Was bored and had thoughts about LD

[Cabalabob]

As I said above, all they really need to do to make it basically like Holmgang is to remove the death aspect and keep everything else the same. The other aspects like the 10s Living Dead before Walking Dead buffer plus the Walking Dead effect being removed if 100% healing is reached should be enough to differentiate LD and Holmgang.

You have to look at it from SE’s perspective of “balance” the 10s duration of WD is offset by the 5min CD, the 10 second leeway to activate it is offset by the risk of death and apparently the removal of the effect from a full heal (or not triggering at all due to never hitting 1 HP) is not considered as a positive or negative.

So, if they remove the death penalty then a boon has to go too. And I’d rather lose that activation leeway than the longer duration on the effect.

[TouchandFeel]

You have to look at it from SE’s perspective of “balance” the 10s duration of WD is offset by the 5min CD, the 10 second leeway to activate it is offset by the risk of death and apparently the removal of the effect from a full heal (or not triggering at all due to never hitting 1 HP) is not considered as a positive or negative.

So, if they remove the death penalty then a boon has to go too. And I’d rather lose that activation leeway than the longer duration on the effect.

I get where you are coming from, but I would argue that it is currently not balanced and that removing the death penalty and not adding any other negative would actually be more balanced compared to what we have now and that the whole death part is really just excessive in comparison to the other tank invulns.

By simply removing the death penalty, you potentially get extra time at the beginning due to the up to 10s of Living Dead before Walking Dead is activated with the trade-off losing time from being healed too quickly.

Let's look at the extremes of this.
- You somehow time Living Dead perfectly and get ~9s of buffer time.
- You pop LD right before a buster and get ~1s of buffer time.
- Your healer times their heals and maximizes Walking Dead's uptime giving you about 9s of its effect.
- You go into Walking Dead and immediately get Bene'd and only get ~1s of it.

Now you could get get the ~9s buffer and the ~9s of Walking Dead, just like you could ~1s of buffer and ~1s of Walking Dead. Realistically it's going to most often fall somewhere between those and approximately balance out to being about the same as an ~10s Holmgang.

Also that up to 10s buffer is really not that different than just timing your Holmgang well. If the damage is coming in slow enough that you would be getting ~10s of Living Dead before you hit 1hp and Walking Dead activates, you can probably pretty easily just wait until you get low on hp before popping Holmgang. In fact you have more flexibility with Holmgang in this regard compared to Living Dead. With Living Dead you pop it and are locked into the 10s buffer, don't take enough damage in those 10s and the ability is wasted. With Holmgang you could just wait a little longer and then pop Holmgang, surpassing the 10s limitation of Living Dead.

Essentially Living Dead is automated but more restricted, while Holmgang is more flexible but requires more skillful execution.
That's the trade-off: a 60s longer recast in exchange for an ~2s longer effective duration and being harder to mis-time, versus a ~2s shorter effective duration and requiring more skillful timing in exchange for having a 60s shorter recast.

That seems better balanced than what we have now.

That and only an extra 2s of not dropping below 1h just doesn't seem like enough to warrant a whole extra minute of recast imo.

I'm also pretty convinced that the whole dying part of Living Dead is not really a "balance" thing but a conceptual flavour thing. The way that they seem so reluctant to change that aspect just smacks of it being a flavour thing because in my experience I have found game devs to be much more reluctant to change a flavour aspect to something than something they deem as just a balance issue. There just tends to be more emotional attachment to the "style" of something than the numbers behind it.

[Cabalabob]

The problem with LD is just that it requires input from someone else other than the user, the DRK has no way to heal through walking dead on their own it HAS to be the healer who potentially doesn’t even know what living dead is since levelling DRK is completely optional to playing healer. This game is not designed around moves like this.

From level 1-50 there are NO moves that require you know another jobs kit and in the entire game there are only 2, divine veil and living dead. Nothing about this game suggests that you need to learn the move set of another job. In divine veil’s case it’s not so bad, the PLD can proc it themselves if need be and if it’s not proced you’re just wasting the CD and not getting a shield, no big deal. In the case of living dead it is much more severe, your main tank DIES.

That is what the issue with living dead boils down to, so the simplest fix would just be to make it work like holmgang, can’t drop below 1hp for 10 seconds (the trade off being the extra minute on the cooldown).

Yes homogenisation blah blah blah blah.... But frankly I’d rather have a move that’s the same and does a decent job than a move that’s unique and is terrible. They can figure out how to make it unique in the future while actually making it a good move, but until that day comes, give us something functional.

Edit: as for my personal thoughts on what living dead could be. Living dead: 5min cooldown, 15s duration. For the duration the user’s HP cannot drop below 1. The user can’t be healed by outside sources (the healer, potions). All the user’s weaponskills restore 100% of damage dealt as HP for the duration. (Stacks with souleater).

And even this idea I recognise is not perfect, in situations where you can’t attack the target you’re putting yourself in a lot of danger by removing the ability to be healed entirely which will leave you at 1 HP when it wears off (ruby weapon comets).

[Aurelius2625]

If TBN doesn't break, that's a 500 potency loss.

I want you to think, for a moment, if Nin's Shadeshift was part of it's rotation, and if the shield wasn't consumed, you'd miss out on a Hyoshu Ranryu. That's how massive this is. 500 potency lost is around 25k ish average damage that just ceases to exist. It's 3k mana, that's an ENTIRE bloodweapon's worth of mana lost...for no reason.

TBN needs to be 9 or 10 seconds in duration. I can't tell you how many times I pull in Ramuh and it DOES NOT break. It's annoying.

[EpicOverlord85]

They need to get rid of the “dead if not healed for your total amount of health in ten seconds” clause. I can’t think of one time (ok maybe once or twice) where I popped LD, I dropped to one HP, and then proceeded to NOT die from that debuff.

[EpicOverlord85]

They need to get rid of the “dead if not healed for your total amount of health in ten seconds” clause. I can’t think of one time (ok maybe once or twice) where I popped LD, I dropped to one HP, and then proceeded to NOT die from that debuff.

Or at the very least drop the requirement to 50% of our total health instead of 100%.

[MerlinCross]

Said this before.

Giving DRK lifesteal/drain on attacks during the "Undead" state might go a decent way in helping out the healers.

If TBN doesn't break, that's a 500 potency loss.

I want you to think, for a moment, if Nin's Shadeshift was part of it's rotation, and if the shield wasn't consumed, you'd miss out on a Hyoshu Ranryu. That's how massive this is. 500 potency lost is around 25k ish average damage that just ceases to exist. It's 3k mana, that's an ENTIRE bloodweapon's worth of mana lost...for no reason.

TBN needs to be 9 or 10 seconds in duration. I can't tell you how many times I pull in Ramuh and it DOES NOT break. It's annoying.

Not the topic, but isn't this going to get worse as more gear comes online?

[Shurrikhan]

Why not just have fatal damage induce a granular debuff?

Borrowed Time
Grants the effect of Death's Dance. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Death's Dance, instead of becoming KO'd, all would-be overkill damage generates Mortal Coil.
Mortal Coil effect: Would-be overkill damage postponed for 10 seconds. Must be removed via healing before its duration ends or the bearer will die. Additionally, generates damage reduction based on % of HP stored in Mortal Coil, e.g. 100% damage reduction when the Dark Knight has absorbed as much fatal damage as they have maximum HP.

[Lannybaby]

My biggest problem with LD is the amount of effort it takes for a non-whm to save the DK. When the tank is a DK, the healer is a WHM, and the content is something actually challenging like savage, the WHM instantly knows that the DK might LD at some point and will save benediction for that moment. Or just go ham with the healing because they have stupid-awesome healing output.

SCH would burn through lustrates, recitation, ET + Aldo, and Fey illum just to save the DK. Not sure about AST since I don't play them.

My point: if LD had a built-in convalescence, I would be less annoyed, as a SCH main healer. Or if DKs could somehow clear it themselves, that would be fantastic. At least WARs have ToB and equil after using HG.

[Makeda]

PLD: You're immune to damage for x-seconds
WAR: Your health cannot go below 1 for x-seconds
GNB: You're health is now 1 and... you're immune to damage for X-seconds
DRK: You have no immunity and no damage mitigation and now need to be healed up to your full health or you're dead

It seems to me like the logical fix is to just copy WAR or GNB... Or you could just use something from The Blackest Knight: You can't go below 1 health and the damage you take beyond your total health is converted into a Dark Arts proc if it exceeds 25% of your health.

That said I dislike that PLD's is the clear winner in all of these. It seems like 3 of them need a buff, or 1 needs a nerf and one needs a buff.