How many more times must our Living Dead get griefed?

[AnjouMaaka]

Healers aren't out to grief us when we use LD, they're trying to keep us alive and they're reacting because our health got that low to begin with. Get over your victim complex.

Completely out of context. If I had a victim complex, I wouldn't be bringing a major problem forward to the light of day. I would also not be the only dark knight I've seen have trouble getting healed in dungeons. I am speaking for not only myself, but all those I've seen die of cringe because the healer couldn't handle 2 mob packs in a dungeon. The healer's skill issue is not my problem. If they can't do the bare minimum requirement of the job they signed up for, they shouldn't be playing the job. That is a harsh truth of it. They are choosing to risk griefing a dark knight by solo queuing into dungeons as a healer with no knowledge of how to heal. They could look up a guide on youtube, but instead, they can't put aside their pride and admit to themselves that they don't know what they are doing. And if you so much as try to help them learn, they don't want your advice. You want to know why I don't speak via the in-game chat, there you go. They will literally report you for harassment when all you are doing is trying to help. That's a major problem that only adds to the negativity of the dark knight dungeon experience.

[Tigore]

The Raw Intuition is probably one suggestion I don't really agree with. Mostly because we are talking about DRK getting the buffs really. I get WAR is the most absurd with Raw Intuition upgrading to Bloodwhetting, but PLD and GNB actually do pretty good on self sustain compared to their damage contributions. Those 2 don't really need a generalized Raw Intuition last I know of.

TBN admittedly doesn't bump much heads with 3 of the 4 healers. It's mostly with WHMs it has issues with since the Holy stuns translate to the shield not getting broken for Dark Arts. TBN also has a somewhat negative scaling issue with higher ilvl for Savage raiders possibly not being able to break the shield on 4 man expert roulette runs. Even though this may make the ability easier, one possibility is to extend the 7s buff timer a little longer to maybe 10s. Another avenue could be reducing the threshold of the shield breaking to being around 1/2 to 3/4 of the shield used to proc Dark Arts.

Living Dead is pretty powerful when you get to use the self-heals, but you gotta admit that the ability goes against what all 4 healers normally try to do. Even with WHM having a lot of instant cast heals, it still involves using some of them around 30 - 80% of the tank's health rather than 1HP. If Living Dead doesn't proc the "dying" effect, it ends up being a wasted longer cooldown Holmgang so to speak. This is why a heal shutdown effect with a 20 - 50% consolation "excog" heal from "not dying" is suggested.

As for the healer issue, I am mostly suggesting maybe a couple more buttons for the damage fillers to reduce the Glare spam a bit. Not remove it entirely, but reduce. Since over gearing the content will always result in less healing and more DPS uptime. Some of the other healers recommended something akin to a 15 - 30s cooldown. It would require consolidating some buttons together to make space like Cure 1 with Cure 2 as an example.

I haven't really tanked the 90 - 100 dungeons though, so I don't know how prevalent the healing issue is compared to what Anjou says. My Savage DRK friend raider confirms that it does happen sometimes. I was a bit confused that I was regarded as outside the norm a bit for still using healing cooldowns.

[Zairava]

Oh no, what are you going to do because of someone trying to speak on behalf of all dark knights?

You're the one here rambling about healers healing through living dead which is a complete non-issue and can be resolved by literally just communicating it to them if they are unaware. A simple "Hey, if you didn't know already I need to "die" for living dead to activate, it's Dark Knight's invuln" will suffice.

Congrats on being on of the lucky few dark knight mains who hardly sees the problems I've witnessed with my own eyes. That doesn't make my experience any less true. Square Enix's track record is one of homogenization, which I'm all in on. I want more of it. The simpler the job is, the easier it is to pay attention to the boss mechanics. It's that simple. The stopping point on homogenization would be the level of simplicity that is warrior. Giving all tanks Raw Intuition does not make them overpowered. Raw Intuition is a 25s cooldown that lasts for 8s. You are still going to need something else during the other 17s of that cooldown. Raw Intuition by itself is a perfectly balanced ability. It should be on all tanks. Surprisingly enough, there are still warriors out there that don't even know they have Raw Intuition. I see healers complain about it a lot in Limsa shout chat.

For every one person like you there's a growing population of people who are sick of the homogenization and simplifications. We're already homogenized enough. If you got your way why even bother having different jobs at that point?

Raw intuition/Bloodwhetting is only balanced in 8-man settings. It being balanced in dungeon content would be that one heal per gcd was enforced or it reverts back to a portion of damage dealt like its Shadowbringers counterpart.

If Warriors can't even learn an ability that appears on their hotbar when they unlock it then making it a role actions would help exactly 0% because they had no intentions on recognizing its existence without an outside source telling them it did anyway. You're making every other tank more braindead because of a minority of players

The other two tanks have gameplay that, to me, feels convoluted and obnoxious to play. I can play them effectively in normal content, but that's where my skill level ends with gunbreaker and paladin.

and that's fine? You recognize your skill level and where it ends, you don't need to bring everyone else down to your level. You don't see me demanding healers be even more lobotomized because I won't take them into anything but casual content you queue for.

I shouldn't have to unlock Bozja and do that to level an alt just because of how bad the dungeon experience is for the dark knight.

This is a skill issue, genuinely. You don't need to like hearing that but it is. Dark Knight performs well in dungeons, its sustain hardly even needs buffing. At most un-linking C&S and bringing AD down to a 30s CD would do the trick.

The healers would still have their gameplay. Plenty of "bad tanks" in the duty finder for their solo queue. The job balance is designed around raids. The dungeon experience for dark knight is honestly a worse problem than healers not having anything to heal, and deserves far more attention.

what gameplay? spamming a single damage spell? lmao

also you seriously believe the non-issue on one tank warrants is worse and warrants more attention than an entire role be completely invalidated in content most of the playerbase is going to interact with? Yikes

The healer's skill issue is not my problem. If they can't do the bare minimum requirement of the job they signed up for, they shouldn't be playing the job. That is a harsh truth of it. They are choosing to risk griefing a dark knight by solo queuing into dungeons as a healer with no knowledge of how to heal.

Yeah, and I agree if they refuse to do the bare minimum of their job they shouldn't be playing it. However...this does not apply to the healers genuinely trying to keep you alive. They are doing the bare minimum of their job if they're healing you whether or not they let LD pop. The sole reason I don't have Living Dead macro'd to let the healer know I'm under LD is because of clipping. And even then...a better solution would be to just implement an indicator or an aura when Living Dead is active, upon activation. Like the flames that spur out around you but instead they persist, even when the healer has the animation filter on limited.

They could look up a guide on youtube, but instead, they can't put aside their pride and admit to themselves that they don't know what they are doing. And if you so much as try to help them learn, they don't want your advice. You want to know why I don't speak via the in-game chat, there you go. They will literally report you for harassment when all you are doing is trying to help. That's a major problem that only adds to the negativity of the dark knight dungeon experience.

While I have heard from others this has happened, very, very few of them were about DRK. In the time I've been playing not once have I interacted with a healer who acted toxic when I politely explained LD. And the amount of encounters I've had to actually do so is a small amount.

[Zairava]

The Raw Intuition is probably one suggestion I don't really agree with. Mostly because we are talking about DRK getting the buffs really. I get WAR is the most absurd with Raw Intuition upgrading to Bloodwhetting, but PLD and GNB actually do pretty good on self sustain compared to their damage contributions. Those 2 don't really need a generalized Raw Intuition last I know of.

All DRK really needs is a reduced CD on Abyssal Drain or give it a MP cost so you can choose between whether you need the healing or the damage.

TBN admittedly doesn't bump much heads with 3 of the 4 healers. It's mostly with WHMs it has issues with since the Holy stuns translate to the shield not getting broken for Dark Arts. TBN also has a somewhat negative scaling issue with higher ilvl for Savage raiders possibly not being able to break the shield on 4 man expert roulette runs. Even though this may make the ability easier, one possibility is to extend the 7s buff timer a little longer to maybe 10s. Another avenue could be reducing the threshold of the shield breaking to being around 1/2 to 3/4 of the shield used to proc Dark Arts.

This can be mitigated by timing TBN a second or two before the stun wears off since it's likely the server ticks will make enough of them auto you to break it, but if you want to play it safe you can just wait until they're third stun and then hit TBN.

Yeah TBN's "issue" is it gets stronger as our IL goes up, so it gets harder to break. In raids it may mean you just simply not use another CD with TBN, but dungeons in mob packs it can become problematic if there's only a few still alive. That's usually when you'd start only using TBN or exlusively pair it with oblation in mob packs if they're dying too fast or do too little damage for your TBN to break. Later on even tankbusters might not do enough if you pair it with other cd's.

Living Dead is pretty powerful when you get to use the self-heals, but you gotta admit that the ability goes against what all 4 healers normally try to do. Even with WHM having a lot of instant cast heals, it still involves using some of them around 30 - 80% of the tank's health rather than 1HP. If Living Dead doesn't proc the "dying" effect, it ends up being a wasted longer cooldown Holmgang so to speak. This is why a heal shutdown effect with a 20 - 50% consolation "excog" heal from "not dying" is suggested.

I haven't really tanked the 90 - 100 dungeons though, so I don't know how prevalent the healing issue is compared to what Anjou says. My Savage DRK friend raider confirms that it does happen sometimes. I was a bit confused that I was regarded as outside the norm a bit for still using healing cooldowns.

It can get close sometimes, yeah, but I've only died maybe once or twice in the dungeons on DRK, even going through the dungeons during early access. I reserve Living Dead exclusively for when I know I'm about to die and time it that way

[AnjouMaaka]

My Savage DRK friend raider confirms that it does happen sometimes. I was a bit confused that I was regarded as outside the norm a bit for still using healing cooldowns.

I don't know who has come after you saying that we don't want you to use your cooldowns cause we definitely want those healing cooldowns, preferably before we are at 50% HP. I would love to see more healers like you around. Please don't stop being a beacon of hope.

I respect your decision to disagree with the raw intuition suggestion. Would be great if dark knight wasn't in a situation where it's in desperate need of some self sustain.

You hit the nail on the head with some of the problems that exist with TBN.

Shadowed Vigil is great for the first 3 dungeons of Dawntrail, barely does enough in the 4th dungeon. In the 5th dungeon, the excog effect is almost useless. Dark knight definitely needs more than this. Even in raids, the lack of self sustain is definitely noticeable, to a lesser degree.

[Zairava]

Even in raids, the lack of self sustain is definitely noticeable, to a lesser degree.

Can't say I agree with this either. It doesn't really feel that much different than it did in ShB or EW. I don't ever find myself needing that much healing because our defense is so powerful compared to Warrior who is the most reliant on self-healing by far. TBN is at its absolute strongest in raid content and the only real thing that feels different is that there's more physical damage this tier so Dark Mind isn't used as much as it could be. Same goes for Dark Missionary

[AnjouMaaka]

Can't say I agree with this either. It doesn't really feel that much different than it did in ShB or EW. I don't ever find myself needing that much healing because our defense is so powerful compared to Warrior who is the most reliant on self-healing by far. TBN is at its absolute strongest in raid content and the only real thing that feels different is that there's more physical damage this tier so Dark Mind isn't used as much as it could be. Same goes for Dark Missionary

If you want to bring Dark Mind and Dark Missionary into the equation, then let's go there too. Both are completely useless in dungeons. Can probably count on one hand the number of dungeon mobs in the game that deal magic autos. Dark Missionary is at least better than Dark Mind in that it's a party mit, but that it's still only really useful in raids and trials because of it being magic-only. That's 2 cooldowns we can't even use in a wall to wall pull.

[Tigore]

I didn't mean to say I was strong armed to not use cooldowns. What I meant to say is I was surprised that even a Savage raider friend is mentioning some troubles on a few dungeons with other healers. I would have thought the use of Afflatus Solace / Rapture with Tetragrammaton for WHM would be more known, but maybe not? Since it is a core mechanic for that juicy Afflatus Misery AoE hit. Then we have Asylum and Temperance wings. From last expansion, I did notice some WHMs never use Holy stuns as well.

The Abyssal Drain approach to increasing self sustain does sound interesting for AoE. I do admit using it on some FATEs helps a lot. Currently it is a shared 60s cooldown with Carve and Spit, so maybe a 45s cooldown? It would consequently also increase DPS a bit of course with the increased mana gains. Once I got Shadowed Vigil, the "excog" effect kept me going pretty well too. Although the enemies hit hard enough to chip down the HP, but not hard enough to completely break the TBN shield (652 ilvl from Endwalker tome gear). I still use the shield to survive, but my Darkside timer or mana pool will definitely suffer for it.

[Zairava]

If you want to bring Dark Mind and Dark Missionary into the equation, then let's go there too. Both are completely useless in dungeons. Can probably count on one hand the number of dungeon mobs in the game that deal magic autos. Dark Missionary is at least better than Dark Mind in that it's a party mit, but that it's still only really useful in raids and trials because of it being magic-only. That's 2 cooldowns we can't even use in a wall to wall pull.

I just think Dark Mind and Missionary could use a bonus 10% and 5% phys mit respectively and that would be enough.

From last expansion, I did notice some WHMs never use Holy stuns as well.

I've noticed this more in Dawntrail than any prior expansion. I chalk this up to being a "them" issue and not reading the tooltip or just way too focused on healing to use Holy for what's essentially 10 seconds of low to no damage intake.

The Abyssal Drain approach to increasing self sustain does sound interesting for AoE. I do admit using it on some FATEs helps a lot. Currently it is a shared 60s cooldown with Carve and Spit, so maybe a 45s cooldown? It would consequently also increase DPS a bit of course with the increased mana gains. Once I got Shadowed Vigil, the "excog" effect kept me going pretty well too. Although the enemies hit hard enough to chip down the HP, but not hard enough to completely break the TBN shield (652 ilvl from Endwalker tome gear). I still use the shield to survive, but my Darkside timer or mana pool will definitely suffer for it.

30s would be better since you'd have it more often and have another ability to use when not bursting, which would be a definitive improvement, if slight. Unpairing from C&S would also be nice so we have another ogcd to use which would make up for one of the two lost when they removed Plunge

If you're on the last couple mobs you generally shouldn't need TBN to survive since the healer can easily heal you through that damage intake. I mean, unless they're about to literally let you die with 2 to 3 mobs then yeah maybe TBN. Oblation and reprisal are both there if you don't need a lot of mit but want something on a shorter CD. I don't worry about the MP too much after they die since it recovers way faster outside of combat. If there's still a majority of them still alive TBN popping shouldn't be an issue unless you used it during the initial holy spam

[Tigore]

30s could work too for Abyssal Drain having the same cure potency as long as the mana gains and damage done is adjusted accordingly ... unless we need that much of a buff from it of course. Un-pairing it from Carve and Spit I find to be doubtful to happen, but I wouldn't say no if Square found a way for it to work. The added physical mitigation for Dark Mind and Dark Missionary paired with the proposed Abyssal Drain buff could be enough to address the self sustain needed.

I think a few other players have graphed out the Savage damage to mostly be fine for DRK now. They are hitting the #2 place for tank DPS I believe now. Although it's just 1 day, so we will have to see averages from more players rather than just first day clears.