New to Shadowknight: Gearing in Luclin and beyond?

I tried searching, but couldn't find much info. I'm currently geared like a wiz for those amazing bursts, but however as I was looking at eqitems and saw that focuses start to disappear. Does this mean I start gearing like a tank and stack AC?

I'm building out my wish list of loot and trying to figure out what's best.

Thanks!

You are a tank start acting like one. raidloot is where you want to be.

Is this a joke? An SK geared like a wiz for “amazing bursts”?

If it’s not, get AC -> HP gear. Use Raidloot.com as suggested.

For SK you basically want Mana+damage foci(+FT in luclin as well) until you hit pop. After in pop and beyond you want to just stack AC+have all applicable foci for sks.

Fwiw gearing in luclin kinda sucks for sks but the focus effects etc you need are all still there, its just they have specific focus names so you need know. You also end up contiuining to use some of the same items you used in velious for jewelery(aow/vulak rings, etc).

with Raidloot.com you can search specifically for the criteria you need, including foci, highest ac per slot, etc.

To each their own I guess. Personally I would do AC and HP. Agro is quite easy and with mental corruption proc you can easily keep up your mana without Clarity. Foci effects are secondary and shouldn’t be taken as an alternate to high AC and HP items. If you plan on tanking anyway. I guess you could pretend to be a melee necro?

was gonna say...if you inspect the top SKs...they all stack int/mana and relevant focus. tanking velious content isn't very difficult.

In classic-velious, as long as a SK has mana+unholy up they will be top DPS, in luclin they become about onpar with sk/ranger/wizard. You either dont play an SK at all, or have no grasp on what is good for one, as you are generally going to be doing more self healing then any healer in the entire raid. The better your foci, the more self healing you get. Come pop is when SK damage starts to fall off until gates/omens comes out where gear ends up rounding itself out so you dont really need to make any sacrifices between foci/ac/mana.

Yeah, eventually you get to where the gear with the melee/caster focuses you want also have the highest ac/hp, or close to it anyways.

I’ve only ever tanked with em. Did late velious into Luclin SK. Go for whatever floats your boat.

As an SK you should be able to either tank or dps. Try to get all your major focuses: improved damage, spell haste, mana pres (in that order) then go for max ac then max hps. Once you get to PoP with heroic stats try to max heroic stamina since that reduces damage taken considerably.

If I had to put things in order from most important to least for an SK it would be.

heroic sta up to cap
improved damage focus
spell haste focus
detrimental mana pres focus
max ac
max hps
max atk
max mana regen
secondary focuses: increased range, dot damage

Heroic dex, agi, and int are also incredibly important.

A lot of poor SKs giving a lot of bad info. The majority of your raid time as an SK will be as DPS, so you are absolutely correct in focusing on your caster side for DPS. Folks claiming you need to stack ac/hp have no idea how to play an SK in the raid game. Your gear will be fine for tanking group content or offtanking adds in raids. I MT Yelinak, Zland and the ST dragon that slows (can't remember the name) for my guild weekly with "caster gear".

During raids I am geared with Yelinak mask (imp dam 3), Koi bracer (imp dot 3), Nev range (mana pres 3), Vulak neck (spell haste 3), Tunare sword, Yelinak hands (haste), Narandi crown (FT 2) and every piece of attack gear available in Velious (cords, Vindi BP, belt), as well as anything else I can to maximize my resists and mana pool, including buffs like Glades for mana regen. Keeping both Boil Blood and Heat Blood up at all times, casting life taps as mana allows (end every fight oom or you're doing it wrong), and timing Unholy Aura properly for mobs that require a lot of life tap casting (quick kills and/or fire resistant mobs), I can keep pace with or beat equally geared Rogues and Monks in DPS through all Kael and NToV raids.

Having said all that, looking ahead to Luclin, I would focus on all the attack gear coming in Vex Thal, and the FT 5 ring off Seru (maybe Emp sword too). The rest is pretty much junk and not worth spending DKP. As others have said, go to raidloot.com and search for items with attack (especially jewelry), mana regen, and the 4 main focuses SKs need (imp dam, imp dot, spell haste, mana pres). Keep in mind elemental armor in PoP has a lot of attack and focus effects, so don't go crazy trying to get those items in VT with 10-15 attack (umbral arms, leg, wrist) if they are expensive.

Calling Zama and Sazzabi anything but the best SKs to play on TLPs is fake news. In a week you’re going to be mediocre dps once an hour on Coirnav while rangers autoattack and wizards mash 2 buttons and dominate. From POP on SKs are amazing burst sky but like Sazz said you’ll want heroic stats especially Dex.

SIGNED

Lol good luck on your wizard sk tanking goals.

Rip sazzabi the poor sk. He was finally outed.

Just speaking for Agnarr here ... I have 23 heroic sta just from potime gear. I don't feel the need to max sta; I can already tank most boss in potime. I'm going for str, agi, dex. I've got my 40% fire dot and disease did and magic dd from potime ring. I'm planning on getting time burn aug for the ldon sk arms, and alternate between the dodge mod when I tank, and time burn when I'm dpsing.

Unholy Aura has a 36 minute recast, not 1 hour.

What other pearls of ignorance are you basing your “expert” opinion?

Maybe the SKs you raid with just aren’t competent?

Unholy alone wont let you parse in PoP and beyond so I wouldnt expect you to understand, stay on Agnarr with the care bear guilds tough guy

GoD is when SK burst picks up again, as that is when the HT revamp goes in going from like 1600? damage to 9k instant that can crit+a hefty dot component to it, where on burns you can have a SK with everything up matching a monk with everything up. Then from omens up until TSS its still easy to be top5 on the parse if you have HT+unholy up.

The problem that a lot of sks in the past seemed to run into was the fact that people were under the impression that they could just tank and to not push the class further, where in reality it could do a lot more and that nobody was just trying for it.

For what its worth, by the end of Ldon, you can have 30+ in every heroic if youre gearing correctly. During this era, it seemed that a lot of players didnt understand how important heroics were, which hopefully changes on future TLP's because they are actually amazing. Hagi/Hsta make a world of difference for tanking, and Hdex makes a world of difference for procs, which compound your selfhealing and damage as well as mitigation.

More ignorance. Coirnav is a ways from “PoP and beyond”.

Being largely caster geared is fine/good in the level 60 expansions, and later the tank stuff largely comes with the caster/melee focuses you want anyways so you won't have to sacrifice one for the other.