We really need to talk about Living Dead

[cactuarzzzz]

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

In particular, statements like the following are inaccurate:

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.

You can visit Healer forum to see how they explain it how among the invuls they hated it the most.The one who shouldering the burden know best. No need to trivialize it.

*But just in case you decided not to look it up I'm going to drop it here :

For WAR and GNB healer only need to heal them to the point that they don't die to auto attack after invul ended. Coupled with how WAR and GNB can heal themselves with their ability just make it way way more easier than dealing with drk and their pitiful self heal.

The healing window is also more lenient and less stressful and ultimately BETTER than with living dead, which the real cause is that useless doom debuff. Oh and just in case I wasn't clear enough, Invuls is useful but doom debuff is freaking useless. It is the worst*

[Seraphor]

If we're going by the Healer forum, you should know that they hate Superbolide just as much as Living Dead. XD

[cactuarzzzz]

If we're going by the Healer forum, you should know that they hate Superbolide just as much as Living Dead. XD

Only when noob GNB use it.

[Recon1o6]

Snip

As an ex healer main who threw my book into a fire, my globe into the interdimensional rift, and my staves into a woodchipper and the depths of eureka while quitting that as well (throwing a metal pole into a woodchipper is a bad idea) living dead's frustration varies depending on your healer

WHM- Meh, benediction it. Oh bene is on cd? fine tetragrammaton, soul eater and abyssal will cover it. both of those are on cd? oh fine guess I'll take a break from glaring, here you go: 2 cure 2/lillies and if im feeling generous I'll toss another your way. I might have an ogcd as well depending on the rest of the party's incompetece.

4.0 and previous AST (I have never touched ast in shb except to wear the anemos top to a wedding)- ED...other healer's a sch in their rotation? here's a benefic 2. Other healer is an ast in other stance? well they ED you as well so you're good, if not then I'm sure I got a ogcd here somewhere I can throw on
5.0 ast from what i seen from those insane enough to play it- ED, ED, not enough ED? neutral stance/sect+ a benefic 2 per energy drain, abyssal drain and soul eater will take care of the rest, now let me get back to hand cramps and malefic spam

SCH- 4.0 Give me a second I have a few ogcds for that... EOS/SELENE STOP BEING DRUNK
5.0 yay i can finally stop broiling! SERAPH STOP GHOSTING


Now I played a lot of DRK as well. I dearly miss the HW gameplay style of debuffing and magic tanking rather than the mess in SB and the marauder clone we have now in SHB (yes Marauder not warrior, warrior has been gutted too)

There's 2 main problems DRK has with its invul
1. It kills you if it triggers Walking dead.
2. Drk lacks the sustain neccessary to stop itself from dying.

In a prepared party, LD is fundamentally the strongest invul in the game. In a df group where you get placed with a sprout or worse, someone who got boosted through levels so they never learned important healer lessons, its basically a kill me now button.
Ideally we would lose the doom entirely and have something better.

Here's a suggestion:
You gain 10 seconds of living dead. You are reduced to 1 hp and cannot be reduced beyond it for the duration of living dead.
While under the walking dead status you suffer a damage over time for 15 seconds. You also gain a secondary effect that heals you for every attack you make equal to 50% of the attacks damage.

Now, gnb has a shield/heal on brutal shell and a potent heal over time with aurora. We just get angry when the idiots fat finger it or use it but then don't use the rest of their kit to make our lives easier
Warrior has a hp booster they can use and a self cure, and bloodbath nascent flash.

The dot needs to be strong enough to be a mild threat, but the sustain should be strong enough that it can outpace both the auto attacks and the dot

[cactuarzzzz]

Snip

Strongest in which way? It's still 9-10 secs of invuls [need heal equal to a total of 100%Hp after the invul kick in but before it reach 0].
I can assure you that dev won't make boss's one shot attack that require more invuls duration longer than 8 secs of holmgang. They also won't make the boss use one shot more frequently to the point that PLD can't keep up with their Hallow Ground's long recast time.

[VaulRi]

I would just increase duration and make more visible feedback effect for healers
Visual and sound also party plate

[Rongway]

You can visit Healer forum to see how they explain it how among the invuls they hated it the most.The one who shouldering the burden know best. No need to trivialize it.
*But just in case you decided not to look it up I'm going to pontificate

You can visit my character profile to see if I've at least taken the time to level healers, or checked the healer forums to see if I ever participate there, before assuming I don't understand how healers think.
*But since you didn't, I leveled all three healers immediately after finishing the story on RDM and I heal roulettes regularly. No need to be truculent.

The healing window is also more lenient and less stressful and ultimately BETTER than with living dead ... It is the worst*

Obviously Holmgang and Bolide are "better" vis a vis "more lenient". Out of four abilities, one of them will always be "the worst", and healers will automatically label the one that takes the most work as the worst.

But it's not bad just by virtue of being the worst, and it doesn't take that much more work.

As for the others being "less stressful", this should be a non-issue. The first thing the healer should look at when getting into a duty is the job icon for the tank, which will dictate, among other things, the appropriate plan for dealing with the tank's superbutton. If you're in a party with a DRK you should already know that it's possible you will be required to heal them to full in the span of a few seconds, just like if you're in a party with a GNB you should know that you don't need to be alarmed if their HP drops from 120,000 down to 1 in an instant. The answer to the potential stress of these two abilities is awareness and readiness.


Would Living Dead benefit from some improvement like Seraphor's suggestion to have 50%≤healing<100% give Weakness instead of KO?

Yes, absolutely. (And Seraphor's specific suggestion made me go, "Oh, that would be a neat way to handle it.")

But is Living Dead just brokenly bad? I don't think it is.

[Rilifane]

Living Dead serves its purpose when you're in a clutch and would have definitely died otherwise. In those cases it's like a second chance for your healer to get everything back under control.
This counts for both dungeons and raids. If something went seriously wrong you may be able to salvage it.
The other tank invuls are admittedly much easier to handle without Benediction but it can still give you valuable time.

However when it comes to raids and using it for tankbusters, Living Dead usually adds pressure on healers instead of taking it away.
Depending on gear you need around 3200-3500 potency which is a lot. While every healer can solo heal it, they all need to blow several oGCD and GCD heals to make it in time.
A SCH/ AST comp will, in most cases, need to use more resources than they would've used if the tank simply took regular damage with some mitigation up. Even if you're really lucky with high rolls, Recit Excog and ED crit is not enough, you will need a 2nd ED and/ or Lustrate in addition to DRK selfheal and fairy autos.
The longer duration of LD is only a boon if a mechanic hits several times so they can take more hits compared to other tanks.
But in most situations it only puts unneccessary pressure on healers and completely messes their distribution of tank upkeep resources up.

Compare that to GNB: it brings you to one HP and you have 7sec to heal the GNB above auto attack threshhold while the tank takes no damage at all.
WAR: you can ignore the tank until Holmgang almost runs out and bring above auto attack threshold. Even easier if it was something like 14 or e7 TB where the OT won't take any damage after the one big hit and you have all the time in the world to heal him back up.
PLD: god button. Period. Healers love it.

Haven't progged through e8 until enrage yet but for e5-e7 I can safely say that DRK invul only ever made my life harder than easier when paired with SCH/ Bene wasn't up.
Yet many DRK insisted on using it to "cheese" tankbusters when in reality, it only made it worse. It needs careful planning and holding back resources which makes it inefficient over just eating the damage with mitigation and healing it efficiently and at your own pace.

I'm against streamlining invuls but some form of tweaking that gives it more uses for current encounter design regardless of healer comp would be nice.

As for the others being "less stressful", this should be a non-issue. The first thing the healer should look at when getting into a duty is the job icon for the tank, which will dictate, among other things, the appropriate plan for dealing with the tank's superbutton. If you're in a party with a DRK you should already know that it's possible you will be required to heal them to full in the span of a few seconds, just like if you're in a party with a GNB you should know that you don't need to be alarmed if their HP drops from 120,000 down to 1 in an instant. The answer to the potential stress of these two abilities is awareness and readiness.
.

The purpose of superbuttons is:
1) oh shit I'm gonna die, time to invul!
2) making situations easier

The latter is basically never the case for DRK invul in dungeons. So preparing for the tank to use an invul that makes it worse on a whim is questionable. I mean, yes. We should be prepared to deal with all types of bad decisions but with how invuls work, you will constantly need to hold back some resources just in case the DRK decides it's a fantastic idea to grief his healer.
All other invuls can be used and dealt with on a whim.
The DRK is the only oddball where using the invul outside of "oh shit" situations feels punishing escpecially in dungeons.

Solo healing a DRK invul in a big pull takes several GCDs/ ogCDs and renders the healing useless because they still take damage. You basically just forced a healer to do what they have to do anyway but in a much more inefficient way because of the added timer while not gaining anything.

[Rongway]

However when it comes to raids and using it for tankbusters, Living Dead usually adds pressure on healers instead of taking it away.
Depending on gear you need around 3200-3500 potency which is a lot. While every healer can solo heal it, they all need to blow several oGCD and GCD heals to make it in time.
A SCH/ AST comp will, in most cases, need to use more resources than they would've used if the tank simply took regular damage with some mitigation up.

Yet many DRK insisted on using it to "cheese" tankbusters when in reality, it only made it worse.

Yes, you're right. If the tankbuster would deal lethal damage and basically any other option besides Living Dead is available, Living Dead is the wrong button to press as part of a prophylactic strategy. But that's a problem with tanks choosing to use it at the wrong time; not necessarily a fault of the ability's design.

In the event that there were no other buttons available, Living Dead successfully stops them from dying at least long enough for the healers to handle it, disgruntled though they be from having to make up for the premature expenditure of abilities or resources.

The purpose of superbuttons is:
1) oh shit I'm gonna die, time to invul!
2) making situations easier

The latter is basically never the case for DRK invul in dungeons. So preparing for the tank to use an invul that makes it worse on a whim is questionable. I mean, yes. We should be prepared to deal with all types of bad decisions but with how invuls work, you will constantly need to hold back some resources just in case the DRK decides it's a fantastic idea to grief his healer.

This is the part I don't understand:

Assume Living Dead is the only option available. If the DRK activates Living Dead and still dies, then the healer was doing enough not-healing that the DRK would have died 10s earlier without it...so how is activating it to delay death for 10s somehow griefing the healer? And, still assuming Living Dead is the only option available, how is activating it to delay death for 10s somehow worse than dying 10s ago?

When it's the only button left, Living Dead still puts the DRK and the healer in a strictly better position than they would have been in without it.

[Rilifane]

Yes, you're right. If the tankbuster would deal lethal damage and basically any other option besides Living Dead is available, Living Dead is the wrong button to press as part of a prophylactic strategy. But that's a problem with tanks choosing to use it at the wrong time; not necessarily a fault of the ability's design.

In the event that there were no other buttons available, Living Dead successfully stops them from dying at least long enough for the healers to handle it, disgruntled though they be from having to make up for the premature expenditure of abilities or resources.



This is the part I don't understand:

Assume Living Dead is the only option available. If the DRK activates Living Dead and still dies, then the healer was doing enough not-healing that the DRK would have died 10s earlier without it...so how is activating it to delay death for 10s somehow griefing the healer? And, still assuming Living Dead is the only option available, how is activating it to delay death for 10s somehow worse than dying 10s ago?

When it's the only button left, Living Dead still puts the DRK and the healer in a strictly better position than they would have been in without it.

As I stated above multiple times: it has it's use when you would have definitely died otherwise as it serves to grant you a and the healer a second chance to get things back under control.
If it's the only option available you use it because it's the only option available. Not because it's good. It's your last resort.

I get what you mean "If it doesn't get triggered, no harm done. If it does, the tank would have died anyway". Which is true but that makes it essentially useless it because you use it in hopes of it not getting triggered.
And if you're counting on a skill not having any effect and actively try to prevent it, that's saying something, isn't it?
It has no beneficial effect and in case it does get triggered, the healer is now forced to work very inefficiently. And lack of healing isn't the only reason it may trigger. Eating a pull raw because "invul is up" is the most common reason I've seen for it to trigger.

All other tank invuls can be used without any downside whatsoever and are always a gain. DRK has the only invul that has no inherent gain and makes situations worse if used poorly. It's really only a gain if the party is well-coordinated and everyone knows what they're doing and even then, dungeons are the least likely place for it to be useful.