Shadowknight Issues / Suggestions

State of the Shadowknight compared to Warriors' AA.
Warriors generally have the following AA.
STR　4-4-8
STA　4-4-8-8
INT　4-1
STR 4-4-8 for Weapon Expertise. This melee crit helps high DPS of Warriors.
STA 4-4-8-8 for Gladiator's Finesse and Gladiator's Revenge. These double attack and tac-au-tac help both DPS and survivability. And Buckler Reversal for riposte for DPS.
INT 4-1 for Acceleration Strike. This faster melee/casting/cast-recovery helps DPS.
And Warriors get INT 4-8-8-7-2 for DPS.
Otherwise, they get AGI 4-4-6-8-2 for almost unbeatable survivability(Dragoon's Reflex can parry all the attack).
Compared to these Warriors' AA, how are Crusaders' AA?
(1)DPS
There are Avenger's Relentlessness(haste), Avenging Invigoration(faster casting/recasting/cast-recovery), Fervor of Faith(crit of physical damage), and Legionnaire's Wrath(spell crit).
Legionnaire's Wrath(spell crit) is great. But other DPS AAs are a little bit poor compared to melee crit/double attack/riposte.
Warriors' STA line is really awesome. Riposte/double attack/tac-au-tac help DPS very much.
(2)Survivability
Crusaders have Divine Aura(a kind of Ward). But it is slightly poor. Ward 50% of HP of caster is very weak. And to make matters worse, Shadowknight has only low HP.
Warriors have almost unbeatable survivability. Dragoon's Reflex can parry all the attack. When it is combined with Stoneskin(Tower of Stone), crusaders can't help but being overshadowed.
Lifetap? In the first place, it is Healers that heal fighters. In solo and group, lifetap is very effective. But, in the raid where epic mob's melee attack gives over 10000 damage, lifetaps, which are interrupted and resisted frequently and heal the caster a little, aren't useful very much. Lifetaps don't help much in RoK raid.
I think the state of the Shadowknight compared to Warriors' AA as above.
PS.
Yeah, improve Mitigation, Avoidance, Hate Control and DPS of SK.
But it will help Shadowknight only to be behind Warriors, not equal to Warriors.
Why? Because Guardian have almost unbeatable survivability as I mentioned as above.
Shadowknight gave up mitigation and avoidance instead of Lifetap.
But lifetaps aren't useful very much in RoK raid as I mentioned as above.
So, to be "realistic" truly, Shadowknight can't help but being overpowered. Why? Because Guardian is actually already "overpowered". At least, no other fighters are rated on par with Guardian.
So, for example, if lifetap is our characteristics, improve lifetap to be as useful as Stoneskin of Guardian in RoK raid.
Improving mit, avoidance, hate control and DPS will help SK to be a better fighter. But it is not enough to change the present situation that only Guardian Main Tank in RoK raid, at least players want Guardian to Main Tank.
Players want Guardian to Main Tank. It's the problem.
Players think that a raid with Guardian is easier than with other fighters. And players think that Guardian is superior than other fighters in raid.
It is true.
So, it is well and good that players want Guardian to Main Tank. Because it is natural that people choose an easy way.
Is Shadowknight hard to be understood? So, it is a system based problem, isn't it? Not player based problem. Because Shadowknight was designed to be hard to be understood. If so, it is natural that players want Guardian.
It doesn't matter whether Shadowknight can Main Tank or not.
People actually say that Shadowknight is unwanted and unneeded in a raid. It may come from players' not understanding about Shadowknight very well. If so, at least, change Shadowknight to be as easy to be understood as Guardian.
I doubt that "realistic tweaking"(not "unrealistic revamp" ) can change this situation in which SKs are unwanted and unneeded compared to Guardian.
Repeating to say, it doesn't matter whether Shadowknight can actually Main Tank in RoK raid or not. Players have already thought that Guardian is superior than other fighters in raid. We can't enlighten. If Shadowknight is hard to be understood, it is a system based problem. Not player based. Change Shadowknight to be easy to be understood.
By the way, why do a lot of players say that fighters except for Guardian are unwanted and unneeded in RoK raid? I can't help but thinking that there is not only a player based problem, but also a system based problem.

Quoting the following, but the response applies to more than just the following. I am obviously the largest proponet for very little happening with the SK class. You can see the things that I think need fixed/tweaked in the second reply of this thread. In my opinion most of the failings for the SK class come in the form of itemization, and if itemization gets fixed like I mentioned in my initial post most of the problems go away.

Istar@Mistmoore wrote:

This is a completely ignorant comment and far from the truth. I MT'd the majority of the 3rd wing of VP as an SK with zero problems. I didn't MT Silverwing but I picked it up twice with zero problems when the MT got chosen for the lever and later charmed. Each time I held it for 30+ seconds without dieing. Also did Shade/Phara in almost completely legendary gear (not even the best instanced gear at that because I'm still missing some, and only Fabled epic because it was literally my first time raiding on the SK) and holding agro against 85k raid dps with zero problems. I even off tanked Shade and did the switches on Phara with only a Warden and an Inquisitor for heals (yes, thats right, I didn't have a shaman) and only a dirge for hate. The ability to FD made it supper easy, and the other tank was a zerker so you can't even say it was recapture. This isn't in some amazing top guild either, this was in a guild who it was only their 3rd time clearing VP. SK's are fully capable tanks if you know what you are doing.
Would a Guardian have been able to do it better? How do you define better? I had zero problems with any of it. You can argue they could have done it "easier" but that is completely relative. Easier when there isn't a problem doing it in the first place means nothing.
My gear that night where I did all the third wing tanking?
Crimson Helm of Horror (my one piece of raid gear from prior when it was my alt in another guild)
Cloak of the Grungetalon Champion
Mighty Hauberk
Mantle of the Jarsath Tribe
Dreadscale Greaves
Armguards of the Elite Yha-lei shock troopers
Gauntlets of Sanctification
Charred Sabatons
Sedition
Enduring Wall (that I got earlier in that same day)
Stretched Sinew Bow
Grunblig's Blackened Allow Belt
Danak Essence Vial Necklace
Signet of the Ankexfen
Sarnak Earring of Station
Broken Toe Shiny
Pristine Imbued Tynnonium Band of Strength
Grunblig's Coil
Dragonscale Bracelet
Why did I bother typing all that out? To prove the point. I did it in that. In a guild that only cleared vp twice so obviously didn't have completely awesome gear. When I wasn't MT'ing I didn't have a shaman. We didn't have problems.

The classes problem in agro isn't there, it is a player problem. Knowing what to hit in what order is all that matters beyond upgrading your abilities, which everyone has to do.
DPS? I'm doing 4k+ on VP Trash (I do now have some better gear from the past 3 weeks since the initial tanking) with a dirge, coercer (that was boxed and doing nothing), Inquisitor, and Mystic (plus whatever person happened to be afk and got moved to my scrub group). This was while OT'ing for the night. I got moved up to the MT group for a short while in the third wing and dps was pretty much the same. On nameds it depends on which named and what I am doing.

In response to Xersues. You take Insinuate over Tap if you are going to tank because Insinuate is your best agro normal agro ability (if you don't include death march, death touch, and rescue). If you can't get the master of Tap you leave it at Ad3. You get more agro from Insinuate. As to the next paragraph from your response, I don't feel like I'm playing catch up. Nuke with whatever is up to pull if possible, else body pull. Insinuate, Chastisement, Hateful Slam, Shadow Coil, Painful Aura, Anguish, Contagion, Siphon Strike, Siphon Vitae, Doom Rays. Taunts when up, lesser abilities when all that stuff is down. Death March if you know someone is about to do something big and you won't lose the mob when they do it.
To Xersues in your final point, a lot of the gear I want is t1-3 or the first 4 named in soh/soh trash. That in my opinion is not hard to obtain.

While I agree that many issues SKs face are "player issues", honestly this notion that you rock so hard that you can do all this stuff while other SKs fail horrible just baffles me. Also, for parsing 4K+ in VP while OT'ing and using the Fabled Epic lol. Post some parses please. Not that 4k is anything special anymore, I've seen Dirges parse 5k - 6k... but still what is your DPS breakdown? I know it's possible and I've posted close to 4k many times, but it takes some gear switching... using potions, stones, maybe a Bertox Miracle, and getting lucky enough to get a healer that doesnt stop healing you after 2 fights of using your Bloodthirsty Choker. Also, you make it seem like you just stroll in and colllect some of the nice gear you have np. Most SKs can't get INTO RAIDS to get stuff like the Dragonscale Bracelet.
Slippery instead of stroking your "****** of OMG I'm so Fabulous", how you test stuff that matters like this obvious spell casting bug (hey jump on your wizard and cast a 2.0 - 3.0 then do the same on your SK) and maybe sharing how you're putting up some of these "great" numbers. I didn't think debuffs, making sure to coordinate your Autoattacks, keeping the long cast spells to minimum (trying to get in a group that provides double atk, DPS, Haste buffs) was rocket science but obviously you're on to something.

slippery wrote:

I think he's right, I was thinking the samething...I wasn't sure if anyone else felt the sameway. The class isn't so forsaken it's just a really really difficult class to understand and learn to play. Tactics are involed to play this class to it's max I learned a long time ago it's not just button pushing even after debuffs, it's a certain order, a rhythm. Itemization is low for crusaders ya but there are items that we can fill on all our equipment slots that's not raid essential and perform well and still tank instances and raids. My gear setup is sort of like Slipperys I try to wear as much double attack and melee crit items as I possibly can without dropping str/int/sta below 600, I too have tanked parts of VP and haven't encounter any serious issues.

The class does have some issues ya, DPS can be a bit better with some of our abilities. The mitigation and avoidance system is broken once that is fixed half our problems will be gone.




Darkc's response to Slippery:

"While I agree that many issues SKs face are "player issues", honestly this notion that you rock so hard that you can do all this stuff while other SKs fail horrible just baffles me."
..

"Slippery instead of stroking your "****** of OMG I'm so Fabulous", how you test stuff that matters like this obvious spell casting bug (hey jump on your wizard and cast a 2.0 - 3.0 then do the same on your SK) and maybe sharing how you're putting up some of these "great" numbers. I didn't think debuffs, making sure to coordinate your Autoattacks, keeping the long cast spells to minimum (trying to get in a group that provides double atk, DPS, Haste buffs) was rocket science but obviously you're on to something. "


Much respect to Darkc and I'm happy that another person can ID that many issue's may be the player base. I don't think Slippery was trying to show off or anything. I kind of understand how he feels if. I do feel frustrated once in awhile when I read these forums seeing the same complaints over and over when really it's not that huge of a deal. I think he just wanted to show that yes shadowknights can tank, and can dps but you just need to understand and study the class. It's a tactical class I admit. With every new expansion I have to retool and tweak my shadowknights stats and gear since something is always changing in combat mechanics. How an SK was intended to be built at Launch is not what it is intended now in RoK, and in the next expansion it's gonna change again. Even the formation and setup of our gear involves some kind of tactics a balance of dps and survival. I don't want this to flame at anyone I just wanted to point out I agree with BOTH of you. We think the sameway and now I'm sure there are more that think this way that it's the "player base" and I think we should form a thread to see who agrees and disagrees if shadowknights lack of perfomance is the community or are we just that seriously broken and beatin that it's the entire system sinking the class. I believe a forum like that will also help the developers see BOTH sides of players the ones who feel shadowknights are fine but need a polish, and those that feel we are truly broken and need a revamp like coercers and rangers. I think it will also make a great discussion and will also help ppl who want to either make a shadowknight or help new knights see or not see the potential of the class. The player defines the class not the dev's, utilize what ya got. *I don't post much but I do check in everyday to read forums I'm still learning the mechanics not sure how to setup a new forum if anyone is interested and willing to have a discussion thread I ask if you can please set it up thanks! *



I got respect for all Dark Knights so I'm not callin out or flaming anyone. This is NOT an easy class to play it took me and I'm sure Slippy, Darkc and anyother SK's that feel this way to realize what we can do if we just sit down take the time to study and learn the class, optimizing ourselves.

slippery wrote:

See the problem here is, we are not actually doing anything to compare our situations. We are takeing to some artificial Level of what one person can do vs another person can do with a guard.. This is not going to fix anything and it never will.
The game is built up of numbers, and thats how these changes will be made by. Comeing here saying omg i can tank this and I can tank that.. is well and fine, but you don't know why, then its pointless debate. I see brawlers are tanking the same things, Hell Scouts have mobs they tank as well. But this is not going to solve any issue we are comeing against.. I am not going to run up and start blindly posting about I cant tank something without knowing anything.
Again, with out any changes, its going to be the same as last expansion, Guilds will use guards/zerkers to clear the zone ,maybe even pallies depending apon what it is, first. Reasoning being.. Guards/Zerkers have a line of progression and the stats with equilvelant numbers above SK's.
Seriously What is the point? .. Do you think SK's have not tanked this stuff yet ? The point i see is, SK's use up more resources then not, in order to do the same thing as another class, and for what gain ? Right now, As its well seen by the sheer amount of people useing what they are.. its not worth it. If there was ever a screw up where SK's became more valuable then a guard, it will be noticed and taken advantage of, sure enough. Like how it went with EQ. People do notice these things.. Its not because SK's pissed off every guild leader in the game lol.

slippery wrote:

I'm glad to hear you have had an opportunity to successfully MT some ROK raid content. But I respectfully disagree with your broad based statement that "easier means nothing." What we are talking about here is class balance. And regardless of how many SK's gleefully post that they are uber 4K ZW + DPS'ers, and MT ROK raid content without any trouble, is totally irrelevant.
What IS relevant is that almost every Raid Leader, on every server, will tell you that you are NUTS if you are an SK and you want to MT ROK content.
Why?
Because the other plate tank classes will do it better than you. They will have better aggro/hate management, higher mitigation, higher avoidance, and/or much higher DPS as MT than you. Why? Because the core plate tank competencies of mitigation, avoidance, aggro management and DPS are not currently balanced. All of the other plate tank classes will have better base tanking abilities than an SK. A Guardian will tank, AND DPS, the pants off an SK in ROK MT raid content. No contest. That is an indisputable fact of the current game design.
If that imbalance does not bother you, that is fantastic. Enjoy the game. Tank your zones, and blast your DPS. SK's For The Win, I say. Good for you.
But for the rest of us SK' that want our class brought up to balance, don't give up. Keep posting your issues and suggestions. The Devs are listening. The cavalry is coming.
(edit for spelling)

While some people will argue "spell consolidation" will make game too easy; which I don't think smashing more hotkeys should determine the how well one knows about the class. Tired of seeing similar equiped wizard do 5000dps in same raid, same group, same combat, while another can only produce 2000dps, as for raid leader would make big headache if same class performance is way too much different with same equipment that will result raid difficulty.

As for SK, I clearly see there is no need to split
Painful Swing Line
Pariah's Strike (71)
Cleave Flesh Line
Anguish (71)
Kick Line
Lucan's Boot (74)
into 3 different arts, as for example. While people can argue on my selection of 3 into 1, this is just to illustrate SK has arts that just waste of clicks (which lead to waste of mana and lower dmg than auto attacks). Mana Sieve is another example which I think be better to put together with some other spell.

Raid Tanking

• Change Harmtouch to "Hatetouch" - decrease dmg amount, change to faster recast and add a hate component equal to the dmg amount.
• Improve Defensive stance - add +block, replace wis with agi.
• Add a chance to absorb an attack to self ward line
• Add some form of reflect in the STA AA line

Raid Utility

• Use some of our most unpopular AA's to give us increased raid utility in the form of buffs and debuffs (decay/agi/wis)

Raid DPS

• Add DPS bonuses to str line AA's
• Add +Double Attack and +Melee Crit to existing and furure gear
• Add more Lifetap and DoT focus effects to gear
• Improve Offensive stance - add +Double Attack, and a Flurry or Enraged type component

More to follow...this was just off the top of my head and wanted to get a post up asap.

To me it seems simpler on the itemisation issues to remove the issue rather than backtracking 1000's of pieces of armour and adding 5 stats to all.

Powerpool:
Change from INT to AGI

Defensive Stance:
Change WIS to AGI (hopefully should help with the avoidance gaps - if still a big gap add + parry % or so too).

Offensive Stance:
Change INT to STR and / or +double attack or melee/spell crit / what you will....

AA:
Bring us in line with Guardian / Zerker - we need a real boost on auto attack dmg via either double attack / melee crits or so

Itemisation:When the above is done (similar to Pallie ofcourse on stances) SK and Pallie wont care about INT and WIS so the only issue then I see is no +spell dmg / crits

DPS:
2h needs serious upgrade dmg wise to be remotely comparable to dual wield. Also need a much greater selection of 2h drops from non VP zones....
auto attack accuracy is pretty scary for my sk...

Spell Casting Time:It can take 20 seconds before I get in debuffs / dots / pet etc.. by which time the end of the fight is done and thats without timing for auto attack swings or even starting on the direct damage stuff....

My monk alt on the other hand can spam his CA's like there is no tomorrow - a much lower casting time on SK spells could help significantly
for aggro control / dps and the stupid amount of interrupts which also singificantly hurt dps and aggro control....

Alrighty - back to lurking I go.

The general concept of RoK is DPS.
The concept of Tank of RoK is Avoidance.
Whether devs intended or not.
So, it is not surprising that Shadowknights which have lowest DPS and lowest Avoidance in fighters have been unwanted and unneeded.

Our casting is taking longer than what the spell reports
on a 1.82 casting time on tap arteries, its taking more like 3 seconds.
It's not just Tap Arteries either, try Crimson circle, and any other spell
To me it looks like casting reduction effects are not working. It shows the reduction in the spell description, but its not changing at all.

Can anyone else test this ?

Timing seems correct to me? Did a stop watch came in under 2 seconds every time

Dekeon@Everfrost wrote:

Heh ok you caught me out, i timed it using mississippi, definatley feels longer than 1.82 seconds though.
I would time it but i dont have a stopwatch

No Stopwatch, but if you're going that route please try it on another caster's spell like Necro. The tests I've been doing show them actualy casting slower spells faster than our "1.82" spells. I'll buy a stopwatch later to try to verify.

Stop Watch:

Crimson Circle : Supposed to 1.82 .. actual 2.16~
doomrays : Supposed to .91 ... Actual 1.21~
tap Atremis : supposed 1.82 .. actually 2.16
unholy arms : 2.73 actual ... 3.06
pain wrath : 1.82 actual 2.20
contagion : 1.36 actual 1.71
Grave blessing 1.82 actual 2.07

* this is with STR endline ability of so called improveing Spell cast timers..

hmm nevermind i timed it, and its right

Well i just did it, clearing out STR End line ability, to see if it was the ability that was messing things up.. I still get off Times regardless... Unholy arms is clearly clocking at 3.15sec ... Our 1.82sec Spells are still clocking beyond 2secs..
so ... yeah... this is something i think they will never fix.

While bored at work I was thinking about the issues SK's have and how to fix them, I don't know the class well because I'm a Guardian but our OT is a SK and I play his char every now and then and raid with him 5/6 times a week.

SK Main Issues, as I see them.

1. Lower avoid than all other plate tanks.
2. Lower survivability than all other plate tanks.
3. Lower agro genertion than all other plate tanks.

Possible fixes...??

1. Like the cleric tree, add a "Steadfast" like ability to a USEFUL ability on the Crusader tree. Make it stood still only just like stead fast so in PvP SK's still can't cast on the run.

2. Make str decide the damage of the SK and Palladin spells. This will do away with the whole Str/Agi/Sta gear against Str/Int/Sta gear. Means SK's can now only work on 3 stats the same as warriors and Bruisers and makes itemisation more standardised across the plate fighters. This should help alot with DPS while in defensive stance so SK's can hold agro properly. Maybe add + Double attack on the offensive stance in place of Int? only 3-5% or so, 1 high end fabled item can have 60 ish int on it and high low end fabled/groupable legendary can have 3-4% double attack, so 3-5% Double attack in place of 100int isn't to much to ask for really IMO.

3. Crusader ONLY plate, some nice items have come in with RE2 and I hope it carries on in a similar fasion, ESPECIALLY in the end game of the new expansion.
A long long time ago in a game far away Crusaders used Vanguard plate which had higher Mit and Warriors use plate which had slighly lower Mit but warriors had temporary buffs to increase their mitigation for short periods. When this mechanic was done away with and all plate classes could use any plate Warriors gained an advantage with their temporary mit buffs while Crusaders gained nothing, either an ability needs to be added to Crusaders to make up for this or it needs to be fixed through itemisation such as crusader only items with + Block/+Riposte in slots where the stat isn't available to warriors.

4. Add + Riposte to the SK and Pally Defensive stances. Lack of parry on defensive stance is ALOT inferior to Warriors, maybe a small uncontested bonus to the Crusader def stances to help with surviveability, only 3-5%.

5. Lifetaps need to scale with Mob level to keep them viable in end game, when a Guardian can ToS 3 x 18k (unmitigated) hits or add 3k Mit for 40 seconds to reduce hits by 15-20% and all a shadowknight can do is pray and maybe get off a 2/3 3k lifetaps there is something wrong
Solo - Lifetap = Damage done to mob.
Heroic - Lifetap = Damage x3 done to mob.
Epic - Lifetap = Damage x5 done to mob.

6. Deathmarch
Tweak the ability to make it help the SK with survivability as well as DPS and Hate.
eq. For every 5 HP any member of the group deals to target the Shadowknight receives 1 HP, will stay up for as long as "on the march" is up.
ADD a T8 Version of Deathmarch, it's lost it's potency and doesn't do what it used to.

7. Increase the Syphon hate ability to 5%-10% of each group members hate.
Palladins have Amends, arguably one of the most powerful tanking abilities in game, combined with the extra defensive utilities they get it puts them way ahead of SKs when competing for the role of OT/ST, something needs to be done to even up that a little.

8. Reaver....... Honestly? It does next to nothing in it's current state. Needs to have something added to it so it's not just a HP drain with a heal on spells. -5% incomming damage AND the heal wouldn't be to overpowered would it since Palladins get +5% protection value on shields on their aa lines.
Palladin (with aa which adds about 2% block??, call it 22% for ease of test) = 100 attacks, each of 5000, 22 blocked so 110,000 damage blocked, 390,000 gets through (78 x5k hits).
SK (with aa to add - 5% damage and a 20% block shield) = 100 attacks each of 5000, 20 blocked, so 100,000 damage blocked, 400,000 - 5% = 380,000 gets through (80 x4.75k hits)

Suggestion:

Any life taps that you do when at 100%, go into a separate pool of life, where at each tick, 1/2 of this pool gets added to your hit points.

If you are already at 100% then this would just go back into the pool of life. So if you get a huge hit that knocks you down to 60% hp, and say you have 2000 points of hp in the pool of life, you would get +1000 at the next tick, and then +500 at the one after that.

Heals from other players would not get added to this, only life taps. And it would make the epic/mythical proc more useful.

what i would do to fix sk's
Agro :
Snap Agro : give us a Large AE instant Huge damage ability "Death Reaper" does 8 k damage on target and 5 k damage on all other targets in encounter on 5 minute timer . for single targets combining this with DT we would do a 16 K nuke = to some other Tank classes Single target Damage . and on AE encounters we would have another AE agro tool and be able to put up some occasional High parses .... i read on flames that paladins have a Buff called " Blessing of the Paladins and that SK's have no equivelent to this Large Buff " .. so us getting a Large AE damage spell on a 5 minute timer would be our answer .
Sustained Agro : Increase Syphon hate to 8 % of group
Survivability :
Put the 2nd charge back on Bloodletter and cannot be debuffed in Raids,(in groups one charge could be debuffed but one should be permanent) it originaly had 2 in beta people Cried overpowered and since Sk's have been the Plate tank with survivability issue's in ROK. nice that the set gear has an extra charge but what happens when we outgrow that set gear ? we are back to 1 charge on bloodletter.
change wisdom to aviod on def stance add a Def stat and lessen the amount of dps loss by 30%
Offensive stance add an Increase to any 2 handed weopon
DPS :
Make deathmarch last for 15 seconds, proc on any kill in a raid, and never not proc
increase spell cast timers , or make us less interruptable when casting