Living Dead and other DRK QOL in 5.3

[Lucy_Pyre]

TLDR; Living Dead takes more resources to handle than any other tank. This is not balanced out by an especially strong mitigation kit. Nor is this justified in terms of drk’s personal damage output. While the skill isn't to the point of unusable, it could use an adjustment.

Living Dead requires no more healing than a GNB using Superbolide or a WAR using Holmgang who has Thrill of Battle & Equilbrium on cooldown, and doesn't have access to his burst damage making his Nascent Flash healing minor at best. No healer in savage is going to let a GNB or WAR sit at 40-50k HP for a long period of time, even if they're the OT, because there's more than likely raidwaide damage coming up soon that requires they be at a relatively stable amount of health. So, really, the only exception to this is a WAR with ToB + Equil ready to go as well as some burst damage to pump into Nascent, but that isn't going to always be up depending on where in a fight these busters and invuln uses are, as ToB + Equil is just as likely to be used after a non-invuln'd buster or even after heavy raidwide damage such as the Tumult & Voice spam miniphases in Titan savage phase 3. In other words, the only true outlier here is PLD with Hallowed Ground. Now, I hate to break it to you, but if only one out of the four doesn't require healing assistance, then that means that that is the one that's out of place; not the one that simply has an arbitrary time limit on when they need to be healed, even though in most situations the other tanks are going to get healed for a similar or identical amount in the same time frame as the DRK would for anyways.

[Chrono_Rising]

Living Dead requires no more healing than a GNB using Superbolide or a WAR using Holmgang who has Thrill of Battle & Equilbrium on cooldown, and doesn't have access to his burst damage making his Nascent Flash healing minor at best. No healer in savage is going to let a GNB or WAR sit at 40-50k HP for a long period of time, even if they're the OT, because there's more than likely raidwaide damage coming up soon that requires they be at a relatively stable amount of health. So, really, the only exception to this is a WAR with ToB + Equil ready to go as well as some burst damage to pump into Nascent, but that isn't going to always be up depending on where in a fight these busters and invuln uses are, as ToB + Equil is just as likely to be used after a non-invuln'd buster or even after heavy raidwide damage such as the Tumult & Voice spam miniphases in Titan savage phase 3. In other words, the only true outlier here is PLD with Hallowed Ground. Now, I hate to break it to you, but if only one out of the four doesn't require healing assistance, then that means that that is the one that's out of place; not the one that simply has an arbitrary time limit on when they need to be healed, even though in most situations the other tanks are going to get healed for a similar or identical amount in the same time frame as the DRK would for anyways.

Superbolide - Yes I’m at one hp, use one oGCD and we can tank swap at the end and I’ll regen my own hp. This works really well when the invuln goes into something like a trio, or other ultimate mechanics where you aren’t taking damage and can just get a regen from a healer for the down time.

Holmgang - about the same as superbolide. Put one oGCD on me tank swap and wait till I have equilibrium or a burst window with nascent flash. I did a pf with a warrior who holmganged the double slap, then without being healed at all nascent flashed their next IR window to full hp.

I just gave you three examples 1 from savage and two examples in ultimates.

Heres three more from the current tier:

Centaurs charge can be excoged and equilibrium and you’ll get to full HP with healer environment regens before any significant damage has gone out. Same way bolide can be handled.

E6s: If not the main tank after the fire tornadoes you can again get by with just equilibrium/Aurora and a ground regen before the next aoe goes out.

E7s, you can holmgang both busters and get by with an oGCD and your own sustain. The hard part is the RNG element of knowing if/when you can do this.

As you said with healing: It just takes planning.

The only one that has to be handled within 10 seconds is living dead. All of these let healers spread out their healing potential, lower the spike and let people put more damage gcds into the thing you actually want to kill even saving GCDs down the road.

Living Dead requires no more healing than a GNB using Superbolide or a WAR using Holmgang who has Thrill of Battle & Equilbrium on cooldown, and doesn't have access to his burst damage making his Nascent Flash healing minor at best. No healer in savage is going to let a GNB or WAR sit at 40-50k HP for a long period of time, even if they're the OT, because there's more than likely raidwaide damage coming up soon that requires they be at a relatively stable amount of health.

E5S: First raidens charge next raid damage is 40 seconds later. If you threw your personal heals off at random you would have a 2 out of three chance of it being open during this interval including things like healers healing during this. As the OT you will be fine.

E6S: After the blaze orbs the OT take two hits in the range of 35k an oGCD and their own heal would keep them alive. There is AOE healing going out during this you have enough hp to survive and an IR nascent window coming up on warrior + more aoe heals going out. Healers don’t need to drop 170k worth of healing on you immediately.

E7S: After the first buster the next time the OT takes damage is 1.5 minutes later. The second has damage outgoing within 20 seconds both before and after, but hey healers can throw a oGCD to bring the OT up, and save the healing for the group till after the tank uses their invuln and goes to 1. Which will also handle the damage coming up.

Are there busters where strats like this don’t work for? Sure, but more often than not, you can use invulns this way to save GCDs/multipurpose heal for healers. E8S is a good example as later phases has both tanks taking damage. But again, you only need to be alive for auto's, you still have self heals, and a burst window in most of the places where you would use your invuln.

There is one that always needs to be healed up within 10 seconds, I think you said the one that is singled out always is called an outlier right?

[Satarn]

No healer in savage is going to let a GNB or WAR sit at 40-50k HP for a long period of time, even if they're the OT, because there's more than likely raidwaide damage coming up soon that requires they be at a relatively stable amount of health.

You're saying this as if raidwide damage was something unpredictable that healers have to always be prepared for - but it's not, it's scripted, hell even auto damage is pretty much static now with bosses no longer able to crit since 5.0. As you've so smugly said before, in raid everything is planned. Healers should know whether or not the tank will need any extra healing after invuln, if they've got their own healing cd or burst phase for NF available and how much the HoTs/fairy can take care of. Good healers can and will let you sit on that low HP whenever possible.

Also I gotta ask man - you're using Thrill as healing after you take damage..?

[Lucy_Pyre]

you're using Thrill as healing after you take damage..?

?

Don't recall saying that, but okay bud. That said, it has completely valid uses both before and after taking a hit.

[bundythenoob]

If there's one QOL change I want to see in DRK, it's moving Stalwart Soul to 40. its potency isnt too powerful at 160, but its mana generation would help make lower lvl DRK a lot more fun. If they did this, they could move Blood weapon to lv 30 and Edge of Shadow to 35. even better if they give Stalwart a trait at 72 that buffs its damage, but this change alone would make DRk so much more fun while leveling, fun while synced, and would help buff its damage by a small amount in dungeons after lv 40, but not too badly as to upset the balance at lv 80 content.

After all, if the other tanks have aoe combos by lv 40, why can't DRK?

[ShariusTC]

I like when walking dead start to take effect they should give DRK some kind of darkening aura, and maybe a big countdown number over their head so healer can immediately know this just by looking at them, rather than forceing DRK to make a macro for it

[bundythenoob]

My prefered option would be having the Walking Dead penalty hit MP and tally how much HP has been recovered.
So if you've only been recovered for 80% of your max HP, then the remaining 20% will be taken off of your MP, 2000 MP.
If you don't have enough MP, then you'll die.

This basically allows you to have an MP buffer on LD's healing requirement, which means you can be self sufficient if you can plan to have full MP when you use it.
It builds on DRK's MP management as well, maintaining job identity.

I actually really love this idea, and it would definitely keep with the identity of DRK using its MP for skills and spells. plus, it would allow for skilled decision making to come through, whether its in the higher levels of play between a good healer who can help DRK keep their mana up, and a good DRK that can build mana to help their healer with the cost in PUG play as well as duty finder.

[Lyth]

MP = dps.

The one problem that you'll run into is that the decision to heal you or not depends on the cost-benefit analysis of actually healing you up. Some healers might decide not to heal you at all, if it impacts their dps numbers.

[bundythenoob]

MP = dps.

The one problem that you'll run into is that the decision to heal you or not depends on the cost-benefit analysis of actually healing you up. Some healers might decide not to heal you at all, if it impacts their dps numbers.

then maybe DRK can regain some of its old mana generation in order to make up for this new LD change?
perhaps fuse dark mind with dark price? or maybe walking dead resets blood weapon cooldown?

[ForteNightshade]

then maybe DRK can regain some of its old mana generation in order to make up for this new LD change?
perhaps fuse dark mind with dark price? or maybe walking dead resets blood weapon cooldown?

But that is still arbitrarily punishing Dark Knight for using their invuln when none of the other tanks are. If Living Dead were on a short CD, you could maybe argue but it's still longer than Holmgang, and Warrior is the one tank that can practically heal itself to full without any DPS loss or healer intervention.