We really need to talk about Living Dead

[Lucy_Pyre]

Yeah, but your stance is still one of an elitist.

Can Living Dead be dealt with by a healer easily without Benediction? Sure, theoretically.

But you really can't say you've played DRK enough if you haven't seen a healer fail to deal with your Walking Dead status countless times. I've seen even great healers mess it up when tons of other factors start adding up like having to raise others and burn through all your CDs to save a party.

It's just self-righteous arrogance to stand on the hill of "it's easy to deal with Living Dead." There's literally no need for the ability to be the way it is. It doesn't give the job any kind of sense of identity nor does it make playing the job challenging.

It merely shifts that challenge onto a healer, which is totally at odds with their approach of trying to make the game more accessible.

An ability shouldn't even be such a hot topic.

Guess what chief, everyone makes mistakes. Even the best of players fuck up sometimes. We're all human, it happens. You could have the greatest healer in the world and they would still, rarely, fail to clear LD just because they either screwed up or simply brain farted for a moment and didn't pay attention. That doesn't mean that LD is suddenly garbage or whatever other crap people in this thread may try to claim it is. Because, yes actually, it is easy to deal with Living Dead. Just because half of the community doesn't understand the ability doesn't mean it's bad, it means that those players don't understand it. On a side note, there is no 'theoretically' in "can LD be dealt with by a healer easily without Bene". The answer is a simple 'yes' and nothing more.

[Chrono_Rising]

Just because half of the community doesn't understand the ability doesn't mean it's bad, it means that those players don't understand it.

On the other hand this entire expansion has been about increasing the accessibility to the entire player base. If there really is such a large percentage of people who are having issues with the skill then that might be something the player base is justified as holding up as a reason for increasing accessibility.

In another post you made a suggestion about how to handle the skill and several people wrote back to you thank you for suggesting a way to heal it because they were at a loss. That doesn't really exist with the other invulns right now.

[Lucy_Pyre]

On the other hand this entire expansion has been about increasing the accessibility to the entire player base. If there really is such a large percentage of people who are having issues with the skill then that might be something the player base is justified as holding up as a reason for increasing accessibility.

In another post you made a suggestion about how to handle the skill and several people wrote back to you thank you for suggesting a way to heal it because they were at a loss. That doesn't really exist with the other invulns right now.

2/3 of the damn WAR playerbase doesn't ever touch Nascent Flash because they think it's 'bad' since it requires a target to use. Does that mean that we should remove Nascent Flash from WAR? No, of course not. It's WAR's most potent cooldown outside of Holmgang. The sad reality is that the majority will always be, well, let's be polite and say sub-par. And in that demographic of the playerbase there is going to be an extreme amount of sub-optimal usage of abilities, cooldowns, and even a sheer lack of understanding of said abilities & cooldowns. I've seen people complain about Holmgang ending early if the target it's tethered to dies, when that's a complete non-issue as if you're so worried about that you can simply make a de-target macro for Holmgang so that whenever you use it it always goes off on the player themselves, so that even if a target dies or goes untargetable you still retain the invuln. I guess the gist of what I'm trying to say here is that there is always going to be sub-par players and those individuals will never understand things properly or use them properly. That isn't grounds to change something, especially when it's already easy to begin with.

[Chrono_Rising]

Ease of use and intuitive game play are two different things.

I wouldn't say oh a dark knight I obviously press these 6 buttons in this sequence once this icon turns grey. Flip this script though. Once you've learned a mechanic in this game is anything actually hard?

I feel comfortable saying most green leaf healer, healing their first dark knight in a dungeon, would not know exactly what would happen when the walking dead debuff expires. This is the accessibility element. Because there is no time that they are force to acknowledge these skills or are taught about tank invulns many of them might be experiencing these for the first time doing savage content.

I have no idea if people are still complaining about Nascent flash. I thought people just had a problem with it at launch because no one realized just how powerful it was. Are there recent complaints? We have had years of living dead, people still die to being just off of the hp thresh hold. Where this ability really doesn't shine is probably the place where it also matters most: Prog.

Nascent flash: A skill that takes alittle getting use to but is very abusable in terms of healing yourself in a pinch. Personally I have used this ability in dungeons where a healer has died almost immediately in a boss battle. How many dps were lost? 0. Why? Nascent Flash. It is broken in warriors favor, I hope they keep it the same and don't nerf it.

The difference between Living dead issues and Nascent flash/Holmgang is that what you are saying for these skills can always be fixed by things you are currently suggesting. Living dead requires a plan to go into healing: there is no no universal fix because if things don't go to plan, then things change. Suddenly something I could handle myself (say with benediction) I now need two people spamming heals with 0 feedback on if they are even close to meeting the requirement in time.

Living dead does its job. I'm not arguing that it is terrible or unusable, but it is not inline with usability of the other tank invulns. I can see you arguing against those saying that its bad or unusable as it certainly isn't, but to argue that its perfect and needs absolutely no adjustment says more about you and what position you are arguing from than the state of living dead.

At minimum changes: Indicate how much needs to be healed and how much time is left. Forexample a doom head that has a counter and fades away as you get close to the heal check point.

Ideal changes: Give back Sole Survivor/self sustain options so we can help with the healing requirement as in late SB.

[DWolfwood]

Guess what chief...there is no 'theoretically' in "can LD be dealt with by a healer easily without Bene". The answer is a simple 'yes' and nothing more.

Guess what chief, there's a difference between being able to do something on a dummy and doing it when it matters, and no, the answer is not always a straight forward "yes." That's just clear as day. You can make excuses all you want and condescend half the community by telling them they don't understand the ability, but the fact remains that 3 out of 4 tanks can be healed to 50% or less HP during an invuln and be perfectly fine whereas one will ALWAYS die at no fault of their own.

Edit - Even if half the community "doesn't understand" an ability, why is that kind of ability in a game that the developers claim to be trying to make more accessible?

Literally the only thing you have to stand on is your elitism and wanting it to be difficult for other players, and frankly I'd respect you a lot more if you just admitted that.

[Lucy_Pyre]

Guess what chief, there's a difference between being able to do something on a dummy and doing it when it matters, and no, the answer is not always a straight forward "yes." That's just clear as day. You can make excuses all you want and condescend half the community by telling them they don't understand the ability, but the fact remains that 3 out of 4 tanks can be healed to 50% or less HP during an invuln and be perfectly fine whereas one will ALWAYS die at no fault of their own.

Edit - Even if half the community "doesn't understand" an ability, why is that kind of ability in a game that the developers claim to be trying to make more accessible?

Literally the only thing you have to stand on is your elitism and wanting it to be difficult for other players, and frankly I'd respect you a lot more if you just admitted that.

No the ground I have to stand on is that LD is hilariously easy to understand, so if people can't comprehend how to manage it then that really is a 'them' problem. Unfortunately, not everything can be, nor should be, catered to sub-par players.

[TheRealQuah]

No the ground I have to stand on is that LD is hilariously easy to understand, so if people can't comprehend how to manage it then that really is a 'them' problem. Unfortunately, not everything can be, nor should be, catered to sub-par players.

Don't think there's much point arguing with the people here. They clearly don't understand nuanced arguments, or playing the game with a basic level of competence. Especially when people who get carried though every fight they've ever cleared start crying "elitism" at the first chance of someone trying to correct them on their incorrect thinking. 100% agree with your sig.

[Lucy_Pyre]

Don't think there's much point arguing with the people here. They clearly don't understand nuanced arguments, or playing the game with a basic level of competence. Especially when people who get carried though every fight they've ever cleared start crying "elitism" at the first chance of someone trying to correct them on their incorrect thinking. 100% agree with your sig.

Oh I'm well aware that it's most certainly just pointless trying to debate things on these forums. For the most part the types of players that make complaint posts on forums are ones who are already set in their belief to an extent that, no matter if they're shown to be wrong through simple debate or even something as concrete as physical evidence, they'll still find some crazy mental gymnastics to claim that everything said has proven their point all along. It's no different than how players will, most of the time, either brush you off, ignore you entirely, or be outright hostile when one gives some polite advice in duty finder. A large part of the blame lies in how the game's community coddles people to such a ridiculous degree.

[DWolfwood]

No the ground I have to stand on is that LD is hilariously easy to understand, so if people can't comprehend how to manage it then that really is a 'them' problem. Unfortunately, not everything can be, nor should be, catered to sub-par players.

I'm fine with that IF the challenge is in my own hands. Give me 2.x DRK any day, back when you actually had to think about positioning for autoattacks, MP management, tanking without tank stance (no free aggro multiplier), no shirk, animation lock from plunge, low blow procs, DoT management, Dark Side skills with proper timings, proc'd reprisals, and much tighter defensive CD management.

Instead we get a dumbed down DRK that STILL has this shitty ability that takes all the challenge out of the DRK's own hands and these elitists who think they know what they're talking about.

I'd be fine with the making the game more accessible, but please stop taking the challenge of DRK out of the DRK's hands.

[Lucy_Pyre]

these elitists who think they know what they're talking about.

And you do know what you're talking about? That's honestly one of the funniest things I've heard all week. I dunno man, I'm not a fan of this 50 Shades of Gray stuff and this whole thread gives me that vibe.