Thanks for this, I'll look them up when I get home. With the Anguish BP I assume the effect doesn't stack with Epic, so if the group has 3-4 Sk's that actually coordinate epic usage it would be useless correct? Is Scarlet Blade and Lacerating Blade the same line? (I think I may have used the older version in my mock up). Regarding Harm Touch, I guess I am asking if the value of the hate for tanking is worth any kind of delay in using it as available in a raid situation. If it is being used for tanking/agro reasons, should I also include a blurb for optimizing it?
SK raid tank spell set: highest level terror highest lvel challenge new bond spell Stance line Spear Dire life tap Touch life tap 105 Touch life tap 100 AE lifetap Torrent – group ac recourse Touch of XXX lifetap + max hp boost for 6 min + inc agro mod (long cast time) Skin And sheex is right, I meant 1st spire. Also don't count out the power of bond under first spire, you can get some very nice ticks. I like to use carmine blade line in 2 ways, either to help during burn, or to use as a emergency heal while epic is up, the effects it gives alone are not worth much, but combined with other things it adds a good bit. Also I did forget about leech touch, but its really really long recast makes it not reliable, but it is a great heal when needed. With VoT on me, casting bond and challenge as they wear off and rotating terror and lifetaps I have never lost agro on a main raid mob. Harm touch should be used when everything else agro wise is down, or if the SK is the first tank on the main mob so that it gives time for others to go all out and the sk to set up dominance. It is a nice bit of damage, but nothing like what anyone else can do. Use it for agro more than damage.
1. Vizats Skin < If you are in the MT order (or its a really beefy add/mini) and the mob hits for more then 40ish K and you survive past Guardian, you should click this off Since Mantle/Armor are vies and the charges from this are vies, you can run into weird issues where it will cause you to take more damage then the 35% of mantle or the 20% of Carapace 2. Staunch Stance < Id only load stance if i knew i was going to be in the MT rot. I would Load Torrent of Misery here instead, because its = to the AC from field protector (I can't remember if those stack, if they don't I wouldn't load Torrent with a warrior in group, id probably sub in another DOT or the HP Buff Tap) *** Yes the minor loss of HP total would be worth having the AC from Torrent on Trash, You can always get Growth (net loss of 2400hp, but a massive gain in Mitigation AC) 3. Dire Declaration (Big Life Tap) 4. Spear 5. Duplicitous Audacity <You could load a DOT here, Any of the halfway decent 101+ DOT's will generate more hate over time (slight loss on the front end, since Aud has a 2200 hate override), AND do damage 6. Terror of Piora < Deceitful Deflection is on a 6s recast and gives more hate, Mezzed mobs should be quarantined So mages/wizards can AE anyway. Load another Lifetap here (95) 7. Terror of Narus 8. Impose for Power 9. Distasteful Bargain (AE hate damage) < Its bad practice to load 2 spells on the same timer at the same time, unless the situation dictates it a necessity. /memspellset. Id Load Another Lifetap here because my survival is paramount to being able to do my job (Level 100 Touch of) 10. Deceitful Deflection (AE hate self heal) < I'd personally spam the crap out of this if i wanted aggro, since its the second highest hate spell you have. If other tanks couldn't hang with that aggro wise, i would probably shame them in /gu 11. Bond of Bonemaw (Heal over Time) 12. Touch of Lutzen (LifeTap) 1) AS far as using Third Spire, unless you are getting chain stunned or silenced, First spire is ALWAYS a larger increase to your survival, On Anything that matters, once you have an aggro lead, you should be spamming the crap out of lifetaps (self healing doesn't work if you use it reactively v. heavy hitting mobs, your dead by the time you realize + Channel a 1s cast lifetap = Hence why in my spell suggestion above, there would be 3 possibly 4 direct taps + bond + deceitful) 2) Unholy Guardian + VOD doesn't work (The negative Increase hit damage cancels out VOD), the scenario Sheex is talking about, would probably be any more then 2 or 3 adds on you at once, The burst healing of Epic/Vod/carmine + Mantle > Guardian's DI shift. 3) shroud and vizat's horror stack and the buffs do 2 totally different things. One is a lifetap proc, the other is a lifeleech proc (10%) that has charges (10ish?) Anyways basically what i was saying earlier is you had alot of singular purpose spells (hate), when you already had other spells loaded that would perform as well (better actually). So dropping the unneeded ones and replacing them with DOTS or something useful (Torrent AC is huge now and thats about as close to "utility" as your class is going to get ) Anyways sorry i didn't respond earlier with something more then "your spellset is weird"
Thank you this is exactly the kind of correction/suggestions I was looking to attain. I spent some time chatting with a couple people yesterday and the spell set is one which one of the players use. I anticipate getting some resistance to any suggestions I make, so I want to have a well positioned argument to explain the merits of one method over another, at least enough so that they will try it and see if it improve performance.
Just tell them if their Spell bar ever lights up, they waited too long to cast. That alone should bring massive improvements.
The only thing I disagree with about Raven's summary is I don't see AE spell hate(s) in that lineup. I usually like to keep 1-2 memmed to ensure I pretty much always have an AE up.
Dread Gaze line is AE hate not a taunt Thats situational, something you would know ahead of time needed to be loaded and could/would swap out a spell of lesser value for it. (If I had to personally make a choice, id drop Bond first, since its a heal over time essentially) Although, How the hell do you even channel that spell in today's EQ, dat 1.5s cast time bro? the last time i played an SK (which was awhile ago) it was hard then Unless your talking say the beginning of Arx4 or something, or WK1? Id think 2 Explosion AA's, that beam hate ya'll got now, and Deceitful/Repugnant bargain would be more then enough of an initial blast of hate to hold aggro. If your talking casting it on mezzed mobs, Id probably laugh at you though, Enchanters are probably better suited to tanking raid trash then SK's are .
Edited, you know what I meant =P. I just like being able to use the aa ones without fear I might be stuck wanting an AE and waiting 30-40s.
I'll tell you it's a struggle. Between DAing wizards/mages when they twincast, knock back stunning mobs behind warriors, and keeping Marrs on tanks, I hardly find time to DPS.
So on a typical named encounter, I usually will cast epic, then VoD, Carmine Blade, First Spire and Harm Touch. Should I use Mantle or Carapace as my disc with this combo?
Only use the amount of cooldowns you absolutely need to handle a particular encounter. Most named in modern EQ are basically amped up Trash mobs, and you can probably power through them with minimal discing. Rotate things so your clearing trash faster, and use whatever disc your holding in reserve or have up. IE: Don't save things to blow on a boss if you only need Epic + VOD to get through it. As far as as Mantle or Carapace, That depends on your durability. However if your using First spire, I would use Carapace first, since the defensive proc is a lifetap and first spire will boost the damage (DPS and healing) it does. If that doesn't work or isn't working feel free to click Carapace off and pop Mantle.
recently started playing my sk again and all this is very informative =) question tho (i dont raid on my sk but still curious) doing all this do you all still spam the Bite aa and spell to keep up on mana? (when i spam my spear/tap in groups my mana starts to go quick)
There's 2 bite AA's now and they're both worth using each pop for freebie mana. The newer one actually has a decent nuke to it, too. For mana use soul flay when not quick spearing, and remember Thought Leech - if it crits it'll restore a ton of mana.
My Raid Lineup for most stuff if I'm off-tanking/tanking. Little more defensive than others. Included what I have bound. Bond AC Torrent Skin Dire Tap (bind1) Touch Tap (bind1) Touch-1 Tap (bind1) Stance Current Terror (bind2) Spear (bind2) Current-1 Terror (bind2) Current-2 Terror || AE Aggro || AE LifeTap (bind2) - Based on mez mobs/AE need Power AC line