TBN & WD probably wont be fundamentally changed (in 6.xx)

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

While I'm not going to respond to the snark, or defend things I never said; the point I was trying to convey is that the suggestions we keep getting from players in videos and forum posts are often not tweaks but wild, fundamental changes that would end up impacting way more than just the abilities they are discussing.

In this very forum there are suggestions for DRK changes that are "Simple" .. and have a table of contents followed by a novel.

Its fun to daydream and all, and we can call things superfluous and bad design all we want, but thats just an opinion.. we aren't devs and they didn't make it the way it is on accident.

Just saying, maybe think inside the box, and not rewrite the entire tooltip is all.

[Archwizard]

Just saying, maybe think inside the box, and not rewrite the entire tooltip is all.

Problem is, the only ability you listed here where pure number adjustments are possible to fix the skill's inherent flaws (or at least address player concerns) is maybe Oblation.

There is no variation of Living Dead where the numbers can be adjusted to make it more balanced. If you reduce the 100% HP requirement, healers will easily clear the "unkillable" component of the skill tied to such drawback. If you reduce the recast to compensate for its weaknesses, healers are taxed to deal with it more often. If you increase the duration, players will try to cheese with it by begging Pure Healers not to heal them quickly. Not to mention that either way, the healer presently has no way of knowing how much they need to continue healing, nor does it synergize with any of DRK's own skills unlike WAR and GNB's self-heals.

Likewise, albeit to a lesser extreme, with TBN: Any adjustment you make to it has to account for the Dark Arts interaction and the skills it affects, and how it impacts your effective damage output. If TBN's cost is reduced/removed (or even the duration is increased by any significant amount) and Dark Arts remains the same, the DRK is encouraged to waste TBN for more efficient damage output. If the effective barrier potency is increased, the difficulty of getting Dark Arts rises with it.

Even if you bump up the effective mitigation or duration of Oblation itself, you still have to deal with it being a double-weave with TBN to match the effectiveness of other on-demand skills.

There's a reason for the "novels" you complain so much about. If fixing DRK was as easy as just fudging some numbers, don't you think they would have done that already?

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

In this very forum there are suggestions for DRK changes that are "Simple" .. and have a table of contents followed by a novel.

Fundamentally, I do agree with part of your post. Far too many people think that its even in the realm of possibility the devs will do radical changes to DRK's job kit and how it operates before 7.0 and not just simple tweaks.
But at the same time, for an ability like Walking Dead that is so fundamentally broken and negative, it's very easy to radically change how the ability works and make it far more usable and player friendly without even adding or re-writing the tooltip:



Unless the backspace key is broken on every computer at Square Enix HQ, they can radically change WD into a usable ability by wiping out a single IF statement and nothing else. No thought or game design doctorate needed.

Otherwise, FortenightShade has pretty much all of my opinions summarized. Flavor is always welcome in a job's kit, but not at the detriment of its usability. They tried to be unique with Walking Dead in a simpler time of the game's lifespan, but content design and job balance has rendered Walking Dead an active hindrance rather than a benefit, and it has no place in today's FF14 design.

[Faafetai]

Fundamentally, I do agree with part of your post. Far too many people think that its even in the realm of possibility the devs will do radical changes to DRK's job kit and how it operates before 7.0 and not just simple tweaks.
But at the same time, for an ability like Walking Dead that is so fundamentally broken and negative, it's very easy to radically change how the ability works and make it far more usable and player friendly without even adding or re-writing the tooltip:



Unless the backspace key is broken on every computer at Square Enix HQ, they can radically change WD into a usable ability by wiping out a single IF statement and nothing else. No thought or game design doctorate needed.

Otherwise, FortenightShade has pretty much all of my opinions summarized. Flavor is always welcome in a job's kit, but not at the detriment of its usability. They tried to be unique with Walking Dead in a simpler time of the game's lifespan, but content design and job balance has rendered Walking Dead an active hindrance rather than a benefit, and it has no place in today's FF14 design.

I know many would not like this, but this is coming from someone who plays with a healer or I am the healer. Walking dead is fine when it is in that combination, yes it sucks it kills you but pulling it off in a pull is so satisfying and would be sad to see it go. Though this is not the optimal scenario for many players and I understand that is why it is disliked so much. If I were to fix it I would give that small boost for the drk to be able to heal out of it right now if you use it on a trash pull and use abyssal drain you are part of the way there. I am unsure what you could do but I think that would be kind of fun to figure out rather than taking those moments away from people who are synergizing well with their team mates. It is similar to holmgang and superbolide but with more of risk where they have options to heal themselves after their invulns giving healers time to react maybe give life steal on something other than your 1 2 3 rotation.

[Archwizard]

I know many would not like this, but this is coming from someone who plays with a healer or I am the healer. Walking dead is fine when it is in that combination, yes it sucks it kills you but pulling it off in a pull is so satisfying and would be sad to see it go.

Aaaand also speaking as someone who regularly heals, I fully disagree. Given that even in the best case scenario it does nothing better than Holmgang, the satisfaction of pulling it off isn't worth the sheer amount of terror and anxiety sparked when I see Walking Dead activate while I'm not prepared for it, when I don't have that same anxiety with WAR.

If it had some benefit to successfully healing it off -- like, "the target becomes invulnerable for the remaining duration and gains an additional bonus for X sec" if healed early -- then I could see the argument for rewarding team synergy. In such case we would still need a UI element and argue to reduce the healing requirement as not to leave healers who have actually been using their CDs until that point in the dust, but it would actually be a boon to seek out and coordinate with rather than just a penalty for failing to. Ample reward to justify taking a risk.

Because as now, it's a huge risk for equal or lesser value as other tanks get.

[Faafetai]

If it had some benefit to successfully healing it off -- like, "the target becomes invulnerable for the remaining duration and gains an additional bonus for X sec" if healed early -- then I could see the argument for rewarding team synergy. In such case we would still need a UI element and argue to reduce the healing requirement as not to leave healers who have actually been using their CDs until that point in the dust, but it would actually be a boon to seek out and coordinate with rather than just a penalty for failing to. Ample reward to justify taking a risk.
Because as now, it's a huge risk for equal or lesser value as other tanks get.

This is fair And depending on level and healer your playing it can be horrible. I was fumbling around in ala mihgo on scholar even with a heads up, I think a emergency tactics adloh and one lustrate cleared it off, but it was an already rough pull my first time healing that. I do enjoy level 50 dungeons talking it out with the tank and them giving me a heads up on white mage. "I am going to living dead" "Okay I have bene". I know though this is not the normal case scenario. Even been in the bad situations where I feel like all six of my lustrates at 50 were not enough I still have to do the math and see with server ticks because it can get freaking rough.

The times it is pulled off are great but the times it is not are not very fun. I do like those times, but if it means less times in full on panic I would be fine with it either being changed or give drk a way to sustain or heal out of it on their own. Holmgang you can heal yourself back up no problem most of the time especially after raw int you don't even need to worry about stressing the healer. I am torn on this because it is really fun, but the stress it does cause people is not fun.

The worst thing to come out of living dead would have to be the time snarky tank decided to tell the healers as if they were infants that they need to heal them out of walking dead when they were being sliced to bits in Niddhogg extreme. They had I think 5 stacks possibly 7 of the magic down vuln debuff thingy and were bene'd by both healers and still died because they yeeted their voke and shirk off their hotbars. You need to swap for that similar to many of the alex fights. I was the co-tank paladin just watching with disbelief while covering for their inability to voke or shirk by stealthily voking when I seen they had 4 stacks after my ad was killed sometime 3 I think it might have been. It was just a bad situation all together. Asked by a friend to run niddhogg extreme for the first to prog it with the drk throwing the entire wikipedia into chat at the start to begin with >.<

I think all together though it is fun to pull off when it happens, but it is unfair that drk is literally the only tank with this disadvantage, unsure if I mentioned that. There is a point where 'stream lining' is a good thing like say giving everyone a moment ability at the same time and the warrior change where your movement now no longer wastes beast gauge. It is similar to how I feel whm and astro's potencies and mana costs should be fixed to be more fair. It is like playing favorites randomly.

I like your idea and wish they would implement more synergies. I would like for it to be less punishing unsure if I mentioned this before sometimes I have more thoughts in my head than I can put into words and lose track. When I heal it usually 'shield healer' and healing living dead though at many levels it is trivial with a communicating tank via voice chat or hyper awareness sometimes that surprises me sometimes(though this is equaled out with many moments of derp on my part). It kind of just stinks more times than it is fun. Early levels whm and astro I feel have a better chance than sch or sage and I am talking 50 or prior. One button or two to solve over multiple buttons with precious time to spare as you see living dead is at 3 seconds now and you cast time will not save them.

It all reminds me of people being sad positionals are gone that made certain classes more 'skill based' but you have literally every boss spinning on a five second timer and there are not enough true norths in the world to rid anyone of the pain. I think the 'fun' is not worth the unfairness and bleh I feel sometimes know drk is done for and I wasted swift on something else. Usually adloh for the emergency adloh and it was not enough time! Server ticks also make me a bit salty about this and at first I was thinking maybe make the walking dead portion longer same with other cooldowns because you lose at least 3 seconds of most if not all cooldowns including invulns to server ticks.

[BlackLion3173]

snip

You've already seen what it's like to try to heal a Drk that has Living Dead go off. Let me also give you a little perspective from the other end.
Every time I activate Living Dead, I have to hope that my healer is able to get me to 100% of my hp before I die to my own ability. The worst part? I have NO way to contribute to my healing besides Soul Eater and maybe Abyssal Drain if I have it off CD. I feel like a damn burden on my healer(s) instead of being an asset.
After leveling up GNB and PLD with WAR close to being maxxed out, the difference between those tanks and DRK are like night and day. Those classes don't have to worry about their own invulns killing them at the end, and even if they did, their kits allow them to contribute to their own healing. This is a huge oversight on the dev's part, and the backlash exhibited could have been seen a mile away. Blood Weapon needs an adjustment, Living Dead needs a FULL REWORK/OVERHAUL, and no less. The rational part of me wants to believe that the devs will do right by us in Patch 6.1, but there's another part of me that thinks otherwise. If they are too resource strained(likely scenario) or too lazy(worst case), the bare minimum, like others have stated is to delete the damn healing requirement altogether. Let it go the way of the Kingdom of Voerburt: buried and forgotten. My expectations are below the ground right now. If the changes to LD are inadequate, being "descended upon in cloud of black smoke" will be the least of their worries.

[Faafetai]

You've already seen what it's like to try to heal a Drk that has Living Dead go off. Let me also give you a little perspective from the other end.
Every time I activate Living Dead, I have to hope that my healer is able to get me to 100% of my hp before I die to my own ability. The worst part? I have NO way to contribute to my healing besides Soul Eater and maybe Abyssal Drain if I have it off CD. I feel like a damn burden on my healer(s) instead of being an asset.
After leveling up GNB and PLD with WAR close to being maxxed out, the difference between those tanks and DRK are like night and day. Those classes don't have to worry about their own invulns killing them at the end, and even if they did, their kits allow them to contribute to their own healing. This is a huge oversight on the dev's part, and the backlash exhibited could have been seen a mile away. Blood Weapon needs an adjustment, Living Dead needs a FULL REWORK/OVERHAUL, and no less. The rational part of me wants to believe that the devs will do right by us in Patch 6.1, but there's another part of me that thinks otherwise. If they are too resource strained(likely scenario) or too lazy(worst case), the bare minimum, like others have stated is to delete the damn healing requirement altogether. Let it go the way of the Kingdom of Voerburt: buried and forgotten. My expectations are below the ground right now. If the changes to LD are inadequate, being "descended upon in cloud of black smoke" will be the least of their worries.

Aye, aye! I understand completely, I have not played dark knight as often after the 'nerf' but I do love dark knight. I don't know if I mentioned it but I want dark to have something, anything. Some life steal. Maybe un nerf abyssal drain?? That just made me angry I honestly stopped playing it as often. Why did they make it share a cooldown with carve and split? It was the one self sustain and they pretty much took it away unless you want to waste damage in single target situations. Before you could use it off global and it would give a small heal during boss fights and in pulls it is still pretty awesome sometimes, but that would be a first step in the right direction.

I don't really think its fair that it just kills you outright as a trade off for keeping you invulnerable for slightly longer than other invulns. I like the idea of it, it sounds cool, and is fun to pull off, but the down sides are just really not worth it. I am worried they are going to ruin dark knight with whatever back asward fix blood weapon, tbn, and living dead will get like whm 'fix' taking away thin air and now it has mana problems because they just didn't forsee these things being a problem. There are small simple things they could do to fix it, but clicking the backspace button or the copy paste keys on their special coding keyboards. I have this very sinking feeling they are going to make blood weapon a charge system, but will give it less charges than the amount you would have had if the just did the math with how many weapons skills you could use during its activation.

Someone else had a really cool idea for walking dead putting you into a stat of vampirism and you would take the enemies blood or something to heal. Someone else wrote something somewhere about it nuking everything in a radius. You would still die but nothing would be alive afterwards. I know those two things might not fix anything but I still thought they were pretty cool ideas if not off the wall.

I really don't like that it kills you and you have no way to heal from it or prevent your own death it is just kind of stupid. I can see why they made it that way, but the game doesn't support it, and I know many people who main dark knight I know hate that it kills you. It is unfair. They better not nerf its damage because they make it not kill you when they fix it....if they fix it properly.

[ASkellington]

snip

@Archwizard beat me to it but your highlights of LD fall completely short as healers have 0 way to know how much healing is enough to not kill a DRK.

There is 0 timer on it except when you toggle the DRK in question (so no timer on the party list).
There is 0 indication that you healed enough except WD's removal
And the above doesn't even help because healing 100% =/= equal max hp like say Doom does (because I have had WD live out its entire timer and the DRK didn't die so ????? explain that)

LD needs an overhaul not number tweaks.

I can't comment on Oblation or TBN as DRK has not been touched since the start of this expansion.

But I never saw how "great" TBN was while leveling my DRK it always felt meh to me and after playing with HoC from GNB this expansion I think I feel more justified in calling it "meh" still.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

LD fall completely short as healers have 0 way to know how much healing is enough to not kill a DRK.

There is 0 timer on it except when you toggle the DRK in question (so no timer on the party list).
There is 0 indication that you healed enough except WD's removal
And the above doesn't even help because healing 100% =/= equal max hp like say Doom does (because I have had WD live out its entire timer and the DRK didn't die so ????? explain that)

Yeah I agree I think this is the biggest issue with LD is the visibility into it, and it's strictly *HEAL* requirement.

I've had cases where I didn't even know it was active while healing and didn't quite make the 100% cause I got him pretty high up with shields. (I never saw his hp drop to 1. TB followed immediately by a stellar detonation or something)

Yeah it'd be simple to just turn it into a holmgang clone, but I think its kinda cool. Its saved me more times than it's killed me. While I think that mechanically it could be tweak to keep it's risk and reward, by tweaking numbers and letting shields count as well, it does feel half-baked, the UI does not convey to the players that "Hey.. your tank is still dead.. you are without a tank.. you are tankless.. and they are coming after you next, healer"

So I do think it *deserves* an overhaul, mostly UI, and I HOPE it does, do we really think they'd just give up and turn it into holmgang?
I for one don't think they will and I also hope they don't. I think it has the potential to be better and cooler than holmgang, but its definitely half-baked.

Edit: wanted to expand on this why I think it could be tweaked to be *better* than holmgang.
The whole point of risk and reward is that when executed properly, you are rewarded with something better that did not have any risk.
Now in theory, Holmgang is worse because it just gives you a window to both *bounce* back up to healthy levels, and LD has the *reward* of your *bounce* window not starting until you reach 1 hp.
A reward in theory alone, because the game UI does a very poor job of informing the players about wtf is going on. How much time is left, the fact that your tank is still technically dead, how much still needs to be healed.
In addition, the reward is still only theoretical because the 10 second bounce window could never truly be needed, or seen as an advantage, because of the necessity to heal 73,000 HP, they would almost certainly never reach 1 hp again during this window and still make the 100% requirement. In such a situation, they would probably die anyways immediately after cleansing the WD early, as has been pointed out.

So as I see it, the risk is VERY real, and the reward is only theoretical. And even in theory, it is flawed. They could just turn it into holmgang, sure, and that would be better I'm not in disagreeance. I just think risks and rewards are cool, and ideally WD could be made practically rewarding.
And I do honestly think that could be achieved by tweaking the numbers.

If you increase the duration, players will try to cheese with it by begging Pure Healers not to heal them quickly.

Well to me that sounds like a proper reward, for proper execution. (deservedly justified because of the risk of WD)
I'm mainly pld, and I'm about to use a dungeon example (which doesn't matter right raiders and Zenos?), but I use Hollowed Ground 2 or 3 times a typical dungeon depending on how much dps the dps do. I don't have to tell anybody about it. I don't have to coordinate with any healers that "Hey I'm gonna HG don't heal me", I don't drop to 1hp when I use it, I just use it and enjoy 10 seconds of no-downsides invulnerability.
The downside of HG is that its got the longest cooldown, so in theory I can't use it as often. In practice, it is by far and away my most used invul, because it requires zero coordination or communication.

And thats what I think LD & WD have the potential to be and SHOULD be, is require the most coordination, have a higher risk (which is already there), and be *rewarded* by being the most rewarding invul when executed well.
And I'm not saying that it is right now. It definitely isn't. What I'm saying is that it could be made to be more rewarding by tweaking number as it already is, and hopefully later on get a UI that actually communicates what is going on.

Edit 2: I used a dungeon example for how a longer (say, 15 second) WD could be exploited as the most rewarding invul by staying at 1hp , but a 15 second WD would also help a lot in raids for those who would use it for TB. That seems to be what everyone is concerned with, just the ability to eat a TB and move on. Well, 15 seconds .. ezpz