Living Dead QoL buff

[MagiusNecros]

I mean if we want visuals why not have a black aura we have been clamoring for?

[Tankstuff]

It needs a shorter cd, im fine with the way it works even though its argueably the worst of the 3 invincibles, but that cd is ridiculous I get to use it once per log in

[347SPECTRE]

It has an absurd recast time and it outright kills you if you dont get healed enough, compared to a 6 second cannotdie spell and root for WAR, and a total BS 10 sec. total invuln for PLD.
Yep that seems totally fair and balanced to me.
/sarcasm

[Launched]

Living Dead doesn't need to be touched. It's pretty much the same duration as Hallowed Ground but only triggers when you would actually die instead of wasting a few seconds, and also has a 2m shorter cooldown. Like both other invincibility cooldowns it should be planned so the healing shouldn't be a problem. All 3 cooldowns have their advantages and disadvantages.

[TouchandFeel]

Living Dead doesn't need to be touched. It's pretty much the same duration as Hallowed Ground but only triggers when you would actually die instead of wasting a few seconds, and also has a 2m shorter cooldown. Like both other invincibility cooldowns it should be planned so the healing shouldn't be a problem. All 3 cooldowns have their advantages and disadvantages.

I disagree for the following reasons.

1) It has two stages to it, Living Dead and Walking Dead. This by itself is not too bad but the transition between them has little to no messaging asides from a change in icon on the status effect bar and the DRK's hp is stuck at 1. Since the timing of the heals for the second stage is dependent on the transition from stage 1 to 2, extra attention has to be payed to watch for this transition for the healer to properly time their heals to not go out too early or too late. It's an extra level of complexity that players have to overcome. Sure, it may not be a problem for statics that have a battle plan but it's still undeniably more convoluted than Holmgang or Hallowed.

2) It has a penalty built in where neither of the others do. Hallowed is straight forward, tank takes no damage. Holmgang requires some healing towards the end so the tank isn't stuck with low hp. If the WAR gets healed to full health, awesome. If not, no biggie as long as they have the health to survive until the next heal. Living Dead requires 100% total HP worth of heals or you die, no wiggle room.

So while Living Dead can perform in an ideal setting similarly to the others, it is just simply more complicated without enough benefit to compensate.

Essentially it is viable but not equitable.

Now, I will say that many of the proposals I have seen are a bit too much, but I firmly believe that at a minimum the messaging for the transition from Living Dead to Walking Dead needs to be improved and the penalty needs to be reigned in from the extreme of "You Die".

[SyzzleSpark]

Living Dead doesn't need to be touched. It's pretty much the same duration as Hallowed Ground but only triggers when you would actually die instead of wasting a few seconds, and also has a 2m shorter cooldown. Like both other invincibility cooldowns it should be planned so the healing shouldn't be a problem. All 3 cooldowns have their advantages and disadvantages.

It puts strain on your healers that the other tanks' do not. Yeah they have their disadvantages, but they're small potatoes compared to outright dying. Hallowed requires zero interaction on anybody's part, and Holmgang can easily be paired with one of WAR's self-heals to put you back in a safe-ish zone.

[Kelg]

Living Dead doesn't need to be touched. It's pretty much the same duration as Hallowed Ground but only triggers when you would actually die instead of wasting a few seconds, and also has a 2m shorter cooldown. Like both other invincibility cooldowns it should be planned so the healing shouldn't be a problem. All 3 cooldowns have their advantages and disadvantages.

Buffs aside, it needs a visual indicator. Not everyone plays with a static.

[Lyth]

Let's do a comparison.

Effect:
Hallowed always gives you a full 10 seconds, because it starts working immediately. You don't need to wait to hit 1 HP for it to mitigate damage. Living Dead gives you less than 10 seconds. The effect starts when you're at 1 HP, so you don't lose any duration at the start. The effect is terminated by your healer. You cannot gain a full 10 seconds because it takes time to remove the effect. Benediction, while instant, has a delay in activation, so you're probably gaining 9 seconds out of the effect at best. In addition, if you're using Benediction specifically to remove Living Dead, the reduction in Benediction's recast to 3 minutes down from five minutes means that you now waste two minutes on every recast by doing this. Using cast heal spells probably pushes that back by several seconds, and your healer can't predict when they meet the check. They'll probably err on too early rather than too late.

Holmgang gives you less than 6 seconds. You can potentially lose some of the duration initially if you activate too early, although if you're mitigating a tankbuster that hits for more than your HP total, the timing is fixed. You generally don't get the whole duration because your healer will start healing you before the effect expires, but you're probably gaining about the same active time as Living Dead.

Recast:
Holmgang is on a 3 minute recast. Hallowed Ground is on a 7 minute recast. You get double the uses of Holmgang because Hallowed has a stronger effect and duration. Living Dead is on a 5 minute recast. You almost never gain an additional use of Living Dead over Hallowed (this only happens if the fight is exactly 5-7 minutes or 12-14 minutes long, and the fight gives you opportunity to use your invincibility move on recast).

Overall, the duration of Living Dead is shorter, but not enough to allow you to gain additional uses over Hallowed. So why is Hallowed significantly more powerful? The effective duration on Holmgang is probably about the same as Living Dead, once you account for the healing requirement and the need to remove the debuff before the full duration. So why is it on nearly on half the recast without a death/healing penalty? Living Dead is presented as a "middle ground" between Hallowed and Holmgang. It is not. It is about equal in effectiveness to Holmgang, and has about the same number of uses per fight as Hallowed. It is a fusion of the disadvantages of both abilities, with an added penalty effect which forces your teammates to expend resources on you and cannot be used solo.

In short, it is not balanced. Just because the DRK community has been relatively stoic about it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be reworked to something more equitable.

[Kreyd]

If it stays hot it is, it totally should have a visual effect on the hp bars, cause thats what healers usually look at and a visual effect on the character model itself would be easily overlooked or negated by shut off effects anyway.

[MercureXI]

Only really need a long timer on the "Living Dead" status (20sec maybe ?) and a visual hint for healers to know they have to bring you to full HP.

Really weird they didn't redesign this skill for 4.0 ...