Living Dead

[AppleJinx]

Living dead can also potentially last near full 20 seconds long if used correctly so just think about the combined healer gcd gains during that time.

[Chrono_Rising]

Its really not 20 seconds of no healer attention, especially if you don't have a white mage. The first 10 seconds: If your healer knows you are going to holmgang or hallowed, there is no point to healing those classes before activation either, let regens work on Hallowed, and the Warrior HP is going to be dropped anyway so why not let them drop in the time before the buster? My point is the Living Dead time really shouldn't be counted as unique "invulnerability time" the others just don't have this safety net of automatically popping at the appropriate time. The 10 seconds in walking dead could be 10 seconds if you have a white mage, but if you don't, or they don't have benediction ready, you will need heals starting at least 3 seconds before the timers pops from both healers + an oGCD, so we are looking at more like 7 seconds of no healer attention.

The big issue in my mind is that Living/Walking dead have numerous weaknesses without great benefit. I can give a few personal experience stories of how I've been killed by living dead, all because people didn't understand how it worked/random chance of fairy healing. And this was in a static context with voice and multiple explanations. For massive hits it isn't an issue, for smaller frequent hits you can take a stray shield and fairy heal (or regen ticks by accident) and not die then your living dead timers runs out and you die to an auto attack, the benefit of autopopping means you don't have control over this potential weakness.

Living dead's strength as compared to holmgang is its duration for taking multiple hits/prolonged hits. This also comes with weaknesses. Iirc, A12S had the holy scourge attack into chastising heat needed early healing to lift living dead in time if you didn't have a white mage, a random two crit heals and LD status lifted, but busters continued resulting in death. More recently o8s has chained tank busters one of which applies a bleed, the less mitigated you are the more damage the bleed does. The bleed unmitigated does around 8000 damage a tick over 21 seconds, meaning you will need healer attention to remove your walking dead status, and you will need healer attention afterwards because you took the full bleed.

Compare this to holmgang's weakness of rooting, which becomes a strength when you don't want to be moved. Holmgang also shares a recast with benediction, which indirectly helps both as it is much more natural to line these two abilities up. Holmgang also shares a synergy with paladin's cover. There are multiple places where you can cover your warrior to give them addition time to be healed up after holmgang is used giving additional time for regens to restore their HP. This list of synergies and weakness is clearly skewed in one direction, these skills really are not balanced.

[Mycow8me]

Living dead can also potentially last near full 20 seconds long if used correctly so just think about the combined healer gcd gains during that time.

... ... what? This post along with many others just goes to show how much ppl struggle to understand the problems this skill has and how many ppl understand how it works.

[AppleJinx]

Please do share how you think this skill works.

[Saeno]

Living dead can also potentially last near full 20 seconds long if used correctly so just think about the combined healer gcd gains during that time.

The initial 10 seconds on the Living dead buff itself is completely irrelevant, so no, it's not a 20 second long invul. You are not immune because of Living Dead, you are immune because of Walking dead. It's true that Walking dead lasts the longest of all tank invuls since it activates after you die because the debuff is applied after the tank killing damage happens, giving an extra second over Hallowed and that aspect should be maximized within any raid that takes a DRK, but the Living dead buff itself is not an invul.

EDIT: I mention that raids should maximize Walking dead duration but in reality, your walking dead debuff stops being effective the moment the healers decide to heal you. You need to be healed while Living dead is active and you still take damage during that time, so if the healers wait until the last second to heal Walking dead, then that means you need to be healed all the way within one second, which is extremely risky unless benediction is saved. If the healers decide to heal you at 4 seconds left on your buff since they have no oGCD heals available, then any damage you take during that time is damage taken into your HP, meaning the healers still need to heal which then also means your Walking dead served an effective 5-6 seconds instead of the 9-9.9 seconds.