Interesting, raid useful, and lore appropriate. An aa to drop rez effects and give you enough mana/end to jump right back into the mix would create a situational, but useful, raid utility; especially if it also refreshed discs so you could truly jump right back into the mix.
What about a short term buff that increases melee + spell dps (various ways) and if during the time the buff is up, anyone in their group scores a killshot it refreshes to it's duration. Kind of goes along with the idea of a SK. Maybe it could be a +damage bonus on melee, + spell dmg on cast and a little end/mana boost. Wouldn't do much on a single target fight, but anything with adds it might work well.
Then it wouldn't be that useful, we get back in the fight after a death within 30 seconds anyhow because of rest and we should have at least one defensive available at all times, maybe a 1 min lag in between depending on how clicked. Also You need that 30 seconds to get the rest of your buffs cast on you. the only one I could think of it being useful is if it always refreshed unholy, that way we could have the highest defense with the melee reduction to make it balanced. even then I'm having a hard time seeing the use of it.
It would also need to place a short duration buff on the sk to make them close to what raid buffs would give them in terms of ac/hp/avoidance.
Every class would love something like that. Why not something like a mana tap from your pet if trying to get back into the fight is what is a problem. You already have rest . And there is almost a 99% chance they will never give you guys what is mentioned above. Or a combination of the mana tap from the pet and an almost 0 mana cost debuff that turns a small amount of hp on the npc into mana onto you ? Or something that is better for self rescue when say your 20% or under similar to warriors flash of anger ? Almost any idea that sounds totally awesome is going to be looked at as over powered.
Mana tap from the pet implies you have a pet up. If you just died that is not gonna help since you would need to med up enough to put up a pet. The only time I need mana really is right after a death. If I am running out any other time I deserve to be out of mana. As discussed in the other thread. Increase the agro on terror. Shorten the cast time on AE hate spells (ones without a damage component) and the agro issues would be pretty cleared up. Our tanking ability if fine. Paladins might have a slight edge on their self heals over our taps but I can live with things the way they are there. Paladins can easily out DPS us even on live mobs (by a significant margin). Make the mob undead and they are twice where we are on DPS. I like many of the ideas presented to add other utility. SK definitely does need something that they can do that can't be done just as well by another class on raids. Hell I play and SK and am raid leader and I would rather have a solid paladin over an equal SK for their other utility. The only thing that saves most SK for our raids is in general I have seen more SKs that really know how to get the most out of their abilities than paladins. But we now have some paladins that really know how to play their class that seriously make the need for SKs nonexistent. I tossed out the idea of being able to tap our group for health a while back and just think it would be cool as an SK since I care more about myself than them. (ie reverse of the cleric shield click take their health and give to me). Something that allowed us to get back into the fight faster than other tanks would be good as well. Increase in debuff power/group buffs would be good. Right now the only thing I really have to offer the group is my epic click(sad that SKs and Necros still depend on this). (yes we got the tap that gives AC to the group but its so wimpy in its current form it does not rate a spot on my spell bar in most cases).
In EQ2, there is a SK tanking ability that taps the group, and is, in fact, even scarier than a normal tap in a way. It takes 25% of the HP from each member of the group, and makes a Rune out of it for 15 seconds. If there's any rune left from it when it expires, those points are applied to the SK as a heal. It's called Blood Siphon. (With today's HP numbers, I suspect that could be one beefy, beefy rune.) It's an AA ability, not a spell, mind you.
Frankly, those aspects of the game which made SKs a solid class in the past* have been slowly phased out over time. Compare where the class was around level 60-70 to where it is now: Back then the ability to drop aggro was something available to a select few classes, and with pulling being a real thing, having Snare and FD wrapped up in a single class was very relevant The Voice line provided actual raid utility... especially for boosting warrior aggro, which at the time relied primarily on weapon procs Because raid design was more attrition based, self-healing (despite being less than what it is now) mattered a lot more as encounters dragged on. For the same reason, bites were also more helpful SK debuffs, though they didn't land incredibly consistently at the time, were significant when they did. Amazing (ranged) aggro generation both allowed for easy pickups and more applied damage on mobs, more quickly. Remember how long you waited on assist calls when warriors were tanking? Aggro generation through spells also allowed for shield-use in the days warriors had to still dual wield. While we may not have understood exactly how important this was at the time, it was nonetheless a boon. Fear immunity came into play more often and with more severe consequences. Not only would SKs not lose aggro due to it, they could also keep themselves alive while healers were feared. The DPS gap between classes was much tighter than it is now, and the combination of many of the above factors (self-healing which is also damage, fear immunity, FD to manage aggro) meant SKs were able to contribute significantly to raid DPS on tougher encounters * - Isn't it funny that SKs were actually looked down upon a lot of the time, despite providing far more raid utility than they do today?
"Havoc"-type autocast might be cool for spears. Some ideas: Normal SK stuff (taps/bites, AE hate, Lich Sting) Chance to recast itself (multi-chain) or refresh itself Group versions of SK self-only buffs (SS, Cascading rune, etc) Low chance to refresh all spells+discs
Well I think since SK's are tanks, any extra abilities they get should help them tank better and any tanks in their said group. I would rather tank better then DPS better. And have aggro on par with warriors and pallies, not left in their dust.
Well, if SK's got something like EQ2's Blood Siphon, that would help with tanking (particularly if you know a big tank-only spike is coming) and it would certainly do for snap aggro on everything in sight. 5 people, each with, say 80k hp, would be a 100000k rune. That's a nice big chunk of aggro.
hmm i think Shadow knights bring alot to raids If hits the fan, they can tap and stay alive for quite a while with discs and such on adds... warriors will just die typically if group healer flops.. paladins can do this too. You also bring better DPS/burns then a warrior or a paladin. That isnt all that bad a deal. Warrior AE agro isnt quite as frequent or controllable as SK as well (can use enhanced AE taunt ever 12? minutes, and our AE damage+taunt every 1 minute, our new wade into battle is a little sick though, but cant turn that crap off). But the ae taunt thing could be argued.
Here's something a little un-SK'ey for you. Not that we don't already have enough healing classes, but meh: Bloody Barrage This does 2 things. (Yeah, it's a kind of lifeburn) 1. Takes 80% of your current HP total and concentrates it into a nuke against your target. (not focusable or critable) 2. That 80% HP is also divided equally as a heal to your group members, focusable and critable. (kinda like a reverse DA - Instead of using many to balance 1, you use 1 to balance many) Refresh 30 secs. Cast time 0.5 secs You wouldn't dare use this while tanking (SK's don't need any help tanking anyway), but while not tanking on a raid you could help keep a group alive, but not so much they can turn you into a main healer (that's pally territory); while adding a little bit more dps in the process. Since it scales with HPs, the beefier you are, the better it does; but will never be overpowered. Let the flames begin
That idea is more a paladin thing, something like act of valor that doesn't kill and heal the group. SK would be better to do the opposite, suck 20% from each member in the group and use it as a dd and heal to the sk.
That's going against utility, it's just another selfish SK thought. This thread is looking for a reason to have SK's other than they can keep help keep themselves alive. The cool lore of the class is also a bane to the class, since most of the cool stuff would just make us overpowered, or results in only the SK benefiting--- yet again, adding no utility.
Yeah true, but that's just more of what you currently have and won't help you to be more desirable in a raid setting. Think of it as an ability that uses extreme physical effort to extract the targets blood and share it with your comrades. Then you can just tap your personal health back. /shrug
I could see maybe a 20 min reuse large Bite type ability, maybe with a recourse against the user. IE 30k heal 10k mana/endurence 20 min reuse with a 2k per tick dot for 10 ticks. then could use AA later to bring down the dot/tick against the sk and up the dmg/regen to the group. Having a dot would make it not desired during tanking.
A new role could be to start adding endurence to our bites. Give us resources to buff the group ac/hp/atk and feed endurance. give us bites that are on the same timer as our hp/mana bites that give hp/end. give us DD spells that recourse ac tot he group same level as war, but doesn't stack. give us DD spells that recourse atk to the group to help with dps group if were stuck in one. give us a group version of our temp life tap/hp boost that can effect the entire group. give us aa that recourse runes for the entire group, one for melee dmg and one for spell damage. around 5k each 30 sec recast, not stack-able with enchanter runes. not going to help with MT much, but can help with AEs and wild ramp dmg.
