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

[Sancho_Nyanta]

They basically already stated that they feel HG is too strong and want to nerf it but are hesitant to do so because of player backlash.

[Kabooa]

I like this idea but it falls short in multi-hitting tank busters/mechanics and cheese strats where the point is to out last the mechanic. The possibility of loosing the clone on the first hit and dying to the second hit could be its biggest downfall. Maybe change it so that the clone has a higher percentage based of your hp (ex. 150% HP) but takes 90% of the dmg and you take 10%? It kinda fits lore-wise harnessing your life energy but still being tied to it. They can even re-use the DA animation, which defined DRK for me in 3.0 and 4.0.

Having it come in at 150% health should let it handle most cheese mechanics - Survive the first hit, get blown up on the second. I think the only one that might cause problems is long 4 hit ones, but I think only...Titan has that this tier?

People would start using that as a DPS tool instead of an oh shit button. It would be popped on CD so that healers could maximize their DPS output during its window.

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.

[DemonicNeko]

Snip

With the level 80 living shadow ability. I honestly feel Living dead should be deleted from the game. Turned something more fitting for the dark knight class. Would say the ability might be called Shadow Deflector. Tool tips would read something like this. "Summons your living shadow to deflect part of all incoming damage for 10 seconds. Part of the damage will be returned to attacker. During this duration Dark Knight drifts more into the void. Your shadow instantly removes 40% of all incoming damage. Of damage normally recieved 20% of it will be sent back to attacker. Dark Knight gains 30% less healing."

A simple example of this would be. Boss is about to do a tank buster that will do 200k to you with no cooldowns. When using this. The damage is going to instantly loose 80k damage. Bring the damage down to 120k. That is the first part of the ability. The second part of the ability. The shadow will then send 24k damage back to the boss dropping the damage you take from this attack as 96k. With the -30% to all healer. This rough example is for level 80 tank in 470 gear. So you should still be live with like 20% hp if you did not use any other CD.

It can also be something less complicated like. Shadow stops 50% damage over the next 10 seconds. With 50% of the damage it stopped being sent back to the attack. Same example as the first one with 200k tank buster shadow prevents 100k and sends 50k to the boss. You will take 100k damage. With the -30% to all healing.

This is a rough idea and numbers can be changed.

[HyperiusUltima]

With the level 80 living shadow ability. I honestly feel Living dead should be deleted from the game. Turned something more fitting for the dark knight class. Would say the ability might be called Shadow Deflector. Tool tips would read something like this. "Summons your living shadow to deflect part of all incoming damage for 10 seconds. Part of the damage will be returned to attacker. During this duration Dark Knight drifts more into the void. Your shadow instantly removes 40% of all incoming damage. Of damage normally recieved 20% of it will be sent back to attacker. Dark Knight gains 30% less healing."

A simple example of this would be. Boss is about to do a tank buster that will do 200k to you with no cooldowns. When using this. The damage is going to instantly loose 80k damage. Bring the damage down to 120k. That is the first part of the ability. The second part of the ability. The shadow will then send 24k damage back to the boss dropping the damage you take from this attack as 96k. This rough example is for level 80 tank in 470 gear. So you should still be live with like 20% hp if you did not use any other CD.

That’s just a Cooldown like Sentinel. NOT WORTH AT ALL FOR AN INVULN.

All Tanks need an invuln so they can complete all content.

[DemonicNeko]

That’s just a Cooldown like Sentinel. NOT WORTH AT ALL FOR AN INVULN.

All Tanks need an invuln so they can complete all content.

Do we really need an invuln? Maybe the problem is not the class ability but the boss mechanics them self. When you go play a game and the only difference between Easy and hard. Is mob hp and damage. That is the most lazy and worse game design. This goes double with tank busters and poor mechanics like this. There more creative ways to do tank swaps. Think the real elephant in the room is poor boss design.

[Tex_Mex]

Do we really need an invuln? Maybe the problem is not the class ability but the boss mechanics them self. When you go play a game and the only difference between Easy and hard. Is mob hp and damage. That is the most lazy and worse game design. This goes double with tank busters and poor mechanics like this. There more creative ways to do tank swaps. Think the real elephant in the room is poor boss design.

I understand your point, and I agree with you for the most part; however, there is virtually 0 chance that we will move away from this type of encounter design any time soon, and in the mean time, the meta is for all tanks to have an invlun. This was meant to be the "oh shit my other tank is dead and I have a vuln stack, but maybe we can save a wipe anyways" button. The unintended (though it is probably intended at this point) consequence is that invulns can be used to cheese mechanics in order to make encounters easier. See Titania ex tethers for an example. Removing the invuln ability from one tank will insantly drop it to the bottom of the meta barrel. Let's not have a red mage situation over here with DRK now lol.

[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.)

[Deceptus]

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but the elephant in the room needs to be addressed soon.

.

If the last Live Letter is any indication, FFXIV devs either have no idea there is an issue or are simply ignoring it.

Just like the SB DRK issues.

The only fixes Living Dead needs is a healing modifier (that abilities interact with!) or lessened healing requirement (50%)

[Absimiliard]

The only fixes Living Dead needs is a healing modifier (that abilities interact with!) or lessened healing requirement (50%)

Both would probably be the best bet. Basically anything that would allow DRK at least a CHANCE to save its own skin would be good.

[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.