DRK skill: Living Dead

[Aurelius2625]

First, if you don't know about tanks... don't comment. For real dawg this is how we get some stupid "fixes" that people want.

Second: DRK's self sustain is peanuts compared to WAR. Abyssal is ABYSMAL for raids. You never use Living Dead for dungeons, my dudes... unless you have WHM with Bene which indicates a huge problem out of the gate already with having to throw the biggest heal at the invuln for it to be "okay"....

DRK has Soul Eater, 3gcds for like 12k hp heal at a critical at Edensverse best in slot... not great. You get ONE soul eater for the invuln time you have for Walking Dead, when tanks have 160k hp. Abyssal is like...10k as well. So impossible to heal it.

Warrior on the other hand, can easily HEAL THEMSELVES TO NEAR FULL after taking the hit with holmgang, making them never in danger of dying from their invuln. Their invuln sounds like total aids on paper, but in practice, it's the strongest one because of their sustain kit of Equilibrium, which if it crits at edensverse bis is like 70k, Thrill, which increases their hp and heals it, gives them 10 percent heal up buff for 10s which ALSO EFFECTS EQUILIBRIUM BTW!! And let's not even get started with how nutty Nascent is... you can heal over 80k hp one ONE use of it... .two infuriate stacks at 35k to 40k each and upheaval, on a 30s cd, that depending on where it's used either heals 15k or 7k ish whether in IR, or you just crit it. That's at least 84k healing on top of potentially 35 to 70k from equilibrium, and can be boosted with thrill of battle. You are NEVER DYING with holmgang.

Superbolide can be paired with Aurora, 1200 potency of healing and you are INVULN so you don't take chip damage, it just heals you up during that time, for a full clemency's worth of hp, as they are both 1200 potency as well as equilibrium.

You can also proc excog off of superbolide as you meet the requirements for it, and an astro can chuck a 1100 potency Essential Dignity at you, as you are at 1hp and they gain max potency for it. Healers have to use almost NO resources for other tank invulns when done properly. Not for WAR as it heals itself, not for GNB, as it has aurora, probably tank swapped so it's not getting auto'd and is healing with aurora, and not with PLD as it doesn't take any damage.

DARK KNIGHT IS THE ONLY ONE WHERE YOU NEVER WANT TO USE THIS SHIT. IT IS GARBAGE. As Xenosys Vex put it: "What a selfish skill... it's a black hole for healer resources..."

[Hycinthus]

Honest question as a new DRK.

Should I make a macro to notify party chat that I’m using LD and to cure me?

Any rule of when I should or should not use LD?

[EaMett]

Honest question as a new DRK.

Should I make a macro to notify party chat that I’m using LD and to cure me?

Any rule of when I should or should not use LD?

Healers should technically notice you using it. With that said, simple chat messages for LD aren't too intrusive, so you can def make a notification.

LD is absolutely fine to use if you're with a WHM and he has bene up. With time you'll learn to keep track of benediction. It can even be used in a planned manner with WHM and give you and your healer many benefits by reducing the need to heal you for 10s. If there is no WHM present you want to avoid using LD. If it's an emergency and you're about to die, you can pop it in order to survive 10 more seconds. That can be the difference between a wipe or clearing a pack of mobs. But expect to die at the end of it.
Any other use of LD should be planned out with your party/healers.

[Aurelius2625]

Usually people will know when you are going to use it in Savage raids so that's not a problem. It's anything below that that is the issue.

[Fynlar]

Honest question as a new DRK.

Should I make a macro to notify party chat that I’m using LD and to cure me?

Any rule of when I should or should not use LD?

I don't think anyone would fault you for having a /p line for it, given how it works. Just don't jam the button multiple times when you use it or anything, and it should be fine.

You use it whenever you're expecting to take a fatal hit (because if you don't, LD doesn't actually do anything for you at all). LD never does anything *bad* for you; the only times it will kill you are in situations where you would have died anyway, so you should still never be afraid to use it if you feel like a fatal hit is coming.

The only potential drawback comes in the form of healers trying to spend MP/resources on you to heal you before WD kills you but failing to heal you enough in time, so then you're dead AND the healers are worse off in MP/resources than they might otherwise have been if you had just died immediately. That is admittedly a big potential flaw of the ability, but that's more of a healer failing than a tank failing, though, and it is most often caused by healers stuck in "dps mode" rather than actually performing the role they're named after.

No, the 'invuln time' is 20 seconds because the concept behind it is to stop spending heals on a DRK once LD has been activated.

If someone is planning to use LD for an anticipated fatal hit though, like I said, there is no difference between activating LD immediately before it or activating it 10 seconds prior. Either way, you can stop healing them until WD is triggered by the tank buster or whatever. Again, any time before WD activates, LD is doing nothing for you, ergo it does not count as artificial extended "invuln time".

The 20 seconds thing is a myth, whether you care to believe that or not. I understand that it is a flawed invuln skill and that people want to desperately cling to any sort of thing they can that will make the ability sound better than it actually is, but the 20 seconds thing just isn't it. It's easily refuted.

[WhyAmIHere]

As for the "it lasts 20 seconds!!"

It doesn't.
Living Dead lasts for 10s, and Walking Dead lasts up to 10s. You can have LD shift into WD at any point in those 10 seconds, and WD can be cleansed almost whenever in those 10 seconds. Holmgang's one deficit to it's duration is more felt in multi-enemy situations if used on a target that dies, whereby you lose Holm. Learned that the hard way. Living Dead doesn't do jack-all but allow WD to trigger. "But it's a sign to your healers to not heal you!" So? I've been not-healed by my healers enough to say LD isn't any more an incentive than anything else for me to just be left sitting with a regen and TBN on me.

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spitballing ideas here: tying back to how people have so many things against LD, and DRK just keeps getting skills pruned.
What would be the downside if Walking Dead was adjusted so that any damage taken while under this effect is instead restored as HP to the DRK?

People keep saying "just add in a healing increase to walking dead! like convalescence!" Why settle for just that? It'd still be in line with DRK's lore of persevering through adversity. If anything for the sake of "balance" just make it so that you still die if you're not fully healed after WD's duration, or just inflict a penalty to WD that prevents you from being healed by anything but it's own effect while you're under the effect of WD.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

What would be the downside if Walking Dead was adjusted so that any damage taken while under this effect is instead restored as HP to the DRK?

People keep saying "just add in a healing increase to walking dead! like convalescence!" Why settle for just that? It'd still be in line with DRK's lore of persevering through adversity. If anything for the sake of "balance" just make it so that you still die if you're not fully healed after WD's duration, or just inflict a penalty to WD that prevents you from being healed by anything but it's own effect while you're under the effect of WD.

The same downside that plagues half of the ideas for re-designing WD: It robs control of the ability and nerfs it hard in content where it's planned to be used.

Quick example why 'convert damage to HP' would make WD useless against mechanics that other invulns would have no trouble against:

-Golden bahamut uses Ahk Morn.
-DRK takes 100k damage out of their 60k HP, WD is procced.
-2nd Ahk Morn hit fully heals DRK, WD is dispelled
-3rd Ahk Morn hit kills DRK.
-4th & 5th ahk morn hits wipe party, where Holm/hallowed/Bolide would have no issues.

Same concept with any 3-hit+ TB, like Punishing heat + 3 divine spears, Ordained capital Punishment + Ordained Punishment, etc. The effect would also be useless against any needed use of LD where the DRK is currently the OT and not taking active damage (Homing Laser from UWU), or any TB that requires a tank swap which would be complicated as the DRK would have to hold onto the boss for an extra auto, where other tanks you just swap immediately. Or a TB followed by a phase jump/long cast bar where the boss can't deal damage to the DRK to heal them.

For an invuln to have Parity & balance with the others and not have that Tank be cast into the abyss of never being used in certain strategies ever again, its effect needs to either A) be guaranteed to be invulnerable for the duration specified (Hallowed/Bolide/Holm), or B) Have it's effect be controllable by the party to absorb however much damage its needed to without falling off prematurely. (Current WD)

That's why adding a Healing % modifier to WD is a common suggestion, since it tackles the issue of WD without compromising its use as an actual Invuln in any situation bolide/hallowed/Holm are used in. It is a very basic solution, but it would require the least work while making the ability more manageable by a single healer.

Honestly, if I were to redux WD to keep its flavor while letting it maintain parity, I'd do the following:

Walking Dead: While this effect is active, your HP cannot go below 1. While the effect of Walking Dead is active, 'Edge of Shadow', 'Flood of Shadow', 'Bloodspiller' & 'Quietus' recover HP based on the damage they deal (100% Convert ratio). 'The Blackest Night' will also heal you for 25% of your max HP during the effect of Walking Dead. Having 100% of your Max HP restored during the duration of Walking Dead will dispel this effect. When the effect of Walking Dead expires without being cleansed, the DRK suffers a DOT equal to 1/4th the difference between their current HP and their Max HP. DOT duration: 12s.

This way, WD keeps its aesthetic flair of needing to be cleansed, but at the same time, giving the DRK more power to assist the healer in cleansing it, while also making it so the effect isn't all or nothing: If the DRK only got healed to say, 80%, then the DOT will tick for 5% of their max HP over the next 12s (or 4 ticks), meaning its a lot more manageable for the healer(s), while still punishing if you barely heal them at all.

[Lyth]

...

Your posts illustrate the confusion surrounding this poorly designed and poorly described ability.

An ability only mitigates damage that it prevents. Hallowed Ground and Superbollide mitigate all incoming damage while they are active. Holmgang and Living Dead only mitigate damage when you are at 1 HP. If you stay above 1 HP, incoming damage isn't being mitigated and the ability does nothing.

When we talk about effective duration, it looks something like this:
Hallowed Ground: 10 seconds
Superbolide: 8 seconds
Living Dead: 0-9 seconds*
Holmgang: 0-7 seconds
*Note that this duration also depends on when your healer cleanses the effect. If they cleanse it early, which happens more often than not because there's no way to see how much required healing is left, the duration is much shorter.

So what is the point of the preliminary part of Living Dead? It reduces recast. A commonly used trick is activating an action early so that you start the recast timer earlier. Let's say there's a single hit tankbuster coming up, with no significant follow-up damage. I activate Hallowed Ground 9 seconds early. The tankbuster hits with 1 second left on Hallowed, allowing me to shave off 9 seconds on the recast timer. The effective recast is 411 seconds. When you know the timestamps of every tankbuster in a fight, this sort of planning helps out a lot to get you more uses out of your cooldowns.

Living Dead just means that your effective recast is always 291 seconds, regardless of whether it's a single hit or multiple ones. The effective recasts of the invulns are:

Hallowed Ground: 411-420 seconds
Superbolide: 351-360 seconds
Living Dead: 291 seconds
Holmgang: 232-240 seconds

The main difference here is that when you compare Holmgang and Superbolide, you're trading off a shorter recast (60s) for a 2 second longer duration and an additional penalty.

For Living Dead and Holmgang, you're trading off a potentially longer duration (maximum 2 seconds, and only if Benediction is used and timed correctly to the very last second of the cooldown) for a longer recast (60s) and an additional penalty (and a really, really bad one at that). What.

It shouldn't take much effort to figure out that this is an extremely poor trade-off. And that's setting aside how badly this action is implemented and written up as well.

But yeah, any time that you see "Living Dead" and "20 seconds", you can pretty much guarantee that anything that follows is going to be completely misguided.

...

Damage to healing can work as an invuln. You just make it such that once you hit 1 HP, you stop taking damage and a portion of what you would have taken slowly causes your health to tick back up for the remainder of the buff duration. That's kind of like an inverse Superbolide.

I think the "heal X damage or die" is going to be poorly implemented regardless of the amount of healing required. That's especially true if meeting the healing requirements early ends the invuln early, as it presently does.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Damage to healing can work as an invuln. You just make it such that once you hit 1 HP, you stop taking damage and a portion of what you would have taken slowly causes your health to tick back up for the remainder of the buff duration. That's kind of like an inverse Superbolide.

I think the "heal X damage or die" is going to be poorly implemented regardless of the amount of healing required. That's especially true if meeting the healing requirements early ends the invuln early, as it presently does.

It completely depends on how the skill is designed. The version as suggested by the person i quoted wouldn't, as it robs complete control of the doom condition from the party and leaves the DRK at the mercy of the enemy and would doom them to die in multiple situations, which I outlined.

There's only one way 'damage to health' would really work while maintaining parity with the other invulns. And that's how you described it; hallowed ground lite (0 damage taken, only its better than bolide because in many instances LD is used, the DRK would be receiving a benediction from the boss mechanics its blocking, saving the healers from having to spend any resources whatsoever. Like how divine spears deal 1mil +damage with the magic vuln, even 10% of that would be a 60-70% heal per spear.), no doom condition, no falling off early for the 10s(or you run into the ahk morn situation I put described.). At that point though, Bolide and LD would need to swap CD timers lol.

That being said, out of literally thousands of pulls during world prog through the years, LD has only ever been cleansed early twice. In a planned usage, it won't ever fall off before it needs to, unless someone fat-finger's benediction. The changes to LD are more to tackle its issue with solo & non WHM comps to make it a bit nicer.

[Lyth]

It'd be an easy enough fix to have an overlay meter (much like the shield gauge) showing how much required healing is left.

...

My point moreso is that a shorter recast has more value than a longer duration, and I think it's fair to say that Holmgang is unconditionally better than Living Dead.

If you did damage to HP as described, the recast is going to be a function of how much HP it restores. If you have something that restores 100% of incoming damage, it could easily be stronger than Hallowed on a multi-hit tankbuster, so would have to have a longer recast. If each HP absorb was hard capped, then there may be situations in which Superbollide is on par or even better. Either way, if you balanced it appropriately, you could easily design it such that you have Holmgang at 5 min, Superbollide/Living Dead at 6 min, and Hallowed at 7 min. To go one step further, I wish that they'd place a team-wide limit on invulns (something like 3x/fight across both tanks) simply to force more planning on how to ration out your standard cooldown pool instead of invuln-swap-supercooldown-invuln-swap.