Suggestion: Living Dead in 3.2

[DBelmont]

More HP = less chance to trigger living dead

That's sadly not always true. If a DRK uses LD as a means of avoiding death on a pull or a damage-intense part of a fight, yeah, those situations will occur less frequently with larger HP pools. However, if LD is used as an immunity utility which is intended to negate an one-shotting mechanic, then the DRK will have to be healed for over 21k with our current gear for reference.

I understand why PLD is provided with a more solid and reliable immunity, but from my pov or the random healer's pov, LD will be less reliable than Holmgang for those cases. Like a point someone raised above me, immunity abilities should provide some short of tank self-reliance and the current LD with extra HP pushes the functionality even further than that.

[randysquirrel]

Reverse effect could be interesting.

See a few comments about how they should/shouldn't tweak it because some healers don't know how LD works, know the buff symbols, or might bene a zombie DRK to death... imo those people should never be considered when making tweaks. If people are bad and don't know what moves do, it's very dangerous ground to start changing things specifically to accommodate those people.

[Cabalabob]

I want dread spikes from ffxi, absorbs 100% of damage taken as hp, lasts for a duration of 15 seconds and keeps living deads 5 min recast.

The reason the duration is longer than any of the other tanks cooldowns is that unlike the other tanks you can still die while using this e.g. If you have 499hp and take a 500dmg hit you'll die before you absorb it. So to mitigate a tank buster you'd need to have more hp than the tank buster deals meaning you'd want to pop dread spikes early to absorb some damage while you recover before the buster comes. It also somewhat keeps the need for healing from walking dead as the healers would need to make sure the DRK is topped up so they can absorb damage safely, just to a less stressful extent.

Basically rather than being like a gimpy holmgang with a longer duration it would be more like a gimpy hallowed ground with a longer duration.

[DBelmont]

Reverse effect could be interesting.

See a few comments about how they should/shouldn't tweak it because some healers don't know how LD works, know the buff symbols, or might bene a zombie DRK to death... imo those people should never be considered when making tweaks. If people are bad and don't know what moves do, it's very dangerous ground to start changing things specifically to accommodate those people.

Unfortunately it goes a lot beyond those players. Let's assume that you are at 20% HP and your reflexes call for LD. What if your healer has already front-loaded a strong heal? If the heal is strong and fast enough, it will overpower the incoming damage that you expect it to heal you instead. Thus in total, we get a huge risk and lack of independence in the case of bad healers AND many potential accidents even with a decent healer.

Although I am being skeptical about this, I personally love the idea of Reverse and hope to see it work.

[wereotter]

IF... they change LD, I'd rather see it do something totally different.

When 3.0 first dropped I wondered why it didn't grant something similar to the Reverse status from FFXII. Damage heals you, heals damage you.

Except in this scenario, my question then becomes what is the purpose of a tank buster? Let's say I'm in A1S and see Hyper Compressed Plasma coming at me, so instead of doing what I do now with dark artsing a dark mind and putting up shadow wall, I just pop off living dead and get healed for full health. Considering that it seems tank busters are most often the time this skill is used wouldn't that make DRK completely OP in raiding situations and eliminate the purpose of tank busters?

[Syzygian]

snip

LD has a 300 second cooldown.

[wereotter]

LD has a 300 second cooldown.

That still doesn't really answer the question. Why would I try to deal with at least that one tank buster when I could just use it to go to full health? Seems counter to the point of that mechanic existing at all, even if I could only do it every other time. I could see this being maybe a little more workable if the reverse status didn't go into effect until after you go into walking dead mode, but even then that could just cause your death if you don't take enough hits before walking dead wears off to regain your health, especially as your healer can't help you out. Also what happens if you have a SCH, and they have their fairy on autopilot? It hits you with Embrace which hurts you, it sees your health is lowered, it tries to heal you again... This could easily turn into death by fairy hugs.

[Kuwagami]

That still doesn't really answer the question. Why would I try to deal with at least that one tank buster when I could just use it to go to full health?

Dunno. Why is Hallowed Ground even here if the point was to keep all tank busters relevant every time ?

[wereotter]

Dunno. Why is Hallowed Ground even here if the point was to keep all tank busters relevant every time ?

Hallowed Ground won't put you back to full health if you use it before a tank buster. Slight, but very important difference to what was suggested.

[Syzygian]

Embrace wouldn't hurt you enough to make a difference against a boss hitting (healing) hard enough to be worthy of popping the cooldown in the first place, any more than the piddly 300 pot heal would save your life had the boss actually damaged you.. Also, SCHs tend to manage their pet. Anyway the whole heals damaging you thing would be part of the balance. It was just cool idea i had, not a serious suggestion that I actually expect them to implement.

The end result is still the same thing as HG or Holmgang; you cheesed a TB and let your healers do other stuff for the duration.