Changing the Dark Knight's Living Dead to something more palatable

[Lyth]

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This post very clearly illustrates how poorly written the tooltips are. But that is also a consequence of how convoluted the ability itself is.

First, Living Dead doesn't mitigate damage for 20 seconds. The only time that it mitigates any damage is when you are at 1 HP. That means that the 'active duration' only occurs when Walking Dead is active. Second, Walking Dead kills you at the 10 second mark. So you really only have 9 seconds of active duration at most, and that's generally only if you have a WHM using Benediction. Outside of that, your healers will have to throw heals at you as fast as they can to cleanse the effect, which generally means that it lasts for a lot less time.

The main benefit of the "Living Dead" part of the ability is to reduce the effective recast. So if I use it 9 seconds earlier before the effect triggers, I save 9 seconds on my next recast of Living Dead. So instead of being 300 seconds, it's 291 seconds.

Second, Walking Dead's cleanse condition is not based on your present HP. It's based on the amount of healing that you've received while the effect is active. You don't need to be at max health. You need to receive an amount of healing equal to your total health. So if you have 120k HP total, you need to receive 120k healing irrespective of what your current HP is at the time the effect ends.

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Holmgang has no detrimental effect attached to the ability. It used to root you in place and require a target to activate, but this was removed in Shadowbringers.

If you compare GNB and PLD, GNB pays for having a 60 second recast by having an additional detrimental effect (Lose all of your present HP except for 1) as well as having a shorter duration (2 seconds). If we follow that same logic, Holmgang should always have a shorter duration than Living Dead (this isn't always the case, it depends on when your healer cleanses the effect) and it should also have the heal or die penalty attached. If you think about it, WAR's Nascent Flash is much better suited for dealing with this mechanic than DRK is.

[LariaKirin]

Might be nice for the remove condition to change from 100% Current Health, to Recieve 100% Max Health worth of Healling, so if you get that 120k healing off in 10s they live even if they never hit 100% health. Which is more doable considering incoming damage isnt increasing the healing required to remove the condition. Since right now, unless your using Benediction, the healing requirement for walking dead can be 200-300k health in 10s.

That is already how it works. They do NOT need to be brought to 100% HP. During the duration of Walking Dead, they need to receive 100% Max Health total healing. 120k, in your example.

It is still a problem, because barring Benediction, healers have to spend a silly large amount of resources to keep the DRK alive. This problem is exacerbated by the HP pools having scaled 50-60%, while healing potencies have not scaled to that degree.

[DRKoftheAzure]

To the OP, just replace Living Dead with Dark Dance that let's you dodge most attacks for 20 seconds and it sits on 5 minute cooldown.

[Duskane]

To the OP, just replace Living Dead with Dark Dance that let's you dodge most attacks for 20 seconds and it sits on 5 minute cooldown.

they will never do evasion stuff

20 seconds of possibly full evasion is pretty busted and if its only sometimes it doesn't guarantee your survival

i think Living dead should at 5-6 minutes and it heals all damage taken for 7-9 seconds

[Xenosan]

Keep in mind Living Dead has the longest duration at potentially 20s. Pretty rare that it will ever get there, but it is it's maximum duration.

No this is a big wrong with the CD imo... The initial Living Dead 10s timer is not something you want to leverage. During that window any incoming heal is a waste of healer resources. Be a friendly DRK and don't pop LD until milliseconds before the point of death, because otherwise you're risking your healer to blow their Tetras/Lustrates/Benes/MP/GCDs/etc prematurely.. And that's when this skill is really at it's worse. For as much as that window is helping you, it's hurting the healer. You've just thrown your CD/GCD timing responsibility onto the healer instead of handling it yourself. Tanks should be helping the healer, tank invulns should be helping healers. That window is in part why the skill needs to be changed.

I think the Walking Dead debuff should be removed. Just have the skill be 10 second holmgang. If desperate for flavor, end of duration a portion of all damage dealt during the 10 second invuln is converted back to HP. Make it a positive feature. The buff-into-invuln-debuff mechanic needs to go. It is convaluted.

[Ryutamashiisan]

I would just remove the healing requirement for LD, no transition to walking dead after suffering a KO hit. A straight 10 second invuln, no gimmick or buffs needed

[Drakkaelus]

I would just remove the healing requirement for LD, no transition to walking dead after suffering a KO hit. A straight 10 second invuln, no gimmick or buffs needed

Sometimes the simplest solutions are best. Living Dead is hamstrung by it's arbitrary need to be, "different". While I can appreciate wanting to have more distinctions between the tanks, if they can't come up with any differences beyond, "it's worse in every way", then maybe it's not worth the hassle.

[Inuk9]

Living dead is ok, I would only put a trait with a convalescence effect in it since we lost the skill.

[Sancho_Nyanta]

I wish I could remember whom posted it so that I could give credit to them but one suggestion I saw was making the Living Dead button turn into a "Walking Dead" button once Walking Dead was triggered, that would turn off the ability. This way you can have the benefit of the not dying at a longer duration than Holmgang but you have to hit the "Walking Dead" button because if you left the skill going for the full 10 seconds then it would kill you as it does now but you'd be able to disable this once you were out of danger.

[Muchmidget]

I'm a fan of the no heals/dmg and having to heal yourself via lifestealing. Maybe add something so that incoming heals from other players are redirected to another party member in case some poor healer is still freaking out and spamming cures.