Living dead must change

[Lyth]

...

It also sounds like the wounds that Frey took while on trial were being turned into some kind of dark and twisted aura that let them fight for even longer before falling. That's quite different from "Frey took mortal damage, swung back for about 10 seconds, and then toppled over spontaneously because they didn't receive Benediction."

I can imagine it now.
Dark Knight: Walking Dead activates!
Temple Knight: Alright, I'm going to go grab a coffee. Be back in five. Oh good, he's dead.
Kind of anticlimactic.

Where's the dark twisted aura? I'm pretty sure that players have been asking for a proper darkness aura on DRK since its release, like what we get in the cutscenes. Where's the blood armor? Does the damage received get turned into some kind of defensive tool? I mean, the lore description actually sounds like something interesting.

[Vyrerus]

It also sounds like the wounds that Frey took while on trial were being turned into some kind of dark and twisted aura that let them fight for even longer before falling. That's quite different from "Frey took mortal damage, swung back for about 10 seconds, and then toppled over spontaneously because they didn't receive Benediction."

I can imagine it now.
Dark Knight: Walking Dead activates!
Temple Knight: Alright, I'm going to go grab a coffee. Be back in five. Oh good, he's dead.
Kind of anticlimactic.

Where's the dark twisted aura? I'm pretty sure that players have been asking for a proper darkness aura on DRK since its release, like what we get in the cutscenes. Where's the blood armor? Does the damage received get turned into some kind of defensive tool? I mean, the lore description actually sounds like something interesting.

The write up of Fray vs. a Temple Knight is definitely written, at least in English (anyone got the JP script?), to sound like it's some sorta mystical, eerie unearthly method of fighting beyond one's means.

I'm thinking the dev intent for Living Dead is just that. To fight beyond one's means, rather than to be used as we use it. Silly, I know, but I've experienced a handful of Living Dead clutch moments, some more epic than others. What makes it feel epic is the desperation, as if other tanks were in the same scenario, there wouldn't be as much tension.

Maybe they should rename it to the DRK merit trait from FFXI, "Desperate Blows." Hehe. Or at least the ATP+ Discount Berserk from FFXI DRK, "Last Resort." Though this makes me think, is it like Hallowed Ground in JP? Completely renamed for us, as HG is just Invincible?

I'll try a "creative" writing description of the last time I had a clutch moment with Living Dead.


The Moon Goddess's whirling fans pirouetted around Clyde and his allies, confusing most of them. Clyde called out to his party, trying to guide them through the whorl of blades, but it had been a pitched battle, and in their exasperation, the Dark Knight's allies were cut one too many times as the Goddess ground them into dust with a relentless assault of black and blue aether. Refocusing her malicious gaze on Clyde, Tsukuyomi beared down on him with another set of bladed fans, and she cried, "WORM!" Imbuing her twin chokutos with aether, one of light and one of darkness. Clyde raised a hand and erected a barrier of shadows, immediately drawing his sword into an almost embrace, cloaking himself in a bulwark of deepest black. Even with these measures in place, Tsukuyomi still rent more holes in the Dark Knight's armor and body, wringing a little more blood out of the man. A little tête-à-tête ensued between the two fighters, their exhaustion and wounds showing. Clyde smashed a max potion over his face, if only to get some of the blood and sweat out of his eyes, though it was also fair to say that it was a reflex of resolve. He parried the Moon Goddess's chokutos once, twice, three times, and then she tried to direct his movements with more fans and a wide aetherial slice with her dark blade. When that failed she burst out a bright reprimand, as she had many times before in this battle, guaranteeing a solid hit on anyone nearby. Clyde was spent, but he drew on his inner darkness, and some of the blood coalesced with his aether, into a bright scarlet orb, which he stuffed into his breast, allowing him to strike the Goddess five times with all of his might. Tsukuyomi dropped the fans again while spitting through clenched teeth, "I'll grind you under my heel!" Light and dark energy glimmered off of her twin blades, and in response the spent Dark Knight thrust his blade into the transmogrified castrum's floor. A seemingly inhuman roar issued out of his body, as he screamed towards the sky, the blood issuing from his many wounds evaporated into vermillion flames. As pure resolve shrieked its way out of Clyde's body, the first black and white aether bomb hit, and had Clyde not been so resolved he would have instantly been incapacitated, possibly even killed. His limbs acted on his intent alone, and struck the Moon Goddess. Another bomb erupted from her blades that she swung out into the air as if they were scepters of a sort. Again and again and again, in rapid succession she scorched Clyde and the ground around him, but every explosion was answered with another stroke of Clyde's sword, until at last the Dark Knight sprang into the air, and thrust his grim blade into the Goddess's heart. She wretched back in pain, exploding into pure vermillion before compressing into a radiant orb of white which slowly descended to the now normal castrum floor. Out fell Yotsuyu.

I would write about how Clyde fell to the ground, unconscious, but uhh... in Trials and raids, if the victory battle is won, then Walking Dead wears off without you dying... which is something it does nowhere else after combat, afaik. At least ever since they altered it, I guess. I mean, it still sucks, but these super rare clutch moments do kind of give it a special place in my heart.

[shao32]

I haven't caught him directly comment on it.
What has he all said?

It was on the SHB event where some youtubers and streamers have been invited to try and review all the jobs changes before the expansion launch, Xenosys vex asked Yoship about living dead being what it is a black hole of resources and if they could change it, Yoship answer with living dead being a important part of DRK lore but they will look at it or somethig similar, i remember it specially bcs i was totally offended by that answer, i was like and the rest of the kit wasn't? the MP management,? dark arts? the whole Darkside stuff?
they destroyed DRK gameplay that did more to make DRK feel like his lore resemble it was and preserve the most annoying skill that have recived the biggest amount of complains that was specially against it.

[Burningskull]

Why not just remove invulns period and force people to do mechanics.

[Cabalabob]

Hmm... I'm with you. I can see the high risk they're going for. But I wonder what kind of high reward we could attach to an invuln? Especially one that wouldn't upset your healers if you're hitting your invuln to drop into living dead as often as possible.

As I said, the theory of living dead works, the basic premise is it’s the longest duration invuln with one of the shortest cooldowns but to balance that power it comes with a built in risk.

The premise behind living dead doesn’t need to change. It’s the execution that’s lacking. The longer duration is meaningless and can even be cancelled out and the risk is too great and out of the hands of the user.

Part of this is that living dead by design doesn’t mix with DRKs kit. It requires a full heal on a tank with very low self healing potential. Living dead as it is would work better (still not necessarily be good) on WAR or PLD who have the power to heal themselves effectively.

If I was to change things, I’d change DRK and GNB around. Make DRK the high cooldown invuln and GNB a low cooldown one. GNB’s superbolide would be a 15 second duration holmgang that lowers your HP to 1 on a 5 min cooldown, it’s straightforward and balanced against holmgang.

I’d change living dead to something like: Grants you a 100% HP shield for 10 seconds, if the shield is fully consumed grants walking dead which would be changed to 8 seconds of invulnerability. If the shield is not fully consumed the remaining shield is dealt to the DRK as damage. 6 min cooldown. All the elements are in tact, potentially the most powerful invuln, with a built in risk and a shorter cooldown than its peer (hallowed ground), with the added bonuses that control over the risk is placed entirely on the user and that it suits DRK’s identity better by sharing elements with TBN in being a shield that you want to consume.

[Lyth]

I wish I had a gil for every time a player in the forums claims that Living Dead is the longest duration invuln. The maximum effective duration of Living Dead is 9 seconds, and only when you couple it with Benediction. You die at 10 seconds. Holmgang gives you up to 8 seconds. Superbollide is a full 8 seconds. Hallowed Ground is a full 10 seconds. Living Dead is mediocre in all aspects of its design.

Living Dead doesn't need a penalty attached.

Why not just remove invulns period and force people to do mechanics.

This is actually the best solution, as it requires you to ration out your cooldowns and know how much damage each tankbuster hits for. A surprising number of players are against this idea, and I suspect that they would likely struggle to clear content on tanks if this was implemented. You get similar pushback if you suggest limitations be placed on instant cast rezzes. It's interesting how dependent FFXIV players are on these crutches, when compared to a game like Warcraft.

[Cabalabob]

I wish I had a gil for every time a player in the forums claims that Living Dead is the longest duration invuln. The maximum effective duration of Living Dead is 9 seconds, and only when you couple it with Benediction. You die at 10 seconds. Holmgang gives you up to 8 seconds. Superbollide is a full 8 seconds. Hallowed Ground is a full 10 seconds. Living Dead is mediocre in all aspects of its design.

As I said before, living dead gives you a free 10 second window to drop to 1hp, every second of walking dead is time you’ve been at 1hp, so while the maximum potential duration is 9 seconds when paired with a bene the maximum potential duration of all the other invulns is their duration minus the time you spent using it before the attack. Let’s best case scenario it and say you popped your invuln exactly 1 second before a tank buster, that’s still 1 second off your duration that wasn’t doing anything. Making holmgang and superbolide 7 seconds and hallowed 9 seconds and that is best case scenario, not even considering the animation delay or ping which makes it likely you’ll use it 2-3 seconds before the Buster.

[Lyth]

Hallowed Ground and Superbollide work for their complete duration, factoring out latency, reaction time, etc. which are going to be universal to all tank cooldowns. You might just be mitigating autos with them, but all incoming damage is negated for the entire duration. Holmagang can work for the complete duration, but you only actually mitigate damage when you're at 1 HP. The effective duration is going to be between 0 and 8 seconds, depending on latency, etc. What about healing? Well, you don't need to have any healing if there's no outgoing damage at the end of the 8 seconds. The boss could be animation locked for the next 15 seconds trying to cast a raidwide. You can stay at 1 HP for a bit, if you dare.

Living Dead operates on a similar principle to Holmgang, except that you must terminate early with healing. The latest you can cleanse this is 9 seconds, because you die when the timer reaches 0. So it's never going to reach 10 seconds, even before latency etc.

What about the fabled 10 seconds of auto-activation? That would be interesting if bosses surprised you with tankbusters and the timing was up in the air. But this game is completely scripted, and even the most grossly incompetent raid tanks knows that tankbuster 3 occurs at, say 7 minutes, 21 secconds, and 15 milliseconds after the initial pull. So what do we do with those 10 seconds? Same thing as any mitigation tool. We precast it to catch the tankbuster at the tail end of the cooldown, so that the recast timer activates earlier. You do the same thing with Hallowed if you're only using it to mitigate a single hit. Activate, say, 9 seconds earlier than you need it (based on your understanding of your own latency, reaction time, etc), effective recast is now 411 seconds.

So Living Dead universally has an effective recast of 291 seconds rather than the listed 300 seconds. Whoop-de-do.

[shao32]

Mmmm i agree that removing invulns will make us have some real mitigation management and spice things up in that department, it's ridiculous how basically all savage has been just superbolide half of the tank busters and the rest of the mitigation skills have to being used randomly to don't waste it despite i barely didn't need it at all.

But at the same time Invuls represent basically with the extra CD most tanks have the biggest diferences betwen mitigations kits and removing it would make feel more obvious that tanks are heavely homogenizated in that department, all tanks are basically rampart or sentinel + shelltron variant and that's it, WAR can play a bit more thanks to nascent flash and thill of battle allowing them to play around and have a more unique aproach to his mitigation department but they can fall in to that mold too with raw intuition and i personally hate that there is no real execution diference betwen tanks right now, and despite i consider invuls being removal being necesary, or desing encounters better over all to force players to use they defensive kits way more often im very worry that making all tanks the same still be a thing, we need more adjustments than just remove the invuls otherwise we are not progresing and we make a current problem more severe in my opinion.

[DaulBan]

I agree that removing Invulns probably isn't a bad idea.

That said, I think it could be used reasonably to distinguish different tanks. Like if GBR and PLD had them, while DRK and WAR didn't (excepting current tank balance) that might be reasonable if the former have weaker on-demand mitigation and the latter has much better on-demand mitigation. If your argument is that DRK has the best personal shield and WAR has the best personal healing, whereas PLD or GBR didn't (for whatever reason) it can be sensible.

That said, I'd prefer it if invulning things actually was more useful than just 'don't take damage'. Since so many effects now are 'on hit' as opposed to 'on damage' it's not like you can do anything too crazy. I also think having invuln 'checks' as a way of forcing people to do something else might work (chastening heat A12S) might not be a terrible idea. Like saying 'sure, you can pop this invuln for prog, but it's not going to help you three minutes later in the fight when you gotta do something insane'.

Again, all that said I'd prefer we had more tools we could use in more interesting ways with more damage coming in than the way it is now with a glut of tools (usually) and pretty minimal incoming tank damage.