Let's talk Dark Knights

[Brightamethyst]

They wont balance things for casuals or low skills players

Um... what? Almost everything is balanced around casual play. That's part of why LD is so weird. It's one of the few things that's clearly NOT designed for casual content.

LD is an amazing CD for any raid content and you can cheese a lot of stuff with it and it's pretty strong overall

Being strong in controlled raid settings does not make it good, and even then it's objectively way worse than all the other invulns.

The devs rightfully doesn't care if you die of LD in raid 24 or dungeons, it's not meant to be used here.

So says you. Not everyone is as perfect as you seem to think you are.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Living Dead is fine in a group that knows what they're doing. In a PUG, it's a crapshoot whether the healers are paying attention and know what to do. Solo, it's delayed suicide, because DRK doesn't have enough self-healing to deal with it.

[Tranquilmelody7]

And it will stay unchanged, because it's a damn good CD.

Living Dead is fine in a group that knows what they're doing. In a PUG, it's a crapshoot whether the healers are paying attention and know what to do. Solo, it's delayed suicide, because DRK doesn't have enough self-healing to deal with it.

Living dead still only provides 9 seconds(AT BEST FFS) of actual mitigation while having a 60 second longer cooldown than Holmang, the best invulnerability skill in the gane.

All the downsides of Living Dead are for an extra 9 seconds to time the invulnerability for a death blow in high end content.
That sounds fair enough on paper, but it's not nearly practical enough to compensate for it's downsides even in highly coordinated groups.

Few deathly tankbusters in the game possess such stringent timing to facilitate the use of a buffer window.
Titania EX is the only I can think of off the top of my head that truly benefits from one.

If anything, I'd argue Living Dead encourages bad habits.
By getting used to the safety net provided by the Living Dead Window, you may neglect to actually time the invulnerability accurately - instead, shifting the bulk of the burden of timing mechanics to your healer while having them have to waste an unparalleled amount of healing resources than they would have to exhaust on any other tank.

With Endwalker, Warrior and Gunbreaker will have an significantly easier time timing their invulnerability skills properly for high end content, while DRK's pathetic excuse for a cooldown still has to worry about ending their mitigation window early.

Speaking of dungeons, pulling wall to wall will offer ample opportunities for tanks to utilize their invulnerability skills if the tank and healer cooperate to conserve their other resources during the activation of the skill.
Some tanks exercise the use of a macro to callout the activation period for invulns in advance for PUGs, which even Paladins should use so a healer doesn't waste a regen or shield on during their absolute invincible period.

Living dead is so utterly demanding of healing resources that you're better off not risking using to squeeze out an extra bit of optimization during runs, let alone as a panic button.

DRK is also the only tank that can't benefit from their invulnerability skill during solo play...I could go on...but many people have made it quite clear FOR YEARS just how aggravating Living Dead is.

It's bottom of the barrel gameplay design that cements it as not only my hated skill in FF14, but possibly any GAAS I've ever played.

The only positives I could sing Living Dead is that it looks cool.
Which is practically the thesis of DRK's entire design post HW and TBN.

[Liam_Harper]

Living Dead is fine in a group that knows what they're doing. In a PUG, it's a crapshoot whether the healers are paying attention and know what to do. Solo, it's delayed suicide, because DRK doesn't have enough self-healing to deal with it.

Even if the healer knows what to do in an organized group, if you use LD to immune tank busters you're either holding the WHM's best single target oGCD hostage or you're demanding a bunch of resources and/or GCD healing. Living dead is rubbish in any group, it's simply inferior to any other tank immune.

Invincible moves are used to cheese or make fights easier, but nothing in the actual game requires you to invu anything or it fails.

It's a piece of your toolkit. There are a lot of abilities in player toolkits that aren't absolutely necessary but are great because they make life easier if we utilize them well. The simple fact is that if 3 of 4 tanks have a powerful ability to handle tankbusters and the 4th tank has an inferior weaker version, that tank is comparatively worse off than the other tanks, even if they're "fine". A class can be viable but still bad.

[Gemina]

This was, in my opinion, the best explanation of a DRK I have seen so far.
Thank you for sharing/clearing this up. My lack of the English language prevented me from doing so.
Now I feel we both are correct from a certain point of view. In my case, it was more of a feeling I had from the experiences of playing a Death knight in WoW.

You would not keep small company in your views of DRK. The "evil" brand is part of their lore, but the DRK's themselves never consider themselves to be evil, and their methods are necessary for the greater good. Some say they lose their humanity to the abyss, and they would say, "If that is the cost to preserve justice, then so be it." They're very extreme, lol.

Even if the healer knows what to do in an organized group, if you use LD to immune tank busters you're either holding the WHM's best single target oGCD hostage or you're demanding a bunch of resources and/or GCD healing. Living dead is rubbish in any group, it's simply inferior to any other tank immune.

All tank invulns are inferior to Hallowed Ground. No ifs, ands, or butts about it. The devs need to finally realize that the tank invuln is a role skill. Please put it there and be done with this nonsense already.

[Tranquilmelody7]

And it will stay unchanged, because it's a damn good CD.

You would not keep small company in your views of DRK. The "evil" brand is part of their lore, but the DRK's themselves never consider themselves to be evil, and their methods are necessary for the greater good. Some say they lose their humanity to the abyss, and they would say, "If that is the cost to preserve justice, then so be it." They're very extreme, lol.


All tank invulns are inferior to Hallowed Ground. No ifs, ands, or butts about it. The devs need to finally realize that the tank invuln is a role skill. Please put it there and be done with this nonsense already.

Yes actually, there are if, ands, & butts.
Hallowed Ground has a cooldown of 420 seconds.

I'd take Holmang or Superbollide over it in almost any scenario save solo play.
The biggest advantage it had was that it had the longest duration of all the invulnerability skills, which will no longer be the case for Endwalker.

I understand hallowed ground could still very well be considered the overall best of the invulnerability skills due to having no drawbacks, but the gap between Living Dead and the rest in terms of of usefulness would still be far larger than Paladins invulnerability compared to the rest.

The last thing this game needs is more homogenization.
I'd much rather the 14 team NOT go the scorched earth approach when only one of 4 contemporary tank CDs has a genuine problem.

[Gemina]

The last thing this game needs is more homogenization.

Because why? When this word gets tossed around as much as it does, it sounds like an echo more than it does a valid argument. I don't see this to be the case of tank invuln skills in even the slightest. Trying to find niche ways for each tank to essentially do the same thing in this regard has got to be one of the biggest thorns in the side of this dev team. I never said Hallowed should stay at 420s, that within itself is ridiculous for any ability in this game. It would have to be adjusted to fit into a role skill, but it might as well be done at this point.

The invuln skill is very similar to tank LB3 as far as the intention behind its function, so there isn't much reason to try and find different ways to make it effective. If the devs made this choice, I am quite sure all kinds of players will be up in arms about it; but in the end they will adjust and everything will be just fine, and these silly arguments can finally be laid to rest.

[Aron73]

You would not keep small company in your views of DRK. The "evil" brand is part of their lore, but the DRK's themselves never consider themselves to be evil, and their methods are necessary for the greater good. Some say they lose their humanity to the abyss, and they would say, "If that is the cost to preserve justice, then so be it." They're very extreme, lol.


All tank invulns are inferior to Hallowed Ground. No ifs, ands, or butts about it. The devs need to finally realize that the tank invuln is a role skill. Please put it there and be done with this nonsense already.

In normal circumstances, I would agree with you but this company is far from what people think/believe. When my book is done I will put it on this forum for you all to read

[Izscha]

You dont use LD if you're not sure it will pop in the 10 sec frame, the more you talk about the more obvious it is that you dont do stuff that requires it.
For years i've seen ppl crying about it, and for years it has been the same and nobody outside casuals do cry about it, we get it PUGs cant heal you, but you're never supposed to use it in stuff you do with pugs so your whole argument is pointless.

[RyuDragnier]

You dont use LD if you're not sure it will pop in the 10 sec frame, the more you talk about the more obvious it is that you dont do stuff that requires it.

You use it if you're unsure if you're going to get healed in time to survive, like any other. WAR uses Holmgang as a buffer, but can bring themselves out of the danger threshold. GNB's Superbolide will cause their HP to hit 1, but they have no worries about heals during that time frame. PLD just uses Hallowed Ground and has no worries because they will take no damage and can essentially heal themselves if need be out of danger with Clemency (though you have bigger problems if you're having to do this). DRK, you can use it as a buffer, but if it goes off...you're likely dead. The healer will have to 100% heal you, something they were likely struggling with prior to this (especially if you were forced to use this in a dungeon), meaning you will likely die within the next 10s.

Also, things can happen in raids, you're going to see the death cheats used early. If you're using them on any other tank, the healer has time to heal people up for the raidwide that is likely about to happen. If you're DRK...there is no time, they're likely sacrificing you to save the party. That isn't a death cheat, that's a delayed death countdown.