DRK's Over-reliance on WHM: Are we Dead or Alive?

[Absimiliard]

I sincerely doubt this. You're going to lose more down the line by using it this way than by using it to mitigate damage that takes more than HoTs to heal.

Not really. TBN + literally any other mitigation cooldown DRK has already trivializes even the strongest of tankbusters. TBN has much the same effect on wall to wall pulls. If used wisely - with proper mitigation CD staggering - you are about as close to immortal as you can possibly get without being a paladin. Nothing would be lost at all by abusing the suggested mechanic to let healers get in more DPS unless there's some kind of unforeseen major screw up that makes you absolutely need your duplicate just to stay alive. Thing is, it's probably already a wipe if things have gone down hill far enough to force the tank to use its trump card as an actual emergency cooldown rather than the convenience we generally treat them as..

What about this:

Living Dead (360s CD):
Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
While under the effect of Walking Dead, most damage done to you will heal you instead of dealing damage. You cannot be healed higher than 50% of your maximum health while under the Walking Dead effect.
Walking Dead Duration: 8s

This potential solution would do several things:
1) It would play on the concept of a Dark Knight feasting on the souls of its enemies.
2) This solution completely removes healing requirements from the skill. Healers would only need to heal the tank back after the immunity ends.
3) This solution makes Living Dead usable in solo content and significantly better in 4-man content.
4) The reason for the decreased Walking Dead duration, increased CD to 360 sec, and limitation on how much healing you could receive is to balance out this skill. The Walking Dead effect in this version is MUCH better than the current version, and IMO the skill would need these other limiters to keep it from being better than other tank immunities.

Dark Knights don't eat souls. Even souleater, despite its name, is not in any way affecting the opponent's soul. The closest they get is ripping out a small amount of their opponent's aether to heal themselves. Despite how some abilities are named, the job sadly has no actual ties to the abyss. They are simply drawing on their own inner darkness to perform the feats we see.

The cooldown is probably too long for the benefit. Its shortened duration coupled with the lengthy cooldown would make it less desirable for cheesing mechanics than the existing version of Living Dead. Likewise, converting most incoming damage into healing, while very interesting, would pose a massive number of issues for the balance of the game.

I would propose instead that Living Dead instead operates exactly as it does now except for one major change: baked in healing. We take the existing Living Dead - or Walking Dead buff, specifically - and add to it an addendum which states that healing from all sources is increased by 50% for its duration. A secondary effect of this would be an additional 100% (stacking with the initial 50%) increase to all self-generated healing from job actions.
(Note: 150% increased self-healing still isn't enough for a DRK to fully heal itself in the span of the Walking Dead window. That's just a placeholder number. I am uncertain as to the exact percentage increase we would need to make this feasible.)

[Kabooa]

Not really. TBN + literally any other mitigation cooldown DRK has already trivializes even the strongest of tankbusters.

Except those pesky 300% Vulnerabilities that 3/4 of the current tier uses.

Invulning saves more healing than splitting these.

[Absimiliard]

Except those pesky 300% Vulnerabilities that 3/4 of the current tier uses.

Invulning saves more healing than splitting these.

People would obviously save it for those rare instances where they would have to be the ones cheesing a mechanic. This will not stop them from using it to get more damage out in virtually all other circumstances.

[Kabooa]

People would obviously save it for those rare instances where they would have to be the ones cheesing a mechanic. This will not stop them from using it to get more damage damage out in virtually all other circumstances.

So...regular dungeons?

[Absimiliard]

So...regular dungeons?

You appear to be under the mistaken impression that the game has only normal dungeons and savage raids.

[Kabooa]

You appear to be under the mistaken impression that the game has only normal dungeons and savage raids.

Seeing as anything that isn't savage basically falls under 'normal', I don't see that being an issue.

Extreme, Alliance, Hard are all variations of 'normal end game content', and I doubt anyone's popping immunities in Ultimate just to get a few DPS GCDs when it doesn't also net a significant mitigation gain.

[Absimiliard]

Seeing as anything that isn't savage basically falls under 'normal', I don't see that being an issue.

Extreme, Alliance, Hard are all variations of 'normal end game content', and I doubt anyone's popping immunities in Ultimate just to get a few DPS GCDs when it doesn't also net a significant mitigation gain.

And you would be mistaken in that regard. There are numerous instances of fights, even in different savage modes, where a viable course of action was for tanks to blow their immunities just for the sake of letting everyone go hard on DPS for the duration. It's been considered a perfectly acceptable cheese strat for dealing with tight enrage timers for a very, very long time. Obviously some fights have mechanics that prevent tanks from "wasting" their big cooldowns like that, but the ones that didn't saw some pretty routine abuse.

Anywho, getting back to the original topic: The main reason I say the suggested ability may not be regarded the same as other tank immunities is the fact that it would actually be "killable." Giving it a set HP pool, even a particularly massive one, would in effect make it a much more powerful version of TBN. Granted I still think the idea is actually pretty cool, and I would actually love to see them actually implement it. Not every tank needs a full on lolimmunity. Something like this would be strong enough to work but different enough to be unique. The fact that TBN itself usually prevents the application of status effects by abilities that don't break it would give them precedence for the simulacrum also not allowing the DRK to be afflicted by debuffs that aren't applied by an effect that completely break it.