Living dead improvement ideas

[Kelg]

Living dead is supposed to be DRK's "hallowed ground" skill, but it falls short... It requires you to die for it not to be wasted. This is a problem because most of the time if a healer sees you dying, they will blow all their cooldowns and do everything in their power to keep you alive. Every time I try to use living dead, it fails in one way or another. I am either saved, and the skill was completely wasted, or I do become walking dead. Usually when this happens, the situation is usually so bad that we end up wiping anyway.

A couple ideas I have for improving living dead, based on my experience playing DRK(I am not suggesting adding all of these effects to the skill, maybe just one or two of them to make it a more desirable ability):

• Increase HP healing from all sources while in walking dead or living dead significantly, maybe something like 50%. This way the skill won't be a complete waste and you won't feel bad for surviving.
• Increase damage dealt while in walking dead by 30% or so. This would fit the theme of the Dark knight a bit, and would make it be more like a last resort.
• Increase the duration of walking dead to 15 seconds or so. At this time it's just a worse version of hallowed ground.
• Give walking dead a distinct visual effect, so that people can know that it's active.
• Have all actions heal hp for 100% of damage dealt while in walking dead. This would fit the zombie theme of the skill.
• Make dark arts cost nothing while in walking dead. This could be interesting at least.
• Make the cooldown become 30 seconds if walking dead doesn't activate.

Or you could just change the skill to dread spikes like it should of been...


Something like this:



Dread Spikes: Covers you with dark spikes that steal hp from enemies who attack you for 100% of their damage dealt. Wears off after hp equal to 50% of your max HP has been drained.
http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Dread_Spikes

Recast 360 seconds.

Duration 10 seconds.

[Zyph]

Having it immediately put you back at 50% HP and only require 50% of your HP to be healed back would be a great goddamn start.

[TouchandFeel]

Honestly, imo the ability is mechanically fine as it is and can provide a greater length of time in which the healer can leave you be than the other two.

The thing is it requires a little more awareness and coordination or else you could end up with a dead tank. Part of this can be simply solved by you as the tank having callout macroed with the ability to let people know you used it and it would also be useful to have a callout macro for when you go into the Walking Dead state.

Really all it needs is better feedback for when you get the Walking Dead state on you, such as an Aura visual effect or something like that to provide visual feedback to the healer and party.

[Zyph]

Aura visual effect or something like that to provide visual feedback to the healer and party.

HP bar turns green and sickly. That would be clear as day for healers.

[Ladon]

A better visual indicator is a must for sure.

I'd personally liked to have seen some kind of synergy to the HP drains while under the effect. Say a 800% HP return on Soul Eater and Abyssal Drain.

[Dualblade]

I think the only true change it needs immediatly is to have things like Benediction work on it (if that is still something that doesn't take it off). Now if it needs other changes besides that then fine, but this needs to be done.

[Illya]

There's nothing wrong with Living Dead and complaining about it when Squenix has never addressed Holmgang is probably tilting at windmills. It's clear that in Squenix's minds, only PLD is allowed to have a genuinely useful, run-saving "OH S***" button because only PLD is the MT in their minds. WAR and DRK are always the OT role as far as the game's designers are concerned.

[Hundred]

try using living dead with an AST healer...

Honestly I think the ability is goofy and probably the only ability on Drk I'd actually want to see reworked.

Eg. For 10s all incoming damage is redirected to your Mana pool at 20% of its original damage. If your mana reaches 0 the damage will affect your health as normal.

Id just pop Living dead and then blood price and wait for the healer to catch up.

[Kelg]

There's nothing wrong with Living Dead and complaining about it when Squenix has never addressed Holmgang is probably tilting at windmills. It's clear that in Squenix's minds, only PLD is allowed to have a genuinely useful, run-saving "OH S***" button because only PLD is the MT in their minds. WAR and DRK are always the OT role as far as the game's designers are concerned.

Living dead is not even up to homgang in terms of usefulness.

Holmgang, recast 180

Pros
Can stop you from being knocked off the arena by attacks like landslide
Can stop an enemy in their tracks
Cannot fall under 1 hp
short cooldown

Cons
Does not act as a defensive buff, but rather a safeguard against death.
Can end up binding yourself and not the enemy.
Requires a target to use.

Living dead, recast 300
Pros
Has the possibility of being like a 10 second holmgang with an organized group.

Cons
Requires death to become active, otherwise, completely wasted
It is potentially a 10 second holmgang, but you must be healed to 100% in order to survive.
Requires organization to be useful
No extra utility
Longer recast than holmgang(almost as long of a recast as HG), while being more gimmicky


Also, the dark knight is less useful than the warrior overall. Anything a dark knight can do can be done just as well, or better, by a warrior.

[Illya]

You forgot that Holmgang only lasts 6 seconds, not 10 like Hallowed Ground and Living Dead (if activated). It binds you which makes it utterly worthless for 99% of potential life-saving uses because you're just standing there waiting for the boss to put a ground AoE under you that inevitably goes off just as the effect expires so Holmgang actually ends up killing you. Holmgang's short duration resulted in the scenario against Bahamut where the WAR basically could only Holmgang at best up to the 3rd Akh Morn. Most WARs preferred to Holmgang Akh Morn #2 because the latency of it's effect going off combined with Akh Morn #3 lasting about 5.5 seconds meant perfect timing was required or it would kill you because if didn't go off in time, or expired too early. WARs could not Holmgang Akh Morns #4 or #5 because it's short duration would kill him when it expired before Akh Morn completed. To add insult to injury, the PLD had to Cover him as the Holmgang effect expired or Bahamut's auto-attack would kill him instantly after Akh Morn completed. Meanwhile the PLD was free to HG the 4th or even 5th Akh Morn and stand there laughing while Bahamut hit him over and over for zero damage. Holmgang is total garbage, period.

Living Dead is amazing if your healer knows how it works, you basically have 30 seconds where the healer can DPS a lot and slowly let you die, then he lets you die around when the 30 seconds buff is close to expiring and then you're unkillable for 10 seconds during which he only needs to heal you for your total HP amount (not up to full). You can move freely during those 10 seconds to avoid ground target AoEs. Imagine if it was PLD + DRK as the tanks instead of PLD + WAR during T13, Akh Morn could be made almost entirely trivial because both PLD and DRK could do Akh Morns #4 and #5, and with some CDs Akh Morns #1-3 don't do very much damage.