Suggestions for bringing DRK up to par, and QoL changes.

[SummerScorcher]

While all these suggestions to replace Living Dead sound nice, personally I really like how Living Dead works.

Aesthetic-wise, it's a very interesting system; you die, but have a chance to get your life back while your soulless body continues to fight until you either recover or it just tears apart. It's interesting, if you /gpose LD and pause the animation at the right frame you can see your (I assume) soul escaping your body before it takes too much damage. I'm curious how Living Dead works in lore, it says on the wiki that "aether is released from the body upon death and then disappears from the physical realm" Maybe it's already off to the other realm, but the spell (or ritual, whatever you'd call LD) prevents that from happening until your body just falls apart. Same thing for Holmgang lol, how's that even work? anyways, way off topic.

All I'd really love to see changed with the skill is the healing requirement lowered. 60-80% of your max HP healed instead of the full 100% would already be very good IMO.

[MoarLegion]

Idea for a possible Dark Passenger rework: 2400mp, reduces target's damage dealt by 10%, DA 15-20%. Since raid-wide mitigation seems to be the bandwagon, reducing the boss's damage is the same as putting a shield on people.

[Mycow8me]

If SE doesn't feel like giving dark dance back... Dark passenger could just be a mitigation skill that does damage against physical attacks cause that's what it currently is, albeit a very clunky one that doesn't do anything on bosses except damage. Something like a 5% drain spikes with dark dance's original duration and cooldown, only works on physical non ranged attacks. Something not meant to save you from a tank buster but increase sustain during downtimes and increase dps.

Edit: Just realized that it would not help as an off tank unless we could apply this to other people. We don't have any raid mitigation so another single target party member buff would atleast increase our off tank versatility a bit.

[inhaledcorn]

Its a lot simpler than that. "Walking dead heal to 100% requirement now includes shields". TBN now helps patch you up and would make it a little easier on the 'shield' healer if adlo/every other shield/etc also counted.

They could alternatively give TBN a self heal since DRK currently lacks one of those as well.

[Shurrikhan]

Dark Passenger: Revert to Heavensward values, rework the skill entirely, or remove it.
This is a particular bugbear for a lot of DRK players, because the reasoning for changing it from HW is largely incomprehensible. Reducing button bloat by making it useless is like trying to lose weight by cutting off a limb: You're lighter but now you're handicapped.

Technically, it'd be like trying to lose weight by paralyzing your limb, no? It still takes up the exact same space and weight regardless, even if you can now only use it to deadarm slap someone.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My own minimal changes suggestion, though these do little to solve our identity issues:

Background Change: Periodic and delayed damage now display a predictive indicators on their victims' health bars. This should help to visualize DoT damage already instilled on enemies and lingering damage to affected tanks.

1. Dark Passenger mana cost reduced from 1 DA (2400 at 70) to .75 DAs (1800 at 70). Even against a single target it is now only 4% less efficient than spending mana via Dark Arts on SS or SE.
2. The Blackest Night now generates up to 50 Blood based on the percent of the shield missing when its duration expires.
3. Bloodspiller potency increased from 400 to 440, and its DA potency from 540 to 580. Grit value removed. Instead, simply reads "Ignores the damage penalty inflicted by Grit."
4. Quietus potency increased from 160 to 300, and its DA potency from 210 to 440, but now deals 15% less damage to its second target, 30% less to the third, and 45% less to all remaining targets. This leaves its AoE potency unaffected, but boosts its effectiveness against low numbers of enemies.
5. Living Dead reworked.

   Living Dead — Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead. Living Dead Duration: 10s
   
   While under the effect of Walking Dead, all would-be fatal damage instead generates Death's Pact. Death's Pact deals and consumes one third of its stored value every server tick, dealing all remaining damage when Walking Dead ends. The damage stored by Death's Pact cannot cumulatively exceed 80% of the Dark Knight's maximum HP at any time; any damage in excess will be negated completely. Damage taken from Death's Pact may be further mitigated.

6. Dark Mind replaced with Dark Dance.

   Dark Dance — Duration - 10 seconds. 20% of all damage taken instead generates Death's Dance. Death's Dance deals and consumes one third of its stored value every server tick, dealing all remaining damage after 10 seconds of Dark Dance's activation. Dark Dance will end if the damage cumulatively stored by Death's Dance exceeds 50% of the Dark Knight's maximum HP at any time. Damage taken by Death's Dance may be further mitigated.

7. Shadow Wall reduced to a 120-second CD.
8. Grit now consumes only 1/3 the mana of DA, and consumes only a two-thirds of a GCD.

Compensatory Changes:

Warrior

• The cooldowns of Defiance and Deliverance now scale with one's GCD.
• Defiance now affects all healing received, not only healing received from spells. Equilibrium's Defiance healing has been reduced from 1200 to 1000 to compensate, amounting to an identical heal given the previous change.
• Raw Intuition now causes you to take reduced damage based on your Determination, and to have a chance each to take reduced damage based on your Direct Hit and Critical Strike.
• Enhanced Infuriate renamed to Primal Instinct, and now affects Raw Intuition as well.
• The potency of Inner Beast has been increased from 300 to 400 and of Steel Cyclone from 200 to 270, but neither remain immune to the damage penalty of Defiance. This indirectly increases the value of Unchained.

Paladin

• Shield Oath and Sword Oath no longer consume mana, and now each consume only two-thirds a GCD.
• Shelltron now guarantees that you will block all attacks until having blocked an amount of damage equal to 15% of your HP. The attack which depletes Shelltron will still be fully blocked.
• Divine Veil now activates immediately, and additionally reduces all damage taken by the affected party member by 5% while the barrier is active.

Notes:

• The idea behind the Living Dead and Dark Mind/Dance changes were to remove penalty from gearing in LD while introducing a new, consistent mechanic that would be unique to DRK while providing a universal mitigation form. Technically, Dark Dance does not in itself mitigate, but it does allow for Rampart and Shadow Wall to double dip, affecting both the original damage and then the periodic damage.
• The idea behind the Blackest Night and Bloodspiller changes are that at present, Dark Knight damage falls slightly short even in the best of situations; thus it seemed apt that I should target The Blackest Night's damage output and regularity thereof (by smoothing its Blood gains), via Bloodspiller, rather than attempting to tack on additional effects to TBN itself, or make it any less of a decision in its moments of use.

[Crater]

While all these suggestions to replace Living Dead sound nice, personally I really like how Living Dead works. [...]

I generally agree. I think all of the qualities of Living Dead are good, and wouldn't want to fundamentally change it. It's just somewhat undertuned compared to the overpoweringly strong qualities of the other invuln skills (3m cooldown, total invulnerability, both are pretty busted).

Personally though, I'm okay with the amount of healing required. What I would like to see, though, is for Walking Dead to last the full duration, instead of instantly getting cleansed once the healing requirement is satisfied (and maybe add a Doom effect that can disappear to let healers know when they're safe to stop healing). That way, you get the full length of the invuln, even if Benediction comes immediately.

I also don't think that it would be out of line for Walking Dead to have the duration bumped up from 10s to 15s.

[Eyvhokan]

Its a lot simpler than that. "Walking dead heal to 100% requirement now includes shields". TBN now helps patch you up and would make it a little easier on the 'shield' healer if adlo/every other shield/etc also counted.

That would be good. I actually do like Walking Dead right now but having a bit of patch up yourself, as well as making it more fair on SCH and Noct AST would do a lot to help.

[SummerScorcher]

Personally though, I'm okay with the amount of healing required. What I would like to see, though, is for Walking Dead to last the full duration, instead of instantly getting cleansed once the healing requirement is satisfied (and maybe add a Doom effect that can disappear to let healers know when they're safe to stop healing).
I also don't think that it would be out of line for Walking Dead to have the duration bumped up from 10s to 15s.

This is a nice idea, but I'd like to have one tweak to it; Alongside it being 15sec standard, instead of having the Doom effect, when fully healed just revert it back to Living Dead for the remainder of the WD duration, but the duration of the next Walking Dead is reduced by, say, 3 seconds. This change combined with some very coordinated and skillful healing/luck, would have the potential to give up to (20? my math skills lack lol. *many*) seconds of invulnerability. Very OP, but it'd be very high risk/very high reward.