Alternate suggestions for Living Dead

[frostmagemari]

Honestly.. they need to stop beating around the bush with Dark Knight and just full on copy the Deathknight ability "Purgatory" from WoW; The ability triggered on death and granted immunity to damage for a few seconds, but anything that took you under 1hp was turned into a healing absorption shield that needed to be healed off (which would bring the character above 1hp) or the character would die.
It's simple and doesn't require excess coordination.. the healer sees you're at 1hp and would heal you until you're an acceptable level above 1hp.

If SQE really wants Living dead to be their own version of "heal X or they die" mechanic though, they need to do it in a better way. A much better way to achieve a much more workable version of their own Living Dead would be to have it usable as it is and proc it at death and make you immune to most forms of incoming damage for the duration; but instead, the ability should put you at 100% hp and apply a non-curable DoT that does 10% of your hp every second for 10sec.
This accomplishes the same thing as Living Dead does now but it's much more intuitive to the healers that they need to heal you during that time because you still will die if it ticks down without intervention.

[DemonicNeko]

Honestly.. they need to stop beating around the bush with Dark Knight and just full on copy the Deathknight ability "Purgatory" from WoW; The ability triggered on death and granted immunity to damage for a few seconds, but anything that took you under 1hp was turned into a healing absorption shield that needed to be healed off (which would bring the character above 1hp) or the character would die.
It's simple and doesn't require excess coordination.. the healer sees you're at 1hp and would heal you until you're an acceptable level above 1hp.

If SQE really wants Living dead to be their own version of "heal X or they die" mechanic though, they need to do it in a better way. A much better way to achieve a much more workable version of their own Living Dead would be to have it usable as it is and proc it at death and make you immune to most forms of incoming damage for the duration; but instead, the ability should put you at 100% hp and apply a non-curable DoT that does 10% of your hp every second for 10sec.
This accomplishes the same thing as Living Dead does now but it's much more intuitive to the healers that they need to heal you during that time because you still will die if it ticks down without intervention.

Honestly with the Heal X or they Die mechanic. They need to give DRK some super strong life steal ability/buffs. I am not saying so over power that we can solo raid content. Yet enough that could be used more of our mitigated mechanics. Paladins block. Warriors parry, GNB puts shield on I think. We just flat out steal the bosses hp.

It really feels like they are trying to copy the death knight but at the same time not copy it. So we are some crappy version of the death knight.

[frostmagemari]

Honestly with the Heal X or they Die mechanic. They need to give DRK some super strong life steal ability/buffs. I am not saying so over power that we can solo raid content. Yet enough that could be used more of our mitigated mechanics. Paladins block. Warriors parry, GNB puts shield on I think. We just flat out steal the bosses hp.

It really feels like they are trying to copy the death knight but at the same time not copy it. So we are some crappy version of the death knight.

They are trying to copy Deathknight, which isn't a bad thing.. it's a really fun class to tank with in WoW; but yeah, they don't want to embrace the lifesteal mechanic / generated damage shields as our mitigation tools like Blood Deathknight does and so we get this weird version that's not quite normal mitigation but certainly not lifesteal based.

Honestly though.. i think one of the things that's really getting in their own way with tanking classes is their obsession with the tankbuster mechanic. As long as they exist, you can't really have reaction based tanks; you need proactive tanks that can brace incoming damage rather than react to having sustained it; of course, an answer to that is more active mitigation tools like how Blood Death Knights generate a damage shield with Death strike, something similar could be put into xiv (not just for DRK, but just as a general thing to liven up tanks). Upping boss general damage and reducing the reliance on tankbusters is also another option.. but i have a feeling they're not going to think of changing the formula, even if it could be a good thing that opens up more gameplay options for them.

[DemonicNeko]

They are trying to copy Deathknight, which isn't a bad thing.. it's a really fun class to tank with in WoW; but yeah, they don't want to embrace the lifesteal mechanic / generated damage shields as our mitigation tools like Blood Deathknight does and so we get this weird version that's not quite normal mitigation but certainly not lifesteal based.

Honestly though.. i think one of the things that's really getting in their own way with tanking classes is their obsession with the tankbuster mechanic. As long as they exist, you can't really have reaction based tanks; you need proactive tanks that can brace incoming damage rather than react to having sustained it; of course, an answer to that is more active mitigation tools like how Blood Death Knights generate a damage shield with Death strike, something similar could be put into xiv (not just for DRK, but just as a general thing to liven up tanks). Upping boss general damage and reducing the reliance on tankbusters is also another option.. but i have a feeling they're not going to think of changing the formula, even if it could be a good thing that opens up more gameplay options for them.

I will not like. I would love for DRK to be more anti magic and life stealing base tank like how they originally teased us in HW. Not really the same as Death knight with their shields and bone armor. Like here some idea on how this could work. We can place a buff that gives use X seconds to turn X percent of magic damage into life points. Another idea is comes from Keagian in my post about LD being removed.

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.

[frostmagemari]

I will not like. I would love for DRK to be more anti magic and life stealing base tank like how they originally teased us in HW. Not really the same as Death knight with their shields and bone armor.

The whole bone motif is just visual; actually embracing the ideas from class they've been skirting around copying and visually changing it wouldn't be horrible, you just make sure you give it your own visual.

[DemonicNeko]

The whole bone motif is just visual; actually embracing the ideas from class they've been skirting around copying and visually changing it wouldn't be horrible, you just make sure you give it your own visual.

Yeah. They do not need to give us 100% copy and paste. Yet they can look at the mechanics. Make their on spin on it. The Darkest Night can be their version of Death Strike shield ability. Just drop it MP cost so we can use it more often. Make it so Soul Eater life steal is strong. Give us like few more life steal ability. We already have some anti magic stuff. It mean they have a good base of the Death Knight. Just need to finish it off.

[DemonicNeko]

I feel the idea of the DRK has so much room of interpretation. That as long as it feels metal and badass. With it being loads of fun to play. People would except it as a dark knight theme. There so many ways they can take the class. We are so used of the play style change each expansion. That we would not care if they turn it up side down on it head. As long as it is dark, Effective at tanking and fun to play. Which is something it was not in SB. It was not fun to play. Did not feel dark and it was a terrible tank.

Sadly I think the devs idea on how a DRK should be is a want a be Death Knight. While the community idea is. "I just want to be dark, edgy and a total bad ass." With a tone of fun playing as this epic bad ass tank. I also worry that they are holding us back because they do not want any tank to outshine the warrior on the cool factor.