SK's need to be useful again.

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Zantor, Jul 1, 2014.

  1. Zantor Augur


    Tanks are tanks, DPS is DPS, understanding this is a fundamental part of raiding. Every class has its roles in a raid, what we are trying to say, SK's need a role other then to take up space and a few odd and end we get thrown. I am usually the top parser for any tank in my guild, but who cares. If I am parsing 50 - 60k while DPS classes are doing 3 - 4 times that much, kinda makes mine look like nothing, which it is.

    SK's don't need to tank better, We tank fine, don't need to DPS better, we aren't DPS, do need faster casting lifetaps, they get interrupted way to much and more aggro generated by them. We need a mroe definable raid role then what we have now to be more useful. When is the last time you heard someone say, OMG we need more SK's to raid well.
  2. Hannil-luclin Lorekeeper

    How about an activatable aa on both Legion of __ from Ench stacking that lasts say 5 min and is 75% spell and dot vie to make you the premier tank for mobs that use high damage spell abilities. And to go along with making you the premier tank for spell/dot damage tank you get passive aa to make you 75-100% at resisting charm, fd, etc. type stuff mobs throw at players - something along those lines. A return to knight's old power of fearless, but making it sk only this time so you have a distinctive raid class role this time.
    Another thing to help could be if you don't have it already is giving you a scout's mastery of disease(effect magic and disease) and poison(effect magic and poison) lines like rangers have for fire/magic, cold/magic, and fire/cold; so you could boost your taps for 3 min by 100-1200 depending on the level of aa trained. Or whichever resists are best for your class. I won't pretend to know SKs well enough to say these are the 2 resists for sure. ;)This would go along with being the offensive knight and helps your taps a bit also for 3 min. Recast being able to taken down to at least 9 min like rangers, too, if Eldiroth would be kind enough if not lower.
  3. Dre. Altoholic

    This might be out of the scope of this thread, but it would be great if tanks had better synergies with each other.

    Tanking is typically an exclusive role, where most mobs deal the majority of their melee damage to 1 player. As such, stacking healers/DPS or different support classes can be effective, while stacking tanks is often not.

    There are a handful of abilities over the years that set a precedent for this role but we could see this role expanded. Some examples:

    Warrior - Group AC buff, Commanding voice, legacy /shield
    Pal - Various buffs, healing, curing
    SK - Voice of Thule, Epic click, (group) power taps
    sojero likes this.
  4. Rogue Augur


    Why do SKs need an additional roll on top of primarily dealing with adds / backup tanking / dpsing if nothing else to do? EQ raids would be pretty terrible if each raid required each class to do something unique in order to win. No thanks to that suggestion
  5. sojero One hit wonder

    Perhaps we should state it definable role between the tanks.

    wars have hp/mitigation/agro advantage
    pals have cure/heal advantage
    sk have....... ourselves :)

    it reminds me of the saying:
    whatever you can do I can do better, I can do everything better that you.
    Xeladom, feiddan and Zarzac like this.
  6. Zantor Augur

    And that is something a pally and warrior can do easily, why recruit SK's then? You always see guilds looking for bards, druids, clerics, shammies, warriors, pallies, how often do you see them actively looking for SK's?
  7. Ravengloome Augur


    Never, and some guilds have asked their SK mains to main change to one of the classes they actually need.
  8. Drakang Augur

    I play and SK and lead raids. The issue is very clear to me. It was brought up. Back in PoP SKs were the first fearless tanks and were really needed to get past some events. Lost that roll. We have another thread for the biggest issue to resolve for SKs on tanking.

    Our group tap stuff has the potential to help fill the gap but its massively underpowered to actually make a difference. giving 100 or so mana to people in group is nothing. If it was 1000 or more off every bite it would start to make some difference and give SKs a solid role. 70ac buff to the group who cares. 500AC buff to the group yeah. Large examples but something to make a raid leader go. Yes I want an SK in this group and that group cause.....

    Right now the only reason is if the SK happens to be really good at his class and then it helps if they have been around long enough or people like them so they don't get asked to main change.
  9. feiddan Augur


    Funny that you mention back in PoP in this post.

    Back then, SK taps were great, and added a fair bit of utility.
    Zevfeer's Bite - level 62 - 100 mana to the group (when 10k mana was end-game!)
    Aura of Pain - level 63 - 135 ac to the group (when 2k AC was end-game)
    Aura of Hate - level 65 - 135 attack to the group (when 2.5k ATK was end-game)
    Additionally, there was this utility:
    Voice of Thule - level 65 - 12% aggro buff (HUGE boost to the MT! back when warrior aggro was terrible)

    I've harped on a new über power tap in the serverwide SK channel. My "ideal" spell takes these PoP-era spells, combines them into one, modernizes the numbers, and gives a big hate override for non-damage aggro.
    1k mana, 600 ac, 250 atk, and some amount of endurance (perhaps in the 1k range). Give it a 60s recast, single target, with a large hate override. I'd also consider an avoidance portion added, though that might be too strong. This would help SKs with aggro and importantly only takes up one spell gem for all the effects - aggro and the several taps. Even if it needs to do damage, to stay in line with the power taps of old, it still holds true to a role SKs have had before (which coincidently fell off as swarming came into vogue) and addresses current needs.

    Warriors nowadays provide huge boosts to their group through buffs and auras. This used to be the realm of SKs - we always wanted a Shadowknight and Bard in the MT group back then. Certain encounters, like Rallos Zek, had shadowknights put in cleric groups. I'd love to see that same utility added on resource-intensive events (HoF2 with its endurance drain) - most of the time, the effect is marginal, but in the right circumstance those abilities can be maneuvered around to where an SK is absolutely a boon to a raid.
    Zarzac likes this.
  10. Zantor Augur



    True, our bites spells actually did something then, now I can't even tell a difference in the HP and mana, then you could actually see your and your group memebers HP and mana bars move some. The utility we used to have is gone.
  11. Ashigaru Augur

    Some form of improved and amalgamated power tap would be a great way to go (I'd suggest accuracy / flurry mod or something, rather than atk, but that's a minor quibble)
  12. Drakang Augur

    I like the combined one. Numbers can be tweaked but don't suddenly want 5 new spells I have to mem and give up everthing we have currently.
  13. sojero One hit wonder

    I would love yo have some new recourse taps linked into one, but I believe that may be over powered unless all the recourses were darn near useless like our current AC one is. I believe breaking them up and tying them to a decent DD would be a better way to go, and easier to balance. You would also only want the one that benefited the group the most at the time up, such as AC for a tank group, ATK/flurry for a dps group, corruption resist for any group if the named/raid needed it.

    Making a new AA bite that gave endo back and had a lockout with one of our other bites would be great.

    Make our dots going forward do about 3/4 a current necro dot, or even same as we don't get the AA or epic to make them crit anywhere near as often or as big. Then put them on the same timer as our older dots so to make it where we don't have a bunch memed.

    either up the agro on terror, our lifetaps, the recourses, or demand line, or all of them to catch us up so that we can do something besides just fight for agro.
  14. Hannil-luclin Lorekeeper

    Rangers parsed the ~950 attack(we are 100% double attack, so DA from pred is moot) of our 2 buffs to only give 35-45 dps, so keep that in mind when thinking about any attack tap. Every new attack aa added further reduces attack's usefulness.
  15. sojero One hit wonder


    Curious if that is only to the ranger class. Would it benefit the other melee in the group more?
  16. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Problem is something like atk is pretty meaningless to a tank group on a raid. Unless you're proposing it's raid wide or we'd be placed in a melee dps group heh.

    Let's face it, we've never really had a true useful raid role. Our versatility and strengths made up for it, but there are very few raids I can think of back to velious and up that you'd say we *must* have sks.

    Now with a lot of those strengths given to other classes (paladins with a single pull button, warriors with fade, everyone being on par or even better with our hate/dps, etc) we don't shine the same way.

    In a lot of ways this is similar to what happened with warriors and mitigation imo. We caught up and they rightfully pointed out knights had more strengths and negligible weaknesses in comparison. Hopefully we can get a similar kind of bump in areas that we used to excel at but have fallen behind recently.
  17. sojero One hit wonder


    No I was proposing for a single group. That way if you are grouping and don't need AC you can mem the ATK one, if you do need the AC it would be the default goto. If you come up to a named that has a corruption dot or something you can do resist one.

    I would love to see a DD attached to it to be around the same DPS as one of our dots so that it has a good place on our spell bar, but not enough to really have all of them memed, or put them all on a shared timer.

    Since we don't have a shining place, we can at least be good to the group that we are thrown in, and yes some guilds have 4-6 sk at a time and some get thrown in the dps groups. its rare but it has happened in my guild, we make an "add" group where 4 sk + shm/dru + clr take care of adds and have an epic click rotation, when we don't have many sk on we throw pallies in there, but otherwise we have them splashing etc, but we don't usually have many paladins on either. We generally don't have sk in MT group for the epic click because they want more wars in for their AC buff rotation and as MT they are getting over healed enough that epic isnt really doing enough for them to warrant the loss of a AC buffer, BUT we do throw in a pally for their aura + group armor + first spire.
  18. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Yeah I've always liked our old stat stealing abilities on principle, the issue is they're so weak that nothing's worth a spell gem at this point. Not to mention unlike many classes we regularly mem many prior level spells of the same functions to retain effectiveness. We usually have 1-5 sks on raid and it's either for the kite group or for non MT tank group support.

    I'd still rather have our core abilities bumped up a bit just like warriors stuff did, vs trying to invent some new raid need out of a hat. The game's too old for that imo.
  19. feiddan Augur

    Attack is fairly meaningless, yes - certainly moreso than it was back in PoP. The attack on the tap is more a nod to that, rather than anything overpowering. Back in PoP there might have been room for an SK in a DPS group because there was no such thing as aDPS (unless you count Beastlord and Shaman attack buffs, which weren't group limited) - today, there's just no room for Shadowknights to be placed in a DPS group.

    The combined aspect is crucial, in my mind. Big aggro, one spellgem, long recast. Tying the effect to a new DD cooldown could also help in the DPS department, but that's really not at all what I'm interested in, as a more than nominal amount of damage could be too strong in the group/solo game.
  20. Hannil-luclin Lorekeeper


    Yes, ranger only parses Sojero. Pure melee would benefit more due to more of their damage is from melee/melee abilities.