[Suggestion: Dark Knight] How to make Living Dead more effective...easily!

[Cherie]

As I'm sure many people that play Dark Knight can attest, using Living Dead can be a hit or miss. How many times have you used it successfully, slain whatever beast only for you to fall over dead 10 seconds after (with nothing even around to hit you)?

Paladin's Hallowed Ground is very obvious. There is that big bubble shield animation and they take zero damage for duration.

Warrior's Holmgang has the cool chain animation and you can just sit there at one hp and as long as you get healed a little bit, you'll be great usually.

The problem comes in with Dark Knight hitting Living Dead. Once they receive the death blow, there is no obvious animation that "walking dead" is debuffing them. Most healers I've pugged with weren't even able to tell me the correct method to remove it or even knew it could be removed. Of course they just have to keep healing the Dark Knight until it goes away. The mechanic itself works fine. It's just not a very obvious debuff for the dire state it puts the player in.

My suggestion is simple: Make "walking dead" have a obvious animation. No need to change the mechanic itself, just have some kind of animation effect to show the Dark Knight is as good as dead without assistance. How about a animated Grim Reaper giving the dark knight a hug from behind? No? Perhaps some black wings, or a dark black spotlight with skeleton hands grabbing the dark knights feet from the ground to show that the dead are calling to them and going to take them to the underworld soon....etc

TL: DR: For "walking dead" lets get some big obvious animation that shows the dark knight is as good as dead without heals. Heck, even poison turns characters green sometimes.

[Cherie]

Also, I thought I should add, it would be helpful if Walking Dead left the player at "0" hp to give the healer a reason to try to heal them. That might be helpful too.

[DukeGr]

or just make it work like paladin's/warrior's skill and not KO you after 10 seconds.

[Katana190]

+1
While their at it give Devine Veil an animation when it successful shields the party, seems rather lazy, yeah it has a cool initial animation but its rather stale after that. :s

[Katana190]

or just make it work like paladin's/warrior's skill and not KO you after 10 seconds.

Invulnerability comes at a cost. Although they could maybe cool it with the whole 100% hp thing and lax it to like 50-75% I guess.

[Cynric]

The problem isn't the lack of an animation. I use a macro that shows my remaining HP and a sound effect to show I've used Living Dead with the name of the skill. That's pretty much enough notification, especially if spammed at 1HP.

The problem is that the skill has a long CD meant for 8~ seconds of invulnerability. However most situations with Living Dead either go one of three ways. Living Dead -> 1 HP ->Walking Dead -> Benediction/ Healer CD -> Only 1.5 seconds of Walking dead invulnerability. Or Living Dead -> 1 HP -> Walking Dead -> 10 seconds later -> die. Or my favorite one ->Living Dead -> HP Drops -> Benediction/healer CD/healer continues healing -> You never get walking dead.

The way Living Dead works in general is just bad. It requires more thought from the healer than any other Invulnerability cool down. If the coordination and thought between your healer and you aren't strong the CD can be completely wasted and most of the time it is completely wasted, only being useful for things like Holy Bladedance(sword oath) where there's almost no chance for you to not die(and i've seen a healer still manage to kill a DRK during Sword mode HB)

It's a bad skill, It has the potential to be a really good skill but that potential is hardly ever going to be seen in a realistic situation that doesn't involve a static group.

Making a bigger animation won't change anything. And honestly the animation is already really big , fire comes down from the sky and envelops you. It has more of a visual representation than hallowed ground or Holmgang honestly.

[Reynhart]

or a dark black spotlight with skeleton hands grabbing the dark knights feet from the ground to show that the dead are calling to them and going to take them to the underworld soon

There is that kind of animation for an attack by Bone Dragon in LotA.
They could reuse it for Walking Dead.

[FinalWolf]

You died because your healers didn't fully heal your maximum HP

[Kitano123]

If a healer doesnt know what LD is I dont think an animation is going to help, chances are they wont even see it mid fight and they still wouldnt know how to deal with it even if they did. Using a macro is probably the best option.

[Kabzy]

A macro is the way to go. Don't forget that a lot of people play the game with only their animations showing. It makes it easier to see AoEs and such when you don't have everyone being flashy. The icon is pretty obvious, and healers 'should' recognise it and heal accordingly, but yeah macros show that you at least made an effort to notify your healer regardless of the outcome.