Can we give Abyssal Drain a proper indicator please?

[NobleWinter]

This wouldn't even be an issue if Abyssal Drain created a Barrier instead of restoring raw health. That would allow a DRK to use it at the beginning of a pull for DPS and have a clear indicator on their health bar for the healer to see. Just let the barrier restore up to half it's original barrier amount if any is left when it times out after like 10-15 seconds and get eaten by damage secondary to TBN.

I'm of the opinion tho that all Tank sustain should be barriers and steady regens while raw healing output should be firmly in the domain of healers. Tanks should have interesting things like their invulns being removed as a single long cast cool down and instead be reworked into their basic action economy. Imagine if Dark stored Blood Gauge to Trigger their Walking Dead state allowing them to fight for a few GCDs without dropping past 1 HP with healing attached to their actions. This would work with their barriers well and give healers a clear indication for when it's time to heal without any messy overlap of who is responsible for bursting their health to full. The tanks avoids death by using hp barriers and well timed Invuln GCD's and Healers restore massive health deficits like common sense would lead you to believe they are both capable of.

[Shurrikhan]

Why is ease or the removal of decisions necessarily better?

Yes, we could make it so AD gives a barrier so it'd never be delayed, but then... what's so awful about the ability to delay mit CDs slightly to weave in AD a bit sooner?

Moreover, unless there's a serious risk of the barrier not getting full use before it's duration ends, it's still just healing that thereby doesn't need to done identically to a heal except without any possible fail-state or reason to be aware of contexts.

Similarly, while stored blood gauge that could act as an invuln sounds interesting on paper, as long as its generation is merely routine, you'd have just made it passive. "Die" and you consume gauge per second instead of actually dying. I suppose the cheese of letting someone drop nearly to 1 HP before a big hit you effectively 100% mitigate from having nothing left to lose before healing back up to consume as little gauge as possible, or the like, could be interesting enough, but what little point there is to invulns is that they have to be used decently sparingly and deliberately per tank. Passively "triggered" resource spending as invulns and "Invuln GCDs" are not that, and I suspect it'd actually be a net loss to gameplay outside of almost absurdly perfect handling (of their redesigns).

[Alice_Rivers]

Having taken a bit to think it over, I think going down the shield route for AD but I'm a bit dubious about LD as a gauge spender. To the question of "Why is ease or the removal of decisions necessarily better?", for me it's about aiding cooperation and reducing waste in a world where tanks are increasingly self sufficient. In my mind, this thread is and was never about removing anything or about dumbing things down, it's just about aiding coordination of resources.

[PyurBlue]

This is a problem born from tanks and healers overlapping too much. Healers have big heals and want to hold them until the tank is low on HP to avoid overheal. Tanks have big heals and want to hold them until the tank is low HP to avoid heal. The result is that tanks and healers want to use their heals at the same time, and because healing power is so excessive someone's heal is going to be wasted. My preferred solution would be to remove tank healing so that heals fall under the domain of the healer. Proper synergistic class design removes the problem entirely. An indicator might also work but it's not something that I would want to see in game. It's a bit too close to having the game spelling out when you should do X or Y, which already happens too much.

[Mercury_Grey]

HOnestly its a communication error, 99% of the healrs i get in normal content or even harder ocntent. They can adjust their healing around how bady the tank needs it. Tank using a couple cooldowns then a full heal after getting to 20%. they can divert more resources on the party or save a "OH SHIT" button for that oh shit moment. Could go a step further and make a macro that says "Hey i'm using TBN <or the tnak invul here> let it break first>. think abyussal was bad, try having a delayed hallowed grounds or superbolide that brought yo uto 1 hp and took a second before it applied.