The ever-favored class

Is that the second most favored class in EQ?

I don't like how you've cherry picked so much. For that spreadsheet, for this... But I guess I don't expect you to read everything here anyway. All eight pages of it. It is a lot. It would have been very helpful and much more productive if you weren't so disingenuous and vindictive from the start, though, as many have already said.

I've read every comment.

I picked the ones that were deflections rather than discussions.

Then it sounds like you misunderstood some of these quotes or misrepresented them (or misrepresented the people) by cutting out the other context, I'm sorry to say. Some of them were trying to discuss and disagree, not deflect. Some of these were also borne out of the initial understanding that this thread is a criticism against shadow knights, not a discussion on balance. You must understand that by now.

Your post on ideas about how to improve some paladin abilities, which I enjoyed reading, was interesting and fun, and I tried to join in that discussion. It's a shame it's buried deep among all of this and the thread kept getting steered back toward the original post. Perhaps the title of a thread is not to grab attention as you say, but really is to set the tone of the discussion after all.

You can't rewrite the series of events.

The Thread is titled "The Ever Favored Class", there is no lets discuss paladin concerns.
Your first post was "Swarm Away" as if riposte healing wasn't dead. There was no lets discuss paladin concerns.
Your second post was the laughable, "Because its super hard to cycle through targets" as if that let you heal for ripostes. Nothing of paladin issues or concerns.

It wasn't until page three and your 5thish comment where you semi try to bring up paladin concerns but its still in the form of nerf calls rather than balance. You pick and choose highlights to support your nonesense. Its still not a help paladins address these concerns tone or intent.

Then you story changes to its for the balance on page 4 and then woah the paladin concerns on like page 5.

Flippity floppity.

There was no flippity floppity...as you call it.

The point, as I already stated, apparently english isn't your first language, is that SKs don't need another roll-back to a nerf, they are already out of balance compared to their knight counterpart.

And yet you still fail to understand that this change will have no effect on SKs. This is to help melee DPS, not SKs.

Out of the 16 classes, we are the #9 favored class. I will let you guess as to who fills in #2-#8...

Without knowing anywhere near every single trick in the book for an SK it is still easy to do some quick math. 40% innate crit chance with Fury of Magic AA, add 25% for First Spire and youre at 65% crit chance on a 45k base mana return on Thought Leech. With Intensity of the Resolute youre over 100% crit chance every 4 hours.

Why among all other classes in EQ is SK the only one that I am aware of that can crit their mana return?
I would love to get in on that action, just as any other mana user in game would.

I've been dumping mana on my sk as it refreshes. Hitting it and getting a full mana bar. I've been doing this for 2 days. In that time I had 1....1 time where it didn't do a full mana return.

I've played with good pallys, and they aren't complaining.

Why is paladin slay undead not limited to blue con mobs like decap/assassinate/headshot? As always, devs favoring paladins over actual dps classes.

You are very blessed to have a 99% crit rate on thought leech. Does your IoTR refresh faster than everyone else? Devs may want to temporarily suspend your account until they can get to the bottom of this potential exploit known only by you.

What is it you do with this mana pool that makes it so advantageous for an SK to have a mana refresh ability? You seem focused on the raid game, so let’s focus on that, although the same results apply for the group game as well:

1) You aren’t using any of the DoTs because they will take up valuable debuff slots from the mobs.
2) You’re not chain casting buffs as the SK buffs are all self only and, like other classes, last a long time.
3) You may be chain lifetapping, but that is only helpful if you’re tanking and your healer can’t keep up (otherwise it is overhealing). Additionally, SK lifetaps have refresh timers of about 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and 60 seconds, so you’re limited by the refresh timer.
4) You can chain cast aggro spells, but that’s only useful if you’re tanking and in danger of losing aggro. I’m pretty sure none of the three tank classes has problem keeping aggro though.

Not entirely sure what else you’re going to do with that massive mana generating capacity. You could give me a mana pool of 10 million and it wouldn’t make me any more effective as an SK. The bottleneck isn’t the mana, it is useful abilities to use the mana.

The exception is of course upon death / battle rez. Thought leech gives you an opportunity to get back into the fight (about once per raid) if you die. I don’t know what paladins have in this regard, but I’m pretty sure all classes have Hiatus to at least restore endurance and keep using discs.

They have Marr's Gift. A focusable heal with non-focusable mana return on a timer half as long as thought leech. No target required, but no endurance return.

Thought Leech is a nuke with focusable mana and endurance returns, but doesnt heal and might pull aggro.

By your example when slay fires it should 1 shot the mob, that dosent happen. Talk about apples to oranges comparisons here.

Paladin single target aggro is fine nowadays. Are paladins able to hold aggro over any DPS ? yes, so it's fine.
If paladins get another new nice AE aggro disc, warriors need to get one too. Would make no sense paladin AE aggro would become better than warrior AE aggro.

Those abilities dont one-shot mobs....

Lets say it together now, "Slay Undead is too powerful!"

The first rule about Shadowknight club is dont talk about shadowknight club.

Coming soon to the August Patch:

*** AA ***

- Paladin - In an attempt to improve the Paladin AA 'Act of Valor', we have added a new passive AA called 'Blaze of Glory'. This AA, when Act of Valor is used, would cause the Paladin to explode in a Blaze of Glory. The explosion will do a 7 mil dmg AoE..

None of those other abilities one shot mobs either. Most of the time when they fire its at the very beginning of a mobs health or at the very end and may appear to one shot but that isn't happening. Those abilities are not continuously firing off on the mob like Slay is either.