Mission Before the Siege and Shadowknight tanks crappy

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Tronda, Jan 12, 2018.

  1. Tronda Journeyman

    Hello fellow EQ SK Masters,

    I did this EoK mission for about 4-5 times so far. It is challenging and I did it last year or 2016 with a Shadowknight too. Even he struggled it was somehow possible after a few tries. SK tanks quite well, has no problem to tank RoS mobs either with a real cleric. Tried some action in EoK T1 zones and with healer merc for testing he never goes beyond 85% (without using any discs). He even got the occasional adds and does not even sweat or need any AA/disc activation.

    But in the mission he gets creamed by these first 4 Sarnaks - to tank them at once is horrible even with discs/AA activated. If he manages to get over the first 4 then the next 6 makes his day even worse.So even there was a nerf with SK I cannot imagine that SKs are meanwhile so whimpy that they cannot tank this mission. So I assume I am doing something very wrong and something changed since RoS.

    SK:
    Level 109
    - all spells up to 109 Rk.I
    - Gear a bit RoS T2, rest is EoK T2
    - AA: 22503
    - Buffed AC: 5300
    - HP buffed around 205-230k
    - Shield: Bridgekeeper's Memory
    - Tanking Weapon: Blackened Blade of Mourning

    What weapon combo do you as "SK master" recommend and for what situation:

    Honed Wurmslayer (EoK T2 Ancient, 1750 dmg reducer)
    + LifetapII-Aug (crappy, needs update)

    Kylong Protector (RoS T2, Lifetap)
    + Magma Gleam (Dmg21 Aug)

    Blackened Blade of Mourning (RoS T2, Rune)
    + Corrupted Brimstone (Remote Healing Surge IV)

    What AA/Disc rotation/hotbutton/combo do you use to sustain this mission? How do you tank them? Do you tank them all at once or is a SK today not able anymore to tank more than 2-3 EoK mobs?

    Pally and Warrior with Level 109 did fine. Pally even did not sweat at all and tanked all at once, Warrior had some nasty damage spikes but made it through. SK sweats from the beginning and is empty after the first or second round.

    Any advice will be very welcome.
    Thank you.
  2. Brohg Augur

  3. Tronda Journeyman

    mh.. yes.. indeed..
    What do you do it that is gone? How is the spells list?
    Perhaps I should also optimize that.
    Here is what I have at moment:

    Spellsgems:
    1: Defiant Stance
    2: Vizat's Skin Rk. II
    3: Harmonious Disruption Rk. II
    4: Revulsion
    5: Spear of Tylix
    6: Touch of Lutzen Rk. II
    7: Dire of Declaration Rk. II
    8: Putrefying Darkness
    9: Touch of Holmein Rk. II
    10: Bond of Xalgoz
    11: Xalgoz's Bite
    12: Dichotomic Fang

    Start Named/Emergency Button:
    - Shield Flash
    - Repel Rk. II
    - Deflection Discipline
    - Innoruuk's Dark Blessing

    Mitigation - Named/Raid Mobs - Hotbuttons:
    - Cursed Guardian Discipline
    - Krellnakor Mantle
    - Reaver's Bargain
    - Third Spire
    - Leechcurse Discipline

    Mitigation - Trash Mobs - Hotbuttons:
    - Tylix's Carapace
    - Impudent Influence Rk. II
    - Third Spire
    - Unholy Aura Discipline
    - Krellnakor Mantle

    Burn Preparation Hotbuttons:
    - Gift of the Quick Spear
    - First Spire
    - Reinforced Malaise
    - Scourge Skin

    Burn Spammer - Hotbutton:
    - Harm Touch
    - Leech Touch
    - Carmine Blade Rk. II
    - Thought Leech
    - Ageless Enmity

    Lifetap Hotbutton 1
    - Reflexive Rancor
    - Thought Leech
    - Vicious Bite of Chaos

    Lifetap Hotbutton 2:
    - Leechcurse Discipline
    - Spite of Kra'Du

    Lifetap Hotbutton 3:
    - Unholy Aura Discipline

    DPS Hotbutton:
    - Helix of the Undying
    - T'Vyl's Resolve
    - Visage of Decay
    - Visage of Death

    Nuke Standard / Aggro 1 - Hotbutton:
    - Repel
    - Projection of Doom
    - Hate's Attraction
    - Veil of Darkness
    - Voice of Thule

    Nuke Standard / Aggro 2 - Hotbutton:
    - Banestrike
    - Wounding Blade
    - Carmine Blade Rk. II
    - Chattering Bones
    - Thoughtleech

    AE Taunt/Dmg Hotbutton:
    - Explosion of Hatred
    - Explosion of Spite
    - Unyielding Acrimony
    - Mindless Hatred
    - Stream of Hatred

    Specials Boosts (Silence) Hotbutton:
    - Second Spire

    Pet Hotbutton:
    - Companions's Aegis
    - Fortify Companion

    Any Optimization would be very welcome. Thank you.
  4. Tronda Journeyman

    And I would like to know how Drogbaa can tank the Sarnaks. I never would think my SK could do it. Raid gear might be good but I assume that one key is the Pinepeak Ancient zonewide buff despite other factors. What is the most important combo to survive a 6er mobs at your SK in YOUR opinion and your experience?

    1. Epic 2.0 - I will have that in mind - I am not sure if that fired properly.

    Also the weapons are such a thought worth:

    AE-Tanking (vs. Blackened Blade of Mournign?!?)
    Honed Wurmslayer (EoK T2 Ancient, 1750 dmg reducer)
    + LifetapII-Aug (crappy, needs update)

    DPS:
    Kylong Protector (RoS T2, Lifetap)
    + Magma Gleam (Dmg21 Aug)

    Solo-Tanking (vs. Wurmslayer?!?):
    Blackened Blade of Mourning (RoS T2, Rune)
    + Corrupted Brimstone (Remote Healing Surge IV)

    Perhaps to add:
    I have gone to focus on hDex with the SK:
    - hDex 2100
    - hSta 1928
    - hAgi 1822
    - hStr 1860
  5. Tronda Journeyman

    Addon:

    - added RoS T2 Breastplate Clicky

    So for AE-Limit I tested:

    - Epic 2.0
    - RoS T2 Breastplate Clicky

    Using AE-Tanking (which seems best at 3+ Mobs):
    Honed Wurmslayer (EoK T2 Ancient, 1750 dmg reducer)
    + LifetapII-Aug (crappy, needs update)

    besides having active:
    1: Defiant Stance
    2: Vizat's Skin Rk. II
    3: Harmonious Disruption Rk. II

    Debuffed with:
    10: Bond of Xalgoz
    8: Putrefying Darkness

    Spamming on Hotbutton in this order:
    12: Dichotomic Fang
    11: Xalgoz's Bite
    7: Dire of Declaration Rk. II
    5: Spear of Tylix
    6: Touch of Lutzen Rk. II
    9: Touch of Holmein Rk. II

    Adding each disc like they wear off:
    - Leechcurse Disc
    - Deflection Disc
    - Cursed Guardian Disc
    - Krellnakor Mantle
    - Spite of Kra'Du
    - Tylix' Carapace
    - Unholy Aura Disc

    Lceanium: 3 Drolvarg Ravisher/Rager + mountain giant lord OK
    Another add (Drolvarg) and Merc Healer could not keep up.
    Endless solo fight, needless to say. Tried to not kill one too early for looking at limitations.

    4 seems max so far with that combo.
  6. Kolani Augur

    I'm hardly a *master*, but this is what I do. Make a extended target entry for the first three NPCs you need to protect. Let me add the caveat that I also always have a ranger in group as well. One the first four Sarnak attack, I pop Deflection and hit Denial and Explosion to get AE hate. Hopefully by the time Deflection is down, headshot has put us down 1-2 Sarnak, if there's still more than 2, I'll put up mantle. If Tsaph, Lcea or the other guy has managed to get aggro and is getting pounded on, assist them and get some hate on them. I usually save epic click and bp click for the second set, I'll generally let the Combine soldiers tank a couple in the next two waves.
  7. Seldom Augur

    Should have posted this in the tank section. Pertaining to your spell set, you don't have your #1 impact spell for this scenario memed and one of the best in an SK's toolkit: Insidious Denial. That change alone will make a large impact on survivability. "More"/spamming isn't always better. Focus on surviving and not spamming things. SK dicho shouldn't be a #1 thing on a spam key, especially in a survival situation. That should be something you hit if your HP bar dips too low. When you're running Cursed Guardian, make sure you have auto bash running for the lifetaps or hit bash yourself(I do it myself). When you're running the other discs, utilize the RoS BP, anguish bp, epic clicks etc. You just want to make sure you're providing yourself enough stream of heals all throughout by staggering those types of abilities and prioritizing proper spells when casting. It''ll be no problem with merc if doing that
    Drogba likes this.
  8. Drogba Augur

    You'll want to load some more lifetaps (and get the slot 3 gems to enhance their damage)
    You could drop putrefying darkness, xalgoz bite and revulsion, and replace them with insidious (unless you're mezzing the adds, in which case i guess stick with revulsion), and 2 more lifetaps (touch of falsin, touch of t'vem).

    You want to lifetap, all the time. Every cast is a judgement call between lifetap / aggro / refreshing utility a buff / doing damage.

    When tanking a pile, you can get aggressive with the lifetaps, and when you take a bad spike (or are anticipating one), attempt to cast insidious denail or dichotomic (and if those are down, dire declaration, though dire is a bit slower to get off). I like to keep these lifetaps at the back of my lifetap multibind so they are usually up to manual cast when i feel they are needed.

    When you have many mobs on you though, often your cast will get interrupted, or maybe you will just get unlucky and fizzle, so when casting these things with many mobs on you, you need to spam click/button mash until the spell actually goes off.

    If all of those are down, repel can be timed to buy u a little bit of time to get off a slower, less powerful lifetap off as well. If all of these things are down, then you want to waste something with a longer cooldown (shield flash, leech touch, deflection, forceful rejuvenation)

    Forceful rejuvenation can be instantly followed up with dichotomic (or if you think you have enough time, insidious).

    When you have leech effects running, you can use offensive abilities as instant heals too e.g. wounding blade

    Another important thing is vizat's skin, if that buff wears off you and you have a big pile on you, you are very likely dead soon. Another killer is not noticing that your mitigation disc or epic has dropped, be mindful of when they are due to expire and think ahead to what you can get running for when they drop.

    If you can get mortal coil to proc by killshotting something, that will provide a lot of healing on you as well.

    If i'm mostly killing 1-3 mobs, i load spear of vizat, any more than that and i swap it for distasteful bargain AE.

    Visage of death can be handy with leech effects running too, because you're hitting for more melee damage, so you're getting more healing back.

    Bond lifetap is kind of nifty too, though it only heals you every 6 seconds. You can cast it on multiple mobs, sometimes i will try to cast this on various mobs that i will kill last if i feel i have time to cast it (during deflection is a great time).

    I notice that you have some hot buttons, which I personally dislike using, how much of that is stylistic vs optimal is it's own debate i won't get into. At a glance, some of those pairings are suspicious to me, though.

    I'd start using first spire in place of third spire, you can tie it with visage of decay.

    These are 2 burn setup macro's that I use, but you can use them with your defensive discs to increase your survivability as well. You may opt to hit some of these manually as I sometimes do (e.g. carmine blade can be timed as a heal when you take a big spike, tyvl's resolve can be saved for a mob with lots of hp etc)


    (macro's courtesy of Gimamam)

    Spell burn
    /alt activate 1450 (first spire)
    /alt activate 747 (visage of decay)
    /alt activate 2034 (gift of the quick spear)
    /pause 3, /useitem 26 19 (cotf BP clicky, see this thread to work out what number to set your /useitem https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/useitem-command-for-click-buffs.200214/
    scroll down to axxius' quote in the comments)
    /alt activate 746 (reinforced malaise)

    Melee burn
    /alt activate 7019 (glyph of the cataclysm)
    /pause 8, /useitem 23 3 (SK epic)
    /pause 2, /alt activate 9403 (Visage of Death)
    /alt activate 742 (Tyvl's Resolve)
    /pause 2, /disc carmine blade rk. iii (you may need to change the rank to i or ii depending on your version of this disc)

    It's useful to use the spell burn during reaver's bargain (or after it), as you can keep your mana up a bit better when your bite of chaos AA is boosted by it (be sure to be hitting that!). You also want to be using thought leech during the spell burn, to increase the chance of it getting a high crit. A Thought leech crit can fix most of the mana/endurance penalty that you take from using reaver's bargain.

    The more ac/hp you can get from gear/trophy/augs/tribute/buffs/potions, the stronger you will become.

    A balance of Hdex/Hagi/Hsta is perfectly fine.

    Wurmslayer is optimal when no mitigation disc is running, the rune proc weapon is better when discs are running. I put a rune proc aug (best one is from tds iirc) in the rune proc weapon.

    How many mobs are feasible each pull is an educated guess based on what discs you have available, what healers you have (a good cleric makes a massive difference) and the dps/utility of the group. Sometimes i ask my group members if dps or heal burns are up, to aid in my decision on how many mobs i will bring in for the next pull.

    UI/control method doesn't have to be pretty, it has to be practical in empowering your ability to both see what's important & react quickly. In the case of SK, in particular, you want extended target, target's target positioned/large enough to always be in the corner of your eye. I can keep good watch of my hp bar by having target's target close-ish to the center of the screen. A Multibind (not a macro), is useful for fast lifetapping, we have a lot to focus on sometimes, and it can be handy to have a button to press to spam cast lifetaps when you are thinking/multitasking.

    I don't have the patience to ever write something comprehensive. If you are doing all of these things, then you're likely covering the main bits, survivability-wise. There are many more nuances to SK tanking, and SK overall, and you can mix and match a lot of these things differently, this is just how I do it.
    Archonia and Tronda like this.
  9. Kolani Augur

    They're not mezzable anyway, so it needs to be insidious.
  10. Brohg Augur


    Check out the video at https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...and-beastlord-pets.246397/page-2#post-3616694

    He has elite gear, but that's a video of raid mobs, so that evens out. The key takeaway is just how much stuff he's using in battle, and has used by the end of the battle. You can only barely see his spell gems flicker to light between casts while battling, and activated discs & clickers are either all greyed out from being used, or they're up next. That's kinda how to be a good anything in EQ.
    Slippry likes this.
  11. Bigstomp Augur

    It's all about disc/button timing. I can't speak from an SK perspective but on my warrior I normally deal with the first set with flash of anger and minor discs, the 2nd set gets a 2h + furious + dps stuff with pain doesn't hurt (dead mobs can't hurt you), and the 3rd gets a 2h + last stand.
  12. Millianna Augur

    The key to tanking multiple mobs is DPS. Drogba gave all the information needed. Just burn through the first few mobs as fast as you can. The only thing I would add - save shield flash for when health is low so that you have time to get off a LT.
    Slippry likes this.
  13. Stikkee New Member

    Where people make a mistake tanking this mission is assuming they MUST aggro all the invaders at once for the left and right defenses. LET them get aggro on NPC's first, they can hold their own for quite a bit.
    Niskin and Bigstomp like this.
  14. Bigstomp Augur

    This is true, but it's also not hard to just tank them all. But it certainly is an option if you can't handle them all.
  15. Tronda Journeyman

    arrg... I don't believe that.... many thanks for all this input...
    I never really took a big look into Insidious - that is crazy - sometimes somebody is so blind even having it in front of the eyes....ignored that line from the beginning like most AE stuff.... and forgot completely how good it is with more mobs... like correcting an own book and you only read what you think you have written instead of what is in front of the eyes - many thanks!

    The second: I set Epic and BP on the same hotbutton and in the background both fired additionally to Deflection - what a waste.

    This are cardinal errors in handling a SK in critical situations.

    I hoped it is possible to set everything on a hotbutton and after each press a single one is activated but it seems that this is only true for AA/Disc on the same timer.

    Thank also for that Drogbaa video after the nerf. He is still using EoK spells instead of RoS. Insidious Denial and Deceitful Deflection are both on his spell bar... strange ?!? They share the same timer - what is the reason? Emergency if mana is low? It seems sometimes they differ in Recast Timer even it should be identical?!?

    He also ignores the Touch of Holmein-Line - instead he has lower versions of Touch of Lutzen-Line.with that setup there is no cleric necessary and even no disc for tanking a "before RoS-Named" I assume.

    Any ideas how to get it on a very small amount of hotbuttons or do I need BP and Epic on an extra button?
  16. Tronda Journeyman

    oops.. I missed Drogbaas Post while writing my own...
    many thanks for that, I will change my config for that!

    I don't intend to pull whole zones but I would be more than happy to manage to tank the EoK and RoS missions. I had quite difficulties also with the Kor-Sha-Mission too. This will perhaps solve that. I will return and give feedback.

    Thank you esp. for that genious post of Drogbaa himself. It answered the Hotbutton setup.
  17. Drogba Augur

    I only use insidious denial. I might have used the old spell name out of habit.

    Touch of Holmein isn't really a lifetap, it's a nuke that boosts your max hp and boosts your aggro. I use it too. (But voice of thule is fine instead)
  18. Natal Augur

    You don't need to tank all 6 of the second wave at once, let the NPCs tank them and peel off one at a time (or at least until the NPCs are dead - but they last a while). You can help the NPCs somewhat by slowing the adds they are fighting, which will buy you a bit more time.

    In my experience the hardest part is the first wave, if you can handle those you should be able to do the other waves with a bit of common sense.
  19. Tronda Journeyman

    didn't tried so far this mission but another one:

    Heroic: Brandaleen's Scheme in Tower of Rot. All went well but then the Named Guardian Roger Macholeth popped. Happily like the usual easy going I went into the fight and at about 93% he creamed my SK. OK.. a little too easy so I went again - with every hint I had here - all buffs where active, went in with discs and having step by step Epic and BP on but this guy, used the Rune-Weapon, had all mitigation buffs for that whimpy 67kDD (RoS was harder with the 150k Dots) but this is beyond even the mobs I am used in RoS. Is the scalability logarithm at the moment on overdrive? Can anybody state that this mob is so crazy with level 114 if you go into that old Heroic with Level 109?

    So I don't think so much that I am doing something wrong here or better I am searching for a solution.
  20. Tronda Journeyman

    First solution: optimization

    RoS BP: 30 strikes, 5k Lifetap
    CoF BP T1: 2min, 2700HP Lifetap (50% of 5400)
    CoF BP T2: 2min, about 3600k Lifetap (50% of 7200 or something)

    I used now the Cof BP T1. Before I used the RoS BP. Still missing CoF T2 - worked on that in the Heroics to get the money because I had no luck with the named who drop the chest.

    Second: still missing the better Rune Augment from RoF/Caves.

    Third: updating all gear to RoS T2 and Level to 110 to be able to tank properly old HAs and missions.