Walking dead should be a gift not a curse

[Cabalabob]

Like Spooky said, there's far less convoluted ways to do this. I'm a fan of the traditional method: communicating with your healers. That method is foolproof, works every time.

Doesn't work when you're in palace of the dead and have no healers, doesn't work when you're in an undersized duty solo, doesn't work in frontlines when you have no healers. Situations where you have no healer are becoming more common and in these situations living dead might as well not exist because you can't use it without dying unlike a WAR or PLD.

If both my healers are dead it might as well be a wipe anyway.
If I pop LD and I get a +50% damage increases with -100% MP cost then I would use it purely for DPS. Turn off Grit, let the PLD/WAR Tank then use LD for insane damage which would kinda make Grit being used in a way the it shouldn't be used. It's a Tank oh shit skill! Not DPS gain.

Basically this.

So, while not tanking, your plan is to step into every AoE until you take the risk of dying, just so that you could gain 10s of damage boost, while putting a lot of stress on your healers who should have probably done more damage than you if he didn't have to monitor your HP in case of unavoidable damagen, while still being focused on keeping the real tank alive ?

Have you considered...playing a DPS instead ?

If you want to use it as a dps increase then why not? It's only 10 seconds and risks death. Compared to fight or flight and berserk which are 30 seconds and don't risk death. It's really not worth exploiting in that way and it's not gonna suddenly make DRK solo the world.

[Truefaith87]

ie: "before i pop LD i like to use a max potion of vitality, really gets the healers blood pumpin'"

Well, thank you for giving me a way to make my friends hate me even more when I pull so much they can't DPS due to sheer damage... Now to make them hate me even more!

[HyperiusUltima]

Situations where you have no healer are becoming more common and in these situations living dead might as well not exist because you can't use it without dying unlike a WAR or PLD.

*AHEM* That's actually false. Palace of the Dead was intended to be done with basically any party regardless, it just comes to the point that if you have other crosskills available and use them properly you can have an easier time in 40F onward. Generally, there is no real situation where having no healer is common unless you want to refer to A4/A4S which have a mechanic included to remove the OT and one random DPS. Same goes for A7/A7S with jails for a Tank and DPS.

Living Dead exists for the purpose of allowing YOU to survive for 10s, and is the longest Undying ability in the game(10s vs. Holmgang's 6s) at the cost of having to recover HP equal to the DRK's Max HP, which makes WHM normally a requirement(if the SCH and AST are coordinated they can pull it off) mainly due to saving the hassle with a single use of Benediction.

Frontlines in general is, well, Frontlines. Nothing you can really do it about it there if people always choose SMN.

[Tint]

Living Dead exists for the purpose of allowing YOU to survive for 10s, and is the longest Undying ability in the game(10s vs. Holmgang's 6s) at the cost of having to recover HP equal to the DRK's Max HP, which makes WHM normally a requirement(if the SCH and AST are coordinated they can pull it off) mainly due to saving the hassle with a single use of Benediction.

actually, Paladins Hallowed Ground is also 10 seconds with absolutly no downside other than the longer cooldown. you don't even drop to 1 HP.

but that's okay, because pala is the super defense tank and DRK has other things to shine, more dps comes to mind.

and you are partially right: if you activate living dead you have 10 seconds in wich you can't die because if you would die walking dead triggers. and walking dead is another 10 seconds buff in wich you can't die. so you can extend walking dead up to 20 seconds.

but - and this is a big but - if you don't have a healer at your side the skill is completely useless. and you can't use the full 10 seconds of walking dead if the healers heals you for max-HP before the end of the duration (what they should do).


what about if the healer doesn't got the DRK healed up in time the DRK sacrifices all his mana (he needs to have at least 50% of his max-MP to acivate this) and gets a debuff wich reduces his max-MP to 0 for a short period of time on top of that? - but he survives

[MagiusNecros]

If you give LD 50% dmg boost "intended" to allow the drk to heal back to full hp, people will just coordinate with their healers to use it as an offensive cd for more dps while still relying on outside heals to avoid the death mechanic lol. As said before, that'd create more balance issues than it fixes.

Surprise elitists(and by elitist I mean high skill players geared towards the masochistic savage raids) will min max anything and everything. You cry balance but as far as I can see the DRK's internal kit has a hard time synergizing with itself. That is to say...not balanced.

A PLD and a WAR can run with all it has with no aid from a Healer. Meanwhile for efficiency I need a vocal channel or a healer I can trust to be at my best and use all my tools and that they will work. Something ain't right here.

[Esp]

what about if the healer doesn't got the DRK healed up in time the DRK sacrifices all his mana (he needs to have at least 50% of his max-MP to acivate this) and gets a debuff wich reduces his max-MP to 0 for a short period of time on top of that? - but he survives

This right here is what I was thinking of, these exact lines. Should you enter walking dead and aren't healed to full, your current MP pool is simply converted to you HP and you enter a state where you can't regen Mana for a few seconds, like a pacify but it's effect on MP regeneration instead (from ALL forms, even your own)

The 50% requirement isn't needed either, since this pretty much puts DRK into its own "danger state" only this time, death isn't the only alternative.

[Tint]

The 50% requirement isn't needed either, since this pretty much puts DRK into its own "danger state" only this time, death isn't the only alternative.

it's for preventing to burn all his mana into dps since he knows he would lose it anyway ^^

[aleph_null]

A PLD and a WAR can run with all it has with no aid from a Healer. Meanwhile for efficiency I need a vocal channel or a healer I can trust to be at my best and use all my tools and that they will work. Something ain't right here.

HG, LD and holmgang come with their own pros and cons, and they *should* be balanced together as a package with the whole job skills traits etc (not saying they're balanced atm).

In raids HD, LD, holmgang are mostly used according to a plan, instead of as panic buttons, so you'd have to communicate with your team anyway. If you're talking about the easier contents (dungeons etc) even holmgang can go useless if your healer doesn't know you're going to use it (they'll spam heal you that you never reach 1 hp during the holmgang duration), in this case only HG has no downside (I won't deny that if you run with randoms, LD is the worst among the three though).

Then again I never said the three jobs are at a good balance now, I just said that by introducing the 50% dmg boost you would need to balance contents' dps checks around the possibility that LD is used for the dps boost instead of the invulnerability, and that might make the problem more complicated than some other possible solutions posted in this thread.

To add another thing, there is not a single thing in this game that I'm aware of which requires invulnerability to clear. They're just used to make things easier by reducing healing requirements (higher healer dps) or ignoring otherwise required tank swaps (so that your co-tank can help with something else) or reduce tank stance uptime (higher tank dps), so if you give LD a dmg boost, it'll come down to whether the dps increase for the drk is greater than the other possible benefits of holding LD to cheese tank busters or mechanics. Wouldn't be surprised if people use it on pull just for extra dps during opener though lol.

[SyzzleSpark]

I dunno why people expect the game to be balanced around you doing everything solo or the scenario in which your healers are dead. Its a multiplayer game, its balanced around you receiving support.

[ADVSS]

Well, thank you for giving me a way to make my friends hate me even more when I pull so much they can't DPS due to sheer damage... Now to make them hate me even more!

Youre welcome

also living deads total run time is 10 seconds, but that doesnt mean it gives you 10 seconds of not death, guys healers can just as easilly bene you before you even go into walking dead. How often does this happen to a paladin about to pop HG or Holmgang(slight animation lock) even if you end up with 3 hp before the 10 seconds of ld are up, its a wasted cd, over the healer spasm healing you in panic at the sight of that debuff

Most cases popping ld too early means its wasted, popping it right before the very last second might get you into WD, or animation lock kills you. The entire thing looks good on paper (whoa a whole 20 seconds! that makes drk the bestest") but in reality, if wd hits, its usually before the 10 seconds of ld, usually a second or two before, and if your health drops before the 10 seconds, well now its just the actual wd invincibility period. 1 1/2 to 2 full 3-hit rotations. honestly the 50 percent damage would still only grant 2 souleaters, tops - that still wouldnt keep you from dying really adding the buff to living dead is stupid because it could just make it a wasted coodldown instead of a last resort. i propose a 300%- 500% healing recieved from souleater while in wd- with the revised stipulation of wd falling off be 50% of max hp and not 100%) or just put brink of death on if the buff ends and you arent healed to max. That in itself is a big enough drawback to make you think hard how liberally youd use the cd imo and really would be a last resort/last chance