Tanking as SK on Agnarr

Hi all,

What spells specifically are people using to grab and keep agro?
The only one that seems reliable to me are the snare line of spells.

Disease cloud, AC debuff and Str debuff's don't seem to grab agro at all.

Clinging/Cascading Darkness, Dooming Darkness later when mana is morepermitting

Use a 2hander

Thats about all ya got till Luclin and you get your first Terrors.

Thanks for your suggestion!
Do those snares stack or has that been fixed as part of that dot change?

The Darkness line spam is your bread and butter until Luclin and the Terror lines as previously stated. Spamming darkness between weapon swings is how you will keep threat. Even if the spell is resisted or cannot land due to another more powerful snare, you still get credit and the same threat for casting it anyway. Once you get Terrors, weaving Terror/Darkness is the standard due to the cooldown on Terror

AC debuffs will also cause a decent amount of threat, if looking for variety, but not as much as Darkness - this can be useful for getting some threat on incoming targets that will be Mezzed - as the Darkness line contains a DoT component if it lands.

Unholy Disc Life taps will do decently well for threat, but with longer cast times they will get interrupted more often if actively tanking (also loss of weapon swings threat). Also dont forget you snap threat-lock bomb - Taunt -> Harmtouch

Your other taps: Attack and Resist tap is next for threat, and the Str line doesn's do crap for threat.

Additionally, Aten Ha Ra gloves have the ranger Call of Flame which contains a stun component weapon proc, however, you give up mana or life procs to use it.

Unholy disc lifetaps are the same aggro as regular lifetaps FYI.

This is not true on Agnarr, and I would recommend testing your other information here as well, especially if you are used to playing on p99.

I did a test and created a lvl 1 druid. With the druid, I did 12 points of damage to a mob (4 casts of lvl 1 nuke) and then snared it. After six casts of Darkness, my level 50 SK did not pull agro. There is a lot more at play in the agro game (like proximity and sitting), but I do know that spamming Darkness (or any other spell) is not better than plain old DPS for generating agro. There could be an argument for life taps, but no amount of Int/mana pool is going to make those sustainable as spam (a chanter and bard, on the other hand...).

I cast spells, and Darkness is good agro if you can land it and keep it on the mob, but there is no reason to spam it and the only reason to use the lower level version is the cast time and the lower mana. The higher level Darkness spells definitely generate more agro. And if you have a good weapon, it is better to keep swinging, from both a DPS and aggro generation standpoint.

And practice with taunt. It should never be spammed, but instead it should be timed, as you MUST follow it up with damage if you want to keep aggro.

PS: I only cast the stat-tap spells enough to keep the buff on myself. I do not try to keep them on the mobs. Maybe a tough mob, but if it gets resisted even once it probably was a poor choice. They generate relatively no hate.

What was the mob you did that to? The running theory is that the hate for stuff like snare and a bunch of other SPAs is based on the mobs HP. So if the NPCs has low HP prox should be able to keep snare low enough hate to not make the mob turn

Its confirmed via testing not a running theory.

Also was dev confirmed but I don't have a citation handy. Granted alot changed since it was confirmed. Though my anecdotal evidence from Phinny would say that yes there is a change in hate on debuffs as.mob HP rises (there is also a hardcap of around 800 in my experience testing).

Namealreadyinuse
Perform your test on a higher level mob (preferably rooted by a 3rd party)

Also keep in mind what the character in question cons to the mob also has an impact, or did at one point

They did fix a double hate bug a while back, but I think they said that was only related to spells like SHD's Terror line ... but it could have effected more things

It was paladin crushes, unless there was another fix outside of that one. It was in TDS

Well, the double hate was from the hate override field, so yes, they were the same fix

That part I don't remember. It's possible we are thinking of 2 seperate changes (likely even)

Your heart flutter line of spells generate the highest agro. That is if you are wanting to generate max agro spam them. I know as a wizard with max gear during luclin, I was unable to pull a boss from a sk using the asystole spell spam, chain casting without using concussion. The disease debuff line do the highest threat per second.

get an SSOY if you can. its the best agro weapon for you now.

I also have a few questions to ask, because I have heard conflicting things both in game and here on the forum.

Currently a 30 SK on Agnaar, and i have issues keeping threat when grouped with bards and rangers, but it only seems those two classes give me difficulty, no one else seems to fight me for aggro unless they are ahead of me in levels.

#1 - Snares - i usually use clinging darkness for its cheap mana cost, but there was discussion that higher darkness spells cause more threat. Can anyone confirm? The shadowknights in game seem to disagree on that.

#2 - Weapons - currently I use a Dark Reaver, but the above poster said to get a Short Sword of the Ykesha (i believe?), which is a 1H weapon, but everyone and their grandmother says to use 2H. For the specific purpose of keeping threat and not damage, which would be better, a Dark Reaver or a SSOY?

#3 Other spells - I don't have heart flutter yet to test, but there was also ingame discussion about Shadow Vortex (level 37) being an excellent aggro generator as well. Any opnions?

Thanks for your time.

1) Different type of snares may produce different amounts of threat, but same line of snares produce the same amount. Thus using CD is just as efficient as using a higher level snare. As far as threat management goes.

2) Aggro from weapons is based off their damage ratio. Dark Reaver gives you a .476 ratio while SSoY gives you a .333. From that standpoint it seems like DR is your go to, but with the low delay of SSoY, you'll produce more aggro over the span of 1 minute, than you would with the DR. So SSoY would benefit your more.

3) AC spells are great for generating threat. Which in part is what Heart Flutter does. Decreases STR, AC, and applies a DoT. Shadow Vortex decreases their AC and gives it to you. Both are good. Perhaps use SV to start with for the AC boost and the start in with Heart flutter (after snare of course)

I would consider whether there were other things going on. Was the ranger casting snare, and blocking your Darkness (definitely makes a difference)? Try casting a higher level Darkness that overwrites the ranger's. Was the Bard mezzing the mobs and was the mez getting broken without a taunt? Was the Bard using songs that generated AE agro, before you could build up agro on the mobs? Use an audio trigger to tell you when mobs are mezzed and when/who is breaking mezzes. A lot of our aggro management is really group management, because we don't have any abilities that lock aggro and just about any class can steal aggro if they try.

The snare component of the entire Darkness line probably generates the same amount of threat regardless of the level of the spell. However, the dot component also generates threat, and the more damage you do, the more threat you generate. Higher spell=higher threat. I use the highest level spell when I have mana, and the lowest level spell when I don't. Also - the higher level spell does not get blocked by as many other caster's spells. I do not spam these like others seem to recommend, and I don't have any trouble keeping agro.

Not really confirming or denying with those specific weapons, but I have the Blade of Abrogation (possible BIS 1h), Mithril 2h, BABS, and Razing Sword of Skarlon. So far, I have the best results with the mith2h and Thick Banded Belt (I use the Belt of Iniquity when not using the mith2h). Doing more DPS than others has been the best way to hold aggro for me. I have yet to fight anything where I noticed an advantage to having a shield and 1h.

Cast your dots when you have mana, but I have not seen any evidence that AC spells give any extra aggro on Agnarr. If I break mez or pull, landing darkness on the mob and taunting (successfully) before breaking mez is all I really need to do to hold aggro. Heart Flutter is a nice addition and I usually cast it on every mob also (it's nice to have something on a disease resist, too). I have never mem'd Shadow Vortex, so I can't say anything about it. Since I don't have agro issues, I'd rather cast another DPS spell instead.

And most important: test for yourself - there's a lot of outdated info floating around

Don't forget that the SSotY procs a stun so that's going to be extra aggro after level 37.

Definitely worth testing that stun proc, from an agrro perspective.

Also, be sure to always use the proc augs (direct damage; Wulfenite, I think) from your starting city vendor. Absolutely worth the price, and such a staple that I forget to mention them.