DRK's Over-reliance on WHM: Are we Dead or Alive?

[HyperiusUltima]

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but the elephant in the room needs to be addressed soon.

Living Dead is a liability, not a Cooldown.

People have said it time and again about how this skill throws healers for a loop unless you have a WHM, but back then both SCH and AST had the tools and abilities to overcome this liability in both a raid setting and in a dungeon setting.

Now, in a dungeon setting, DRK has to hope he gets a WHM or else he can't use Living Dead due to the new HP increases they forced on Tanks this expansion to adjust for their new design for Healers. Living Dead has been the only cooldown since inception to be detrimental in more ways than one, and if SCH/AST don't have their resources ready to allocate to Living Dead, the DRK will die.

Yet WHM has no issues with their plethora of healing tools and their ability to make someone go from 1 HP to 100% in a few seconds due to their "pure healer" design philosophy they've taken. If we're to balance this out so DRK isn't the Black Horse it already is, we need to find a solution.

Given DRK's current state, it would operate well in 8-man raids, but it lacks heavily in physical defensive CDs compared to the other 3 Tanks, who have at least 3 to accomodate themselves with, making them rather subject to fight design issues than other jobs due to whether the fight is Magical in nature(Titania, Innocence Autos/Tank Buster, Leviathan, Eden Prime) or Physical in nature(Innocence Ult/Spears, Titania Add Phase, Voidwalker, Titan).

This leaves pre-70 DRK in a rather uncomfortable spot. Given Living Dead is learned at Lv 50, there's a way to fix the issue among the Balance Discord:

The most popular way is to make healing become 150% or 200% during Walking Dead, allowing both SCH/AST to have a better time healing and alleviate the issue. The other way is to make Walking Dead only require 50% of the DRK's Maximum HP in healing.

[Lyth]

Jobs are generally not balanced around dungeon or levelling content. That being said, the reason why a lot of DRK players and their healers want to see a change to Living Dead is because the ability isn't fun to use.

There was a tremendous amount of support for a change in the last Q+A session, but we haven't seen a response yet. I know that questions on housing, glamour, and Emet-Selch's hobbies are certainly easier to answer, but it would have been nice to at least see them attempt to comment on the issue.

There are also a lot of good suggestions on how to tackle the issue across the past two threads (1,2), as well as a healer perspective on the issue. Either way, this is something that needs to be addressed.

[Absimiliard]

The most popular way is to make healing become 150% or 200% during Walking Dead, allowing both SCH/AST to have a better time healing and alleviate the issue. The other way is to make Walking Dead only require 50% of the DRK's Maximum HP in healing.

These two solutions still create a crippling over reliance on healers. DRK is currently the only tank that is absolutely 100% going to die if forced to use its last stand mechanic without a healer present. Hallowed Ground grants full immunity without drawbacks other than having a longer CD than its competitors, while Holmgang and Superbolide can both be compensated for by the tanks using them simply by making effective use of their healing kits. DRK cannot do this. If Living Dead has popped, the only way you're going to heal yourself enough is if you have a positively insane number of mobs crowded around you for a good Abyssal Drain hit.

Those two solutions also leave one other problem intact: Premature healing. Whether cheesing a mechanic or simply needing the temporary immortality to handle a situation that caught you with your proverbial pants down, healers are quite capable of completely screwing you over by kicking that buff off of you at inopportune times. Or, worse still, they keep you alive just long enough for the initial timer to expire, thereby denying you immunity and getting you killed regardless.

[Kabooa]

Living Dead
Recast: 300
Effect: Summon a shadowy Simulacrum with health equal to your maximum health for 10 seconds. While active, attacks that hit you strike the Simulacrum instead. When the Simulcrum's health is reduced to 0, it is removed from the field.

[Marxam]

Living Dead
Recast: 300
Effect: Summon a shadowy Simulacrum with health equal to your maximum health for 10 seconds. While active, attacks that hit you strike the Simulacrum instead. When the Simulcrum's health is reduced to 0, it is removed from the field.

I like this idea but it falls short in multi-hitting tank busters/mechanics and cheese strats where the point is to out last the mechanic. The possibility of loosing the clone on the first hit and dying to the second hit could be its biggest downfall. Maybe change it so that the clone has a higher percentage based of your hp (ex. 150% HP) but takes 90% of the dmg and you take 10%? It kinda fits lore-wise harnessing your life energy but still being tied to it. They can even re-use the DA animation, which defined DRK for me in 3.0 and 4.0.

[Absimiliard]

Living Dead
Recast: 300
Effect: Summon a shadowy Simulacrum with health equal to your maximum health for 10 seconds. While active, attacks that hit you strike the Simulacrum instead. When the Simulcrum's health is reduced to 0, it is removed from the field.

People would start using that as a DPS tool instead of an oh shit button. It would be popped on CD so that healers could maximize their DPS output during its window. That being said, I actually quite like the idea of it. It would effectively be a tank immunity that sees use as something OTHER than a last resort/cheese button while at the same time being just as effective as everyone else's tools. Would probably need more than 100%, though. Like maybe give it 100% of your HP plus the equivalent of a full TBN.

One thing I would say, however, is that you might be better served to call it Dark Simulacrum. Living Dead makes it sound more like you're reanimating a nearby corpse (which, granted, would be awesome) to fight for you for however long it lasts.

[HyperiusUltima]

I honestly want to say get rid of the Death Penalty altogether. It’s not fun and it fights with Healers a ton. To not make it OP though you’d have to take off the 10s prep in Living Dead and jut give them a 10s Holmgang at this point. It’s a easy fix, but one that makes them too similar to WAR. How else can we fix it without presenting new problems?

[Tex_Mex]

What about this:

Living Dead (360s CD):
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, most damage done to you will heal you instead of dealing damage. You cannot be healed higher than 50% of your maximum health while under the Walking Dead effect.
Walking Dead Duration: 8s

This potential solution would do several things:
1) It would play on the concept of a Dark Knight feasting on the souls of its enemies.
2) This solution completely removes healing requirements from the skill. Healers would only need to heal the tank back after the immunity ends.
3) This solution makes Living Dead usable in solo content and significantly better in 4-man content.
4) The reason for the decreased Walking Dead duration, increased CD to 360 sec, and limitation on how much healing you could receive is to balance out this skill. The Walking Dead effect in this version is MUCH better than the current version, and IMO the skill would need these other limiters to keep it from being better than other tank immunities.

[HyperiusUltima]

What about this:

Living Dead (360s CD):
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, most damage done to you will heal you instead of dealing damage. You cannot be healed higher than 50% of your maximum health while under the Walking Dead effect.
Walking Dead Duration: 8s

This potential solution would do several things:
1) It would play on the concept of a Dark Knight feasting on the souls of its enemies.
2) This solution completely removes healing requirements from the skill. Healers would only need to heal the tank back after the immunity ends.
3) This solution makes Living Dead usable in solo content and significantly better in 4-man content.
4) The reason for the decreased Walking Dead duration, increased CD to 360 sec, and limitation on how much healing you could receive is to balance out this skill. The Walking Dead effect in this version is MUCH better than the current version, and IMO the skill would need these other limiters to keep it from being better than other tank immunities.

Having a self-healing effect as an invuln sounds cool and all, but making it work like that would put it up there with Hallowed Ground in terms of Invulns, if not better since it relieves Healer Stress compared to Holmgang and Superbolide, which both threaten to kill the Tank when their HP plummets to 1. It’s a great idea on paper but in practice how far would 64k HP take you in Expert or Raids?

[Tex_Mex]

Having a self-healing effect as an invuln sounds cool and all, but making it work like that would put it up there with Hallowed Ground in terms of Invulns, if not better since it relieves Healer Stress compared to Holmgang and Superbolide, which both threaten to kill the Tank when their HP plummets to 1. It’s a great idea on paper but in practice how far would 64k HP take you in Expert or Raids?

I don't see anything wrong with having it be at the same power level as Hallowed, since IMO all tank invulns should be relatively similar in power level. As far as relative power levels, I think the way I wrote it is relatively balanced when compared to the other tanks. Using my proposed change, I think it would make Superbolide the weakest of the invulns, but SB and changes to that skill is a different discussion. Of course CD timers and buff lengths can always be edited if balance is too far off, but what I am more concerned with is the concept. A soul stealing move would be nice considering DRK really doesn't have much identity in 5.0