Living Dead is often an unfun and frustrating cooldown for both tanks and healers

[Eorzean_username]

Positive: Living Dead in its current state can be very powerful.

In a coordinated team with a White Mage, Living Dead allows a tank's HP to be completely ignored for approximately 17-18s, with absolutely no significant consequences afterwards. In this situation, Living Dead is (arguably) more powerful than any other Tank invulnerability.

Negative: Living Dead is a DRK cooldown that cannot be used to its full potential unless a WHM is in the party, and punishes other healers for not being a WHM.

• To heal up Living Dead, a SCH needs to dump an entire stack of Aetherflow (and possibly more). An AST may not be able to resolve Walking Dead before expiration, even if it blows both charges of Essential Dignity.
• This means that non-WHM healers are punished with a disproportionate burden and resource cost if their tank uses Living Dead; conversely, Living Dead has almost no real downside and is effectively overpowered if a WHM is present. I think this is unbalanced is an unfair way.
• It's also not fun as a DRK to join, eg, a dungeon party and have to decide that I won't be using my tank ultimate CD for large pulls, simply because I see that my healer is an AST. I don't think a tank should feel disappointed or punished simply because they see that their dungeon healer is not a WHM.
• Compare this to Holmgang and Superbolide (any healer can comfortably stabilize a tank under one of these effects with normal use of healing spells and abilities) and Hallowed Ground (there is no burden on healers at all).

Negative: Living Dead puts immense stress on healers if it is used in an uncoordinated manner.

• The intuitive way to use Living Dead, for a player that has not been educated otherwise, is to save it for an emergency where the DRK player is about to die. Then, they activate Living Dead as a last-ditch effort to stay alive.
• This intuitive use of an ability, however, is completely wrong: the Walking Dead effect requires so much healing to remove it, that an unprepared healer (especially in 4-player content, or if their co-healer is dead or out of MP) literally may not be able to remove Walking Dead even with non-stop Spell casting without the support of OGCD cooldowns. However, by the time a DRK uses Living Dead as an emergency tool, the healer has probably exhausted all of their cooldowns already, meaning Living Dead is little more than a death sentence for the tank and a source of immense panic for the unprepared healer.
• This makes Living Dead a luxury tool that is only of use in coordinated parties, while less-coordinated players are forced to essentially pretend it doesn't exist. Further, if a player actually does use Living Dead in an uncoordinated manner, that tank is inadvertently punishing their healer and potentially actually causing more problems than if the tank had just let his or herself die normally and be raised.

Negative: Living Dead is overcomplicated and confusing compared to other similar tank CDs.

• Many healers do not even fully understand how Living Dead works, or what they are supposed to do when they see it.
• It is not clear that the "orange hourglass" is not harmful and that (unintuitively) the DRK should be ignored when the Living Dead buff appears; instead, many healers will panic and dump their healing resources into the Living Dead phase, then have no way to respond to Walking Dead if it triggers.
• It is not clear at all how Walking Dead works, or even what "If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade." means: many healers (and other players) assume this to mean that the DRK literally must be brought to full HP, which can be nearly impossible if the DRK is sustaining continued damage during Walking Dead, leading to even more extreme panic and resource-dumping from startled healers.
• Due to these factors, many DRK begin avoiding Living Dead as a button, which then has the cascading effect of many healers never learning how the ability works. And, even if Living Dead is used, many healers will simply dump heals until the "grey eyeball" goes away, without understanding how much healing was actually needed (because the ability is ambiguous and overcomplicated).
• Compare this to Holmgang and Superbolide (intuitively, as long as the WAR or GNB's HP does not reach 0, the tank will survive; even startled healers can comfortably achieve this with normal use of healing spells and abilities, without needing any further understanding of the ability's nuances) and Hallowed Ground (there is no burden on healers at all).

Negative: Healers can inadvertently kill a tank under Living Dead

• The "Living Dead" effect provides no damage reduction, only a window of time to trigger Walking Dead. If a healer heals a tank under "Living Dead" too much, Walking Dead may not trigger. This can then cause the tank to die to an upcoming mechanic, because they do not gain the protection of Walking Dead.
• The "Walking Dead" effect prevents a DRK from being killed, but is instantly removed if a DRK receives "too much" healing. Therefore, if healers pump too many heals into a DRK under Walking Dead, or a WHM presses Benediction too soon, the DRK may die to an upcoming mechanic, because they lose the protection of Walking Dead.
• Compare this to Holmgang, Superbolide, and Hallowed Ground: these abilities always work and always have the same reliable effect, regardless of how much incoming healing occurs before, during, or after the effect begins or ends.

Issues to address that would improve Living Dead

• Goal: Make Living Dead feel like a more rewarding Level 50 capstone ability, and a button that more DRK players feel like they are allowed to press (and see positive results from) outside of very specific situations in very coordinated parties.
• Problem to address: Relative to other tank ultimate CDs, Living Dead is complex and difficult for healers and other players to understand if they do not play DRK or receive specific education about the ability.
• Problem to address: Walking Dead requires too much healing to remove, putting excessive stress and burden on healers.
• Problem to address: Walking Dead is trivialized by the presence of a WHM, and disproportionately punishing to SCH and AST players.
• Problem to address: Living Dead and Walking Dead work in a convoluted manner which can result in a DRK player receiving no effective protection from their ultimate CD if a healer heals "too much" (while also potentially leading to a tank KO if a healer heals "not enough").

Conclusion

I think Living Dead is a very interesting ability with a lot of nuance to it, and probably in an ideal world, there would be more abilities like Living Dead, not fewer. However, I also think Living Dead feels out of place in FFXIV's modern design: every other tank's ultimate defensive tool is simple and intuitive, is guaranteed to be effective once triggered, and does not require excessive party coordination or healer education (which can be more burdensome than it sounds, when seeing many different random healers every single day in Duty Finder and Party Finder).

If the design team wishes to "homogenize" tanks for the sake of balance and player comfort, then I think that Living Dead stands out as a very irregular tool that can either make DRK an excessively-strong choice, or a notably-inferior choice, depending on bizarre factors like "Is there a White Mage present?" and "Does this tankbuster or Prey damage last for more than 10 seconds?"