New to Shadowknight: Gearing in Luclin and beyond?

Please explain how this works?

Guessing that by max, he really means 35 points for melee shielding. Going to be a bit before we can hit 400 hsta for that next step up.

S Tier
Shield AC, Worn Haste, Magic ID

A Tier
Hsta and Hagi until softcapped. Imp dodge/parry X, Spell haste

A - Tier
AC, Hdex, Mana Pres

B+ Tier
Fero/Cleave, H int, FT

B Tier
Raw HP/Mana, Resists, HP regen ---- AGI/INT in SoL only

C Tier
Heroic Str, Worn atk.

Short bus Tier
Other spell foci before DoDh

Sooooo... where to Start. This comment is strictly for at a minimum mid tier raiding sks in early and middle expansions...later expansions I am not expert in. My honest suggestion for anything less than that is play a less gear dependent class. SK is one of the most gear dependent classes in the game to perform to the maximum capability of the class.

I played an sk pretty hardcore on two tlps one time as alt and one time as main I realized I only really wanted to play an sk if I could be competitive and godly. What that meant was having tons of gear for different scenarios.

Zama was an amazing spec dps sk and sazzabi was the best all around sk in my opinion. There are many other great ones that I have played with korrupt foaming and otherd. I’m going to go out on a limb and speak for some of them since they were my mentors in many ways and I spent many hours with them.

When I played a 3rd tlp casually, I didn’t even try to play an sk because I couldn’t fulfill its full potentis. It’s hard to go back once you’ve played at the top end for gear. Monk was easy though

I have full tank sets, full dps sets(2 stages first mana for engage then gear swapping to +atk)

I tanked seru khati shah and tons of other relevant mobs in luclin using the right situational gear (horn of hsagra hype) and topped many parses both in guild and server wide. I was able to regularly be a meaningful contributor even without unholy up. In velious I had over 5k without any type of mana buff and could stack to well over 600 ac if I needed to tank with my multiple gear setups.

If I were you I would focus on getting key focus items first snd foremost, stacking mana and atk, and having some answer for gear you can pop on to be a serviceable offtank in raids. You can get decent gear for cheap raid loot wise that will service this purpose. This approach will añllow you to fulfil the primary expectations of your class on raids. Also in general with that type of raid gear you are crushing group content when you are the traditional tank. There is a lot of value in learning your class here, as an example swapping to a shield when tanking if needed can provide much needed ac that isn’t affected by cap. This ebbs and flows depending on the gear you get but it’s just an example.

You will notice sazzabi and I did things slightly differently but we were two shades of the same spectrum. That boils down to player style
And preference. The results were what was important. Beyond gearing sk was a cool class where player skill can shine through (also effort... it’s an effort class)

In summary the hybrid classes are all about trade offs and I mitigated that with a lot of gear swapping and reading situations / knowing the ebb and flow of different encounters. Best of luck and have fun.

Oh and hi skynet, miss yah buddy.

-The Cukernaut aka Twochainz

People that are playing down heroic tank stats simply forgot what that first month or two in Plane of Time felt like.

Sure, but it requires a lot of math to explain fully.

So heroic stamina gives melee shielding, which lowers the damage you take from the mobs damage bonus. Heroic dex gives accuracy which increases hit%. Heroic str, agi and int also all give different bonuses.

When I was trying to figure out gearing my SK in PoP, I knew than shielding was great for mitigating damage, but how good was it vs ac? Since some of the shielding/heroic sta items needed to max were not also BIS for ac, I wanted to know. How much ac was one 4% shielding item worth? My findings through parses were pretty surprising. On a raid bosses 4% shielding is equal to about 80 item ac, or 36 worn mitigation ac. On trash mobs about half that, since their DB is a lower percentage compared to their damage interval.

On trash at Plane of Fire C1 (a defender of fire), over about 600,000 damage taken, I got equal average damage taken (per hit) from 800 worn mitigation ac with 20% shielding and 900 worn mit ac with 0% shielding. That shows 100 worn, or 220ish item ac, reduces about the same damage as 20% shielding, or 44 item ac is the same as 4% shielding.

On boss mobs the value of shielding/heroic stamina is bigger, because their damage bonus is a bigger percentage of overall damage.

For example Cazic Thule in Plane of Time

Damage bonus 835
Damage interval 49.5

Damage interval is the amount between the possible hits the mob can hit you for. Cazic Thule can hit for a minimum (with no shielding) of 835+1 damage interval = 885, then 934, 984, 1033, 1082 etc up 20 damage intervals to 1825

Damage reduction with max shielding 835 x 0.35(35% shielding) = 292 (per hit) reduced

292 Damage reduced each hit, means instead of getting hit for minimum of 835 + 49.5 = 885, with max shielding you get hit for a minimum of 885-292 = 593. And all other hits are reduced by 292.

885 vs 593 is such a huge reduction in damage taken for each hit. This is with between 925 to 1060ac, over the last 5 months. I got similar % reductions on Plane of Time Innorruk.

And you might think damage bonus is a small percentage of the damage taken so it doesn't matter that much. Last Cazic Thule I took 136903 damage from melee on 181 hits. CTs damage bonus with max shielding is 544, so 181 x 544 is 98464 damage from CTs damage bonus out of 136903 total, Thats 72% of damage taken is from damage bonus which can only be lowered by shielding/heroic stamina.

That's why I consider it THEY most important tank stat to max first, if tanking is your play style. There are certainly other valid ways to play an SK though.

These SKs were talking about unholy and tanking zlandicar which means they’re just in small guilds. The majority of your damage comes from melee in Luclin and only scales as a larger % as expansions go on. If you’re topping parses in Luclin that means your rangers, rogues, and wizzies are doing something wrong. In PoP if you’re parsing as a SK at all it most likely means your guild has horrible dps and is killing slow. SK dps all depends on how slow or fast your guild raids.

H Dex is super important for self heal procs and is easily the most important dps stat for SKs in PoP and beyond.

Yeah saw that last night. Wasnt aware heroic stats gave mod2 bonus now. One of the million things they have changed since 2007.

And yet more ignorance...
All of Velious has been cleared for months, hero. How else am i wearing "caster gear" like Yelinak mask, Koi bracer, Nev range and Vulak neck?
Maybe you just have terrible SKs?

Going forward from Luclin to PoP to GoD to OoW it’s bascially this formula for SK:

BIS AC shield, BIS AC, HP, AC / HP Augs, Skill Mods, Melee Focuses, Spell focuses.

You can figure all that out on raidloot for free with an excel sheet. I wouldn’t waste DKP buying wizarding items in Luclin because your role changes quickly in PoP to full time OT/Peeler that can take burst dmg while trash / adds get slowed. And you don’t want to be hurting so bad for tank gear that you’re spending your DKP on elemental molds and have little left to fill out on Time drops.

Were the top of the food chain on almost every TLP while your raiding zlandicar that guilds one group in era. Sick guild dps though you must take 2-3 hours to clear ToV if you’re always on top lol

This list doesn't include heroic stats which are vital. Or worn haste.

this is my new favorite thread ever. geez zama l2sk bruh

Im really just suprised nobody brought up shadowknight pvp or FV Tlp yet.

How much unbuffed AC would you recommend to target coming out of Luclin to be effective at off tanking immediately upon PoP release?

Top of the food chain...on a tlp server killing content that’s 20 years old. Thanks for the chuckle haha.

Casual guilds kill the same stuff you do, and we don’t have to live in the game or sleep with a bat phone to do it.

Top of the food chain....lol. That’s hilarious!!

Your top of the food chain guild is nothing more than cheap manual labor for folks who are top of the food chain in real life. I pay you for my boots of the storm and yelinak mask the same way I pay my landscaper to rake up my leaves. Is my landscaper top of the food chain because he raked up 8 bags of leaves quickly?

Top of the food chain....haha haha haha!

Eh... SKs are actually quite good DPS. A well geared SK in PoP can be top10 dps consistently. If you have vanazir or gboc with relevant foci, you're gonna be able to tank most time bosses and still get on parses.

Hey guys, I really didn’t want drama to be in this thread. It’s ok for there to be multiple schools of thought!
What I gather is that some builds are built for safety in mitigation while another school of thought I’m reading about is to stack stats that allow you to use spells and abilities to cover for less ac/hsta?

Can I redirect discussions beyond gearing and start to talk about what things with regards to spells and situational awareness, clickies, consumables make one SK better than another? Anyone can cast hate spells and snare when needed or spam tap on raid bosses every once in awhile. But what is it that makes some folks more legendary than the other?

When PoP rolls out are knights more likely to MT raid mobs?

I would like to hope he meant trash mobs other than the occasional positioning of some of the bosses