expansion, and will be even more true next expansion, when PLD and WAR both have significant gains in self-sustain. Even DRK's strongest defensive ability, TBN, has no interaction with this ability, because barriers don't count towards meeting the healing target.
The loss of Convalescence in Shadowbringers, as well as the loss of Sole Survivor, both removed any semblance of control that you had as a player over getting healed through Walking Dead. And while I know that not everyone enjoys solo content like single player PoTD (or the Bozja duels), it's frustrating to play a tank and not be able to use your capstone defensive ability at all, knowing that you're completely unable to heal through it. This is part of the reason why I also think that suggestions to 'ease up the healing requirement' don't really hit the mark. You really don't have any agency whatsoever to help survive the Walking Dead effect. This is an ability that really should be designed around a burst self-healing tank.

3) Healer Interactions.
The single best ability for addressing Walking Dead is Benediction. This is really the only way that you can guarantee a full 9 seconds of Walking Dead. Why 9? You die when the cooldown reaches 0 seconds. Otherwise, you're just throwing heals at it until the debuff disappears, which could be anything from 1-9 seconds.

Living Dead is on a 5 minute recast.
Benediction is on a 3 minute recast.

The problem here should be obvious. For two abilities that are seemingly meant to be used together, they sync up very poorly. If you want to always use them together, you need to hold Benediction for an extra two minutes every time, resulting in lost Benediction uses over the course of the fight. This wouldn't be an issue if Benediction instead was on a 2.5 minute cooldown (150 seconds). There's also the question of how costly this effect will be for other healers. Benediction, at the end of the day, is a single cooldown. Other healers may end up using multiple cooldowns to eradicate the effect. And again, without a clear visual indicator for the remaining healing requirement, it's easy to burn more cooldowns than you need to keep the DRK alive.

4) Duration.
The active portion of Living Dead (i.e. the part when you actually mitigate damage) is always less than 10 seconds. Living Dead and Holmgang only ever mitigate damage when you're at 1 HP. Otherwise, all the damage goes through. The active portion of Living Dead is Walking Dead, and Walking Dead only.

I'll let that sink in for a second. Anyone who claims that Living Dead 'potentially gives you 20 seconds of invulnerability' has no idea what they are talking about.

Just to illustrate this point further, let's say that Living Dead was a trait that automatically activated Walking Dead when you receive an attack that would otherwise kill you, up to once every 5 minutes. Would you claim that such an ability makes you permanently immune to death? No. The active duration only starts when you hit 1 HP. (It's worth noting that this design approach would actually be a downgrade to what we have).

The real advantage of the 'Living Dead' buff is that it allows you to precast your invuln. So if you know that a tankbuster is coming at a particular timestamp, you activate it 9 seconds earlier. This starts the recast timer ticking, which shaves off 9 seconds off. You could say that, if you time Living Dead correctly, it has an effective recast of 291 seconds.
So what's the real duration of Living Dead? It's something between 1 and 9 seconds, depending on when your healers give you an amount of healing equal to your total. Heal too soon and the death immunity effect ends early. Heal too late and you die. It's the only invuln with this problem.

5) Balance.
So let's get to the key balance problem that Endwalker has introduced.

Regardless of whether you like Superbolide or not, there's a basic trade-off that you see between PLD and GNB. Superbolide has a shorter recast (by 1 minute), but comes at the cost of a penalty. With the buff to Superbolide duration in Endwalker, both abilities are otherwise equivalent.
Death immunity is a bit worse than true invulnerability in that you only mitigate damage when you're at 1 HP, so it's a bit difficult to compare these two directly with Holmgang and Living Dead.

Let's look at Holmgang and Living Dead, though, since you can draw a direct comparison between the two. Holmgang has a shorter recast (by 51 seconds if the DRK plays optimally - see previous section). But Living Dead is the ability with the penalty. And with the buff to Holmgang to 10 seconds this expansion, the active duration of Walking Dead will always be shorter than Holmgang. It's just objectively worse, even factoring in all of the previous design problems that we highlighted.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

Living Dead really is on the wrong tank.

---

This is the crux of the issue right here.
Traditionally, Dark Knight has always been about lifesteal effects, but for some reason WAR jumped in their first and hasn't let go of it.
WAR could easily be the 'resilient' tank that has insane mitigation, reducing damaging taken instead of recovering HP.
DRK should have got the effect of Bloodwhetting instead, in fact, it should have been baked into Living Dead, not Raw Intuition.
In fact, in SB this was what DRK could do, I remember some insane dungeon pulls with Abyssal Drain spam that made me as untouchable as a modern Bloodwhetting WAR is.

While I do agree with your points, I feel compelled to point out that DRK has not historically been about life steal effects. In fact, it has traditionally been about shaving off its own life to deal high levels of damage. This does not, however, mean it shouldn't be about life steal in FFXIV.

As for Living Dead; it should just go. At this point we know they aren't going to change directions to suddenly make DRK the drain tank. Instead, they should replace LD with an ability that gives you a ridiculously powerful shield, maybe totaling several times your total HP pool. This would fit with the job's barrier theme, avoid giving them a tool as broken as HG, and allow them to utilize it without their healer wanting to shoot them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

While I do agree with your points, I feel compelled to point out that DRK has not historically been about life steal effects. In fact, it has traditionally been about shaving off its own life to deal high levels of damage. This does not, however, mean it shouldn't be about life steal in FFXIV.

---

Technically, FFXI (still ongoing) has DRK being able to drain stats and HP from their opponents. They incorporated that somewhat with Souleater, they probably should be giving a self-cure potency with the Blood Gauge skills to incorporate it further (since you know, you're using BLOOD to pay for this).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Technically, FFXI (still ongoing) has DRK being able to drain stats and HP from their opponents. They incorporated that somewhat with Souleater, they probably should be giving a self-cure potency with the Blood Gauge skills to incorporate it further (since you know, you're using BLOOD to pay for this).

---

And other FF games, Dark Knight uses Darkness abilities which sacrifices HP for more damage. The lifesteal effect is Absorption magics. It's either a Tank class, or a melee DPS class.

Sacrificing HP wouldn't work in this game, nor for a tank.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undeadfire

And other FF games, Dark Knight uses Darkness abilities which sacrifices HP for more damage. The lifesteal effect is Absorption magics. It's either a Tank class, or a melee DPS class.

Sacrificing HP wouldn't work in this game, nor for a tank.

---

I think the Blood Gauge is them changing it around to where you're not using your blood for it, you're using your enemies blood.

There are a few other entries in the series where Dark Knights absorb HP, such as Tactics and Dimensions. Part of the rationale for this is if you're going to be spending HP to do attacks, you also need a way to replenish it. The bottom line as it applies to this discussion is that Living Dead's penalty is designed for a tank capable of burst self-healing, which DRK is not.

At this point Living Dead's penalty is designed for groups that have a WHM, because anything else and you're going to be pushing up daisies on the ten count.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Matots

It's well known among the tank players that LD is the most hated of all the invulns, mainly for the playerbase because both: A) it involves the player dying and B) this happening without any input from the tank player itself, who is solely dependent on their healers.

Setting aside the discussion of whether o not any other tank would survive post invuln without external aid (we can all agree that they wouldn't, or would, but not for very long), i wanted to to make a suggestion on the OF that i heard outside of it (idr the name of the original poster unfortunately), of a change that keeps it in line with its current goal, and deals with these two problems, in a few steps:

1 - Keep the effects of Living and Walking Dead, but make Walking Dead a true invuln;
2 - After the effect of Walking Dead expires, the DRK player deceives a DoT on him (idk, name it "Call of the Dead" or something like that), that will tick for 25% of their max hp every 3s, including when the dot is placed on them.

That way, both the time to mitigate it is extended, which relieves pressure on healers, and the drk player can actively interact with their invuln via TBN (for 25 or 50% of it, if timed properly), which keeps it in line lore wise, and playstyle wise, no other changes required.

---

My overall idea would be this; upon activation of living dead our HP drops to zero and activates walking dead. We become completely invincible during the 10 seconds that WD is active and we also get a healing boost (ala convalescence) until the 10 seconds is up. Once the 10 seconds is up the healing boost and invulnerability drops off and that’s it, no “dying unless healed to your maximum amount of health” clause making it so that the only thing that’d kill you is the healer not tossing a few heals your way.

Admittedly it’s not a perfect idea, but it’d be leagues better than what we have now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

My overall idea would be this; upon activation of living dead our HP drops to zero and activates walking dead. We become completely invincible during the 10 seconds that WD is active and we also get a healing boost (ala convalescence) until the 10 seconds is up. Once the 10 seconds is up the healing boost and invulnerability drops off and that’s it, no “dying unless healed to your maximum amount of health” clause making it so that the only thing that’d kill you is the healer not tossing a few heals your way.

Admittedly it’s not a perfect idea, but it’d be leagues better than what we have now.

---

This is the same way as it operates except Invincible instead. LD has 2 conditions, not one. Obvious 100% HP, the 2nd condition is healed total health number, you don't HAVE to max HP. Total health number? You have 80k HP, get healed 80k HP without being 100% HP.

All it needs is a Holmgang treatment, and Living Dead makes the next attack you take makes you 1 HP, and you can't fall below 1 HP on Walking Dead, but can be restore like normal.

Ok keeping with the theme of shields that DRK is currently known for try this... LD makes DRK unable to go lower than 1HP for 10sec then at the end of 10 sec they get a shield for half the amount of HP they lost During LD. This could have interesting interactions with things like POTD or HoH for people who like to solo that kind of content. Here’s the catch though, since that would make it better than WAR and GNB,the recast would be as long as HG for PLD.

Simple rework to LD: Invulnerability for 10 seconds as soon as the effect activates, but it drains 10% of your HP every second while it's active.

Either have it fully heal you on activation and drain 10% of max HP, or no heal and have the drain snapshot your HP at the moment of activation (so if you use it at low HP, the HP drain is a fixed amount, even if you're fully healed -- risk not using it till you're low, reward is it's easier to heal).

You keep the element of it being a doom timer if you aren't getting healed, as well as the flavor of DRK draining its HP for power -- but as an invuln, its effects are survivable even if you don't get to 100% because your healer burst everything before you hit LD (literally 1 heal and you'd survive), and you can keep your invuln if you were Benediction'd 2 seconds into the effect.

Then it doesn't really matter if DRK gets self-healing effects to bust out of it.

This has all been beat to death but an easy quick fix for SE, while waiting for a rework, is:

-In order to give healers a idea of where they are at cleansing WD, make DRK invincible for the 9.9 seconds after hitting 1 hp.
-Also give a buff to the healing magic on DRK during WD so it isn’t such a healer ogcd pit.
-And last, when the DRKs WD is cleansed, the duration of the invincibility continues all the way to 10 seconds.

These are QoL adjustments that should have been in place, at least, since SE began buffing holmgang. It will still be unusable outside organized content but it’ll be less painful. LIVING DEAD WILL STILL NEED A REWORK.

You could even drop the healing buff, and it would be the simplest way of addressing most of Living Dead's problems without introducing in UI elements for the healing totals.

There's been so much frustration expressed over this ability over the years, and I'm yet to see the dev team actually comment on the ability anywhere. I'd love to see the question be put to Yoshi-p directly in an unfiltered interview where he can't evade the subject or pretend that it wasn't asked. What are you going to do about it?

Just give DRK holmgang. LD fixed. Even "The 3rd Seat" uses it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Just give DRK holmgang. LD fixed. Even "The 3rd Seat" uses it.

---

I mean someone at the company realized that LD is terrible otherwise it would be in the trust system. Unless they felt like they couldn't program an AI that could easily fufil its requirements and let it work as intended...in which why on earth do you think its fine that players are forced to deal with that

If they didn't want to outright copy Holmgang, just make it so Living Dead freezes your HP. Upon activation you can neither take damage nor receive healing. If you use it at 53%, you stay at 53% for 10 seconds. Bam! Instantly fixes the whole problem without making it a blatant Holmgang copy.

My input on what living dead should do is this:

when under the effect of walking dead, you get a free use of abysssal drain. I believe this will help it in the 4 man dungeon content for job.

I'm not sure about 8 man content.

I got 3 suggestions: 1) Life leech aura while in Walking Dead that scales up the fewer the number of targets around you, Living Shadow replicates the aura. Basically to help the healer in keeping you from dying. 2) If Living Shadow is out and Walking Dead times out the Living Shadow sacrifices itself to restore you to full health (basically Fray is not going to just let you die). 3) Combine the previous 2 ideas.

Maybe it would be cool if after it proccs you heal for a % of the damage taken while you are in walking dead state.

My ideas for Living Dead changes to reduce both DRK and Healer frustration.



Idea #1:

- The Dark Knight now heals for 75% of all damage they deal while under the effect of Walking Dead.
- Walking Dead will now last the entire 10 seconds regardless of whether the healing requirement is satisfied or not. No more benediction ending your invuln early.





Idea #2:

- Walking Dead no longer KO's you if 100% health is not restored but instead will place a bleed on you for 10 seconds for whatever % of your health was not healed.
- Healing received from external sources increased by 5% while under the effects of Walking Dead.
- Walking Dead will now last the entire 10 seconds regardless of whether the healing requirement is satisfied or not. No more benediction ending your invuln early.


If you're in Walking Dead and the healer manages to heal up 60% of your health, you'd take 40% of your health as a bleed dot over the next 10 seconds (so 4% / sec essentially).

Shields can probably handle this bleed damage so it shouldn't be too punishing to either the DRK or Healers.

I would love to see Living Dead turned into a more powerful Blackest Night. I would make it a skill that created a barrier upon activation based on the available amount of MP. For every 1000 MP you get barrier worth 10% of your health that last 10 Seconds. So a full MP Bar could get drained for a shield worth 100% of your health total. If the barrier is completely broken you become Walking Dead for another 10 seconds. Walking Dead would reduce damage received by 50% and healing received by 30% with no silly death penalty or healing requirement. To make it DPS positive Walking Dead would also grant 3 uses of Edge of Shadow or Flood of Shadow regardless of the amount of MP consumed to activate it. This would make Living Dead a serious DPS gain if you popped it to drain your last 1000 MP and a legitimate dungeon Cooldown for the hefty mitigation Walking Dead would provide. Making sure you have enough MP to trigger the desired effect would be part of the optimization since it would be neat to have a Tank Invuln that doesn't actually provide any Invulnerability. If you drop below 1 HP at any time during the Living Dead or Walking Dead you would just die. It would still have the dramatic tension with healers but in a much more pleasant way.

With the current tool kits of DRK and Warrior..

DRK should get Holmgang and War gets Living Dead.