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

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

Yet when put to task about how that specifically can be done to defend your point

...

Numbers are your whole thesis.

I explained myself. If its 25% maybe its too easy, not advantageous on accident. If 100%, maybe (imo definitely) is too much. I don't give a serious number because I don't know, honestly I think that'd be best discovered through hours and hours and hours of playtesting the ability to find the right number. I know a great number between 1 and 100 exists, I just don't know it.
As for walking dead duration, well, the longer the more potential reward. I think 15 seconds is probably as much as anyone could hope king yoshi to consider.. but the longer the better.
You made a claim that no tweaking of numbers could justify the cost of risk of death, or burden on healers, I forget the exact quote. But its easy to see that isn't a reasonable claim. 300 second walking dead... well that was easy. Of course I'm being ridiculous! And why should I have to be held to serious chiseled-in-stone numbers when you claim something as absolute as "No number adjustment can remove that burden."?
Yes it can! (But to be honest I don't think that it should *remove* the burden)
You have to heal the drk anyways. Lengthening WD, lowering threshold, and letting shields count can dramatically lighten the burden especially considering that drk can do 25% of it. Thats all I was trying to say.

The healer and tank synergies are a thing yeah. Should everything be compared to the marriage made in heaven that is sage and warrior?
Shield tankers do better with regen healers, self-healing tanks do better with barrier healers. Its a thing, yeah. It effects a hell of a lot more than walking dead though.
Sage and drk are just a match made in hell

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

They literally mentioned in LL68 that LD is getting adjusted in 6.1. That's what all the hype about it the last few weeks has been about.

Oh! Well thats good news, did not know that.

Well then I suspect they will probably do exactly what I'm thinking they will and not turn it into holmgang. I think that second bold part is probably referring to Jump?
Jump is really frustrating when on the move not just the jump animation it returns you to where you were.

[Archwizard]

And why should I have to be held to serious chiseled-in-stone numbers when you claim something as absolute as "No number adjustment can remove that burden."?

Because even in the exaggerated example you're giving, the burden still exists. It's just stretched out to the point of virtual irrelevance, no longer a challenge to deal with, but still requires someone to tediously keep an eye on the timer so the DRK doesn't spontaneously drop dead mid-pull.

So unless that number is "zero percent", another absolute to cancel it, my absolute claim is still true.

(But to be honest I don't think that it should *remove* the burden)

And if that had been the point of your thread from the very beginning, this would be a different and perhaps even valid discussion.
The issue is that you're saying "I think a hypothetical reality exists where this works," and the people who have experience playing as or healing DRK are gauging it against their experience to tell you "Uh, not so much. Even if you tweaked the numbers toward X value, we would still hate it, either casually or in competitive play."

Just because something can be underpowered or overpowered with slight tweaks or changes in phrasing, does not mean there is a happy medium. Binary states can exist in game design, especially when the issue is using Instant Death as a penalty, even on a skill that gives you god-mode. (That is what we call "Awesome, but Impractical.")

Don't get me wrong, there are suggested alternate versions of Living Dead where healing still matters. My personal go-to suggestion is turning LD into a %HP-based DoT -- something that can be mitigated by TBN and even trigger its Dark Arts interaction -- which can't kill you by itself and gives you damage immunity otherwise. You'd still want healing for when you come out of LD much like Bolide, but you aren't "100% Alive or Dead" depending on the experience of your healer just because you pushed a button.
Another option is having it trigger some type of Stored Damage effect instead, so that you absorb all incoming damage for 10 sec but get dealt some capped portion of it when it ends, like a reverse Macrocosmos, encouraging the healer to do what they can to top you off before it breaks -- similar in essence to what we have now but easier to gauge -- and again, allowing you to mitigate the worst of it with TBN. (Synergy! We love it, we need it! We gaze upon Holm+BW and Bolide+HoC with emerald eyes!)
Hell, even with extremely minimal adjustment to the current LD's functions, all you would need to do is put the Doom clock on a separate debuff from the Holmgang effect, and then you could tune that healing ratio separately to a happy medium. (It would still be an objectively worse Holmgang, but at least you would guarantee 10 seconds of effect with it, which is really the bare minimum we're asking for any adjustment to it.)

If your conceit is you want DRK to have a balanced immune skill with a risk factor to it, there are potential options for that -- and we can compare that to WAR or GNB's own to know this for certain.
DRK's existing one is just a poor implementation, in large part because of the number of supports it demands (notably indicators and UI updates), but never received in the last... 7 years?

Another element to consider is that ability adjustments don't exist in a vacuum. Part of the issue is that having a healing-based burden on a job with minimal internal healing is anti-synergistic. We see healing-based burdens on WAR and GNB too, but they can actually put up with it independently.
If DRK (as implemented) and PLD traded their immunes, PLDs would complain about the downgrade, but at least both parties could control theirs effectively due to their own kits -- PLD because worst case scenario they can Stop-Drop-and-Clemency towards the end themselves so the healer isn't hung out to dry, DRK because of not needing to shore up its chances of survival with its own non-existent healing.
(Of course, then prog comps might stop using PLDs altogether because their immune is always a damage penalty, unless PLD contributed enough bonus RDPS to make up for it. Not a vacuum.)

[NightHour]

Why does DRK have to spend a third of their MP to apply Dark Arts when Warrior's can apply Storm's Eye (their version of Dark Arts) by simply doing their 1 2 3 combo?

Why is DRK's AOE combo labeled as "Spell"?

Why is Dark Missionary unlocked at 76 when all other tanks get their raid wides at 70?

Why is Enhanced Unmend a thing?

Why is Blood Weapon as bad as it is?

Why is Living Dead punishing healers when invulns are meant to preserve resources, specifically healer resources?

Why does TBN still cost MP when other tanks have similarly powerful or stronger abilities that are free?

Why does DRK have to wait until 72 to have it's AoE combo when other tanks get theirs long before that?



So many Why's about Dark Knight atm.

[Archwizard]

Why does DRK have to spend a third of their MP to apply Dark Arts when Warrior's can apply Storm's Eye (their version of Dark Arts) by simply doing their 1 2 3 combo?

Why is DRK's AOE combo labeled as "Spell"?

Why is Dark Missionary unlocked at 76 when all other tanks get their raid wides at 70?

Why is Enhanced Unmend a thing?

Why is Blood Weapon as bad as it is?

Why is Living Dead punishing healers when invulns are meant to preserve resources, specifically healer resources?

Why does TBN still cost MP when other tanks have similarly powerful or stronger abilities that are free?

Why does DRK have to wait until 72 to have it's AoE combo when other tanks get theirs long before that?



So many Why's about Dark Knight atm.

Some of these I can accept to a degree. For instance, having an MP spender as something to differentiate DRK from WAR, or even the delay on getting Dark Missionary since the leveling schemes for tanks aren't necessarily lockstep, nor is Dark Missionary vital to the job's performance.

Getting its on-demand at level 70 (where WAR and PLD get theirs before level 60 and it's bad enough that GNB gets theirs at 68), and its second AoE at level 72 (when all other tanks have it by level 40) on the other hand? Those delays are harder to justify.
Granted, part of that is because the job initially had skills that filled those positions in Heavensward but were trimmed in Stormblood and Shadowbringers, but the fact that the devs chose to put their replacements up as "new, high level skills" instead of retroactive ones is confusing (and painful for synched content).

Incidentally, THOSE would be something that could be resolved with simple number changes... on the level requirement.

[Imoye]

So many Why's about Dark Knight atm.

DRK is a hackjob and got absolutely zero love in Endwalker. The devs spent 5 minutes tops on rolling a dice when deciding what to keep and what to remove. There is no coherent design philosophy behind current DRK. Large parts of the kit make zero sense both thematically and functionally.

If you're looking for a reason, you won't find any. Reason implies some sense of logic behind the design choices, but to me it's pretty clear they rolled a dice, slapped something together. and gave themselves a pat on the back.

[Archwizard]

While I understand being upset, dev-bashing and hyperbole help nobody. However deserved or not, feedback fails if the people it's directed towards wouldn't want to listen to it.

It's also just hard to engage with. The only upshot of that kind of talk is getting derailed by more of it.

[Imoye]

While I understand being upset, dev-bashing and hyperbole help nobody. However deserved or not, feedback fails if the people it's directed towards wouldn't want to listen to it.

It's also just hard to engage with. The only upshot of that kind of talk is getting derailed by more of it.

Nah, all the feedback has been given. They cheaped out big time on DRK and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out. If there is a reason for this then they should be transparent about it.

I'm going with the dice theory.

[Lyth]

Being able to objectively evaluate feedback is just basic professionalism. Why would you ever want to spite the people whom you are designing a game for?

The reason why people escalate their comments over time is because there's no response to them. In Blizzard's heyday, the likes of Ghostcrawler would post directly on the class forums, talk about job direction and balance changes, and even debate with the users. You really had the sense as a player that there was a specific person in charge of your class design, even if you were frustrated with their decisions or the viability of your favorite spec. That's level of personal interaction is not really practical in any game at the moment because you don't want to set false expectations and the flow of information ends up being very centralized. At the same time, there's this widespread player perception in FFXIV that there are four people managing the design of nearly twenty jobs, and that understandably makes players worried. Correcting that image should be a priority.

I don't think that the dev team needs to have Yoshi-p conduct a press release every time they want to discuss a job. They have dedicated Twitch and Youtube channels with a Community Team. If they just did a really short Dark Knight or even a Tank show to discuss the dev team's views on direction every few months and field a few quick questions, interested players would tune into it or watch the VOD to see what's up, rather than sitting through a 4+ hour session every six months to possibly hear one point mentioned about their job. And it looks seriously exhausting to conduct those marathon sessions as well.

[Oextra]

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.

Big facts right here. This one massively easy change would fix the skill and put it on the relatively same level as the other invulns.