Living Dead: Problem List

[Monimonmonmon]

Here are my proposed changes to DRK:

Walking Dead now grants invulnerability status.
Walking Dead debuff is removed upon reaching full HP.
- With Living Dead now being an invuln, reaching full HP from 1 HP is essentially the same as being healed for 100% of your HP. The nice thing with this change is, from the moment Walking Dead triggers, healers have the full 10 seconds to heal you as opposed to waiting for let's say a multi-hit tankbuster to end and then rushing to heal you with 4 seconds remaining. It's basically similar to Superbolide with the condition of needing to be healed to full, but better than Holmgang in the sense that you can be healed immediately upon triggering of Walking Dead. This justifies the cooldown being longer than Holmgang but shorter than Superbolide.

Oblation now lasts 15 seconds.
- A little buff to Oblation wouldn't hurt as this allows Oblation to be used as the "uptime" mitigation while reserving TBN for the harder hits.

Bloodspiller/Quietus extends your Darkside duration by 30 seconds.
Darkside max duration is 300 seconds.
Upon reaching max duration, Darkside duration is reset to 30 seconds and a Dark Arts proc is granted.
You can now store up to 2 Dark Arts Proc.
- These changes make Dark Knight's job gauge more meaningful. You would use MP and Blood to extend your Darkside timer which in turn rewards you with a Dark Art Proc. 300 seconds as the max duration can be adjusted to sound more reasonable.

Abyssal Drain now gives 20 Blood Gauge.
Salted Earth grants you a buff that freezes the duration of Darkside.
- These changes make all DRK's oGCDs related to one of their resources, with Carve and Spit replenishing MP.

Shadowbringer does not require Darkside but consumes 1 Dark Arts instead.
- This requirement sounds more reasonable as Darkside is never dropped. Having Darkside as the ultimate resource to use DRK's strongest oGCD makes sense. With it still being tied to a cooldown, you can use any extra Dark Arts proc generated from TBN on Edge of Shadows. But the primary idea is to be able to generate 2 Dark Arts proc from reaching Darkside max duration and spend them on Shadowbringer every 2 minutes.

[Wayback]

(edit, whoops forgot I already commented in this thread a little while ago.)

+1 for this post, it's something that's really important to me as a DRK player.

I've proposed my own fix for Living Dead, might as well mention it again. Instead of killing you if not healed to full, Living Dead should grant 4 stacks of an effect for 10s. While under this effect, you get the standard invun effect.

When you're healed for 25% of your HP, you lose one stack. When the effect expires, you take damage equal to 25% of your max HP for every stack remaining.

With this change,

• the thematic concept of the skill is preserved
  
• its easier to track how close you are to surviving the skill by tracking your remaining stacks
  
• you only need to heal to 50% HP to survive because:
  
• shield healers are more valuable to soak that final burst of damage
  
• the DRK can delay TBN and use it to soak a stack and get a guaranteed Dark Arts

I've always thought this fix should be pretty obvious so I'm surprised we've gone years without a change like this from the dev teams.

Honestly, part of this is the self recovery. You can prevent an amazing amount of damage as DRK but you can't correct any mistakes you make in the way other tanks can, which is a huge issue.

To resolve this, DRK really should get more healing skills. Not more than the other tanks but something to flesh out the kit and recover from dangerous situations when TBN fails. Their new 60s 2 charge cooldown is screaming for a healing effect - would love for it to heal based on damage taken like Macrocosmos does.

Alternativly, Dark Mind would really do well to have healing folded into the skill so you have some regeneration at a low level (DRK should never have lost Soul Survivor tbh).

[Grimfaust_BLM]

Really like this idea for LD. Kinda reminds me of Stagger from Brewmaster Monk in WoW.

Refined out, this would be a really cool QoL update.

[Handsareus]

I've said it before in other medias and I'm posting here cuz i want DRK to change as yoshi apparently hasn't seen any posts in the forums about LD and BW. Just get rid of the detrimental "death" affect of LD. other jobs have gotten rid of their debuff and side effects on their skills, why cant LD get rid of theirs? just leaving it as is and not adding anything additional is still better, do to the fact that you need to activate WD under LD to be invuln is its own side effect.

you can split the tanks invul into two kinds, WARs vers or PLDs vers. With GNB being a PLD vers and DRK being a WAR vers, its literally holmgang with extra steps. it actually might be better than holmgang in the invul aspect, holmgang makes you invuln right away within those 8(EW will now be 10) secs but for LD you can have a range of 10-20 secs. even if it activates right away from a one shot mech, the fact you have a better timing window than holmgang allows you to pop it almost 10 secs earlier than needed. so keeping it at 5 mins would still make sense.

[ForteNightshade]

Someone from the reddit thread suggested what I feel is easily the best solution to Living Dead. Simply put, you take zero damage but also cannot be healed throughout its duration. So if you active it with 5% of your HP, you'll stay at exactly 5% for 10s. If you active it at 90%, you'll stay at 90%. Not only does this allow DRK to feel powerful using its own invuln but also removes the resource dump required from Healers. This also justifies the 60s longer CD than Holmgang because you're technically immune to damage.

Basically, this fixes nearly all of LD's problems in one fell swoop.

[ArthurATDayne]

Someone from the reddit thread suggested what I feel is easily the best solution to Living Dead. Simply put, you take zero damage but also cannot be healed throughout its duration. So if you active it with 5% of your HP, you'll stay at exactly 5% for 10s. If you active it at 90%, you'll stay at 90%. Not only does this allow DRK to feel powerful using its own invuln but also removes the resource dump required from Healers. This also justifies the 60s longer CD than Holmgang because you're technically immune to damage.

Basically, this fixes nearly all of LD's problems in one fell swoop.

I rather like this idea, not just mechanically but for in game lore reasons it can be interpreted as one of the aspects of being "Living Dead": You are snapshot locked in the state you were the moment you "died", with all the good and bad up to that point.

[Lieri]

Someone from the reddit thread suggested what I feel is easily the best solution to Living Dead. Simply put, you take zero damage but also cannot be healed throughout its duration. So if you active it with 5% of your HP, you'll stay at exactly 5% for 10s. If you active it at 90%, you'll stay at 90%. Not only does this allow DRK to feel powerful using its own invuln but also removes the resource dump required from Healers. This also justifies the 60s longer CD than Holmgang because you're technically immune to damage.

Basically, this fixes nearly all of LD's problems in one fell swoop.

That Reddit person's idea is overall good but the DRK cannot be healed during invuln so it will still be confusing for healers (especially for casual players) since they need to pay to Walking Dead buff. Press heal 1 second before the buff wears off and you're wasting your juicy heal. Also if the DRK faces a situation where they need to pop the invuln at 5-10% HP. What happens after the invuln goes off can kill the DRK, basically it's like a way inferior version of Hallowed Ground.

My suggestion is to simply make DRK invuln based on a shield, aren't they supposed to be the barrier tank anyway? basically when activated, if they get hit by a lethal damage the DRK wouldn't die, it'll stay at 1 HP and gain a huge shield (preferably with another color than your usual yellow/orange to make it easier to spot), by this time the invuln buff wears off and they will survive by relying on the shield (a separate buff). Then it will be up to the healer to top the HP back when the shield is up. If the shield wears off and no healing was received, then the DRK will die from tickle damage. It's much easier to handle since healers just need to pay attention to "does this DRK have a stupidly huge barrier on their HP bar? if so I spam heal".

To maximize it, the timing of it's usage will different than the other invulns though. But at least this will be controlled by the DRK and not the healers (wherein lies the confusion with current Living Dead, another person having to pay attention to your debuff caused by yourself). Right now when there's a 2x TB upcoming, in most scenarios tanks just use their invuln and forget about the TB since they cannot go below 1 HP. But with this shield invuln, there is no guarantee that the second hit won't break the shield (and if it breaks it will be the healers heal that determines if the DRK will leave or not).

So to gain the most out of it, it'll be something like : 1st hit = eat it -> the DRK is at low HP -> pop the invuln -> 2nd hit -> DRK goes to 1 HP and gains a huge shield -> healers top DRK.

It's not the best idea but since they already have barriers around, why not improve on it if what they're after is something unique. No need to add an overly complicated system. Also barriers are fun. Looking at a huge barrier is satisfying and gives you a feeling of comfort than seeing a debuff that will kill someone if you don't heal them enough.

I also feel like the invuln should be based around the average player's skills. So the healing part needs to be easy. Why? because imagine you're the rank 1 DRK. Then you pop your invuln in a dungeon but because how it works is too big brain, your healer struggles, makes a mistake and as a result you're dead. Not your fault, not (fully) your healer's fault, but you're dead. It's just unfair to everybody. Invuln should save you from a wipe and not causing it.

[ForteNightshade]

That Reddit person's idea is overall good but the DRK cannot be healed during invuln so it will still be confusing for healers (especially for casual players) since they need to pay to Walking Dead buff. Press heal 1 second before the buff wears off and you're wasting your juicy heal. Also if the DRK faces a situation where they need to pop the invuln at 5-10% HP. What happens after the invuln goes off can kill the DRK, basically it's like a way inferior version of Hallowed Ground.

Neither of those drawbacks are all that bothersome. It's simply casual players making mistakes and isn't all that different from a WHM throwing Bene out only for a GNB to Superbolide. With my version of LD, it should be used immediately in big pulls to minimize the potential drawback. And yeah, it is a worse Hallowed Ground, on paper. It'll actually be better in practice much in the same way Holmgang is. A 5min CD means you'll get more uses out of it than Hallowed.

The issue with shielding is we've gone right back to the DRK being entirely reliant on the healer to heal them through their own invuln. At least they aren't going to die within ten seconds but it's still a scenario I largely want to avoid because unlike WAR and GNB, DRK has no means of sustaining itself. Therefore, making LD require any heals is counterintuitive, imo. Furthermore, a shield is strictly inferior because it can break whereas say all the other invulns have a set 10s immunity.

[Lyth]

Well, I've done everything I can for this. Hopefully someone out there listens to our pleas.

This probably seems like a strange thing to focus on. I know that many people are upset about Blood Weapon not being on a stack system, Delirium being kind of boring and repetitious, DRK being still penalized by having 'spells' that don't benefit from Skill Speed, and the new abilities being fairly underwhelming. But it's more about what it represents: silent, stubborn hubris on the part of the devs to acknowledge a 6 year old problem with lots of player complaints against it and address even basic problems about it, like translation and localization errors or UI communication issues.

I think conceptually, the idea of going down to 1 HP is fun. I still think that using Holmgang on Akh Morn back in ARR something like 7 years ago was one of the most memorable raid moments I've had. I think that high risk high reward gameplay is exciting. But this is all risk no reward, and it's really poorly implemented at that. And the buffs to Holmgang and Superbolide really emphasize how bad this action is in comparison.

I really enjoy this game, and I'll be interested to see how the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc finishes off. I will be looking forward to Endwalker, if only from a story standpoint and the way that it usually manages to tug on the nostalgia strings. It's just a bit disappointing to have the job that I wanted to play deliver in so many ways aesthetically and yet consistently fail in terms of basic gameplay issues. I'm thankful that Reaper is around. Let's hope that they don't butcher it next expansion.

[Shin96]

Well if we can get them to acknowledge this, I believe it should be much easier for them to take us seriously. One step at a time.

I really like the idea previously mentioned in this thread, where upon using Living Dead your HP stays at 50% for example, except you cannot be healed, or killed. I'd like to add you can restore your own HP, if Blood Weapon had HP properties integrated into its toolkit.

I only want them to acknowledge us. If we don't get our way at least communicate it respectfully or explain why it can't work. I miss this lack of transparency from the developers. Every job has gotten alot of care and love except DRK and SCH. It's not fair given how much people love their jobs and some of us are loyal to a fault. It deserves attention whenever possible.