February 2016 Patch Preview

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Roshen, Feb 4, 2016.

  1. Makavien Augur

    With the recent stuff they been putting out yes .

    And yes Defensive proficiency stacks with everything but last stand discipline it was given to us after 5 years of stagnation and so we could tank for more than 3 minutes out of 10 minutes. They are buffs not discs and once this patch comes out they will auto cast when you switch weapon sets.

    My aggro generation keys basically are 5 line macros and to keep it off people burning especially servants you have to use multiple keys with aggro multipliers.

    And like I said earlier I think you guys should get defensive proficiency just not a 30% one more like a 10 - 15% always active mitigation that should give you guys enough of a boost to make your self healing and absorb disciplines put you just below warriors on raid main tanking.

    At the same time you really don't need 2 hand proficiency unless they add warriors to knight 2 hand and 1 hand weapons so our sustained dps goes up as well.
  2. Battleaxe Augur

    Rogues do always seek to take advantage of enemies by attacking from behind. IF advantage is to be had by attacking from behind. Which is often the case - rear arc DPS and backstab. Surely tanks are familiar with melee, particularly Rogues, complaining if mobs aren't positioned so that attacks from the rear arc is possible, Seeking to take advantage does not equal unable to damage at all if attacking from the front.
    Types does not equal all weapons. Lemme check - 1H, 2H, Piercing, H2H, DW. Yep Warriors have skills for each of these types and can raise them.
    Domain does not equal class defining ability that should not be shared. Enchanters have the best haste spells and unlike Bards their's persist even if you don't have an Enchanter in your group.
    I agree cast times should be zero. "Most remote" does not equal anywhere.

    Their enemies does not equal all of their enemies. Slow apparently means run speed - Dooming Darkness etc.

    I absolutely agree spells like Incapacitate, Cripple, etc. should be part of the SK spell repetoire. Better to adhere to a class description that's in class character and accomplishes an aim of your general archetype than sup continuously from a parent classes dinner plate. However when I suggested this in a rare post by me in the SK class forum the fact that SK's once had such spells was admitted along with the claim that they were no longer interested. Apparently the Warrior class description was too tasty to resist.

    It's Harm Touch, not Death Touch. I'd invite SK's to suggest that it's too low now to even be called Harm Touch but again they don't seem to be interested in things their class should have - only in things their class should not have.
  3. Jaerlyn Augur



    And 'unmatched' doesn't mean only viable. Heck, technically speaking, as long as wars mitigate one point of damage better than knights then they are, by definition, unmatched.

    And the fact is, wars will still be the preferred MT on raids, even with knights getting a 5% innate and 30% def prof. It'll be by quite a bit more than one point.

    Hypocrisy. It's not just an augment.
  4. Dre. Altoholic

    I don't doubt it, but that's really not an argument for balance. Looking at max mitigation percentage doesn't tell the whole story.

    In other threads, tank officers and raid leaders have said that they put Warriors on MT duty even when Knights can tank it, not because they are so much better, but that's all that Warriors provide to the raid. They prefer to free up their Knights for other duties Warriors can't perform or aren't so great at.

    Now let's say that DGC makes all three are equal at MT for all intents and purposes. The situation then would be:
    • WAR: MT, RT/OT, ???
    • PAL: MT, RT/OT, Cures/healing
    • SHD: MT, RT/OT, ???
    You're back to SK's being 'down one' on Raid roles vs other tanks, and now you've added Warriors to the 'down one' list. As some Paladins in this thread have suggested, that's not the best situation either.

    We may be entering a period where the gap between War/Knight survivabiilty is narrow enough to only be definable through anecdotes, confirmation bias, or too close to call from any practical standpoint. Some argue we're there already. As above, looking at max mitigation percentage does not tell the whole story.

    In any case, it makes a whole lot of sense to give SK's a raid role not shared by other tanks, even if MT role is something that DGC intends to share. And if they do, not only are SK's owed something, but Warriors are also.
    Aurmoon likes this.
  5. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    [IMG]
  6. p2aa Augur

    When an ability is a 2 min 50 % mitigation on Raid Boss Mobs, of course it's relevant to the discussion

    You can repeat the same thing in all of your posts, it won't make it suddenly "true", when smart people know it's false.
  7. Makavien Augur


    That's not true at all 1 point would push you way above us with all your self healing and utility leaving us useless . Down playing all your power does not make any of the nonsense you are speaking true. 30% all the time mitigation is too much of a boost you guys don't need it . Sk and paladin that know what they are doing and are geared appropriately are tanking the same npc in raids and groups already.

    And it would be easy to give all 3 tanks roles on every raid instead of dps races put more than 1 npc to tank and dps at a time 1 designed to require a well prepared tank of each type.
    Geri_Petrovna likes this.
  8. Triconix Augur

    However, using proficiency + mantle or carapace would be equal to or greater than warrior LS. Mantle + prof would be better than LS + Vie (same SpA as your mantle). We'd have to stack bravery/CoA bp to become better and those are very short term abilities (sub 1 minute each). So for the duration of LS, knights would be equal or superior a good portion (about half) of the time unless warriors stacked 3-4 abilities at a time, leaving us very very little after LS is over.

    And if mantle/carapace doesn't last 3 minutes like our LS will, you can switch to guardian + cleric vie while using repel every 30 seconds and have (if you're an SK - Vizat's Skin up. I don't know the pally equivalent) which would again put you above what a warrior can do because we'd be at around 40% (prof + vie) while you're at 46%.

    I'm not even going to mention reaver's bargain. Because that would push SKs well above warriors where you could rotate your discs longer than a warrior can and with greater mitigation. You'd be incapacitated after bargain, but you'd be able to tank just as, if not more, effectively than a warrior for a good 8-10 minutes.

    However, this depends if the proficiency is a copy/paste. Something I'm anxious to see. But if it is, that unmatched word kind of gets thrown out the window? Does it not?

    And just to be semantic, unmatched means it cannot even be compared. If somebody is very close, it doesn't make it unmatched because they are close enough to be compared. When somebody or something is matchless, it means they are well beyond comparison. By this definition, warriors should have a huge advantage over everybody, not 1-5% because being 95% of somebody is pretty comparable, especially when you consider the other benefits knights can provide - paladin heals, cures, SK self heals, power taps, more dps, etc.
  9. Battleaxe Augur

    "Unmatched ability to survive" does not equal "mitigate one point of damage better". And in fact vs. within the realm "most brutal battles" warriors are to be unmatched - which does mean only viable.

    SOE established toward the end of GoD that "most brutal battles" did not include group content. They made adjustments and reconfirned this when DoN was released (Sorry non-raiding Warriors who got stuck with being the tank without a strong secondary role backed up by a bag full of spell goodness).

    Which leaves raid content while first encountered until the gearing up process, learning the content, and practice makes it tankable by knights.

    Which does not mean necessarily that they would get to tank it - there are other tanking jobs in raids and some raid leaders would continue to let Warriors MT in any event. We've earned that privilege. I suspect it would take developers making events not tankable by Warriors (kinda blatent don't ya think? Even compared to this which is only MOSTLY blatent) to hand it to classes who chose less tanking/more outside the tank archetype stuff.
  10. Derd Augur

    All this over something you've yet to see the actual numbers and how it effects anyone, seems a bit over the top. But after reading some of these posts what stood out to me was that most of the warriors posting seem to think the guilds they've lived and died with for years are going to dump them, not a guild I'd want to be part of anyway. If your fears come to fruition look me up we've got a few slots open always.
  11. Kleitus_Xegony Augur


    Ideally, in that situation, it should be:

    WAR: MT, RT/OT, Superior Melee based DPS
    PAL: MT, RT/OT, Cures/healing
    SHD: MT, RT/OT, Superior Spell based DPS
    Note: Pal / SK melee DPS should be essentially the same

    Part of the issue for SKs Spell based DPS is the reliance on DoTs. Since it's foolish for them to use theirs on a raid mob when 3 or more Necromancers are around (maybe less). They need several overhauls - we all know that.

    Part of the issue for Warriors is the stupid penalties associated with the previous way the stances worked. You couldn't afford to use the other two stances because a few missed heals meant you were next in line as the main tank. Whether those stances are worth using is a separate issue that should be addressed. Probably need extra abilities added / overhauled as well.

    I will agree that Paladins don't have those sorts of penalties right now. In general, extra healing stacks. Even if it's over healing, you aren't penalizing the rest of the raid by using your abilities like the other two classes could be. Outside of these changes, they need minor changes right now.

    The three classes should be able to use their abilities to achieve roughly the same level of success in those roles (MT, RT, OT). It's not currently the case. Right now a badly played warrior box is often times a better choice for MT roles than a well played knight with better gear simply because of a few abilities. It looks like they want to fix that aspect of it. Then you simply have the best players perform the more important role of MT, then the next group of lesser geared / skilled / etc... characters as RT/OT. That doesn't sound all that horrific to me.


    A lot of the complaints and arguments in this thread are no longer anything more than noise. Some of my favorite examples of the noise:

    • The class description stuff which stopped applying 100% a long, long time ago. Those things are only relevant for the early part of the game. They break them more and more every single expansion - this doesn't apply to just tanks either. Don't forget, Rangers used to tank equivalently, plus dual-wield, heal, snare, etc... (wow what a godly class they were at one point in time) Now, they don't tank anywhere near as well outside of Weapon Shield. Just like every other class, they have changed. Every class is going to keep changing over time so worry about the now, not the stuff 10+ years ago.
    • Claiming knights can't have more of the abilities of a class that they're a hybrid of (Warrior) because they get things like buffs is nonsense. AAs, Discs, etc... have blurred the lines so much it's a weak argument to make, let alone spend page after page arguing about. So these days, complaining about a knights ability to buff is simply complaining about Brell's because all three of them can self-buff in some manner or another (Ex. Imperator's Command vs. Armor of Formidable Spirit vs. Drape of the Wrathforged). Brell's is the only real meaningful buff that's cast outside of combat. Everyone has a Cleric merc available that gives better buffs than a Paladin - other than Brell's. Shadow Knights and Warriors both lack meaningful buffs. There's far more too it than that and they know it.
    • Same with the spell book arguments vs. instant cast abilities and discs that do essentially the same thing. There's no practical difference between an ability like Cyclone Roar and Terror of Narus. Sure, ones a "spell" and the other is a non-mana using "ability" that uses endurance instead. There's trade-offs for both but claiming things can't be done because knights have a "Spell Book" and Warriors don't is just silly.
    • Using the abilities of both knight classes to argue that a single class, Warrior, is inferior to the combination of those two classes is unfair. You can't lump Shadow Knight aggro abilities, Paladin heals and cures, etc... into one and claim Warriors need to be balanced against both classes as if the knights are a single class. Knights do get heals, cures, DoTs, stuns, lifetaps, feign dead, etc.... Neither of the knights get all of that and certain people act like they do, argue about it non-stop like there's one single Shadow-Pal-a-Knight class wearing landshark helmets, casting heals and cures with one hand, DoTs with the other while shooting stuns out their and falling over to feign dead when there's a problem. It doesn't do anyone any good but does make for some entertaining reading.
    These upcoming changes could be good for all three classes and the game overall - assuming they're done correctly. I'm sure that's going to take time, testing and several iterations of "breaking" things. Several people have mentioned some of these issues and I assume this is probably a first step but a lot of this thread is just pure noise and chest thumping.
  12. Repthor Augur

    i dont really care much about the whole whos who on the boss tank list . i will say this tho if we are gonna be brough closer together for game balance sense. the warrior class needs to become close at solo/moloing aswell all things beein the same it needs to be that everywhere if thats the game we gonna get ourself in to

    also the paladin and sks self heals and leech abilitys are super down played in this thread. a 6 k base heal is not a 6k heal on a paladin and or SK due to aas and focus effects and everybody knows that
  13. Jaerlyn Augur


    You really believe that equally geared and skilled wars would stop being the preferred MT on raids even with knights receiving 5% innate, and 30% defensive prof?

    All arguing aside here, do you believe that? I don't. Honestly, If I did, I wouldn't be pushing for it.


    I'll admit, I've never seen other threads that have made that point. None of the raid leaders I have spoken to about this change feel that way about wars. Can you show me some threads?


    Everything in DoN was actually scaled in such a way as to allow knights to walk into it and be a viable MT. Not the best choice, which isn't what anyone seems to be wanting even now, but viable.

    Thank you for proving my point with your own post.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  14. Jaerlyn Augur



    I'm still a fan of wars getting a massive baseline DPS upgrade.
  15. Repthor Augur


    just adding more dps wont fix the solo/molo problem paladins and SKs alreaddy burst and sustain more dmg then warriors when on their own and or with a merc
  16. Dre. Altoholic

    I'd really prefer it not to be a DPS thing. We're tanks, not DPS classes. I'd see cures/heals being more valuable to most raids than margin-over-Paladin DPS. Unless we're talking about DPS-class DPS, which would be unreasonable for tanks to have. Not to mention how horribly stagnated Paladin DPS would become.

    More important than total DPS potential is for our class to perform closer to our already-low DPS potential when tanking. Using Stout or FS vs brutal/mighty is already a significant handicap. Combining that with the drawbacks of Offensive Discipline and 2H proficiency make 'good tanking DPS' difficult or impossible in most relevant situations.
    Using 'PAL/SK' or 'Knight' interchangeably is fair when comparing levels of raw defense/melee damage to Warriors. Self-healing isn't quite as easy to draw equals, but consider Warriors are basically zero with mitigation intending to make up the difference. Sometimes that works in Knights' favor, sometimes that works in Warriors' favor.

    In the context of utility, I think it's obvious the slash between PAL/SK utility is understood as 'or' and not 'plus'. But if you're really suggesting that the scope of Warrior utility is comparable to Paladin or SK utility, I don't think that's a fair assessment either.
    It was surely prior to the proficiency implementation during CotF. This forum's search function is failing me a the moment. But even without links, I think you can agree there's a case for Warriors tanking instead of Paladins, at least.
  17. Jaerlyn Augur

    Oh, I firmly believe wars should stay the preferred MT on raids. I've never said otherwise. I'm just of the opinion that all three tanks should be viable at all tanking levels.
  18. Battleaxe Augur

    I believe class defining parts of class descriptions that have long been the case and have been been referred to by SOE employees absolutely should remain the case. Knights absolutely are viable in raids and groups.

    Some propose "viable" but that's really code for able to do the job adequately even when events are not yet mastered and greater Warrior survivability is the difference between success and failure - and sho9uld be.

    Some suggest greater Warrior DPS making Warriors in effect the DPS hybrid of 3 equal hybrid tanks. I don't recall being offered more than heavy DPS (which I've been denied). I was offered and accepted "unmatched survivability" which precludes Warriors from being 1 of 3 viable MT's. (Survivability does not equal taking slightly less damage. It means not dying where other classes are prone to die).

    Others suggest utility with Paladins having clerical utility and SK's necri-like utility including greater survivability when pulling. 5th rate utility when SOE once offered and withdrew the Phase 2 Mekee Update with a fair amount of utility with knights to get nothing when it was released - it was to close a utility gap that was too wide even with Warriors confined to being the Defensive/Last Stand Raid Boss Mob tank.

    I don't recall signing up to be 1 of 3 viable MT's - the one with crappy utility either. I was offered and accepted "unmatched survivability". Not matched, unmatched vs. the most dangerous content.

    And the funny part is - in every raid guild I've been in knights do get to MT boss mobs about the time events go on farm. Provided the other tanking duties in raids, which usually occupy knights, permit the luxury of doing that.

    13ish years ago EQ Comics, TSW, and back channels would be ablaze over this. A Guild Summit would have to be held in San Diego and there would be a lot of 'splaining to do.

    Brenlo wrote:
    "Conor is correct, much of what is asked for by Paladins and SKs is specific to warriors and that will not be changing. Like it or not, warriors are supposed to be and will always be better able to tank than Pallys and SKs."

    apparently the later days team revises this to
    Conor is correct, much of what is asked for by Paladins and SKs is specific to warriors and we are identifying these abilities and giving them to knights. Like it or not."
  19. Aurmoon Augur

    I don't even know how to respond to Battleaxe at this point. I have a fair amount of respect for the top guilds. It truly perplexes me how such a successful guild can house an individual so out of touch with reality.

    I'm going to sit back now and await this much anticipated patch. I'm hopeful that it will give me a more meaningful role to play in raids and enable my guild to be more successful on nights when our warrior attendance is low. Thank you again to the devs for giving us Shadowknights a shot and my apologies for contributing to your misery if you have indeed read through all 15 pages of this thread!
  20. ShadowMan Augur

    At some point in history the warrior description listed the world as being flat. We should stick to that forever.