I am a 94 Shadow Knight and I play with friends, sometimes I box when they are not here. Since I am the tank I worked on my gear more. We used most of hour ressources on my character, money, time, quest (epic, augs), I also did a lot more AA... I have all RoF tier1 gear, all my non-skinnable is 92 req tank gear, I maybe dont have top AA but almost 3k and all CA/CS/Shield Block maxed. In our group we have a mage wearing half defiant half 80ish gear from The Ground nameds with abit more than 1000AA and his pet out tank me by such a large marging its incredible. I mean, on white/yellow con Oashin in Lunanyn if the mobs are not slowed I have to burn discs or the Reactive healer mercs cannot keep me alive, his pet hardly even needs heal at all. I end up standing back and casting DoTs because its not efficient when I go on melee range... What am I doing wrong?
How are your augs and mods? For example: What is your AC unbuffed and buffed? Do you have at least 30AC in every slot? Are you maxxed on shielding? What heroics (for augs/gear) are you focusing on? Is the gear you have tank oriented gear with the better AC or is it any gear you got off named (so some at the bottom say better for casters/priests, etc.)? Other questions: Which pet is the mage using (earth, air, etc.)? What level is the mage (you didn't state)? How many healer mercs are you using and are they both on reactive or do you have them split to different settings (splitting provides much more healing) Have you buff blocked certain spells that the healer mercs like to use (blocking certain spells that tend to provide less healing to you means you'll get more focused heals when you need it). Lots make a hotkey so they can toggle on and off based on whether they have a real healer or not. There are some periods of time where a mage pet will out-tank a tank class in general (and then also if the tank isn't geared in all the areas - gear, augs, AA). Looks like you have 2 of the 3 but you didn't mention the 3rd so I had to ask. As a side note, mage pets don't really take their strength from what their owner/player is wearing (so the mage's defiant gear level is less important here).
What is your AC unbuffed and buffed? 0 buffs (no self, clic or else) : 5922 Do you have at least 30AC in every slot? In every slot yes, not on every augs. Are you maxxed on shielding? 40/35 What heroics (for augs/gear) are you focusing on? I always take AC when I can. As fir +yellow stat (thats heroic?) I have 161 dex, 145 agi, 149 stam. Is the gear you have tank oriented gear with the better AC or is it any gear you got off named (so some at the bottom say better for casters/priests, etc.)? Most of my gear is tank oriented, I have 1 "enchanter" earing and a "berzerker" ring. Which pet is the mage using (earth, air, etc.)? Air. What level is the mage (you didn't state)? 94 like me. How many healer mercs are you using and are they both on reactive or do you have them split to different settings (splitting provides much more healing) One healer merc. If set in efficient I die. Have you buff blocked certain spells that the healer mercs like to use (blocking certain spells that tend to provide less healing to you means you'll get more focused heals when you need it). Lots make a hotkey so they can toggle on and off based on whether they have a real healer or not. I dont know what buff block is.
Elinda, You are a firsthand witness to some of the tank issues being brought up in regards to pets. Since there are numerous posts regarding the issue, I will avoid it like the plague. As a knight, paladins and shadow knights have a lot of utility with being a tank. The knights can heal, pull, cure, and ghetto crowd control among some of those utilities. One of the drawbacks is that they require lots and lots of alternate abilities to achieve a comfortable tank level. You listed the defensive lines being max'd for your level which is very good; however, for the shadow knight,this is just part of their tanking abilities. Shadow knights use various forms of self healing abilities in the tanking. They have self buffs like their horror lines (life tap from weapon damage) and shroud lines ( life tap procs ). They have life tap spells: dire(big life tap ) and two touch lines which are light and medium healing. They have life tap from weapon damage based on AA ability and an epic weapon life tap . Shadow knight self buff passive healing uses the horror and shroud lines. The horror line uses life tap from weapon damage so anything that affects your me lee damage will increase your self healing/survivability such as combat fury, veterans wrath, knights advantage, and burst lines. The shroud lines use life tap procs so abilities which affect procs will help such as soul abrasion and direct damage crit lines(fury of magic and destructive fury). Finally, the touch of the cursed AA provides a mana-less big life tap proc which can be affected by direct damage AA lines. The shadow knight life taps can help you get threw high rounds of damage by bridging that merc healer. I keep three on my spell bar but haver dad some keep more. These spells are affect by direct damage modifiers such as fury of magic, destructive fury, and theft of life lines. Since the DD modifiers were already mentioned, will discuss theft of life line. This line increases your chance for a life tap critical which sounds mediocre;however, when you realize that the life tap can double critical does it begin you sink in. You now have life taps that can critical for your full health bar depending and gearing and level: impressive! Yet another way shadow knights get passive healing/survivability is through use of the mortal coil line ans epic life tap buffs. The mortal coil line gives you a life tap from weapon damage buff from kill shots. This is sometimes hard to maintain in groups but can be coordinated especially since you seem to play in a set group of friends. Epic gives you the controllable/on- demand life tap from weapon damage buff. Another area would be in riposte. Without going into EQ defensive mechanics, this ability gives you the chance to avoid damage through an offensive action. This offensive action can use life tap from weapon damage to self heal the shadow knight which double riposte increases the chance of occurring. I would take a look through you AA and start working on those lines mentioned. This should put you in a very nice place for tanking but will also take more time to achieve. The daily lines from The POK npc seem to help that if done daily. P.S. : Some of the AA lines that I have mentioned have been merged and are called totally different names so bear with me. I revert back to the old names here and there and do not have EQ available at the moment. Good luck fellow weilder of the dark power, Ryneis
basically, you're not doing it wrong - mage pets are just really powerful, and the closer you are to the level of the pet spell the more powerful they are going to seem relative to a tank player.
Looking at magelo profiles of SK's level 91 - 94, you would appear #60 of 185. I would suggest comparing your gear and AA's to those above you to see where you can improve. Buff blocking is a short list of beneficial spells not able to land on you. If the spell has a duration, you can right click on the spell to bring up the option to block. You can also block instant spells from the EQ button > characters > blocked buffs (iirc). Complete Heal is one of the primary spells to block when relying on merc heals. It takes 10 seconds to cast and can leave you dead long before it finishes casting. You can remove the block by clicking on the icon in the blocked buffs window. There is also a command line version but the exact syntax eludes me at the moment. There is a similar blocked buff window for pets, blocking complete heal on the sk pet if you are using it can be beneficial as well. Are you utilizing the group roles? setting yourself as main tank? It could be as simple as the merc is healing another toon when its priority should be on you.
5922 seems a bit low for 90+, I think I was rocking 5700 in Underfoot group gear at 85. With full ROF T1 Vis and Nonvisibles I think you should be pushing closer to 7k then 6k AC, I think your augs more then likely need some work, and Possibly rearrange some of your nonvis to favor the higher AC options. Also are you running tribute/possibly guild tribute for the extra AC bump? Also if the mage has EM12 (which is better then the best groupable EM item in VOA, which you were talking about Valley...) Thats another advantage his pet hjas over you
Nope. I think food/tribute and even more aug will help much. By the way does the gap closes with time/level or does it becomes worse untill you get raid geared?
think of it this way: content is designed around a certain benchmark - in many instances, that benchmark is "what could be handled by someone in this circumstance with the best possible gear and AAs?" and the content is tuned around that level of difficulty. sometimes, the benchmark is much lower and it's not the best setup possible that they're aiming for. the big issue is generally that mage pets are designed to be tuned towards the upper end of that difficulty curve - they are made to be strong enough to tank a wide spectrum of content including the more difficult stuff "out of the box" (ie, as soon as the spell is purchased and pet can be summoned), whereas tanks need gear and augs and AAs and several other things to push themselves to that point. so ultimately the answer is that yes, with time and level it does get better strictly in terms of your tanking strength relative to a mage pet. but until you're at the top of the curve in terms of gear and AAs (relative to the tuning point for the content you're doing) it's going to be a struggle.
Adding a couple other things to what Tearsin said (or I guess saying it a slightly different way). Outside of 1 pet focii, AA's are the only thing that can increase pets. You can't gear them or give them augs. So a pet has to be able to tank all of that 5 level expansion of content (91-95 or 96-100 for example). So as Tearsin said, the pets get the boost initially as there is only 1 pet spell per per "type" per level increase + the pet focii (which usually isn't an increase for each tier, it's 1 or 2 increases for the entire expansion). For tanks, it's a different story. In addition to the AA's (which pets also face) tanks have to upgrade their gear through the tiers and their augments. So there's the extra layer of work to stay comparable to the content being tested.
My sk has full rof t1 vis and non vis, he's 92 and he has at least 25 ac in every aug slot.. He's not breaking 6k ac yet. (5990). Group gear AC is super low anymore =/ Just a note: my sk only has 3k aa, and he's similar in stats to yours with less levels. He tanks just fine in valley. Now the key is to kill things faster, IMO. With two wiz mercs, a wizard, and a mage, I never have trouble tanking.
What augs should I aim for? Right now I have this req grey scale thingy, the red rose thingy with bout 45AC and the yellow flower from HoT zone quest. The rest is just HoT zone lores, and very old LDoN craps. Should I try to get into HoT content raids or is it way too old now?
My paladin broke 7k with full ROF T1 armor, shes now sitting at 8420 in COTF gear 5700/5800 was attainable in UF 6500 was attainable in HOT 7000 was attainable in VOA <maybe more I probably didn't have optimized augs 8000 was attainable in ROF 8400 is attainable with what little COTF we have As far as what augs? Go on raid loot and Seperate based on AC, Find the best augs you can and go camp them. If the camps are undoable find the next best aug, go camp it. Work your way down until you get to what you can do tankability wise, and work back up as you get upgrades. Also what Jehmmy said is some of the most valid advice you will get: DPS wins fights, Tanking and healing only prolong them, Pack your group with as much DPS as you possibly can and still maintain the level of heals/tanking you need.
Your going to need to up that ac a bit and get some high ac/hp aug's. The past two expansions have not been too Sk tank friendly but you can do it. What really helps on proc rate of passive aa and spells and weapon aug's is having HIGH Hdex as high as you can get it even if it means sacrificing a few ac from your non-visable gear. Work on this and you should see considerable increase in your tanking ability. Make all your life tap lines and their increases are maxed make sure your casting nuke and dot lines and their increases are capped as well. Plus if you have not done your Don progression get it done. Do your MMM trials to help with resisting spells and then all you have to do is a bit of twinking of how you spell chain and tome usage and your there.
WTF are you talking about? The last 2 expansions have been perfectly fine for SK's, Theres no content I would say "Wow I really should get a Paladin or Warrior for instead of an SK." And is there any proof Hdex improves our Passive AA proc rate? I've never heard that before, enlighten me how much % per 25 Hdex does it improve our passive proc rate. If it does increase it at all, I can't see it by much. So I could be wrong/dumb. Granted I am not disagreeing that He/She/It should Focus on Hdex/Hagi.
You say all your base defensives are maxed and you have around 3k aa, that indicates to me you may be missing a lot of passive healing aa (is soul abrasion, mortal coil, theft of light, nuke crits, heal crits maxed?). Up those and your passive healing with skyrocket which will ease general tanking a good bit. AC seems low, definitely look into camping better augs and looking for gear upgrades. Make sure you go for augs with heroic dex and heroic agility, not just vanilla ac augs and that will be a massive help.
Im 91, in t3 VoA (embellished) and other group gear and Im at 6358 selfbuffed. Im working on AC augments, still got a few under 30. Im afraid youre gonna have to do some camping... I still get trampled on in Lunanyn but guess thats more a lvl thing, yellow con hurt.
any AC aug under 30 after about 80 or 85 is just bad practice. Replace anything that is sub 35 ASAP Get a metal powersource and Purity augs Get AC food/drink Blam shoot up from 5900 to 6500 perdy qwik that way.
