Why was Living Dead not removed?

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly they should just remove the death penalty from Walking Dead and instead make it so that all of DRK's attack's lifesteal HP back while being invulnerable to damage but can't be healed for the duration. As long as each attack heals for 75% of the DRKs damage potency, it wouldn't be hard for DRKS to get back to 50-75% HP. Having a visual effect to let healers know that they can't heal the DRK by having some sort of bright purple aura around the DRK would allow them to ignore the DRK for the duration of Walking Dead, this way it would actually help healers save on MP and have the skill rely solely on the DRK's own abilities and resources to get back to a healthy position.

The fact that Living Dead requires a healers intervention and taxes them, is part of the reason why it's considered a bad invulnerability skill. If I used Living Dead and died to Walking Dead then it would be on me for not using my resources to get myself back up to a healthy HP line. Currently Living Undead punishes both the tank and healer if all requirements aren't met and I hate having an ability that puts pressure on my teammates.

I still slightly prefer the simple "Purgatory" mechanic, whereby would-be fatal damage prevented places a heal-absorb shield on you that must be cleansed (by healing) before Living Dead ends. Total Purgatory generated cannot exceed your maximum HP, which is still a faint gear-penalty, but during this the Dark Knight's self-healing is increased based on missing HP (flat, not percentile), which can ultimately overtake the penalty (if we'd just finally give Souleater significant healing). Walking Dead pre-immunity period would still remain and the CD shortened to compensate for the greater possible healing penalty, although on average this would actually mean a far lesser penalty.

But, I like this too. This is pretty intriguing in that there are many ways to fail it but it also means healers can just shrug and leave your fate to you alone. I don't know if it'll much more intuitive than what we have now, but it is interesting, for sure. From a gameplay perspective, I may even prefer it. There's that whole risk-reward factor of "How much can I self-heal for so I'm not AAed to death in 11 seconds but also don't end before the tankbuster that's also coming up soon?"

No ulterior motives here.

Let's be fair, though: there is a wide gap between the maximal effectiveness of Walking Dead and its intuitiveness or polish.

In the latter sense, it's absolutely horrible. Its UI sucks. Its tooltip sucks. The fact it penalizes you for being more geared sucks. It is dog**** and has deserved additional work since the day it was created.

But its not an ineffective ability. Regardless of pretty much whatever healers you're taking, it's ~9 to ~18 seconds of (not of "immunity", exactly, but...) scheduleable healer action. From the moment it truly starts (which should be a far more obvious transition) you have exactly 10 seconds to heal for max HP. As a healer I can enough easily guess out which non-crit oGCDs that will take just by knowing their max HP and what my abilities do on that. (At least unless the DRK gets hit by infirmity, in which case... rest in piece.) Given that I would still be healing up at least nearly that much had it been CDed instead, that's no huge loss to healers. Obviously we could have spared those resources if Hallowed Ground had been used instead, but then we wouldn't be able to have that extra 9 seconds or so of lenience; the "I won't die so long as I get heals" still lasts for up to 19 seconds, after all, and that's something we probably shouldn't so easily expense with when considering how to fix Living Dead.

Why hasn't it been removed? Because everyone needs a herp-derp immunity of some sort, I guess, and DRK's is still effective... enough?
Why hasn't it been changed (the obvious real meaning of the title to those who read the whole post and don't take it too literally)? ...Yeah, I don't know.

[WhyAmIHere]

I missed this, and it's a really interesting point. I really want to see the devs formally state their views on invulnerabilities and whether they have plans to re-evaluate them. Because these are some of the worst double standards that we've seen.

For the media tour, XenosysVex got to interview Yoshida directly (translator was there), and brought up how he felt about tank invuln skills. I forget what he mentioned, whether that be Superbolide's weakness, LD's drawbacks, or both, but Yoshi responded by comparing them to Hallowed and how if he were to change that there'd be an uproar from the community, and that he viewed Hallowed as the strongest.

No clue on what that will do with Yoshi's views on the skills, but at least a prominent voice in the community has finally said something directly to the man.

[ADVSS]

For the media tour, XenosysVex got to interview Yoshida directly (translator was there), and brought up how he felt about tank invuln skills. I forget what he mentioned, whether that be Superbolide's weakness, LD's drawbacks, or both, but Yoshi responded by comparing them to Hallowed and how if he were to change that there'd be an uproar from the community, and that he viewed Hallowed as the strongest.

No clue on what that will do with Yoshi's views on the skills, but at least a prominent voice in the community has finally said something directly to the man.

I think from watching his thoughts on the 4 tanks vid, that the answer was that LD was "thematic" as well as the "magic tank" part of the DRK's "theme" which is why they didnt touch it. The answer was very mind boggling to me, why "thematically" a DRK, in any FF game, in any capacity had this skill. I never played 11 but im pretty sure this was never a drk skill in that game either. I could be wrong though

To me, if we were going to get "thematic" with a DRK i wouldve called the ultimate "Revenge" and have the DRK deal damage, based on health missing, to give health back for x seconds. Not a 1:1 ratio, of course, but something balancable
I also would have preferred "Soul Eater" to have more impact and meaning as an iconic DRK, if not the only iconic ability DRK ever had-and made it more akin to DRG iconic jump, PLD iconic cover- and made it sort of like equilibrium as a burst heal, damage skill oGCD

[Noitems]

For the media tour, XenosysVex got to interview Yoshida directly (translator was there), and brought up how he felt about tank invuln skills. I forget what he mentioned, whether that be Superbolide's weakness, LD's drawbacks, or both, but Yoshi responded by comparing them to Hallowed and how if he were to change that there'd be an uproar from the community, and that he viewed Hallowed as the strongest.

No clue on what that will do with Yoshi's views on the skills, but at least a prominent voice in the community has finally said something directly to the man.

Yet Yoshi-p is completely oblivious as to why Holmgang has such a short cool down, and is used even more to cheese tankbusters.

I can respect the man for what he does, but he really needs a clue.

[Danelo]

There's that term again, "magic tank". It seems to be an excuse to make magic reduction only CDs as part of its kit (that's the only theme it has left... Besides having the worst ultimate). LD could be a more appropriately themed ultimate since it's a dark knight not a death knight. I always loved the ideas of it gaining dread spikes during the invulnerability phase to recover hp or heals based on a percentage of damage dealt. The only job in game that is entirely at the mercy of someone else to save it when it uses its ultimate since we have no self heals. Soul eater doesn't come close to counting.

I know Yoshi doesn't want to nerf WAR and PLD because they are grandfathered in. Fine. Make LD viable, kill it and start over, kill all invulnerabilities (if intestinal fortitude is lacking to even the playing field and that allows devs to save face), or buff DRKs kit by giving us extra CDs that you don't copy and paste over to other jobs. As it stands we already appear to be on the loosing end of mitigation CDs and our raid utility isn't as good due to being magic only (same with dark mind). Doesnt "magic tank" have to have something on the opposite end of the spectrum to be something special and to have a purpose with balance? Oh yeah, it did, PLD 3.x.. Everything else takes magic damage just fine. Do away with the magic only CDs. Truth is that if you wanted to put the magic tank sticker on anyone of the current tanks then it may be best placed on PLD. They use a lot more traditional magic than DRKs do.

Come on Yoshi, you already admitted it sucks. The Ffxiv player base loves you but that will only buy you so much good will. It's been 4 years with this lemon. And it's not like we had the royal treatment for the last two years.

[WhyAmIHere]

Come on Yoshi, you already admitted it sucks. The Ffxiv player base loves you but that will only buy you so much good will. It's been 4 years with this lemon. And it's not like we had the royal treatment for the last two years.

Yoshi doesn't care. He already has your money (the figurative "your").

I agree he's out of touch with the tank invulns, and I hope that was the point Xeno tried to convey, that Holm is just simply too powerful, LD is too burdensome to use, and superbolide is inferior as well. I also hope he takes that into consideration and speaks with the rest of his team to re-evaluate the tank invuln skills, and has someone on his team that knows both how best to approach this, and makes a change to them that, while might be initially seen as controversial by some, is overall good for the health of the tanking community.

[Danelo]

I am also curious about DRKs HP pool, where it relates to LD and how that correlates to the effectiveness of TBN. Some of the leaks gave stat values for HP pools on WAR and PLD, I believe, but I saw none for DRK. I know DRK always trailed behind WAR on hp pool numbers due to job themes (defiance). But on the leaks, ***and granted they are leaks even if they were very accurate leaks***, PLDs hp pool was higher than WAR if I recall correctly (110k+ hp as opposed to 100k+ hp).

Pure speculation. I can see hp pools only being mentioned if they were above and beyond or extra special. Giving me the impression there was nothing special about DRKs hp pool, meaning it more than likely could be less. But how much less? Who knows. Is it possible that DRK has hp numbers closer to that of PLD, yes, but I find that highly unlikely because it wasn't mentioned and devs, in my mind, would shy away from doing that bc it would make it even more difficult for healers to reach the threshold WD demands. Even if it was only slightly more demanding. So is LD holding back the Hp pool growth of DRK for the next expansion? Maybe.

And if the hp pool of DRK is hampered to make LD easier to cleanse then it would have a knock on effect of making TBN less effective since it is based off hp percentages. Again, all speculation based on an incomplete information, but it makes me nervous never the less.

Another reason the fix or nix LD. #fixornixLD

*****
Edit:
Replayed xenosysVex's video and saw stat values at the bottom. Thought the were blurred out for some reason. DRK seems to be up there with PLD. Open world gameplay, I don't know what level, showed stat value at 111,400 HP. So great news for TBN but bad news for DRK when using LD and healers that have to top us off. Looking forward to telling to healer when I'll be using LD and them saying "I'm clear, I'll be saving a swiftcast for you".
*****

[ADVSS]

Looking forward to telling to healer when I'll be using LD and them saying "I'm clear, I'll be saving a swiftcast for you".
*****

LOL for real, this so much this

Havent seen any footage of LS AFTER a DRK dies though, but I thought either one of the leaks, I had heard that LS was supposed to "assist the DRK with enmity gain" again, this prob came from a vid maybe raziel's from before media tour embargo was lifted. I am guessing though that like pets, once the drk dies, Fray disappears as well. If not...I guess this could be a wasteful roundabout way to avoid the healing and just sc raise the tank.... and for the record I too hate the term "magic tank" when they should have thrown that out the window the minute PLD shield blocked magic damage - period.

[WhyAmIHere]

Yoshi, wanna not adjust LD to maintain "class fantasy?"
Here's a really simple fix. Add "While under the effect of Walking Dead, healing (from spells / abilities) increased by 25%."

There. You're welcome.

[Inuk9]

I think living dead has some advantages in comparison to HG and hg.

- More time after activation: You can tank more damage before get healing
- More time to activate: You can press the button earlier than the other CDs, meaning you can get 5 or even 10 seconds of CD down for the next activation.

I just wish they put a trait to add +20% healing when you are in living dead state to compensate the convalescence exit.