SK's need to be useful again.

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Zantor, Jul 1, 2014.

  1. Bigstomp Augur


    (Warrior here, and raid leader - just to add context) - When I add SK's to the TO, their life spikes hard.
    Trust me the sk's I'm thinking of are well geared. I think either the sk's could use a little boost to mitigation, or maybe a hp boost. Give em the same aa wars just got for hp's.

    That still lets wars mitigate better (that's what we signed up for) and makes sk's (and I'd extend the aa to pallys too) less squishy.
    Xeladom likes this.
  2. Zarzac Augur

    I'm personally OK with SK's hp spiking more than warriors. That's supposed to be where our self healing comes into play.

    I would just like if our self healing was more at least in the ball park of where pally SELF healing is, both in speed and heal power; leaving them with the advantage of being able to heal the group. Self healing however should be much, much closer than it is now.

    Other option is to give us some sort of sk only mitigation ability so that we mitigate somewhere in between war and pal to make up for the lack of self healing.
  3. Ineptocracy Leader Elder

    Couldnt you ask for being balanced for selfhealing with just the current content spells? IE 96-100 lifetaps instead of the 4(?) SKs use from different eras? Maybe link them to prevent misuse.
    Daegun likes this.
  4. sojero One hit wonder


    This is hard because of all the ways paladins have to heal and all the ways SK have to heal.

    SK tend to use Dire (big) lifetap and 2 regular (in this case 100 and 95) lifetaps. if you chain these you have a couple of seconds with no heals coming in. we have bond line, kinda a joke in today's game, and leachtouch with a really long recast timer and leach curse with an even longer recast, and unholy aura which ups lifetap dmg but locks out defensive discs

    Pal have splash, burst (current and last expansion) and regular heals slower cast no recast timer, and 2 group type heals, aurora and wave, and a huge self only heal. they also have a decent HoT.

    Then we get into skin vs preservation, both have aa heal on hit, totc and (cant remember pal one off top of my head) and then sk has the self buff. Our self buff is supposed to make up for some of the self healing of a pal, but it is unreliable and has stagnated compared to their healing over the last 2 expansions. We have been held back because of our epic click and MC procs.

    Pal also has AoTI and GAoTI as well as epic click to up their healing on them and group for GAoTI.

    but in the end, it isnt as simple as that, I wish it was. Its a fine balancing game that they play, and over the last 2 years SK has fallen behind, but hopefully with the epic/mc change we will catch up some next expansion.
  5. Zarzac Augur

    I have asked for exactly that :)

    But that's a pretty big change.

    To balance this out however the reuse on our primary tap would have to drop much lower along with having faster cast time and power. That's a lot of change to one spell line, but it really what is needed.

    I also have asked for our big tap "dire" line to be a target of target heal as it was originally intended, but at the time code did not support as it does now. This would allow for the heal portion to be larger without making the tap more damage if that is the desire for the spell.
  6. Zarzac Augur

  7. Brosa Augur

    Just a stretch, but maybe a flash type ability would be beneficial for the knight classes. Call it shield of the gods or something that allows knights to shield block incoming melee blows for 12 seconds. Warriors know how amazing flash can be when used correctly. Although there is a down side to ability timers being linked to it. Devs would probably put a cool down timer on all your life taps for 2 minutes after using it.
  8. Drakang Augur

    Its called Deflection and have had it for a long time.
    Ravengloome likes this.
  9. IDotPeople Augur

    So they finally gave SKs some attention in the agro department, but would be nice if they looked at some of the other issues. Granted it would also be nice if we could come to some kind of consensus about what said issues are. Top 5 or something like that, something neat and simple for them to consider.

    Main needs as far as I see it:

    1. Dire implication heals target's target.
    2. Better lifetap healing potential, lower recast at perhaps the cost of linking them?
    3. Make T'Vyl's stack better, unresistable, maybe last slightly longer?
    4. Better group taps, as torrent of agony leaves much to be desired. An atk stealing/granting and resist stealing/granting version would be nice too like we had in the past.
    5. I know I'll be in the minority on this, but working on our various touches. Making the endurance one unlinked to the mana one, and further reducing the timer on our regular Harm Touch.

    So there is my list, I'm sure others have different opinions which is fine, purpose of this post is to start getting them out there. Personal opinions, copy/paste from evilgamer, whatever.
  10. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    I would say let's all give it a little time before making any more demands and see how today's changes pan out....I'm optimistic but do have a few concerns - voice in particular looks flat out too powerful.
  11. Zoran Journeyman

    Said this elsewhere, but I don't see how buffing VoT or MS is good for hate balance in the game. I'm not fond of either ability being an always-up thing. I can theoretically maintain MS on 4 targets. I only do it for 3 to preserve my sanity, but 1 cast of VoT is more powerful than if I could MGB MS onto the entire raid (sans tanks) right now. I don't appreciate the power of these abilities and I don't appreciate the disparity in the power of these abilities.

    Hate should be balanced around moment to moment activity, not the increasingly tedious amount of buffs we utilize. Just as I expect a DPS to understand how to prioritize their abilities to maximize their damage potential I expect a tank to prioritize their abilities to mazimize their hate potential. A +72% Aggro Modifier is wacky.

    I don't see how T'Vyl's even went live with its issues, especially stacking with monks. That's just uncool. An explanation would be nice if they're not going to change it.
    Sheex likes this.
  12. Daegun Augur


    That paired with faster casting would be useful.

    Link the taps from expansion to expansion but decrease the cast time.

    I use 4 taps on my primary tanking bar and it takes all 4 of them to have one reasonably available at all times if I'm needing to increase self healing on a regular basis. Getting that number down to 2 taps that refresh somewhat faster (so you can cast almost the same # of taps over a similar block of time) individually would be a good thing.
    feiddan and Ravengloome like this.
  13. IDotPeople Augur


    I don't see the issue with the abilities always being up, we have plenty of those already, not to mention all the buffs from other classes we need each and every raid we are ever on. I also don't see a problem with this one possibly being deemed more useful than a pally's MS, slightly makes up for the whole able to cure the whole damn raid at once thing you have going for you. However, 72 % may be a bit much on VoT, I've heard reports, but haven't had a chance to get home and play with it a bit myself just yet.
  14. IDotPeople Augur


    Apparently no rest for the wicked, SHD voice is needed again, and Monday 08/25 by the looks of it:

    Discuss AAs for 21st expansion with Devs Event
  15. Raibastiz New Member

    personally, I'd like to see our dots rid of an increased use of our bite line, touch of klonda line relevancy, and a spell rotations that doesn't have me using 2-3 expansion old taps. Dire needs to be instant cast. It is a huge tap that can make or break life or death. Getting a dire interrupted on a heavy hitting named, is just bad all around. Touch of Klonda needs a cast time reflective of our other taps and the healing needs to be on par with Touch of Urash. I should have no purpose to use Urash or Dyalgem, as I am level 100 and my spell lines were increased. Rather than forcing me to use old content spells, my current level spells should all be better than my old spell set. Bite needs be a 15 sec recast, and the cast time should also be reflective of our basic Touch tap line. We are tanks. We take hits. With our main source of mitigation being interruptable, that's just garbage. Bite needs the self healing increased (demolish the group heal portion... I don't care about my group. I'm a SK. I want them to die, so I can get all the loot.), and the mana tap needs to be increased. Our Horror line proc buff and our mana leech proc buff needs to be stackable. What is the point of ever using the mana leech buff? If content is easy enough to not worry about heals, I shouldn't be using mana. 2handers.... We have these awesome 2handers that we keep getting, and no real reason to use them. Increases to our overall 2hand damage, proc rate bonuses to 2handers, etc. Don't give me a shiny weapon with huge damage, and then cripple my class from getting any real large gains from using it. I'm sure paladins would be happy with the same boost in that department.... A couple things that I personally just find irritating... We have a bazillion self buffs... Gimme a unity for that. It's tedious, and it doesn't effect gameplay. Voice of Thule, Stance, and Skin all need increases to duration/hitcount. It's excessively irritating to tediously cast buffs. Do away with Stance and Skin, and just give me something less annoying honestly. While we're at it, remove the horn from my AA mount. I'm not some lame unicorn riding paladin.
  16. IDotPeople Augur

    So regarding the new terrors and VoT, I don't really feel like there needs to be any change after fiddling around with them last night. Logged in expecting agro super powers, just found I had a little easier time managing agro, that's it. About the only new power I have is the ability to snap agro about.... .5 seconds faster. Not having the .5 cast time was slightly disorienting in fact, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

    What was VoTs % before, because I could notice 72 % some, but only a little more than I was used to. Started off with VoT rank 1, bleh, 2, meh, 3, well this is somewhat nice. Paladin I know the agro was strong with didn't suddenly find it impossible to keep agro, although he did have to work for it more than before, had to actually choose between healing or agroing. Gave him VoT sometimes, sometimes not, agro was fine as long as I didn't play like an idiot in both situations.
  17. sojero One hit wonder

    I also had to get used to the no cast time, kept hitting terror and didnt realize it was on cooldown till the mob was smacking on me, so used to watching cast bar for interrupts, and not seeing it threw me off. On my raid last night, was could still keep agro over me when I had VoT and cast my 2 AE's to make sure the adds didn't hit any non tanks, so nothing overpowering. I was able to easily keep agro against dps on the adds as well, very nice change.

    As a side note, I cannot wait to test it on the first wiz that gives me lip, we will see how that 72% works :)
  18. Riou EQResource

    It used to be 24% at max rank
  19. IDotPeople Augur

    To help in discussion, here is the SK specific AAs we are getting so far in the new expansion (taken from here):

    Burst of Power 13

    Burst of Power 14

    Burst of Power 15

    Armor of Wisdom 19

    Armor of Wisdom 20

    Armor of Wisdom 21

    Companion's Durability 22

    Companion's Durability 23

    Companion's Durability 24

    Companion's Fury 4

    Companion's Fury 5

    Companion's Fury 6

    Enhanced Aggression 41

    Enhanced Aggression 42

    Enhanced Aggression 43

    Expansive Mind 42

    Expansive Mind 43

    Expansive Mind 44

    Finishing Blow 30

    Finishing Blow 31

    Finishing Blow 32

    Fury of Magic 16

    Fury of Magic 17

    Fury of Magic 18

    Gift of Mana 10

    Mastery of the Past 31

    Mastery of the Past 32

    Mastery of the Past 33

    Mastery of the Past 34

    Mastery of the Past 35

    Mental Clarity 42

    Mental Clarity 43

    Mental Clarity 44

    Mental Stamina 29

    Mental Stamina 30

    Mental Stamina 31

    Shield Block 19

    Shield Block 20

    Shield Block 21

    You will of course notice the insane amount of blandness to this list. It seems much the same for most classes though, seems they are waiting on input for the rest :)
  20. Brohg Augur

    That list is explicitly only the extensions to current AA. It is exactly the same for all classes, on purpose, because that's what the lists are. You got the list from the developer who linked the lists saying "here's a list of the basic extensions to existing AA".