Living Dead

[347SPECTRE]

snip

I'd keep the original cooldown for something like this.

[DaulBan]

Now, in my defense I wrote that post at 4:30 AM my time so I wasn't exactly lucid, so I wasn't really thinking about cooldown time. I probably meant to put 180s but we'll never know because I barely remember writing the post in the first place. That said...

I would put this at a 3 minute at the very least, if not 210s--have to consider that Shadow Wall itself has a 180 second cooldown as well. That aside, I like the concept of this; it's a free and easy get out of a tankbuster free card that has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. It could be used to cheese things like Flash Gale ala Hallowed as well, come to think of it.

The main benefit of fully ignoring a TB like Hallowed but without the crazy long cooldown is pretty big, there's also the fact that an MT DRK can just... Die and get full HP. Healers basically can ignore them and get a free bene. To me at least a perfectly timed bene at 180s for one specific job is perfectly fine.

After all the QQ about holmgang thread still on the 1st page, there is no way a 10 second safety net window that combines holmgang and benediction on a 2 min CD is going through. If holmgang is "overpowered", holmgang with a free benediction attached and a 10 second window on 66% of the recast is batshit stupid broken. Why even have tankbusters anymore.

I meant 180s (probably) when I wrote it. Also, and this might just be me, but saying 'something ignores tankbusters' isn't a legitimate reason to dislike something. Tankbusters are some of the easiest to manage parts of Savage fights so long as you have the free time before raid to look at a timeline and scribble down some notes. Holmgang has become a popular bug-bear for the OF and Reddit where people complain it somehow breaks fights... But... That's... Not... True... Holmgang in 8S allows your OT to not stack with you which is fine but with maximized Holmgang usage they only have to take one or two embraces. Their entire cooldown suites is instead used on wings of destruction which is just stupid given the fact that regardless of whether they're a DRK or a PLD they could easily manage the damage better. Healers don't have to heal a PLD with Sentinel+Sheltron as much as they need to heal a WAR that's gone down to 1 HP, particularly if there are follow up Ultimas or such. Having more HP after a tank buster is legitimately useful. Having two tanks stack when one is going to be healed up with AoE anyways is functionally indifferent to using holmgang and depending on your healers may actually be easier.

I can think of precious few examples where having Holmgang actually made a significant difference over doing it the intended way and that's the double lightning mechanic in Exdad because you couldn't for sure skip the last dualcast lightning and unless you had a WAR it was kinda annoying. That's the power of Holmgang. Avoid kinda annoying.

Those cons are inconsequential. Its not useless against multi hit attacks unless each hit could 1 shot you since you are at max health after it triggers. Lets say theres a 5 hit tank buster that could be survived via conventional mitigation (~50% or so mitigation to comfortably live. TBN+Wall. IB+Defiance+rampart, Vengence+ToB etc. This is a VERY hard hitting tank buster by conventional measurements requiring all this to live). 50% mitigation means you have 200% effective HP. So you would die on the 3rd hit, get fully healed and take the last 2 hits with 20% life. Holmgang would also survive this, at 1% life. Hallowed is hallowed. The only way this new holmgange+Bene combo is 'bad' is one specific scenario. Cheesing shared tank busters that have multiple hits. That is an EXTREMELY specific weakness and only applies to shared tank buster akh morns which only appear in 2 fights I can think of, one of which is level 50.

Holmgang at 6 seconds (not 7) generally takes the tank buster and the follow up auto attack, then requires a heal. You are proposing something that functions better requiring no heals (buster>100% HP>Auto>80ish% HP) on a 2 min timer. Look at every complaint about holmgang, then square it. Way past broken.

Specific mechanics I was thinking of that work poorly for this are Neo Exdad's Delta Attack (If you're stacking enough magic resist to survive the fire + lightning you may as well be swapping), A12S TB, A7S TB (though in this case it would help with healing you I suppose if you didn't get grinded by the autos), those sorts of things. In current content there are few examples but in the past the devs have implemented Tank Busters that would make this immunity either useless (doing enough damage to kill you multiple times over) or forcing you to stack mitigation and immunities (which kinda negates the point of having an immunity, ignoring damage).

Having to pop mitigation along with an immunity is astonishingly bad because it means that you're taking mitigation away from parts of the fight that you can use it. Immunities by and large are designed so that you can move your mitigation away from a part of the fight that's high damage. That's why they're called immunities. Saying 'A multi hit TB wouldn't kill you if you used mitigation' is the same as saying 'this doesn't act as an immunity this is basically just a heal'. And if it's just a heal and you're still having to pop a lot of mitigation to deal with a mechanic then it's bad for that mechanic plain and simple.

What I'm saying is that if what gets people antsy about holmgang is the fact you have an option to not use cooldowns then the fact that this version of LD would still require you to use cooldowns means it's probably balanced right?

[Izsha]

[QUOTE=DaulBan;4666514]snipQUOTE]

I did forget about Exdeath lightning. But in the history of the game, there are only a handful of tank busters that would 'beat' this immunity making the default "Immunity on a 2 min CD" and therefore absurdly powerful.

I wasn't talking about using CDs AND an immunity. That's utterly stupid. The example was of a multi hit tankbuster that you 'could' survive with CDs (because a tank buster has to be survivable...) is easily replaced by your proposed Holm-bene move. Even one powerful enough to barely survive throwing STRONG mitigation at it (50%+) would be easily taken point blank by yours, despite listing multi hit busters as a 'downside'. And do so better than holmgang. If a multi hit is powerful enough to eat 200% of your HP (including the overkill that triggered it so really OVER 200% HP), then traditional mitigation would require 3-4 CDs to survive comfortably and nothing actually hits THAT hard in this game as of now. The idea that regular (read not shared/weird thunder mechanic cheese) multi hit mega busters is a downside doesn't hold water when nothing strong enough to kill through this even exists.

The worst case scenario for yours is matching holm (surviving with very little HP after a multi hit buster). The best case scenario is the equivalent of holm+bene (survive and end 100% HP after ANY 1 hit buster, which is nearly all of them) on a 2 min timer. Which is ludicrous considering multi hit tank busters are pretty rare and have never been that strong to eat 2x HP bars. They are even less common once shelltron was introduced as it only takes 1 hit. The only downside is inability to cheese shared multi hit busters which is highly unusual/rare and oddly specific.

You made a holmgang that is WAY better than homgang, put it on a 2 min timer (by accident or not), and expected it to just be fine? Even at 3 it would set a new precedent for the most powerful defensive action in the game.

[DaulBan]

snip

I'm not saying that the ability wouldn't be really good because you're right, for 99% of the high damage mechanics in the game it would work just fine. However, in the scenarios where it does not work it will be absolutely terrible. A12S Holy Scourge/Chastening Heat combo, Dualcast lightning, these might not be common but for DRK should they be a major part of a fight they would render my version of LD useless.We live in a world where Sheltron is on a 25s cooldown and mitigates 30% of any hit you take, and the single thing that stops it from being absolutely balls to the wall nuts is that A it might get eaten by an auto if the boss has an untelegraphed cleave (A9S, A12S, Last Kiss) and that even with Bulwark you can't be certain you're going to block 100% of the hits you could take from Akh Morn and similar attacks. On every single hit telegraphed tankbuster you get 30% free mitigation as a Paladin assuming you have gauge, which you should. Every 90s then you have 50% mitigation on a single hit from just Rampart/Sheltron with no party benefit, or 60% with reprisal. If you're using Sentinel every 180s you get 80% mitigation.

That of course isn't how mitigation works in the game, the real values a bit lower than that but you get this gist. If PLD can have ~80% mitigation every 180s with 2 CDs (one of those being sheltron) and a reprisal we're already at a frankly insane amount of mitigation. DRK is in a similar spot with DM and TBN where if you go full turtle on magic you can 30% mitigation from DADM and an additional 20% HP from TBN. It's a mana sink but there you go, another insane method of taking a TB that reduces your incoming damage astronomically.

We already live in a world where on-demand mitigation has never been higher but the job that has the most difficulty handling mechanics is DRK when everything is physical. At two minutes the ability is busted, sure, but for me personally 180s being a Holm+Bene instantly isn't too insane when we already have things like 80% mitigation PLD wandering around blithely. Is it OP? Sure, but there are a lot of mechanics in this game that are OP and given that Holmgang, as I said, doesn't break anything in the game, I doubt that a 180s Living Dead with my description would substantially change how the game works. Debuffs that apply on hit will still exist, tank busters will still be around, DRK would just have one of the best defensive kits in the game which would not hurt tank balance anyways.

If anyone thinks this version of LD is OP, they're right, but the concept of the magical block is already OP enough to make mitigation in this game kinda dumb. There's obviously a range on how long the cooldown can be up to 5 minutes. That said as far as I'm concerned the game is already in a state (and has been since block could handle magic damage) where the tanks already have a plethora of incredibly strong mitigation options regardless.

[Mycow8me]

I don't understand why walking dead has to be so punishing for how long its cooldown is. It's not preventing damage like hallowed is and it technically may not last any longer either if you factor in the need for it to be cut short its full duration it actually has the potential to be shorter or slightly longer but we all know it will probably be shorter. The safety net living dead provides is moot even if its a planned usage other than letting healers know you dont need heals (yet), we use it right before we think we are going to die if its not planned. If DRK is to keep the chance of death then our invuln needs to be more rewarding or the first portion of living dead needs to be more useful than just a safety net. It needs to be more useful in a soloing situation that it is used as well. Hallowed and holm will prevent death in a soloing situation. Living dead will give you 10 more seconds to kill the mob before you die anyway (If I go down, I'm taking you with me? lol...)

One option is to make living dead compile damage received and unleash an AOE of it for a maximum of 20% the drks HP or something and to make walking dead reflect auto attack damage during its duration. Living dead still becomes useful in this scenario by doing damage even if walking doesn't proc.

Another option is to have living dead compile damage received before killing blow and heal the dark knight for that amount at the start of walking dead or at the end of living deads duration in the case of walking dead never procing. Walking dead's duration will have a form of drain spikes that heals the drk on attacks instead of receiving damage. It has the potential to lower healer burden and will make living dead useful in a scenario that walking dead never procs cause you still receive a heal at the end of it for all the damage you received.

Just throwing out ideas at this point.

[Kabooa]

Ill let you in on a secret. Pld using Shell(30%)+Sentinal(40%) gives the pld 172% effective HP. .

1.0 - (1.0 * .3) = 0.7
0.7 - (0.7 * .4) = 0.42.

At 0.5, this is a 100% increase in effective health (Taking 50% less damage, means your current health value is effectively doubled).

Paladin using SHell + Sentinal is approximately 238% effective HP.

TBN + Wall

1.0 - (1 x .3) = 0.7. This is approximately 144% effective HP.
TBN is 20% more health.

1.44 + (1.44 x .2) = approximately 173% effective HP.

"Healing" tax

Assuming two tanks with 60k hp each.

At 238% EHP, the paladin has an effective total of 142,800
At 144% EHP, the Dark Knight has an effective total of 86,400 + 17,280 (shield)

Throwing a tank Buster that won't kill either, but still require healing: 80,000 raw damage.

Paladin EHP / HP: 62,800 / 26,386
Dark Knight EHP / HP: 23,680 / 16,444

If Magic Buster

Add approximately 16% to the Dark Knight totals for DM and another 44% if DA DM.

Also, due to the way multiplicative reductions work, even if it's the same 'total' (30 + 40, 20 + 20 + 20 + 10, 50 + 20, etc), the less chunks it comes in, the better it is. Adding up to 70% mitigation effects is less powerful than a singular 70% mitigation effect. This is why the Sentinel number seems to absurd. 40% is better than 30% + 10%, and almost better than 30% + 20%, and why Shelltron, with its ability to scale, dumpsters TBN in single hit Scenarios.

[Izsha]

Snip

Accidentally had a * instead of / in my spreadsheet. Threw off everything. Math is hard. Deleted.

[Fyce]

The number of people who think that a WAR doesn't need the healer to intervene for a Holmgang is damn to high.
The number of people who think that the 10s safety cushion before LD procs is worthless is also damn to high.

[Chrono_Rising]

I realize you did not quote me directly, but since I have made similar claims in the past I would like to express my opinion here.

The number of people who think that a WAR doesn't need the healer to intervene for a Holmgang is damn to high.

Ok, lets be clear, a tank at 1 HP will need to be healed, which means healer intervention since no tank does self healing in a great way, my main point is the degree of healer intervention varies greatly depending on your strategy.

We have two choices for dealing with a tank at 1 HP that doesn’t involve killing them: continue to tank, swap or stop taking damage with tools like cover.

Option 1: continue actively tanking. Healing you up to survival range for auto's is probably a heal and an oGCD, if you continue tanking additional heals will be necessary, and depending on the mechanics may need to happen quickly. This is pretty normal healing requirement for a low HP tank who is actively tanking and likely mirrors Living Dead, healers will likely bring you close to 100% before not worrying about you.

Option 2, tank swap after invulning or stop taking damage through other means (like cover). If you tank swap you can probably lower your healing requirement to something like an oGCD and regen, depending on mechanics following after, the healing requirement may be reducible to a regen and fairy heals (12 to 15 seconds should be about half your HP without other healing).

This is what I mean when I say Holmgang doesn’t have a large healing requirement, there are a variety of ways to handle the requirement, half of them being fairly low stress (tank swap or get covered) and let regens and aoe healing do most of the work.

Contrast this with Living Dead. You must restore my total HP in 10 seconds or I will die. Tank swap, cover, other clever strategies do not get us around the healing requirement, heal a total of 66.5K HP or the tank dies. Taking a look at my healers average large GCD heal and oGCD heal, they are restoring around 20k HP on the high side without critting, which means two healers must coordinate 3 to 4 heals to satisfy the requirement and get the most of our my invuln, independent of what else is going on. Of course critting adds an additional variable which is my invuln can wear off early based on crit RNG, which adds yet another layer to this; but multihit tank busters are on the rare side meaning this is usually not something which is a frequent worry.

The number of people who think that the 10s safety cushion before LD procs is worthless is also damn to high.

In terms of raids, I would say all invulns should be used as part of a strategy which healers know in advance. In that context, the 10 second cushion is important for dealing with timing, using the ability early mainly allows for you to have some freedom in timing. For example Neo ex death allowed you to invuln early to catch all three thunder tank busters if you used LD early enough.

Thats the benefit of the 10 second cushion, you can use your invuln up to 20(ish) seconds in advance to be able to invuln something else earlier than you would be able to with other tank invulns. In that respect, Living dead is the most flexible tank invuln in the game. However, and I might be wrong here, I think the last time this was useful was in Neo Ex Death.

As far as a safety net argument, this comes down to a good healer/bad healer argument. A good healer is likely to know the strategy and take advantage of the ability to not heal the tank before they invuln, a bad healer is likely to not take advantage of this ability.

If you Holmgang a tank buster at 66.5k HP or 1 HP or anywhere in between, it doesn’t matter, if you Hallowed a tank buster at 66.5k HP or at 1 HP, it does not matter. A good healer is going to capitalize on this regardless, so I see little value in the automatic proc. Yes, we can engineer a situation in which this has more value, but in general I don’t see this as an issue. Contrast this with a bad healer who will not take advantage of the safety net. Well in that case you have gained nothing, because the main advantage in this argument is for someone who does not capitalize on it. Tl;dr the safety net argument advantage doesn’t hold water, good healers already realize the safety net before any tank invuln exists in a strategic sense, bad healers don’t and don’t capitalize on it.

[Fyce]

Snip 1: healer's intervention

All of what you just said about swapping after a holmgang is completly dependant of the fight and assume that the WAR will take absolutly no damage in any way for an extended period of time. You also need good party coordination. These techniques are mostly moot in PF. Being able to pull it off and take advantage of it is actually the exception, not the rule.
Anyway, if you take the possibility of encounters where you don't need to heal your WAR after a Holmgang, I can do the same for cases where strong healing is required immediatly. In which case, Living Dead is, if not better, on par with Holmgang.

Also, it's extremely frequent when a WHM is in the team to use Benediction after a Holmgang/LD. If bene is used, it actually doesn't matter if the tank is a WAR or a DRK. In fact, it's easier to bene a DRK under LD than a WAR under Holmgang, as the timing window is way shorter for a WAR. More on that below.
And when it comes to AST, they might be forced to use more tools and GCD to heal a DRK (Essential Dignity + Synastry + Benefic II. Bonus points if Convalescence is used), but the effort required to heal both tanks doesn't varies that much in the end.

Still, my point remains relevant: healer intervention is usually required in both cases. And the difference in ressources needed to deal with a Holmgang or a Living Dead is actually not that big of a deal. At least, no way near as some people in this thread said.

Snip 2: 10 seconds cushion

The automatic proc guarantees the full duration of the 10 seconds "1hp" state no matter what happens. This is not something you have with Holmgang, which usually means that Holmgang will be effective for something like 5 or 4 seconds only. Or even less if the WAR has a tendency of pressing the button too early.
Living Dead is much more stable and the outcome will always be predictable, meaning that the healer have full control on its timings. When it comes to Holmgang, that's not the case. The WAR plays a big role in how much time they'll give to their healers.

I like the fact that you took Neo Exdeath as an example, it's probably one of the lastest end game content where this difference is the most obvious. With Holmgang, your timing needs to be perfect. Even more so during the delta followed by a random laser that you need to avoid, which can be problematic because of the root. The chance for mistakes is quite high. With Living Dead, the chance of messing up is almost zero thanks to that safety cushion.

If suddendly Living Dead didn't had that automatic proc thingy, it's ease of use would drastically drop, both for the DRK who would now have to time it right, and the healers who would have less time to heal.
It's not only about being able to capitalize on LD, it's about how stable, convenient and predictable it makes this ability. Holmgang is pretty much the complete opposite in that regards, not even talking about the root.

Saying that it's not valuable is absurd. Reducing the possibilities for mistakes is something highly valuable in end game raid environment. The 10s safety cushion provides exactly that.