I am personally not in favor of long cool downs. I have other things that give "big" on long cool downs (HT, Projection, HA). I need quick add-to-add use that won't disrupt the raid, akin to Warriors Blast of Anger, Rage of Forsaken, 30 second downtime Swarm pet, Wade (any ONE of these 4 options will lock aggro for them with little further effort required), and Paladins highly effective crush / 15 second Disruptive line-- which is all they need to chain to hold aggro from mob to mob. This is vs. us cycling 3 terrors a DD and yanking mobs across zones / hoping you can get away with popping a couple of instant use AE's and not die. Now I am not asking for easy mode at all, but knights are able to survive well on their own "over" warriors because of being able to use trixy spell bars. But I can go one way or the other in certain situations... I can survive, or I can hold aggro. It does come up where I can do nothing other than spam my weaker-than-others aggro abilities-- or watch a ranger tank.
So full disclosure--I play a warrior, as a raid leader. Personally, I think SK's should go strong in the melee debuff line--Wars have a couple of very short melee debuff effects (Gut Punch, Knuckle Crush, etc.), but it would be great to see SK's being able to do straight debuffing of the target--ac, attack, short term mitigation break, skills damage breaks, the works. I realize the balancing issues related to taps/thefts, but just throw some longer duration straight debuffs into your repertoire and you are very much more attractive to me as a raid leader and MT on raids for sure.
Whatever we can get to improve our role on raids should be separate from drastically improving our agro spells/abilities. Don't mind if it has an agro component just would rather it not be part of our main agro line. I still want Terror line to be back where is was as a huge agro shift that pulled agro off other classes almost instantly with one cast.
Buffing your teammates' atk may have diminishing returns, but atk debuffing the mob is very powerful indeed.
A major ATK debuff would be awesome, one that stacked with druid one or over wrote it. our dire stricture that does ac debuff is nice but is overwritten so useless on raids by disease dots from bst and maybe others.
While SKs definitely need a new feather in their cap to make them desireable for raids, some basic, like really basic things also need to be done to make the class a lot better than it currently is: Instant recast Terror, it is really annoying to have to keep 2 terrors up on top of charge just to have a chance to keep agro. Also free up a spell slot for us. Instant Cast Terror, this would be really nice, and give us a lot more flair as the agro kings we once were. Our dots have been instant a long time, and a lot of our AAs have shifted to instant cast, this wouldn't be much of a stretch. Much faster recasting Life Taps. It is ridiculous to play as an SK if you want to self heal against current content, I regularly have to keep no less than 4 lifetaps up to do this, sometimes more. I understand why Dire has a longer recast, and that one is fine, but my other one should be able to almost be chain recast, with mana being my only limit. This would also free up our spell bars just like the terror suggestion would. Faster recasting AE hates. I do not think these should be chain castable, but faster would be good so I can just keep my current one up to couple with explosion. Once again, more freedom for the spell bar! Somewhere in the realm of 8-12 secs be good. More hate on all terrors/AE hate, preferably not scaled assuming we always have Voice of Thule on, as that makes the buff really pointless. Is why I despise ADPS honestly, they make all the other DPS weaker overall, since everything is balanced and crapped down to account for that. More buff slots please. Buff slots of hatred or something, 5 to 10 extra ones for SKs since we need so many all the time. I don't know about other SKs, but buff slot AAs are the ones I buy FIRST when they appear in new expansions. Death's Effigy timer matching up with Hate's Attraction, as well as Visage of Death's timer matching up with 2.0 timer. These are used so often in parallel them having different durations is just silly. I often don't even bother w/ 2.0 now unless I have visage up when it is important. Granted, I don't expect this one to happen, because next thing you'll want the blade swing and CoP III/IV to match up with it, etc. But still be nice! If we had all that, we would have at least 3 spell slots freed up, and be much faster/more reliable than we currently are. Speed is key! Again this is just basic fixes we could really use, this is not the feather in the cap we need to be more raid useful.
We need love, but some of those requests are absurd. Why not put harm touch on a 30 second timer so we can use it on every mob while you're at it? Abilities all shouldn't have recast that perfectly align, it's up to us as players to use them intelligently.
Funny, Drelzna gets even better recast on her harm touch... Anyways I mentioned that last one as one I didn't expect to happen. As for the others, I don't find having my spell bar held hostage at all times to be intelligent in any way, sorry if you enjoy having this problem. Could we please stop attacking ourselves on here, is no wonder they never take it seriously with a response like that not even an hour later.
The disservice (like all AA idea threads) here is that the list you provided are massive, massive power gains to the point that many are ridiculous. When that point arrives it's hard to sift out your better ideas from the crazy ones. And I'm on your side, *agreeing* that we need love! Instant cast terrors with no recast delay? Come on... I can see faster or more hate or less recast, but all of them? Devs already have to sift through a ton of unreasonable suggestions, we need to be realistic and not expect the moon. We're not hurting *that* badly.
In my experience, better to shoot for the moon and hit the barn then shoot for the barn and hit a rock. I don't find any of these basic asks to be that unrealistic, personally. It would just make life as an SK better, not make them radically OP. Just radically faster at what they do. And once again, the reduced timer on visage I said probably won't happen, just a nice thought! Regarding instant cast terrors with no recast delay. I separated these as I'd like them to be considered separately. No recast delay means there is still a recast delay, that is the default spellbar delay. The entire purpose of no recast delay is purely to avoid the stupidity of us having to use spells from multiple expansions just to keep up. No cast time is purely because it lines up better with our other AA hate abilities, and warriors already enjoy this in all their agro grabs. We are supposed to be the most hateful bitter people of all though. Shouldn't we should be most talented of all at insulting a monster's mother while running? We need to be bitter on the go after all, otherwise we couldn't even buy groceries we have so much hate to give to the world! Anyways, good that discussion is happening, but the lack of ideas from the responders could be better. I really don't find calling something too much without offering alternative ideas, or even trimmed down lists, to be helpful to anyone. Saying things like why not just give us 30 second refresh HT and we aren't hurting 'that bad' aren't really helping us in any way. Just seems self-defeating honestly. Rather trade those for something more constructive.
If you shoot for an att/ac/{?} tap please go for it stacking with druid. I say this because it would stack with ranger tank debuff also. We get ghetto druid ability basically. You want to try to make sure it is at least better than ranger since light tank vs. real tank too. I'd really push for a multi debuff tap of some kind as now rangers have it for hybrid/light tank precedence and you guys originally were the debuffers that mattered of hybrids(excluding bards). Otherwise just buff icons stack but best in slot wins, so we keep the fire resist debuff if SKs are given best attack/ac debuff. Our defensive proc [40122] Ro's Burning Gaze III Target: Single Range: 200' Resist: Fire -225 Reflectable: No Casting: 0s, Recast: 6s Duration: 60s (10 ticks), Dispelable: Yes 4: Decrease ATK by 60 6: Decrease AC by 20 7: Decrease Fire Resist by 60 10: Decrease ATK by 95
Here are a few ideas that have been thrown around the camp fire. lifetap-DS, activated AA on a 3min recast to prevent any abuse with swarming. has a max potential damage of 150k if all counters are used by melee and 125k if all counters are used by spells. this works out to ~694-833 dps per person in group assuming all charges are used before the recast is back up. as for healing this would return between ~93-113k HP per person over the duration of the charges. lifetap-DS Classes: SHD/254 Skill: Conjuration Target: Group Range: 150' Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes Casting: 1s Duration: 2m (20 ticks), Extendable: No Max Hits: 20 Incoming Hits Or Spells 3: Increase Spell Damage Shield by 6250 7: Increase Damage Shield by 7500 8: Return 75% of Damage as HP Pulsing type Aura (think like Amp Aura), adds a spell proc of increase hate on any nuke that takes 1s or less to cast. The melee proc is a small "resource" return for the group. assuming 2-3 tanks meleeing in a group on raids and you're looking at roughly an extra 2k mana and 1k endurance per minute for the group. Defiling Proliferation Aura Classes: SHD/105 Target: Group Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes Casting: 1s Duration: 60s (10 ticks), Dispelable: Yes Max Hits: 40 Matching Spells 1: Cast: Defiling Proliferation Effect I/II/III on Spell Use (100% Chance) 2: Limit Effect: Current HP 3: Limit Spell: Exclude Aura Effect 4: Limit Max Level: 105 (lose 100% per level) 5: Limit Type: Detrimental 6: Limit Type: Exclude Procs 7: Limit Min Mana Cost: 10 9: Limit Max Casting Time: 1s 10: Add Proc: Defiling Strike I/II/III with 400% Rate Mod Defiling Proliferation Effect I/II/III Target: Single Range: 300' Resist: Disease -75 Reflectable: No Casting: 0s 1: Increase Hate by 5000/5500/6000 Defiling Proliferation Strike I/II/III Target: Single Range: 300' Resist: Disease -100 Reflectable: No Casting: 0s 1: Decrease Current HP by 990/1275/1588 2: Cast: Contained Defilement (Chance 80%) Contained Defilement Target: Group Range: 300' Resist: Beneficial 1: Increase Current Mana by 99/128/159 2: Increase Current Endurance by 49/64/80 3: Decrease Current HP by 198/256/318 passive death proc (based off Zerkers dying blow), nukes the mobs and recourses a rune + HoT on group. figure its a very "vampiric" type of ability that with your final breath you take some blood from your opponent to share with the group in the hopes it will help them survive. 361 Proc On Death Death's Bite Classes: SHD/254 Skill: 2H Blunt Target: Single Range: 150' Resist: Disease -150 Reflectable: No Casting: 0s 1: Decrease Current HP by 181515 2: Cast: Death's Kiss Death's Kiss Target: Group Resist: Beneficial Duration: 18sec (3 ticks), Extend: No 1: Absorb Damage: 100% Total: 30000 2: Increase Current HP by 10000 per tick
From most successful people's submissions, the ones that don't shoot for the moon not only do better but also get more of what they want. Also, Aristo and team have said at every fan faire/SoE Live (when it comes up) that they expect us to use our spell sets and make choices. They do not want us to have every spell up that we would like to have access to - it's by design, even if we as players disagree with it. (Note, before anyone jumps on me for putting my nose in here, I do have a baby SK I play - but what I stated is public record and confirmable by others.)
As a Warrior I'd LOVE to see SKs get newer and bigger AC and ATK taps. I remember tons of times when we used the taps to boost tank AC, while reducing the mob's AC so the dps would hit better. And after seeing how attack can change how mobs DPS on tanks, I think reducing mob's dps by the attack tap would be more beneficial to everyone than the small DPS boost that attack would do to the SK's group.
If they do get a tap that adds AC, I hope there is a way to get that AC buff to the maintank warrior without needing to put the SK in the maintank group. The maintank group space is limited as is without having to add an SK to the mix.
To reinforce my point, as a raid MT/raid leader, I don't even care if new debuffs for SK's are taps--I just want them to have some nice and meaty pure debuffs. Sure, attack/ac is great, but there are plenty of other options as well.
Is a lot of good ideas (well and some not so good ones also) I just hope the Devs actually do something to help SK's out. Something Unique to SK's.
Most of the melee hybrid classes have some type of group buff, would it not be time to give the SK class something along these lines. Either just a pure AC buff that stacks with brell and spiritual vindication, or an AC/HP buff that does not stack with the other classes.
My idea for your debuff taps would be like this. I leave the number amounts to you sks since I don't know for sure where you'd want these to fit in as debuffs. The 2 share a timer last say 2 min. Recast is 3 min, so you need multiple sks in order to keep them up constantly. attack tap - drain a amount of attack and reduce ramp/ae ramp by b amount ac tap - drain c amount of ac and reduce mob strikethrough by d amount To go along with this SKs get another tap as an aa that is 15s reuse at most (or added on to their terrors if they'd rather), so they have a lesser form of the above taps but it won't stack with them. drains x ac and y attack with z hate override attached
A start would be just upping Soul Flay to fire more often and return more mana. Not sufficient but an easy start.
