I'm thinking Dark Knight's rework will be more extensive than I initially thought.

[Shurrikhan]

That's not necessarily true. FFXI's Dread Spikes had all your opponent's attacks heal you, but you took the damage first and then received some percentage of that damage back as lifesteal after. Lifesteal and %DR are not the same thing, and I would advise against trying to equate the two.

Not necessarily the case, true. But as even taken most conservatively "where all attacks heal you" does not say whether the damage is taken and then restored (100% mitigation without an increase in eHP) or simply restored in place of taking damage (again, 200% mitigation), I'm going to point out the potential for a massively overpowered ability where I see it so that the idea, spitball or not, can be refined. As it was to be tied to Living Dead, an "invulnerability" skill, I see no reason to assume it will function like Dread Spikes and not at all like an immunity. Dread Spikes is an altogether rather different thing you only just inserted into the discussion and has nothing directly to do with Living Dead as it stands or was suggested.

If we're getting rid of invulnerabilities across all tanks, fine. But otherwise, do you really want DRK to be the only tank without an invuln?

[Jandor]

200% DR is surely just a generic version of stuff like having 120% fire resist in older RPGs, where instead of receiving 100 fire damage you'd instead get 20 hp restored.

[Izsha]

^ this guy gets it. 100 damage goes out. 99% mit =take 1 damage. 100% mit=take 0. 101% mit= heal 1. 200%mit= heal for the base damage of 100.

There are of course near infinite ways to get healing into a job like drk. It can be a true life steal based on damage (like path, etc), it can be a flat amount (like mp gained during blood weapon, just HP), it can be a reactive ability like dread spikes that is basically a regen effect if based on your char potency, but more like mitigation if its % of incoming monster damage. You can have life steal over your max hp become a temporary shield like some items in LoL. You can have a button that gives hp like equal. A spell heal. Theres a bajillion ways to get hp back. Dread spikes is 1 single way. So is 101% or higher mitigation.

One doesnt delete the other.

[Lyth]

...

As I said earlier, Living Dead has two phases to it anyways. Just have Walking Dead activate when you hit 1 HP, and then incoming attacks start applying some fraction of the incoming damage as healing. You could even add it as a traited modification to the existing ability.

The problem with applying the term %Damage Resistance to self-healing is that it creates all sorts of additional problems to the one that I mentioned. Mitigation cooldowns are multiplicative. So if you stacked two self-healing cooldowns, do you negate the self-healing effect? If you stacked a "200% DR" cooldown with a regular mitigation cooldown, do you reduce your self-healing? There's also the fact that, much like with block and parry, you can only construct equivalents to healing effects when talking about average damage, not spike damage. Similarly, the term eHP (or effective HP) only applies as an equivalent to %DR with spike damage, and not average damage.

There was a tanking manual that was written by Ciderhelm back around the time of WoW's Lich King expansion (back in 2008) which does a pretty good job of outlining the game design considerations in MMO tanking, as well as standardising the terminology. You can invent your own terms, but don't expect people to automatically understand what you mean.

[Shurrikhan]

As I said earlier, Living Dead has two phases to it anyways. Just have Walking Dead activate when you hit 1 HP, and then incoming attacks start applying some fraction of the incoming damage as healing. You could even add it as a traited modification to the existing ability.

The problem with applying the term %Damage Resistance to self-healing is that it creates all sorts of additional problems to the one that I mentioned. Mitigation cooldowns are multiplicative. So if you stacked two self-healing cooldowns, do you negate the self-healing effect? If you stacked a "200% DR" cooldown with a regular mitigation cooldown, do you reduce your self-healing? There's also the fact that, much like with block and parry, you can only construct equivalents to healing effects when talking about average damage, not spike damage. Similarly, the term eHP (or effective HP) only applies as an equivalent to %DR with spike damage, and not average damage.

There was a tanking manual that was written by Ciderhelm back around the time of WoW's Lich King expansion (back in 2008) which does a pretty good job of outlining the game design considerations in MMO tanking, as well as standardising the terminology. You can invent your own terms, but don't expect people to automatically understand what you mean.

It's not a new term. WoW itself, especially during Wrath, used percentiles in excess of 100%, and mitigation in excess of 100% was used in FF as recently as FFXIII or FFXIV 1.x (Aegis Boon healed you for the damage you would have taken).

I'm not unaware of multiplicative buff stacking. But we were talking about a single buff to be used on its own (an invuln) as not to waste other cooldowns, regardless. We can talk about whatever it is you want to talk about, but there is little point in inserting the content of that subject into something separate from it. ("An invulnerability skill that heals for damage you would have taken could be painfully OP" =/= a discussion on the finer points of mitigation integral-optimization.)

Yes, your Dread Spikes idea is one way we could provide DRK with additional self-healing. But where and why does DRK need it? What will it replace? (And, in this case, what does it possibly have to do with an invulnerability skill if it will lack the invulnerability component?)

200% DR is surely just a generic version of stuff like having 120% fire resist in older RPGs, where instead of receiving 100 fire damage you'd instead get 20 hp restored.

This. I'm not sure when percentiles in excess of 100% suddenly disappeared from the memory of RPG players, of all people. 120% Armor Penetration = ignore all Armor, and then deal damage as if the enemy had 20% negative Armor. 120% dodge = guaranteed dodge; chance to double-proc. 120% mitigation = take no damage, but heal for 20% of the damage you would have taken. None of these things are new nomenclature.

[Lyth]

I'm not overly interested in a terminology debate. I asked for clarification because the term didn't make sense to me, and in all fairness, your posts tend to contain more word-emesis than the average Urianger soliloquy.

There's a couple of reasons for adding a self-healing phase to Living Dead. First, Living Dead is positioned as if it exists somewhere between Holmgang and Hallowed in terms of effectiveness. It's not.

If the ability brought you down to 1 HP and then progressively helped to built your HP back up, it would actually represent a middle ground between the two. I still think that Holmgang needs to be brought up to a five minute recast simply because it completely trivialises tankbuster patterns in fights, but at least then you could justify a 5/6/7 minute recast for Holmgang/LD/Hallowed respectively.

The second reason is because you could potentially retain the healing requirement on Living Dead and have the healing effect help reduce or even remove that requirement. Akh Morn/Holy Scourge styled multi-hit tankbuster? I might stay at 1 HP, but the healing that's generated might be enough to meet the requirement on its own.

The third reason is that FFXI's Blood Weapon and Dread Spikes gave DRK a fair amount of lifesteal potential. And I think that DRK would be very well suited to being this game's lifesteal tank, from this coming expansion onwards.

[Shurrikhan]

The third reason is that FFXI's Blood Weapon and Dread Spikes gave DRK a fair amount of lifesteal potential. And I think that DRK would be very well suited to being this game's lifesteal tank, from this coming expansion onwards.

Why do we have to use something from XI?
Why do we need one dedicated Lifesteal tank? How is that even remotely enough of a theme to make a "<something something theme> tank" out of?

[kidalutz]

Dark Knight is probably my absolute favorite tank job however by the time youve engaged in enough sb content it feels weak like death by a thousand papercuts weak in questing.

[TaiyoShikasu]

DRK's single target self-sustain is garbage outside of Grit and only people who respect the content stay in that forever. Dread Spikes or whatever as a cooldown would alleviate that to an extent, but so would Souleater acting like Syphon Strike does which should've been done in 4.4 or whenever DRK got some changes last.

Also Dark Arts being a button you push every ten seconds or so rather than every oGCD and the odd GCD or even every GCD depending on the content would also alleviate how garbage the job feels to play to an extent.

[Lyth]

Why do we have to use something from XI?
Why do we need one dedicated Lifesteal tank? How is that even remotely enough of a theme to make a "<something something theme> tank" out of?

For whatever reason, this game draws very heavily from XI in terms of references, be it actions, or be it relic names. I don't see why we should preferentially ignore XI when it comes to something that could give DRK a real identity. Besides, I'm fairly certain that I've answered the second part of this question already. More specifically, to you.