We really need to talk about Living Dead

[cactuarzzzz]

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.



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.

1.Profile meant nothing to me here. Only how people show what they knew via explanation.

2.Yeah, go on and be the sole healer that claim LD isn't bad.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Living Dead being the worst invuln on the tank with the best non-invuln mitigation kit is fine.

Ill be happy to admit that I am fine with how LD is as long I can keep TBN at current power and circumvent LD use and make it niche / tactical instead. Power budget seems right on point to me, but let's keep judging invulns in a vacuum instead of the entire kits, clearly this is the more important metric.

[Miminming]

LD is okay it's one of the few identity left on DRK leave it alone, and as a SCH i can handle LD just fine as long as it was not a panic random LD, invul should be use in a planned situassion anyway

[ItMe]

Honestly?
If they made it so incoming heals were buffed I'd have no problem with Living Dead.

[shao32]

I firmly believe DRK under the effect of walking dead should be able to restore his own HP with attacks to complete remove the debuff by himself or at least a great chunk to not being a complete resource black hole for AST and SCH so the skill will be the same and will enforce DRK identity over there.

Probably to make it still useful under multi TB it's keep the don't die the whole duration even after remove the walking dead prematurely.

[cactuarzzzz]

LD is okay it's one of the few identity left on DRK leave it alone, and as a SCH i can handle LD just fine as long as it was not a panic random LD, invul should be use in a planned situassion anyway

NO THANK. This is like expecting to hear WAR saying holmgang that need target , make them unable to move and last only 6 secs is their identity. We're hoping for the problem to be fixed not a coping mechanism.

[BarretOblivion]

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?

...
You need to talk to my AST/SCH. They hate LD so much that in E7S I am required to always split the TB with my DRK tank instead of him invulning. Healers... HATE it because of how many resources you have to dump into it.

[Tranquilmelody7]

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.

I know exactly how all the invulnerabilities skills work, but thanks.

The debuff is still what kills you, it just activates the same way as the actual invincibility for Holmang is applied.

The bottom line is no other skill in the game has a drawback that literally kills you.
It's still terrible even if the skill has a very long window of use comparatively.

You can actually easily plan uses for Holmang and Superbollide to make runs easier and not as an "Oh **** button", which is almost always preferable.

[Driavna]

On paper, Living Death is the best of all similar skills if paired with a White Mage for the amount of "no healing needed" time it offers. In reality, almost any random healer is going to hate it for the same reason they dislike Superbollide. Proper use requires communication or to be part of a regular boss strat, in that last case you really don't care unless a WHM is not present.

But really, what's the fix? Give every tank the PLD version?

[Hierro]

It's okay.

It's hard to find a party without a WHM, and healers today have so many tools at their disposal to rid walking dead's status. However, it would make things a lot simpler if convalescence was re-added.