Raid wise SK's need to be useful. Most of the time now I'm the only SK in my guilds raids and no one notices a difference if it is just me or when we had 3 or 4 on per raid. But if we lack pallies or warriors, we can't raid. Well warriors will always be needed since they are and should be the best tanks. But Pallies get splashes, cures, heals, group heals and buffs. What do SK's get? And with the recent changes in aggro, SK's are turning into a joke, my raid leader said only thing a SK is good for anymore is sometimes kiting. At first I thought he was kidding but more I think about it, its true. SK's can tank good, that I have no problem with, its our usefulness in raids that needs to change and our aggro needs a bump up also.
I think SKs are quite useful on raids. They are wonderful add tanks and also do very well with their AE aggro on add heavy raids like WK1. What exactly would you have be changed to make them more useful?
SKs bring arguably nothing to the table. Warriors have undisputably better mitigation, single-target aggro (by far) and AE aggro. Paladins have all the utility that you mentioned - they tank as well as sks, their single-target aggro is better, they can be main healers or dedicated splashers or curers or group healers, and don't lag far behind in AE aggro. Shadowknights can DPS the best (w00t!), as long as it's not against undead, and their AE aggro and kiting niche is of negligible benefit over the other two tanking classes. Given the choice of a paladin or SK of equal skill, I want the paladin in my raid every time. Give me 8 paladins and they'll all find something to do and benefit the raid. After the first SK, the rest can sit around on their behinds or DPS; and in the case of knights on DPS duty, I'd encourage them to play an alt instead. Shadowknights are in a terrible spot because paladins have branched out and grown into battle clerics, maintaining their own unique advantages, and still remaining balanced as knights. Shadowknights, in contrast, have stagnated. Still, it's rare to choose between players of equal skill, and as such exceptional shadowknights will still find raid slots. Shadowknights can perform a fraction of a paladin's duties, with little to no advantage on raids.
SK's are the best group knights, pallies are the best raid knights. Like trying to do DH1 without any pallies, can be done, but makes it tons harder. Tanking wise yeah both are on par, no arguements there. But would be nice for some new raids to come where SK's are needed for a good win like pallies are now on some raids.
^^That Basically SKs are beholden to a much larger grouper population, the downside to swarming. They get nice shiny stuff for the group game but are almost (asides from kiting/HA/AoE agro for Adds) useless for raiding. Somewhat amusing watching the raid SKs rage against the grouper SKs when it comes to AA/Spells/etc for the class. As for DPSing, they have a slight advantage on living targets but noticeably beaten on undead. Why anyone would have an SK filling a DPS spot is beyond me. For years it has been 5 - 6 Pallies and 1 - 2 SKs on the roster for most upper tier raid guilds.
I'm not arguing that paladins aren't better on raids(and I don't think anyone could), I just think SKs have a place too. After reading the posts above I can see however how they are in kind of an awkward middle spot of not really excelling at anything. So what improvements would you guys make to make them more needed on raids?
I agree - SK's need a specific role (not necessarily a role only they can fill) on raids. Having an SK on a raid should bring a situational advantage, but not be essential, same as other classes. Good SK, like any other good player, are always going to find roles to fill, but the class does need a role for raiding We don't want other classes to be nerfed, nor impinge in roles (main tank, and battle cleric), so what are the options? Massive DPS boost? ADPS?
It's a tricky question. Part of the problem is how strong paladins have become (what's the gap between priests and paladin heals, cures, and splashes these days?), and I'm not at all interested in nerfing Paladins (I love where they're at for raids!), because any discussion of Shadowknights has to be within the tank and knight archetypes. Let's rewind to level 65. Warrior aggro was poor, but they were undoubtedly the best tanks, with defensive and evasive defensive discs. Paladins got stuns, some small heals and group heals, but little oomph to help much on the MT - these were generally scaled with shadowknight lifetaps. Shadowknights were the masters of aggro in all its forms. Paladins got buffs (brells), shadowknights might help with the pull team - both knights were squarely balanced, far away from priests, and were certainly below warriors under disc (though quite similar if discs were down, as warriors largely weren't wielding shields, rather dual wielding for aggro). Obviously, the game has changed in so many ways since then (goodbye, complete heal!). Warriors now have the best aggro and mitigation, paladins have established themselves as healers (slay DPS isn't such a big thing now, but maybe they'll be getting even more ranks of it again to bring it to relevance?), and shadowknights can… what? I think it'd be interesting to compare the current line of power taps to their relative strength at level 65. While the devs may hate them, it's within the lore of the class and something shadowknights have had in the past - one mega powertap that saps AC, ATK, and Endurance. I think the recent Tyvol's is somewhat in this vein, in terms of debuffs. There's really no point in increasing Shadowknight DPS, and I think this would pose too many problems from a game balance perspective for it to even get consideration. I don't know of any shadowknight that wants to become a quasi-debuffer, nor do the devs want to give SKs any buffs. It's really a class without obvious options. The great stumbling block is the great divide between what a raiding shadowknight needs versus a grouping one. Shadowknights are between a rock and a hard place, and there's no obvious solution. Whatever solution does come about will, I imagine, be a mix between creative new ideas, getting abilities requested for since the advent of swarming, and the devs changing their stances on disallowing certain abilities.
SK really DOESN'T have a place in a raid currently though. I can't remember the last time I didn't just wish I were a paladin instead. SK shortlist: Aggro revamp - ours is abysmal compared to war/pal currently Spell cast times/cooldowns - if I'm doing my "job" and offtanking a few adds, most of my stuff isn't even capable of being used because it all gets interrupted. T'vol's debuff - 100% chance to trigger PLEASE. It's friggin stupid as anything that there's only a 75% trigger chance on an ability with that kind of cooldown that only lasts for a few ticks anyway. Especially since SKs rotating it is the only tiny benefit to having more than 1 SK on a raid instead of just stacking more paladins (more pallies is still better).
While I see a great deal that could be improved for SK, the same can be said for warriors (i.e. we got very limited solo ability comparatively and aren't needed that much in the group game). SK do have a reduced value at the Raid level, but good players still find a place. I think the real issue is that some classes appear tuned to solo, another group to do well in the group game, and then the final group for the Raid game. There are 3 different games going on....and enough classes that everyone either becomes over specialized, or, in order to make everyone viable in all three areas...overly generic. Frankly I think it's an issue that arose over time that isn't going to be fixed at this late stage in EQ. Honestly, given the gaming world today...I think most efforts to balance things out are going to damage one class or another....or more frequently result in all classes looking too much alike. I suppose, if I want to play out EQ for another few years I'm going to have to accept more generic roles...as I don't think the server populations support increasing specialization. That being said...I don't object to any of our Tankish classes getting more agro but I think we've got enough to get the job done. I don't really object (in fact I'd like) a bit more base DPS (not more button mashing) to allow for better solo and group utility. But I can play the game in its current form and am not thinking that anything done at this point is going to radically bring back strong class roles like we saw the first few years of EQ. And yes I play both a warrior and an SK (on the same acct) so feel the pain of each and have for going on 14 years now.
Each raid if different and often requires unique strategies. For example, I've been on raids where we needed some folks to kite, and well us SK's worked great for this. Other classes had other jobs in this particular raid. SK's can be used to kite mobs in raids and FD to drop aggro and effectively stop kitting, pally nor warriors do kitting well. Sometimes Paladins are so busy splashing they don't get to do anything else in a the raid, and well that's just there job for the raid. So for each raid classes generally get a particular job and in some cases it's specific and in others it's generalized as in a part of overall DPS. (don't use this as an excuse to ask for wizard like DPS either) My point is don't be so naive and state that SK's don't have a 'place' in a raid. It all depends on the raid you are running. It's that simple.
Man, I just don't get all the doom and gloom. We typically have used 1-2 Warrior, 2 SK MT rotation since we've started raiding as a guild after Vox was created. Aside from the pre-nerfed WK2 Commander and pre-nerf DH2 Captain, our two SK MT's have been able to tank everything the warriors have at roughly the same level. That's not saying we still haven't tanked them for long periods of time, just that warriors were able to survive more regularly on those real big hitters. There have been other encounters that I've prefered the SK over the warrior just to free up healer for other tanks, curing, etc. I look at my heal parses, and the majority of the time I'm #1 on my own list. Sometimes by a wide margin depending on the encounter. SK synergy with shamans and bards is probably higher in my opinion than any of the other tanks because increasing our DPS just increases our passive healing abilities. Fights like Bonecrusher I've tanked with a two hander, burns, no defensive discs, and still cover 85% of all the healing needed to keep me up. I realize a lot of guilds aren't going to give their SK's a shaman, but I challenge some raid leaders out there to do it and throw those SK's to the front of the line. You might be surprised what you find out. Our snap agro is fine, and if people are constantly taunting off of you... Not much is going to help that other than having your tanks respect that someone else is already tanking something and not try to ping pong agro around. We can all get agro, but it's the good tanks that will pull it when they need it. Outpacing a full DPS burn for any of the tank classes is the easy part. My only issue with SK's currently is that to be effective, we rely on having to have ALL of our buffs and clickies to be effective. Where warriors and paladins aren't as dependent, or don't have quite as many self buffs. Add in the buff cap, and it can get tricky sometimes getting a proper burn up. Things like the stacking issue with our new aDPS ability are annoying, but will probably be addressed in the long term.
Up our dots to 3/4 what a necromancer is at the previous expansion. This will help us bring up the dps, but since nec has many many more AA that effect their dots would not bring us up anywhere even where a shammy is on dots. this would also take 2-3 expansions to fully help us and give time for fine tuning. un-link bond lines hp and dmg. Up the damage to current dot level damage. and add a hate over time component. un-link the damage of the touch life tap line. make them do the same healing as the pally main heal line, and increase the damage, un-linking them will make them not double crit anymore and we can add a hate component to them then. Thinking something like valiant deflection without the heal the other person, cause that's not sk'ish. Torrent of Agony 72 ac Boost this to field guardian level and keep the no stacking issue. This would allow us to help when in the tank group, but not infringe with the warriors. add a 3k dd + hate, and reduce the buff time from 10 min to 1 min so we have to keep it memed and recast more often. Aura of Hate Decrease Hitpoints by 100 ATK unknown calc: 108 range: 100 -> 0 revamp this spell to new times and make it around 600 atk. Gives us a boost to the dps groups if we are thrown in one. continue the decay over time. Add a 4k DD Give us more ranks of AA that effect our 2h capabilities, speed of the knight and bloodthirsty blade. This would up our dps but not our tanking as it wouldn't affect 1h dps. currently we have about 1-2k dps difference between the 2 and that's with a decent dps group. on burns I usually see about 3-4k dps difference. Other options to further separate our tanking and dps is to make our next expansion defensive discs reduce our dots / un-linked life tap damage down to what they are now, but then we should have our dots at 4/5 a necro. That still wouldn't put us anywhere near necro dps because of their epic + many more AA that affect dots. Also would need significant boost to non linked life tap damage.
Revamp into a new spell line Aura of Darkness to give 200 to all resists including corruption + 2k dd 1 min buff duration and make it buff the group. Aura of Darkness Description 7: Decrease All Resists by 10 Recourse Effect Aura of Darkness Recourse 7: Increase All Resists by 30
What Leighton says is very much so true. As far as topping your own heal parse, you should pretty much always be at the top of it, otherwise BBC your doing it wrong. All of your self over healing gets picked up by your parser, compared to say.. A cleric heals you for 100k, but your only down 5khp.. The parser only picks up what they actually healed you for. Part of the problem we have in the raid game, is what Sojero recommended about increasing our DoTs... DoT dps might help us in group content, but not in the raid game. Until the Devs increase debuff alota significantly... Asking for DoT improvements hurts us more than it helps. As far as tanking goes.. Im able to fill MT roles just like Leighton said, and do it fairly often. As kunon said though, a large portion of the SK community are groupers, so our community is strongly divided on what is the direction of our class.
That is the reason I did not say we need more tank abilities because we can tank fine. I wouldn't mind the dot increases because as pointed out, Life taps are for raid and dots are for group. We need to work equally to boost both raiders and groupers. Now mind you sometimes when we are low ie 1-2 necs, I do load up my "dps" set of 9 dots and 3 life taps if I am in no way needed to tank anything (very rare, BG 2 mainly) with the ac/atk/resist boosters I recommended in the raid game it gives us a niche, in the group game you have to replace spell slots for them so your dps isnt going to up to have them, probably go down.
The aggro issue should be addressed. SK's should not have to use way more aggro spells going back a couple expansions spells to keep pace with what wars and pally's do with just current stuff due to the hate amounts. The cast times should also be similar. If two tank classes have instant to near instant stuff then the 3rd shouldn't have drastically slower casting or reuse aa and spell hate stuff. Dots are really not the answer for sk dps imo. The debuff cap issue is not going away anytime soon for raids making even drastically increased sk dots a loss to the guild if they block some other classes dots or debuffs. Any dps boosts you get should come from melee and nukes leaving dots as the bonus damage like your pet for grouping. Melee was held back because of swarming so that should be able to be addressed now via quite a few neglected or missed AA like sk only additional ranks to knights advantage, flurry, knights return strike, speed of the knight, punishing blade, bloodthirsty blade, visage of death, etc. And a few more dps nukes would go a long way, either boosting taps to be more inline with mob damage so you don't need 3-4 up at a time or by adding another nuke line or two paired with nuke AA like destructive fury and spell casting fury. There is a lot of wiggle room to be the "offensive knight" of the tanks with these AA and spells and still not encroach on a dps class as a tank. Giving you a role to fill in raids without throwing anything else off that much.
Well knights got the fearless AA years ago, what about for SK\s, maybe a mezzless or charmless AA? I remember in Time years ago, that one mob a knight had to tank cause the warriors would get feared. Or a AA or 2 that helps to boosts the whole groups defensive capabilities, do for tanks what bards or rangers do for DPS? Just a few ideas.
Check out this thread: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...-truth-about-parsing-and-self-healing.199907/ Parsers only pick up what you healed from incoming damage, not over heals, i incorrectly stated that once too, then many did parsings to show that we don't pick up over heals. this is also why a cleric/shm/dru can look like they are not doing anything but when you look at spells cast they did just as much as the others, but were unlucky and always hit you when you were near top. the reason we top it is we get a bunch of 1-6k heals. our 2 AA bites, our bond recourse, our aa that heals from terror and DD casts, totc, heal from weap dmg(epic/ang bp/new bp/ leachcurse etc), and life taps. we also get to time out our casts of life taps more than a clr gets to time theirs. We know when were about to take a round and most the time they are just casting in a rotation to make sure were topped off. We also have taps built into our defensive discs that affect our healing too. Paladins have the same effects and is why they always top their own too. the problem comes in when for a pal they have a high heal but it takes a long cast time or a awesome heal with a long recast time. we have the same issues with out life taps and both classes can be without a heal at times because of lockout/recasts and interruptions. pal got a huge boost with ostracize and valiant deflection to make up for this delay. and when tanking they should constantly be chaining these 2 abilitiesand using their burst when they have a large spike. SK has 3 lifetaps and they have 1 sec cast times and long refresh times to where if we cast all 3 we are waiting a couple seconds before we can cast them again. This is where epic / ang bp/ new bp's /horror line help fill in the gaps.
Kiting is not a raid role. Besides if it was a role warrior and paladin are better equipped with faster agro and insta agro abilities while on the run.
