Living dead must change

[LeonardoRozsas]

Dark knight is the only tank that relies on a healer to use it's invulnerability, so as yoshi-p like to keep identity, my suggestion is instead of losing hp when activated it will instead gain hp equal to the damage taken, this will make it also unique and keep the lifesteal theme of dark knight

[Anhra]

Dark knight is the only tank that relies on a healer to use it's invulnerability, so as yoshi-p like to keep identity, my suggestion is instead of losing hp when activated it will instead gain hp equal to the damage taken, this will make it also unique and keep the lifesteal theme of dark knight

There is no job identity among tanks, its just 4 shades of WAR.
I think tanks would be far better off if only PLD had the immortality bubble and the rest of the tanks had something else entirely instead.

Holmgang for example could just do the snare and if the warrior shackles his target for the full duration, he can perform a finisher attack.

as for Living Dead, i think it would be better for DRK if it would allow the DRK to stand up on his own once AFTER he died for a set amount of time. During the duration, the DRK's HP stays at 0 and he can use skills normally, but drops dead again after the timer ends.

As for Super Bolide, i honestly don't know, maybe something that would allow the GNB to get a % dmg boost deoending on missing HP or improved effects for skills that require cardridge charges.

[DaulBan]

There is no job identity among tanks, its just 4 shades of WAR.

[Kabooa]

That's some tasty bait there.

Sure would be a shame if

Someone

Took it.

[Lyth]

I think invulns need to be sorely looked at by the development team now. This is especially true if they want to make a healer rework a priority in Endwalker. Tanking and healing are closely interlinked by necessity. Right now, raidwides are the primary healing 'challenge', rather than tank damage. Invulns are too powerful and too available.

Living Dead definitely needs to be looked at. If we're separating out healers into 'pure healers' and 'shield healers', then the rules will need to change for Walking Dead's heal or die check. Will shields count towards cleansing the effect? I'm not sure what direction this is going to go, but I'd love to see some dev thoughts on this.

Holmgang was changed this expansion. It no longer requires a target. It no longer roots you in place. It has a longer duration and a longer recast than it did previously, and it's enough that it's consistently better than Living Dead in every situation without having any associated drawback. Historically, there Living Dead's potential duration gave it some situational advantages over Holmgang. It was better suited for longer, multi-hit tankbuster sequences (i.e. Final Beam combo, Holy Scourge, Ultimate Embrace + Hyperdrive). Now it's pretty obvious that Living Dead is the worse choice all around.

There are a lot of technical issues with how Living Dead is implemented as well. You need to heal to prevent instant death, but healing paradoxically causes the cooldown to end early. Most of us have seen an early cleanse on a multihit tankbuster only to cause a death on a later hit. There's no gauge to let healers know how close they are to cleasing Walking Dead. And when you go the most reliable route, Benediction is three minutes and Living Dead is five. You're guaranteed to lose Benediction uses when you try to pair the two up. And don't get me started on the tooltip errors. There's no wonder why most of the playerbase doesn't know how it works.

In one of his early interviews, Yoshi-p mentioned that Invincible (Hallowed) was too strong, but that they couldn't really do anything about it given its history. The original Nisi cheese very nearly involved a PLD purely for the invuln, except for the fact that it was at a clear dps disadvantage. There have since been stealth nerfs (you no longer can use it to negate stack applications,) but it's still incredibly powerful. Living Dead and Superbolide try to tone it down some, but they still tend to overpower the rest of the cooldowns in their respective kits.

If Living Dead were to be reworked, what I would favour is this:

Shadowform: For the next 10 seconds, any incoming damage and healing is negated. Damage and healing prevented this way is converted into a temporary shield of up to X% of max HP.

This is essentially a modified version of Sigma's Kinetic Grasp.

As far as availability goes, I'd like to see 'higher difficulty' settings place team-wide limits on player access to invulns and rezzes. I think that Monster Hunter approach of having a shared 'pool' of deaths or resources forces you to play a bit more cautiously and work more closely with your team. If you could only invuln, say, three tankbusters per fight at a savage difficulty setting between the two of you (or two in an ultimate difficulty setting), then maybe cooldown management may become a thing again.

[AC9Breaker]

I can only hope to reach this level of genius.

[Cabalabob]

The sad thing here is that tank identity has been mostly stamped out for balance and people complain about that. Yet one of the few things left giving tanks identity is the invulns, but people complain about the effect those have on balance too...

So the question here is, would you rather have tanks have unique, identity defining abilities that cause balance issues, or homogenised tanks that all play the same?

Either way I will say I agree living dead needs a rework, it is baffling that this move has gone untouched since its release when it has NEVER been a good move. It has never fit DRKs lore, it has never fit DRKs skill set, it has never fit the design of the game as a whole! (Being one of only two skills in the entire game that requires someone other than the user to know how it works).

[Lyth]

How can an ability type be described as 'unique' and 'identity-defining' when every job in the role has it? There's a difference between 'gives me an identity' and 'gives me a competitive advantage'.

I personally think that easy access to invulns and rezzes enables sloppy gameplay. Yes, they lead to some clutch gameplay moments. But that's only true when they are rare. I think that if you want to scale up the difficulty of content, all you need to do is start placing caps on these.

[Vyrerus]

The least they could do is add another piece of jargon to its tooltip...

Additional Effect: If Walking Dead effect expires, and the Dark Knight dies, then they aren't inflicted with weakness.

The idea being that they were trying to not die, and were somewhere between not restored at all, and completely restored, so why be weak?

I mean, I'd be in favor of a better rework, but I think that's the least they could do. Make the death that isn't the DRK's fault less penalizing.

[Liam_Harper]

From a healer PoV, even if you have a WHM in the group it doesn't make Living Dead great. Benediction is not just a rare emergency button, it's an extremely potent oGCD and great to weave in on a tank who is low or a dps who got hit by a mechanic to save heal GCD's. When your tank is a DRK and assigned to immune a tankbuster, you lose free access to that part of your toolkit. Other tanks don't have to be healed to full, you can throw a lily and a tetra on them or let the AST ED and any HoT's up or passive raid heals can handle the rest.

Holm is almost too good now. In some fights, having a WAR lets you immune more busters than a non-WAR comp. That's a huge advantage and makes healing so much easier, especially with an AST and because the tank can move the mitigation elsewhere. I'm surprised LD doesn't have the shorter CD so DRK could at least have filled that niche of an extra buster immune instead. But tbh immunes in general probably need looking at.