We really need to talk about Living Dead

[DWolfwood]

There was massive backlash against this skill when it first released and you, Square-Enix (i.e. Yoshi-P), told us you were looking into changes.

I know some have tried claiming "it has synergy with Benediction, it's not so bad", but in order for two abilities to have synergy, they have to provide more utility combined than when each is used alone. Living Dead virtually needs Benediction to just function as intended when it matters. This is why the ability sucks.

When you got raid mechanics which eat into the action time of healers just after massive tank busters, it makes it even worse. For example: Ramuh's Centaur Charge in E5S.

We've made progress in making jobs more streamlined and more accessible for everyone, however this ability is still a glaring problem. Largely in part because the difficulty in handling it is not even up to the Dark Knight. It's a burden placed solely on a healer. Dark Knight has the poorest self-healing abilities when it comes to a 10 second window, making the DRKs efforts to handle Walking Dead just a drop in the bucket.

It's been FIVE years since this ability was released. Dark Knight has gone through TWO major redesigns, yet this clunky skill still remains.

When will we see it addressed?

[ItMe]

That's a little hyperbolic. AST doesn't have problems with Living Dead. They generally need to push more buttons than WHM, but...

But yeah... despite TBN healers thank me when I switch from DRK to PLD.
My fiancé mains SCH and asks I at least switch to WAR for content with legitimate tank busters.
I feel pressured to not play DRK and that makes me sad.


You say that Yoshi-P was looking into changes. I haven't heard anything about that. That's interesting.
I tried to do some research but couldn't find anything. Where did he say that?

[DWolfwood]

You know actually I tried to find what I swore was said, but I can't. All I was able to find was that they were looking into it and going to compare its performance in Gordias Savage at the time and make the decision there.

Which I still feel is the wrong approach there. Especially given how skewed Gordias was in favor of DRK.

[Lyth]

Just get rid of invulns from all tanks. The focus should be around rationing your defensives based on incoming damage, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach that you use without thinking on any tank buster.

I don't think that the devs are capable of figuring out how to fix Living Dead's many issues, the tooltip errors being the least of them.

[shao32]

It was in the pax event before SHB launch where certain streamers go invited to try the job changes, xenosys vex raised his concerns with living dead to Yoship during his interview, he get a "we will look at it" from Yoship and nothing more since then.

[cactuarzzzz]

It was in the pax event before SHB launch where certain streamers go invited to try the job changes, xenosys vex raised his concerns with living dead to Yoship during his interview, he get a "we will look at it" from Yoship and nothing more since then.

It's been ...what?a year since 5.0? seem an Android's butt is more important to Mr.producer than the DRK.

[Tranquilmelody7]

I think it's the worst designed skill in the entire game.
It's entire gimmick is that it's debuff will kill you which is terrible in a game that tries to be accessible to many people.

[Tint]

Especially when you comare Living Dead to the changes Holmgang got.

Before you could say Holmgang had the downside that you needed a target and the WAR could not move while using it. But that is gone now, making the skill better in any regard than Living Dead, except the duration, but when will you get the full 10 seconds out of Living Dead anyway? You are dead at 10...

[Rongway]

Unpopular opinion: Even though Living Dead isn't Hallowed Ground, it's okay.

In particular, statements like the following are inaccurate:

It's entire gimmick is that it's debuff will kill you

That's not what it is. It's not "I push this button, then I die."

It's "I'm about to die anyway, but I can delay it for 10s." The debuff isn't what kills you. You get the debuff because you died. The healer then has an opportunity to veto your death that already happened up to 10s ago. If Walking Dead doesn't activate, you were safe all along and didn't need to push the button because the healer was already doing enough healing to keep you from dying. If Walking Dead does activate, you would have died anyway whether you pressed the button or not, but now the healer has 10s to correct that. In an unplanned use situation, it does its job: if you would have died, you don't.

But these abilities are best used when planned, not as emergency buttons. Here's how they work when you plan them:

• PLD: Press button within 10s of hit that would kill you. Damage you take afterwards can kill you, but at least you start of with full/fullish health when it wears off without any healer intervention.
• WAR: Press button within 8s of hit that would kill you. After buff wears, healer must heal you before you take another hit. However, if they heal you too early it will be for nothing because you still take damage while buffed.
• GNB: Press button within 8s of hit that would kill you. Healer must heal you before you take a hit unbuffed, but they may do so at any time even while you are buffed.
• DRK: Press button within 10s of hit that would kill you. Once you are fatally wounded, you get Holmgang until the healer accumulates your full HP of healing on you or 10s, whichever comes first. If the healer wants to, they can ignore all damage you take for the next (10-X) seconds, where X is the amount of time it would take them to heal you for full HP.

In all cases except Hallowed Ground, which the devs have acknowledged as blatantly overpowered, the superbutton prevents you from dying if you would have died, and requires a healer's immediate intervention. The only big difference is that Living Dead requires intervention on a Benediction scale, but if the tank were a WAR or GNB coming out of superbuff with 1hp, the healer would likely have responded with a Benediction equivalent in most cases anyway.

[Seraphor]

I can see two potential improvements that maintain a similar risk.

1. The healing requirement is split, into 50% and 100% thresholds. If you are healed to 100% as it already is, you're fine. If you're healed to 50%, then when it wears off, you get instant Weakness, as if you'd just been raised. <50% and you're dead.

2. If you're not healed to full, then any difference needs to be made up by your MP. If you were healed to 80%, then you lose 20% of your max MP. If you don't have 2000 MP available, you're dead.
This might be my prefered option as you have the possibility of saving yourself by having max MP, or if you've used a TBN and you're ~7000 MP, you may even be able to recover that 30% HP yourself.