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*

[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.

[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.

[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.