SKs, what is your sustained dps?

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Parmalice, Jun 16, 2021.

  1. Disapointed Lorekeeper

    You took a debate about casting while tanking, and brought "swarming" into it. No one would argue that casting anything that would get you killed in it's cast time due to lack of leech would be a good idea.

    With that said, your normal CoV group + estimated mob count allows for some casting.

    GD is a horrible example of anything though, since stacking 20-50 mobs on top of each other seems to lag them out essentially freezing them, allowing you to strafe around them 360* without them ever changing the direction they are facing. (Still one of the most exploited zone issues in the casual game)

    You are 100% correct in the assumption that while your essentially swarming, anything that isn't damn near insta cast will greatly increase your chances of being murdered.IR is great for this situation, since it's reasonably fast cast, and AE lifetaps (When not resisted)

    While you cast, you neither riposte or swing, so Mortal Coil/Lich Sting/Touch of the Cursed(procs) are all waiting for that cast to finish before they can get back to work & they are the only reason your still alive at this point anyway.

    Edit: Never running QS is utterly wasteful, using bargain while QS is down is fine as they share the same recast, not bothering to use QS at all, is just leaving DPS on the table more times than not.
  2. Chaosflux Augur

    In your 4 to 8 example in COV content, you aren't losing dps by casting lifetaps, your riposte rate and swing rate isn't high enough that, that is even a thing.

    And like disappointed mentioned not using Quick Spear leaves a very large amount of dps on the table, it has 30% uptime, your focus AA for Spear is massive, and it casts incredibly quckly. Couple that with the fact you really shouldn't even need the aggro from Bargain if you are fully utilizing your other tools. Sure if you have 50 mobs infront of you Bargain since its AE damage will out damage Spear, but in your regular grouping scenario that's not a realistic mob count.

    Your supposition that its less dps because "you can't parse it, because variable mobs counts", then how did you determine it is in fact lower dps? If you don't know, you don't know, but you can't say it would be negatively impactful if you don't know.

    I 2hander tank as a paladin all the time, and our nukes are similar cast times, I can't see how you are dying if you are casting life taps on 4 to 8. My "lifetap" nuke also heals me for significantly less on average and I don't have the incredibly strong skin line to offset that damage. Swarming sure that makes sense, regular group? Ehh no I don't think so.
  3. Triconix Augur

    Also unsurpassed in having the absolute most passive dps of the tank archetype. A 100% crit rate (or very close to it that it's basically negligible) without needing to press a single button besides auto attack is quite advantageous.
  4. Hellowhatsyourname Augur

    Yeesh, a lot here to comment on...

    1. As someone else mentioned, terrors activate Cascading Theft of Defense and Cascading Theft of Life AA lines. In the group game I have one memmed all the time... when raiding I mem two. They're almost always on cooldown, unless I'm in dps mode.

    2. Dire/lifetaps (except for Composite Fang) have cast times. When you're casting, you're not swinging your big 2-hander. Most of the time you're better off using insta-cast dots/damage AAs and reserving lifetaps for when you're taking damage and absolutely need the heals. Even then, composite should be your #1 choice (again, if you're purely going for dps).

    3. Spear + activated AA's to reduce spear cast time = $$. I keep it up all the time. The only time I drop spear is if I have the AE hate + damage spell memmed (on the same timer as spear) and am using that for ae agro (which I do a lot in raids).

    4. On a Sontalak burn this week I was a hair short of 1mil dps for the raid. That's using 2-3 dots, SK alliance, all the AA goodies, and HT at 20% with a group tailored for melee dps.
  5. Szilent Augur

    The AA procs are, by intention, not strong. Terrors *can* activate CToDefense… 20% of the time. That's a one in five chance, so an average of protecting versus 24k damage. Meanwhile every lifetap heals 40k minimum (for the group geared SK I use, rk2 of the level 110 T`Vem), up to 700k crits. Both spell types fire off CToLife with the same 1:6 chances

    Cast times do not interfere with melee, they haven't for the past…decades. You're very much leaving dps on the table not chaining taps.
  6. Hellowhatsyourname Augur


    In combination with the rest of the heal procs via AA's, activated abilities, buffs, epic, mortal coil, etc. its rare that lifetaps need to be anything other than selectively used.

    Are you saying that when you cast you're still swinging at the mob? Because unless we're talking about bards (which we aren't), that is not my experience.
  7. Szilent Augur

    Unless your cast times are longer than your melee dly (spears and lifetaps are not), you do not lose any melee rounds to cast spells.
  8. Hellowhatsyourname Augur


    Spears are not and Composite Fang is not, but the other lifetaps with the best cast mods are 1.5 second casts (normally 3 sec, iirc).
  9. Szilent Augur

    …they're 0.8s reduced from 1s. Insidious is 0.4 reduced from 0.5s. You're sure you're a shadowknight? Necro lifetaps are 3 sec cast time
  10. Syylke_EMarr Augur

    I can confirm that you are leaving a dramatic amount of DPS (and survivability) on the table by not chain casting Taps.
    code-zero likes this.
  11. Hellowhatsyourname Augur


    You're totally right. That's what I get for posting from work.