I wonder if you just are enjoying the arguement, or if you really just don't get the mechanics? The fact the warrior toolset kept him alive over that timeframe is EXACTLY what that chart shows. A knight would have been one rounded on multiple rounds with those spikes as they would have been larger and we have less hit points. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, warriors should absolutely be the best MT option on raid bosses.
In game, i can tell you that i see the difference between me under defensive disc, and me under defensive proficiency. My HP bar is moving more. And i maintain that one of the main factor of you staying alive against Raid Bosses is how well your healer heal you or how much healers healed you. Also, for those that use a condescendent tone, if you think it will get me angry or so it's not. It's not cause your toon name is X or Y or that you are in guild Z or V that you are better than me. You aren't. As for knight one rounded, the same old argument repeated over and over again, i have seen knights that manage to one tank Purple Golem or Gordianus, who are some Arx raid boss mobs. Very far from being one rounded and saying "Knights suck". To devs that may read here, defensive proficiency % is well tuned, we don't ask for a downgrade to it, like Triconix is asking.
I know how AC works. You can play with words if you want, but if damage intake is the same whatever the disc you use like you claim, it means that 1400 AC equals to a 15% mitigation. Warrior state is perfectly fine atm, Defensive proficiency allowed us to still be reasonable alive versus raid bosses mobs, and this is the tool that we needed. it's a wonderful one and closed the gap that knights had when they got their new defensive disc and were tanking like us without def disc versus us without def disc or worst out tank us. Garbage stuff, brings nothing to the discussion.
Knights were never out tanking warriors. In fact, I would go so far as to say that warriors without discs are out tanking knights with discs now. And, no, I am not looking to have warriors nerfed, nor do I want to see them nerfed. But knights do need help. SK's are told we get less tanking ability than warriors due in part to being able to lifetap. Well, they aren't much good if they keep getting interrupted - and they do. It would seem an easy thing to make them instant and see how this helps and tweak from there.
All, Looked at the log files from Triconix and am totally blown away by that tanking power. The defensive prof/ stance looks pretty darn awesome! As far as the SK goes, I think we should first look at the knight to knight area which would be healing and dps between the two. First, Paladins, in my opnion, should dominate the healing area between the two but, SKs should do some pretty good self healing. The SK lifetaps are just too slow in comparison getting interrupted a ton. Maybe create and AA line reducing the cast times to bridge the gap. Additionally, the amount of healing might need a look. I know that separating the damage and healing is not popular but, maybe adding a secondary component to lifetaps which adds more healing only could appease the situation. Second, damage should be dominated by the SK between the two knight classes in my opnion. I believe shandowkinghts do more but might need more of a gap since they are more of a damage oriented class. Maybe adding secondary components to DOTs might help distinguish the two more. As far as knight to warrior tanking, Warriors should be the main or better of the tanks. In the group game, all should be interchangeable. As far as raids, Warriors should be the tank unless there is a drive to allow any of the three tank classes to fill the roles for tanks. The question lies should other tank classes be able to tank raid bosses. If so, Knights really need help. If not, should knights be able to temporarily tank raid bosses and, how well should they be able to do it. Rykard
Rykard had said adding secondary components to DoTs - I can get behind this idea. Similar to how our corruption line does extra damage against plants (druid skin to seeds), and similar to the necro/shaman quick dot line where they do less damage against raid mobs, DBG could modify our already existing dots to just have X amount more damage per tick against raid flagged mobs. Shouldn't be hard to code in on blood line/dire line/etc since their is already mechanics similar to it in place. This allows the SK to move up in damage for raids, but doesn't affect group game. And it wouldn't affect the debuffs all that much if the same spells that we are already using just get a boost for raids.Also, I have been seeing the ideas tossed about to have lifetaps be a 0.0 cast time much like our terrors and dots. This in my opinion would be great. The global cooldown is still in place, as well as the spell cooldown, so this wouldn't affect group dps or raid dps all that much (other than we can move and dps), plus this would allow us some leeway when picking up mobs that we don't have deflection up for to allow for emergency tap outside of Leech Touch. This coupled with another idea someone posted - adding a flat + heal value to all lifetaps - would help transitions and overall healing while tanking. It isn't as powerful as a Flash disc that warriors have, but baby steps.An offset to the idea of less cast time or instant cast time lifetaps would have to come in the form of helping out paladins get an equivalent reduction on some of their self healing or tanking heal spells so as to not separate knights too much more than already they are.While I haven't been unhappy with the discs we have, although it would be nice to see a little more manageability in the way of discs. We do need another filler disc for quick pick ups like flash or not even as powerful - just something that gives us even an extra couple seconds for a healer to retarget and keep us up. Veil of darkness AA helps, and was a good idea - but could use some improvement. The aa line to reduce the reuse on deflection was very nice, it would be nice to halve the timer yet again. Or even additional aa lines that would reduce the timer on some of our other discs for quicker reuse. I was excited when they gave us a reduced timer on VoD, and I'd love to see that again reduced to allow us to burn more often on melee. Also wouldn't mind seeing a reduction in the Unholy Aura disc timer - I like me some lifetaps!But on the whole - knights could use some 'all the time' damage absorption/mitigation/reduction as many in the previous posts have said. If this is just a passive aa or class ability/self aura that gives us 5% 10% or so, that would be huge. and while helping us, it would still put us behind warriors in terms of raw tanking ability. If that means that I last 6 seconds on Calix instead of 3, that's progress!Now to get onto the touchy points. There have been a few parses posted and people talking about comparing apples to oranges or whatnot. While I wouldn't mind seeing large jumps in the DPS ability of the SK class, we are really not in a terrible position. Most of the SK's i raid with parse significantly better than the paladins in similarly built groups (mostly tank/offtank groups without adps other than ae abilities). The warriors for the most part are also in tank groups and relegated to tank line ups, so they do not fully burn, or keep sword and board up waiting for their turn. So they quite often parse out lower than the SK's as a whole. There are always examples of someone having a good night and outparsing other tank classes etc, and the parses posted so far on this thread illustrate that. there are nights I've pulled out close to 90k on an almost 2 minute parse, and a paltry 35k on a 2 minute parse due to bad luck, bad positioning, bad AEs, bad knockback, bad yada yada yada - always an excuse. The group makeups are never the exact same from fight to fight. In the group game, I usually outparse my dps caster mercs on burn without trouble, and without constantly burning. Again, mileages vary from person to person behind the wheel of the character. In my opinion - the best thing to do is not complain that someone did better than you, but to ask how they did better so you can find avenues to improve yourself. There are so many tools that we have now that you can lifetap burn, or dot burn, or melee burn, or mix and match!TL;DR - some things could change, some things aren't bad, some things don't really need changing. Many of the complaints so far in the thread are due to the person driving the character, not entirely the class itself.
Nice post Tyonin. Again, I want to reiterate that improving SK via dots is not a way I would like to see us go with limited debuff slots on raids. This is doubly true of us getting fast dots that don't work well on raid mobs as this wouldn't help us at all.
Improving SK DoTs, especially only for raid targets, is an incredibly bad idea. First off, SKs would still be competing with Necros and other classes for debuff slots and no, SK DoTs should not be larger than Necro ones. Secondly, SK dps is way behind in the group game as well, if not more so. An SK should do the most damage of the tank classes - not just a Paladin, but a Warrior as well. Just because a Warrior on a raid might not use their abilities to dps doesn't mean they can't; that's like saying Wizards' dps is too low because you see a Wizard who cast very few spells. While I am all for improving lifetap cast times (and keep in mind that this thread is more about class role other than tanking & dps woes than tanking faults), it seems it needs to be said again that lifetaps do nothing for tanking content that will one round you. An instant cast one million point lifetap does nothing if you are already dead. So while mitigation concerns are real and a bit off topic for this thread, realize that lifetaps only come into play in content that is already survivable to some degree.
I agree with you about lifetaps and single round kills, but its a good start and would likely be easier to tune after doing that as sk tanking is supposed to be tuned around being able to lifetap.
I use dots on raids and we field anywhere from 1 necro to 5. I have yet to hear any of them complain about debuff slots. And if you are ignoring dots as a source of DPS, you are not utilizing your class fully. There was nothing in my post about increasing our dots to compete with necros. Increased dot damage in specific situations does not make us a threat to necros. If you do not like increasing dots against raid mobs, then increase lifetaps against raid mobs. No debuff slots taken up and increase damage. We are pretty good in the group game. There shouldn't be much need for changes that would affect us beyond the changes that would help us in raids. You keep talking about 'what is our role'. We are tanks. That comes with asking for additional increases to our survivability, which includes mitigation, healing (lifetaps!), and having the hp to be able to take hits. You also keep talking about increasing our DPS to be the 'DPS tank'. That comes with increasing our dps with all of our tools including dots. For someone who talks about those items, you seem to want to pick a fight with those who provide ideas for them. You can't just ask for a complete overhaul of a class or broad sweeping changes without consequence. Start by asking for small things that will add up.
Tyonin, I hope the "you" that is being referred to in your questions isn't me. If so, I think you might be referring to the wrong person.
Xan, Yeah I agree DOT stacking issues would be problems for raiding. Since I play a Paladin and Wizard, I was thinking more of a DD that is added. A lot of the Paladin crushes have a secondary DD on them (least the higher level ones). Why not see if direct damage can be added to DOTs and a secondary heal component like a heal the target's target can be added to lifetaps. Have not really addressed the tanking issue. If it is to be addressed, it would seem to be limited to either mitigation, new defensive ability of some sort, or possibly adding hit points. Once again, I am unsure if it is even viewed by the developers as a pending issue. Rykard
....dude, you realize how the discipline system works, right? Also, you keep saying sks are way behind on dps relative to the other tank classes and it's really, really not true. Additionally, dps isn't a way to make the class desired on raids as we'll never do a meaningful amount of dps relative to actual dps classes. We need some unique *raid* utility to actually make more than 1-2 sks in a raid max desirable. While some tweaks to how tap healing and or dots work would be nice, we're absolutely fine in the rest of the game.
I am a necro. Just as a reference, I take up 26 debuff slots alone. 28 if you count both scent debuffs. 4 necros in raid is okay only when other classes hold back on using their crappy detriments. I feel bad for SKs right now. The 2 in guild that we have barely play anymore. They bring nothing to the raiding table. I hope Dzarn and the community can figure something out.
That's the crux of it. Short of niche scenarios with raids with swarms of weak, faster spawning adds, there's really little reason to choose sk for a raid scenario. Our utility is borderline meaningless in a group of 53 other people, and at the group level the other classes have pretty heavily encroached - things like Divine Call, FD potions, everyone and their mom getting a fade ability, etc etc. We tank just fine - like all classes there are things that would help us do it better or be nice to get, but none of that addresses the lack of a raid role. The massive lack of diverse content of CotF-TDS and beyond doesn't help, either.
I'm not sure if this is sarcastic or not Agree to disagree. I personally think we are overpowered now. It takes minimal effort to do a mediocre job at tanking now. And actually, NTTB was the original tool to help us close that gap before it got nerfed into oblivion. Proficiency was added much later to give warriors some "flare and excitement" (I believe how it was stated) and a reason to use other weapon combos. Finally someone that understands the concept!!!! Praise to you, Zarzac. Everyone needs a healer to live and anyone can die at anymore moment. However, warriors would not have the potential to live this long without proficiency. The spikes would be way too high, too often. I don't care how good a healer you have, you can't live if you can't absorb the damage and proficiency allows warriors to absorb a heck of a lot more damage now. I guess it's just a matter of opinion then. I prefer a more active role when tanking and being able to time stuff out, constantly change when I use abilities and manipulate my tanking ability rotations on the fly. Sustained abilities don't allow to me to that. It's pretty much telling me you will mitigation X amount of damage at the minimum no matter how good/bad you are. As long as a warrior has brace and prof on, they will be roughly 70% effective as an active, very skilled warrior because they'll constantly be mitigating over 45% damage. I can now get up, go to the bathroom grab some water and then blankly stare at my screen and I'll still be mitigating almost as much damage as I would be if I were actively playing (and a heck of alot more if I were actively playing without prof). Personally, there was no need to get rid of phalanx. It hurt our class because we now don't get that extra 10% under dps weapon set ups. Everytime I go dps I'm risking of being rounded instantly on a ramp or aggro blur or something. If they added more ranks of phalanx to make it innate 15-20%, that would've been well more than enough to have good outside LS mitigation, yet require a warrior to actively play to his 100% potential. Prof has bred warrior laziness imo.
Disagreeing is not picking a fight - don't take things so personally. Neither is requesting more dps for the tank class devs themselves have stated should focus on dps an 'overhaul' of the class. I use DoTs when I can but if you have 5 necros on a raid and are debuffing the mobs as typically done, you should be out of slots, else someone is slacking somewhere. If you look at the base damage on SK DoTs, you cannot increase them too much and not surpass the base damage on Necro DoTs. While I agree that lifetaps need work in the healing department, SKs already get up 50% of their damage from spells - adding more damage via spells and SKs are become casters wearing plate (if not there already). If has been shown in this thread and others that SK DPS, both sustained and burst, in the group game and on raids, is now behind Warriors with the recent changes whereas it was possible to equal them - SKs should be exceeding them. The gap needs to be closed on the melee front, which is abysmal. If nothing is done for SK melee, this is going to continue to be a problem. You realize how profiencies and disciplines work, right? Not all discs are linked together and profs can be switched... As per this very thread, it is very much true, as proven in this thread and others. All gear, buffs, AAs, etc being equal, Warriors sustain more dps than SKs with spells now. Before 2her prof was introduced, SKs could nearly double a Warrior's dps (sustained). When 2her prof was introduced, SKs could only equal Warrior dps (again, sustained for each). Burns, of course, follow suit. We've covered the role topic in this thread. Per the devs, SKs will not become a buff class (nor really should it). SKs won't tank like a Warrior, nor should they. While SK self healing needs lots of work, self healing will never be more valuable on a raid than targeted healing. The list goes on. Gimics are not the answer (ex AE hate with mobs just for SKs). We've been told SKs are to focus on DPS and that's what the class has always been designed to be; you don't get part necro and suspect to gain anything else, really. How much dps would it take to make SKs desirable on raids? That can be argued and discussed, with some saying 'never happen' and others thinking it may. This much I know - if SKs are the tank class that is dps oriented, then SKs should do more dps than any other tank, period. Get SK dps there at least, no matter what else is done to / for the class.
There's literally no answer to this. They'll never let us dps like a t2 dps class, and even if we did, those aren't typically very desired for raiding currently, either.....check out how many guilds are recruiting monks, Rangers and Mages lately? Hint: they're not terribly desired either, and I've seen a lot of "why have more than 1 mage for mod rods?" posts lately, especially after the rain changes. Again squabbling over which of the 3 tanks out parses the other 2 in various situations is pointless to the discussion and gets us nowhere. It's like arguing who was the fastest sprinter at the special Olympics. The discussion should be about raid contributions first and foremost, everything else is missing the big picture.
