[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]

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.

[Atoli]

And honestly the animation is already really big , fire comes down from the sky and envelops you.

Lol, really? I didn't even know it HAD an animation. Not even when I play DRK myself, much less as the healer
PLD and WAR are both pretty obvious, but I never saw any animation for DRK even once. Only the buff/debuff icon, that's it.

I agree that it wouldn't help all that much because the problem with LD is exactly as described above with either never hitting Walking Dead because the healer cure spams you beforehand, or dying because I never got enough heals during Walking Dead.
And I have to admit, as a healer I find LD really hard to work with. I had it happen more than once that the DRK didn't actually drop to 1 HP before LD ended, and then dying immidiately after, because the buff ended right when the last monster GCD hit, kicking that 20-50 HP DRK into oblivion..

[Cynric]

Lol, really? I didn't even know it HAD an animation. Not even when I play DRK myself, much less as the healer
PLD and WAR are both pretty obvious, but I never saw any animation for DRK even once. Only the buff/debuff icon, that's it.

I agree that it wouldn't help all that much because the problem with LD is exactly as described above with either never hitting Walking Dead because the healer cure spams you beforehand, or dying because I never got enough heals during Walking Dead.
And I have to admit, as a healer I find LD really hard to work with. I had it happen more than once that the DRK didn't actually drop to 1 HP before LD ended, and then dying immidiately after, because the buff ended right when the last monster GCD hit, kicking that 20-50 HP DRK into oblivion..

Yeah you stick your sword into the ground, create a magic circle then fire comes down from the sky and sets your entire body on fire. It's a pretty big animation

@Eidolon : It works like this. Living Dead gives you 10 seconds to die. If you don't die nothing happens. If you do die you get Walking Dead which is somewhat similar to holmgang in the fact that your HP can't go past 1 but you can still take damage after being healed. If you try to get the entire 10 seconds of invulnerability (meaning you wait 10 seconds to be healed) you'll die. You can't actually get that entire 10 seconds. Also if you are healed to full then you won't die but you also lose the ability to keep your HP at 1.

Basically imagine if on Warrior you used Holmgang then the healer benedictions you and holmgang ends immediately. Or if you were a Paladin and used Hallowed ground and if someone uses benediction on you , you lose hallowed grounds effect.

[Lemuria]

Invulnerability comes at a cost.

Not if you're a Paladin! #shotsfired

[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

[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.