Half-baked Thoughts of a Filthy Casual DRK

[Drkdays]

My issue with LD is it's not a use it or you die skill, it's a use it and you may still die skill.

[Tint]

my solution for living dead: if the buff runs out before you got healed enough the drk automatically sacrifices all the healers HP to get a 100% heal. okay, that's not really a good solution xD

hmm... but what if the drk actually sacrifices the HP of the party for surviving living dead? either you heal the drk to 100% but if you just healed him for 70% he takes the other 30% from the party's life?

[Violette]

"Hallowed has a 7 (!) minute recast. Holmgang only lasts 6 seconds and still requires a heal. Does Living Dead require you to communicate with your healer? Absolutely. If you have a good one, its better than either of them as far as the length of time you can go without attention from the healer. Have you considered pairing Living Dead with Convalescence?

In a raid setting there's no excuse for a healer not handling Living Dead. In the DF setting, one of four things happens: 1. You communicate, you do the pull, Living Dead, get healed - hooray. 2. You communicate, you do the pull, Living Dead, don't get healed - HEALER'S FAULT NOT THE JOB'S. 3. You don't communicate, you do the pull, Living Dead, get healed - You have a good healer and a set of balls. 4. You don't communicate and don't get healed - YOUR FAULT NOT THE JOB'S.

This is all kind of grasping straws though. No tank requires their ultimate ability to get through a *dungeon*. If you do... hmm. Arguably, PLD and WAR (actually WAR has quite a few things as well) have even fewer tools to deal with this. As a DRK, if you do a pull that would require the other two tanks to either Holmgang or Hallowed, there are a handful of things you can do as a DRK that they cannot, without even touching Living Dead.
1. Pull all the things, hit Blood Price, pop a cooldown, and self-heal with Abyssal Drain. You can self-heal pretty much indefinitely in a Hallowed-Ground-or-Holmgang-worthy pull, for 15 seconds.
2. Pull all the things, DO NOT HIT BLOOD PRICE, and then Dark Arts-Dark Passenger + Dark Arts-Dark Dance. You will take very, very little damage for 15-20s.
3. Pull all the things, and do #1, and then #2, OR Pull all the things, and do #2, and then #1.

Bam, you've just survived 20-40s of a huge-ass pull while barely touching any of your main cooldowns, and not touching Living Dead. Good on you."

I might just keep coming back to that.

If you don't like how Dark Knight plays......don't play it. Stop trying to "fix" the class when nothing is wrong with it.

There are lacks, in comparison to other tanks.

But which other class lets the healer hands off for 15ish seconds and just dps?

None of them.

[Drkdays]

LD is def worse off than other tank savers. Pld hallowed might have the longest CD, but you can only use it once per fight just like the others. Unless it's a really long fight. Holmgang might put you at rock bottom like LD but at least you can get away with having just a portion of your health restored. It certainly can't be said LD is as good as the other tank savers. Wouldn't a skill called living dead make more sense if it made you immune to damage? Zombie don't care about a spear in the chest. Though that's stepping more into the realm of death knights than dark knights.

Come to think of it, didn't undead traditionally get damaged by heal spells. Maybe they should make it so damage is reversed to heal while healing damages the drk. Healers would definitely need to pay attention then. But again, that's more death than dark.

[Violette]

LD is def worse off than other tank savers.

Come to think of it, didn't undead traditionally get damaged by heal spells. Maybe they should make it so damage is reversed to heal while healing damages the drk. Healers would definitely need to pay attention then. But again, that's more death than dark.

........Except Holmgang is trash and Living Dead is amazing in raid situations.

Go watch the world first A8S clear. They do some neat things with Living Dead, only possible with living dead.
Don't take away this functionality because it's not as "conventionally good."

[Drkdays]

Calling holmgang trash is a bit harsh. After all it does pretty much the same thing as LD except that admittedly annoying movement freeze, but LD requires a full heal. If they would just drop that full heal requirement it'd be simply better than holmgang, as it is it only buys you a bit of time to hope your healer can spam heal you hard enough while not standing in poo. As mentioned it requires a call out or macro to see it's full usefulness as I'm sure they had in that aforementioned raid kill.

[Violette]

snip

Why? It's 6 seconds, timing it poorly directly removes the ability to sustain tanking in some situations or gets you killed because it wears off early. That is why it is bad. Not the 6 second movement freeze. That's only applicable in dungeon content.

If you cannot communicate with your healer, don't use Living Dead. And it wasn't used to dodge a tank buster in A8S. It allowed the healers to focus on healing everyone else then Benediction for the save. It was used in A3S to tank 30kish damage, but that's just another use.
As said, Dark Knight is an advanced job. All of the advanced jobs have mechanics that are harder to master than the original jobs.
If you cannot deal with it as it is, I suggest playing Paladin. Same structure, less stress.

[Drkdays]

All jobs have room for improvement, drk included. The fact that of the three tank savers LD is the riskiest and requires the most coordination cannot be denied. Now I'm all for playing a challenging class, in facts that's why I enjoy playing drk most, but I like challenging myself and not my team and LD is a team effort more than the other tank savers. I like challenging myself while making the team effort easier. Imagine if you will that savage fight where the healer didn't have that one shot heal available. He simply would have had to choose who to save. It's a good clinch move with definite viability, but far too hazardous when compared to other classes.

[Violette]

All jobs have room for improvement, drk included. The fact that of the three tank savers LD is the riskiest and requires the most coordination cannot be denied. Now I'm all for playing a challenging class, in facts that's why I enjoy playing drk most, but I like challenging myself and not my team and LD is a team effort more than the other tank savers. I like challenging myself while making the team effort easier. Imagine if you will that savage fight where the healer didn't have that one shot heal available. He simply would have had to choose who to save.

So you want to provide team utility while challenging yourself? That's a paladin.

[Drkdays]

Pld abilities are too boring for me. I've leveled it (and warrior) but I just can't get into it like I can drk. Though holding agro isn't as aggressively hard for pld as it used to be so some of that challenge is gone.

More food for thought: it'd be nice if empowered dark minds affected the group...