We really need to talk about Living Dead

[Lucy_Pyre]

On the other hand this entire expansion has been about increasing the accessibility to the entire player base. If there really is such a large percentage of people who are having issues with the skill then that might be something the player base is justified as holding up as a reason for increasing accessibility.

In another post you made a suggestion about how to handle the skill and several people wrote back to you thank you for suggesting a way to heal it because they were at a loss. That doesn't really exist with the other invulns right now.

2/3 of the damn WAR playerbase doesn't ever touch Nascent Flash because they think it's 'bad' since it requires a target to use. Does that mean that we should remove Nascent Flash from WAR? No, of course not. It's WAR's most potent cooldown outside of Holmgang. The sad reality is that the majority will always be, well, let's be polite and say sub-par. And in that demographic of the playerbase there is going to be an extreme amount of sub-optimal usage of abilities, cooldowns, and even a sheer lack of understanding of said abilities & cooldowns. I've seen people complain about Holmgang ending early if the target it's tethered to dies, when that's a complete non-issue as if you're so worried about that you can simply make a de-target macro for Holmgang so that whenever you use it it always goes off on the player themselves, so that even if a target dies or goes untargetable you still retain the invuln. I guess the gist of what I'm trying to say here is that there is always going to be sub-par players and those individuals will never understand things properly or use them properly. That isn't grounds to change something, especially when it's already easy to begin with.

[Chrono_Rising]

Ease of use and intuitive game play are two different things.

I wouldn't say oh a dark knight I obviously press these 6 buttons in this sequence once this icon turns grey. Flip this script though. Once you've learned a mechanic in this game is anything actually hard?

I feel comfortable saying most green leaf healer, healing their first dark knight in a dungeon, would not know exactly what would happen when the walking dead debuff expires. This is the accessibility element. Because there is no time that they are force to acknowledge these skills or are taught about tank invulns many of them might be experiencing these for the first time doing savage content.

I have no idea if people are still complaining about Nascent flash. I thought people just had a problem with it at launch because no one realized just how powerful it was. Are there recent complaints? We have had years of living dead, people still die to being just off of the hp thresh hold. Where this ability really doesn't shine is probably the place where it also matters most: Prog.

Nascent flash: A skill that takes alittle getting use to but is very abusable in terms of healing yourself in a pinch. Personally I have used this ability in dungeons where a healer has died almost immediately in a boss battle. How many dps were lost? 0. Why? Nascent Flash. It is broken in warriors favor, I hope they keep it the same and don't nerf it.

The difference between Living dead issues and Nascent flash/Holmgang is that what you are saying for these skills can always be fixed by things you are currently suggesting. Living dead requires a plan to go into healing: there is no no universal fix because if things don't go to plan, then things change. Suddenly something I could handle myself (say with benediction) I now need two people spamming heals with 0 feedback on if they are even close to meeting the requirement in time.

Living dead does its job. I'm not arguing that it is terrible or unusable, but it is not inline with usability of the other tank invulns. I can see you arguing against those saying that its bad or unusable as it certainly isn't, but to argue that its perfect and needs absolutely no adjustment says more about you and what position you are arguing from than the state of living dead.

At minimum changes: Indicate how much needs to be healed and how much time is left. Forexample a doom head that has a counter and fades away as you get close to the heal check point.

Ideal changes: Give back Sole Survivor/self sustain options so we can help with the healing requirement as in late SB.

[Tranquilmelody7]

Superbolide isn't much better in solo content than Living Dead, since even if you pop Aurora right as you activate it you aren't getting *that* much health back before the immunity times out. Holmgang in the same situation is +/- depending on if the WAR has ToB & Equil up, since we can't use Nascent without one other party member (SE plz). As for using healing resources, sure, you're technically correct. Even if that is the case, though, LD doesn't take *that* much to heal up with two healers in 8 man content. An AST and SCH can take the DRK from 1 HP to full in two GCDs, together, if either of them get crits on Essential Dignity/Lustrate. If no crits it'll take 3 GCDs most likely, but crit rates are pretty comfy these days. Honestly the only healer I can see having any issues dealing with LD in light party content is SCH. WHM obviously has Bene, and AST can snapshot ED at 1HP with other heals in unison for a huge burst heal, plus two ED charges makes it even less of an issue. While yes, SCH can still manage it with Aetherflow up (or burning Dissipation to get it if necessary) it'll likely still require burning 2 Lustrate's, Excog, and a crit Adlo with Emergency Tactics at the least; which is a pretty significant resource drain, I admit.

You may be surprised as the amount of solo play situations you can salvage pertaining to use of Holmang and Superbollide.

First off, you can utilize a healer chocobo to manage Holmang(Any type of chocobo should be sufficient to keep yourself topped off with Nascent Flash in most situations) and Superbollide, making them viable options for virtually all overworld content.
Naturally, that isn't the case Living Dead, with the cumulative 100% HP requirement being unattainable.

Secondly, sustaining potions in palace of the dead are surprisingly enough to manage both Holmang and Superbollide.
I'm not too familiar with using them, but there is a similar item in Eureka that may be sufficient for solo usage of Holmang and Superbollide in Eureka Anemos and Pagos.
Once access to Logograms is granted in Pyros and Hydatos, I can definitely vouch for logos action like Bloodbath being sufficient enough to use in tandem with Holmang and Superbollide.
Once again, that is not the case for Living Dead - which is honestly kind of sad.

Apart from straight forward running of undersized content, there are honestly quite a few contextual actions and skills accessible that may provide players with access to unique heals in solo content.
They can be often be adequate to utilize in conjunction with Holmang and Superbollide, but will virtually never be enough to get any use out of Living Dead in solo play.

My general point is that the amount of healing resources that Living Dead is essentially uncomparable to those required by any other tank CD in the game.
The fact that you may even have to consult and employ a healing rotation to manage the skill speaks volumes as to something going wrong in development.

Firstly, LD is not a bad skill. You and your team plan out when you are going to use it and there's no problems, which is what you should be doing anyway. Learn to communicate.

I feel you're conflating a 'manageable' skill with a 'satisfactory' one.
Living Dead's downsides are greater than those of any other Tank CD in the game, with the invulnerability phase still only having a maximum duration of 9 seconds to compensate.
The only practical advantage of Living Dead is the 10 second buffer period, which is of limited benefit in high end content where communication with party members and preparation for enemy damage and mechanics are vital.

There's no point discussing it's merits outside of raiding, because it literally doesn't matter. Casual content is casual content, you die, so what.

This statement, is frankly; utter rubbish.
Non-raiding content constitutes the majority of the combat encounters in the game.
Just because the skills and strategies employed aren't as great as those in high end encounters, doesn't automatically make any relevant gameplay issues and concerns invalid - that's just outrageous.

It's dumber to look at balance seperatedly between overall defense and invul instead of the entire class design.

Skills indeed don't exist in a vacuum, so there is a modicum of truth in your crude statement.
However, judging skills on their own merits as well as in context of a class's entire toolkit should ideally both be critical perspectives to practice during game development.
I don't think anyone in here is implying DRK should have the best tank invulnerability skill(Or even not the worst!( to coincide with the mighty TBN.
I myself would be quite satisfied if Living Dead merely wasn't as terribly impractical and unenjoyable to use as it is now.

2/3 of the damn WAR playerbase doesn't ever touch Nascent Flash because they think it's 'bad' since it requires a target to use. Does that mean that we should remove Nascent Flash from WAR? No, of course not. It's WAR's most potent cooldown outside of Holmgang.

This is yet another highly unpleasant strawman argument to witness.
No one is asking for the outright removal of Living Dead.
We are requesting a prompt rework of the move, or at least tweaks to make the healing requirements easier to meet.
It's WAR's most potent cooldown outside of Holmgang also don't know what prompted you to conjure that suspect "2/3 of the WAR playerbase."
The overwhelming majority of level 76 and above WAR players I crew up with use Nascent Flash as applicable.
Personal ancedotes I'm sure, but with more grounding than the nebulous unsupported claim you just made.

Although I will admit that every now and then on forums I witness someone propose that the target requirement for Nascent Flash be removed, which I feel we both agree is also a fair case to make.

I do agree however, that Nascent Flash is an extremely effective skill, actually being my favorite added this expansion.

VERY LONG POST

Normally I'd say: "Wow, someone is holding a grudge!"
Instead I'll just comment on that being the most impressive in-depth articulate analysis of someone's post history that I've ever seen.
Bravo.

[Lucy_Pyre]

overworld content

Ah yes let's start judging things by how effective they are at content that quite literally is utterly meaningless 99.9% of the time. Big brain.

[Tranquilmelody7]

Ah yes let's start judging things by how effective they are at content that quite literally is utterly meaningless 99.9% of the time. Big brain.

Why is overworld content pointless?
Is it just because you say it is?

Now, you can of course argue that in overworld combat stakes are much lower and fights are much easier than instanced content, but that's still a plethora of respective instances(No pun intended)where DRK has an utterly useless CD to compound on said skill being painful to use in the majority of combat encounters in this game.

By all means though, feel free to overlook the other examples I alluded to if it means you can get your Ad Hominem across.

[ItMe]

Ah yes let's start judging things by how effective they are at content that quite literally is utterly meaningless 99.9% of the time. Big brain.

I dunno...
I seem to spend quite a bit of time in the overworld.
I think the more important question is how relevant invulns are in the overworld because outside of boss Fates I'm not sure there's much use for them there.

[Lucy_Pyre]

Why is overworld content pointless?
Is it just because you say it is?

Now, you can of course argue that in overworld combat stakes are much lower and fights are much easier than instanced content, but that's still a plethora of respective instances(No pun intended)where DRK has an utterly useless CD to compound on said skill being painful to use in the majority of combat encounters in this game.

By all means though, feel free to overlook the other examples I alluded to if it means you can get your Ad Hominem across.

Overworld content is meaningless because you could put a doped-up monkey at a keyboard and it could successfully complete overworld content. It's irrelevant to discuss it.

[Miminming]

You may be surprised as the amount of solo play situations you can salvage pertaining to use of Holmang and Superbollide.

First off, you can utilize a healer chocobo to manage Holmang(Any type of chocobo should be sufficient to keep yourself topped off with Nascent Flash in most situations) and Superbollide, making them viable options for virtually all overworld content.
Naturally, that isn't the case Living Dead, with the cumulative 100% HP requirement being unattainable.

Secondly, sustaining potions in palace of the dead are surprisingly enough to manage both Holmang and Superbollide.
I'm not too familiar with using them, but there is a similar item in Eureka that may be sufficient for solo usage of Holmang and Superbollide in Eureka Anemos and Pagos.
Once access to Logograms is granted in Pyros and Hydatos, I can definitely vouch for logos action like Bloodbath being sufficient enough to use in tandem with Holmang and Superbollide.
Once again, that is not the case for Living Dead - which is honestly kind of sad.

Apart from straight forward running of undersized content, there are honestly quite a few contextual actions and skills accessible that may provide players with access to unique heals in solo content.
They can be often be adequate to utilize in conjunction with Holmang and Superbollide, but will virtually never be enough to get any use out of Living Dead in solo play.

Have you been in that situassion or it's just your hypotethical? First thing first if you bring healer chocobo as a tank there's almost virtually no contents that need invul in overworld that can be solo'd.
(Lvl 80 mob hunt or anything that doesn't mean to be solo'd exclude obviously because even with invul it's impossible to kill lvl 80 A class mob hunt atm)

In eureka or PotD or HoH if you still have the time to use potion or Logos, there 's NO reason to use invul, and if you are gonna argue the potion cooldown is on 5s or something, the i must say that 0.000001% of situassion is not worth counting, it's like saying you could have live if the enemy attack is missing or your attack is crit or is there's pomander of raise beside you or there's one less enemy in that floor or there's some random healer to heal you etc. etc.

[Lyth]

...

Even my chocobo is better designed for tanking than Living Dead.

[Miminming]

Even my chocobo is better designed for tanking than Living Dead.

And even my chocobo is better than holm and bolide, so why the whine?