We really need to talk about Living Dead

[Lyth]

There are a lot of design problems with Living Dead.
1. There's no gauge that indicates how much healing is still required to remove the effect. You're almost certainly going to overheal it without benediction.
2. It's not intuitive. There is no obvious indication to your team outside of a single buff icon that the effect is active and still needs to be addressed. A new healer has no idea what to do with it unless they mouse over it, read the (incorrect) tooltip instructions, and cleanse the effect.
3. The tooltip is still wrong.
4. Benediction syncs up poorly with it. Benediction is a 180s recast, and Living Dead is 300s. If you use Benediction on the first Living Dead use and want to have it up for the second use of it, you waste a recast.
5. You would think that the cooldown with the greatest penalties would have the shortest recast. That isn't the case.

I think the core problem here is that the devs are trying to make all of these invulns "unique" relative to Hallowed. But here's the underlying problem. Invulns are broken, and they trivialise tankbusters when you have four uses per fight between your two tanks. Let's get rid of all of them, and actually learn how to ration cooldowns again. Then you'll have at least one way to differentiate tanks who needed the crutch and those who don't.

[Vyrerus]

Living Dead opinion

1. The DRK's HP bar is the gauge that denotes that. There's always overhealing if you're healing anyone to full. Healing potencies vs. HP totals haven't ever been mathed out in a way to prevent that. It doesn't need any special gauge denotation because you can rule of thumb it by just filling their HP bar once.
2. A good tank will communicate to a new healer that they need healing done, either with a macro text or prior to planned usage of the cooldown. If you have no experience with any of the other jobs as a newbie, no one else's needs are intuitive for any set of skills.
3. The tooltip is not wrong. It's worded poorly, in your opinion. What it conveys is clear as day. You are actually reduced to 0 HP, but you are gifted 1 HP by Walking Dead, and this plays into the second half of the tooltip.
4. The amount of tank invulns that align with healer CDs is exactly zero in this game. If you're planning on using Living Dead, then you should be letting your healers know they will have to heal you without Benediction if the timers are out of sync, if the tank busters are that close together, which is rare.
5. Given its duration, its recast is warranted.

Invulns aren't fun to you, but for a lot of people they are. They allow for solos that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Rare clutch moments, as well as the knowledge that each tank has one skill that will make them unable to die for a short time, making the player feel tough. All of them have tangible draw backs except Hallowed. The only thing that needs to change relative to this, is PLD needs a slap to its DPS potential.

[DWolfwood]

My personal, simple suggestion to remedy LD is change it so that:

DRK loses 50% of their HP every tick for 3-4 ticks. During which time the DRK cannot be reduced passed 1HP.

[DWolfwood]

I think making job adjustments based on comparing its "overall kit" to another tank is not always the best answer, nor is their performance. Certain abilities just shouldn't be the way they are, and the people who want LD to stay the way it is fall into two camps: 1. elitists and 2. people who want their tank of choice to have advantages of DRK.

Just because we fix LD doesn't mean DRK is the only tank that needs adjustments. If we only seek to look at "overall kits" and how their performance in raids is, then we end up with the situation we have, where dumb abilities that need addressing go unchanged.

[Miminming]

No, even now DRK is the MT tank of choice,
People who want LD to change is just the DRK elitist that want more some probably just want a panic button which shouldn't be even a thing if played right... and less good healer or just want to get it easy healer... LD being a 20s invul has it uses and nich, it' perfectly fine as is.

[DWolfwood]

No, even now DRK is the MT tank of choice,
People who want LD to change is just the DRK elitist that want more some probably just want a panic button which shouldn't be even a thing if played right... and less good healer or just want to get it easy healer... LD being a 20s invul has it uses and nich, it' perfectly fine as is.

Yeah, this is a terrible way to look at it.

Again. Fixing a single job ability doesn't mean other jobs should stay the way they are. The other tanks need their own issues addressed as well.

[cactuarzzzz]

It's a strawman, so it doesn't really mean anything.



Would I be pleased with it? Not necessarily, as arbitrarily swapping CD's between the tanks doesn't make a lot of sense. However, would I be bothered by having to use LD? Not really.

On another point, I said that can be the strongest invuln with proper play and coordination, and a WHM. In a general sense, Holmgang is the strongest invuln in a larger number of scenarios. That doesn't detract from LD's strength though. Try to come up with some legitimate points of contention next time.

Edit: WAR could even handle LD better than DRK can, since WAR has access to Thrill of Battle, Equilibrium, and Nascent Flash. So, sure, give me LD on WAR when I can heal a solid 50% of my own HP back minimum.

Yes, finally you open your eye to the truth that DRK lack the resource to to handle LD and that make it a burden not something strong and amazing like you claim it to be. Have fun in solo content tho because if NF and NG doesn't change you won't be able to remove the debuff with it.

[cactuarzzzz]

No, even now DRK is the MT tank of choice,
People who want LD to change is just the DRK elitist that want more some probably just want a panic button which shouldn't be even a thing if played right... and less good healer or just want to get it easy healer... LD being a 20s invul has it uses and nich, it' perfectly fine as is.

20s invul? pffff* Nice try.

[cactuarzzzz]

WAR would honestly work much better with Living Dead than DRK.

Nascent Flash alone would be enough to help purge the debuff, but the also have Equilibrium, and Thrill of Battle(Along with the baked in convalescence trait at level 80).

Meanwhile DRK has a pitiful GCD combo finisher, and Abyssal Drain which would have been a great help but was sadly nerfed to the ground this expansion.

Yeah you're right, but then we might hear WAR complain how they have to reserve and wasting resource on LD and that they can't remove debuff when doing solo content. It's funny when other tank say the current LD is not bad but they don't want it.

[cactuarzzzz]

1. The DRK's HP bar is the gauge that denotes that. There's always overhealing if you're healing anyone to full. Healing potencies vs. HP totals haven't ever been mathed out in a way to prevent that. It doesn't need any special gauge denotation because you can rule of thumb it by just filling their HP bar once.

DRK HP can still drop to 1 again after receive the heal during walking dead if there're still an incoming attack. Also the healing could Cri.