Take monk swift reflexes, extend to other melees if they do not already have a similar ability. Give it a 3 second cast time, increase the endurance cost to 1000, but completely remove the recast timer. This would serve as a counterpoint to shield of fate, and make it so that we are almost as likely as a caster to survive a melee round from big baddies. 3 second cast time forces us to sacrifice DPS to recast it and makes it so that we can't chain cast it to tank.
They already are copying monks swift reflexes to zerkers and rogues, except their defensive bonus portions are pretty bad
They are? I don't see any rune like abilities for rogues. I agree that if we were to get something then a long cast time and short recast time would allow for it to be usable on rampage mobs but at a drop in dps. Rogues do get a long lasting (10 min) disc to boost avoidance (Agile-Footed disc), but it's basically a "do rubbish dps" disc too as we can't do anything else while running that disc and that includes the recent long-duration Knifeplay "sustained disc". However IMO we don't need something like rune. Instead we just need the AE Rampage damage from mobs kept low enough to not one-shot us. By all means keep single target rampage high so we need proper tanking there, but AE rampage is just an anti-melee skill basically. Why boost all melee defense to compensate? May as well just stop one-shotting us by changing ae ramp instead.
Instead of the rune like ability that fires when you eat a hard hit (Monk Version), the Rogue version = PBAE -95% aggro, Berserker version = 4 second PBAE stun up to lvl 110. This of course is subject to change (it probably wont though lets be honest ) and will likely be released in T2A with the new Spells.
i dont see what a pbae deaggro will do to an AE rampage. Aggro is not the problem of rogues , AE rampage rounding us without notice is.
AE rampage, while my largest concern, isn't the only problem. Because all raid bosses by design ignore avoidance, I tend to get pancaked anytime a tank goes down because of leather AC. We can argue about aggro management and all those other things, but EverQuest should not be a "twitch" type game (MMOs in general shouldn't). I also intentionally stay higher because I feel I have a better chance than most dps in my guild of firing a defensive disc before I take that 1 round. An add if not picked up within .01 seconds of existence (Bixie raid comes to mind) is going to hit someone not a tank, I would like a reasonable chance of surviving such a thing. At least avoidance seems to work on them. Swift reflexes used to be on its own timer, it now shares a timer with a good sustained disc for monks. And honestly, shield of fate is way better than swift reflexes and can be recast if the caster is so inclined. It blocks spells as well as melee, it blocks more overall damage, and doesn't require you to first eat a massive hit for 100% damage to work. Also, stun wouldn't do anything, even at 110 level, to deter a raid boss.
I use Swift Reflexes quite a lot. The buff lasts a long time so I click it, and then let the timer refresh fort he dps disc that it shares a timer with. Let's me get FD off before I bite the dust if for some reason I get something big's attention.
