SKs need some LOVE too!

Plz correct me if I were wrong.

I believe SK now can use these rotations to block death-touches.

Crusader's Faith with 25% DR 10s before the Death-touch inc
Hateful Respite when mob begins to cast
Chaotic Blade with 90% DR while mob casting

SK can use this combination every 61 seconds.

Or SK can use one of these every 31 seconds
1,CF + Chaotic Blade
2,Hateful Respite + Chaotic Blade

Am I right ?

Without Warden, i don't think monk now can do better than SK when it comes to dealing with Death-touches
If what i think of SK is the case.

SK would not be on pair with Brawlers if that got added. They would be the most OP tank class this game has ever seen. Yes brawlers has the best temps but tbh dont forget the tools you have to deal with stuff. another temp avoidance buff when you have one with a duration on 25secs (with prestige points) is just silly. Brawlers last for what 12 secs? you also have Divine aura that should works nice vs Co-op strikes. Add LC and crusaders fate both pretty powerfull tools. Hatefull respite, bloodsiphon.. Manawall (yes i know the powerdrain suck it does on all abilitys) still a stoneskin tho. Chaotic blade... and myth cloak effect. Yes not many will ever see the myth cloak but it still need to be counted. Add a very nice healing abilitys to all this aswell... Yes brawlers are the tanks that have hands down the best tools for everything but tbh nothing huge is needed. a SK should not be as defensiv as a monk. And tbh i think the biggest problem with brawlers is that they share all the good stuff. the defensiv tank get the offensiv utility and so on. But tbh ask for something that will balanced rather than just silly and OP.

No. You're wrong.

Crusaders faith 25% DR is not enough to stop a deathtouch.

Respite can block one if it's timed perfectly, but realistically has to be used in combination with furor so that auto attack doesn't strip the respite charge.

DT's apply a detrimental to you that anywhere between 6 and 9 seconds later kills you.. During that 6-9 seconds, you can't use hostile abilities, and CB only lasts 1.5 seconds, so it cant be used.

If CB were changed to be a non-hostile/non-beneficial, so that we could cast it during all those lovely little 'hey, you rolled a shadowknight so you can't use any of your saves because they're all hostiles!' then perhaps your theory would be viable.

Let me think, there's a DT every 22 seconds, and Sk's can block one every 68 seconds. That means that every 4th DT, we can block ourselves IF we time it perfectly. Reliably we can only block one every 2.25 minutes. So short of using a 4 healer maintank group with two wardens, it's not possible. If you WERE to run a 4 healer maintank group, you couldn't maintain hate because you'd be dropping your dirge or coercer, AND your hate transfer both.

No. It's not just 'easier using a different tank'. It's not possible using an Sk. Or a paladin for that matter.

Your response of 'warden's aren't the only way to protect tanks btw' is interesting, but realistically of no additional value. Cleric/Shaman DI's are on a 5 min recast, Wardens get thorns/cyclone/group di/single target di, and you'll need all four of them, from both wardens, in ADDITION to your cleric/shaman di's to be able to reliably survive against a death avatar as an SK.

You're right. Then SK's would have all the tools a brawler does. That wouldn't be much fair now would it?

SK's have Furor on a 136 recast. Monks have Tsunami and Bob and Weave, 20s duration compared to 15s of furor, and 13s compared to 15s of furor, both on close to half the recast.

Let's look at the math supporting this. In a two minute fight an SK will get one furor that grants 15s of auto attack immunity. In that same two minute fight a monk gets 2 tsunami's for 20s each (40s) and 2 bob and weaves at 13s each (26s) that means that to the sk's 15 seconds, a monk will get 66 seconds. That sounds fair right?

Let's look at stoneskins, side by side as we did with physical damage avoidance temps. Superior Guard (30s recast) vs Respite 68s recast. Now, it's not just that it's double the recast, but it's the fact that the reuse on SG is SO low that it can block an AE from every single round, or every other DT. As the reuse timer of an ability approaches 0 it asymptotes in terms of it's utility. I could draw a graph if it'd help. Not just SG, but in addition both brawlers get Inner Focus, which stoneskins only physical attacks. Now this may seem pointless, but what it allows them to do is either A) Stoneskin a physical aoe or B) Time Inner Focus in combination with SG rather than in combination with Tsunami/Bob&Weave to avoid a deathtouch! Pretty neat huh?

Don't even bring up the 'nerfed' brawlers tenacity. Three trigger death prevent that lasts for 60 seconds with a 2m 30s recast? It has an additional trigger AND they get to recast it every 2m30s? Once BL goes down in combat, it's gone for the duration of the fight. This isn't as important as it used to be because of how much shorter fights are becoming, but it's still a huge advantage.

Snaps? I'm not sure if I'm being trolled or if someone is honestly suggesting giving an SK 3 more 3-4 position snaps on a ~30-45s recast would be imbalanced. Let's look at what monks and sk's get side by side, as we did with their physical damage prevents. Provoking Stance, and suddenly you have an encounter snap on a 11s recast, a single target snap on a 4.5s recast, and another single target snap from reprimand, also on an incredibly short recast. Okay. That's fair because shadowknight's get rescue and sneering assault! Oh wait, monks get those too. Well, what about Chaos Cloud! Yeah! Chaos Cloud! That's a 90s recast. Comparable to 4.5s/11s/10s? I think not. Not even close.

Additionally, greater utility is provided via a single target snap because you can use it on fights where there are adds and a named that you don't want turning around. Look at any raid mob in the game as an example. You don't want it to frontal the raid, so AE snaps are dramatically less valuable. Let's also include that to do DPS, an SK will want to use Chaos Cloud on cooldown rather than as a snap, and then let's also factor in that it has a MONSTROUS cast time, so that it can't realistically be used to pick up a mob after a memwipe, before the mob has killed someone.

Let's continue with snaps that a brawler has, even though we're almost out of snaps to compare it to for an sk! Hidden Openings, which is a 6 position snap on a fully modifiable down to 45s recast. The only snap an SK has left to compare is also one of our saves, touch of death, our broken mythical clicky, on a 3 minute recast. So brawlers get 2 additional positions, plus damage and hate, on 1/4th of the recast. As if that weren't enough, they also get Peel, a massive range positional, and the ability to spec for Mantis Leap where everything they do is a positional

Okay, so we've established that SK's are dramatically underpowered when it comes to avoidance temps, death prevents, stoneskins, and snaps. So surely they make it up via utility, right?

Unfortunately, if that's what was being thought, once again, it's wrong. Brawlers get Combat Mastery, it's the single best utility spell in game because it means that for 12s out of every 90s (when your predator/beastlord/rogue) is using their biggest combo (pft/primals/dance of metal) everything they do hits for maximum damage. Nothing a crusader gets comes even close.

So, they have vastly better temps for avoiding damage, vastly better death prevent, vastly better stoneskins, vastly better snaps, vastly better utility, and they have better static defensive stats as well.

I could bring up other things such as Crusaders Faith in comparison to Provoking Stance damage reduction, but even then the brawler could just spec for stonecold and get a vastly superior version of CF in terms of damage reduction, that's, huzzah, group wide!

No. It's not possible to argue that Sk's are balanced in comparison to brawlers right now. I could do a similar side by side with a bruiser, but honestly I'm not going to bother because someone(or multiple someones) is going to quote this with a short one or two sentence response telling me why all of my statements and facts about timings, durations, and reuses is wrong, or is invalid.

Let me just address a few arguments that I'm guessing will be used to 'counter' my statements.

No. Shadowknights do not do more AE dps than a monk. No, shadowknights are not a 'dps tank' that out dps brawlers. I can link 1.6-2.5m damage parses from brawlers on raid encounters that most of the people on this thread have yet to even engage.

No. Shadowknights are not 'ae' tanks. Well, they are, but they're not superior 'ae' tanks to brawlers. Bruisers get Chaos Cloud (our best ae snap) except, it has double the positions and only a 25s recast. Plus they can AoE sever hate the raid, give the raid a stoneskin, and teleport to the mob three different ways if it does somehow get out of melee range. Plus both brawlers get AOE rescue by speccing mantis leap and using blues, thereby generating more threat positions in aoe than an sk can, even as a monk.

Yes. Not every tank should be able to tank every scenario without any outside help. That said, the classes aren't balanced. They're so far from balanced it's sickening. More abilities, with better effects, on a shorter recast, does not a balanced game make.

Most brawlers are just so bad at EQ2 that it doesn't matter how many abilities and amazing effects you give them, because they don't know how to use them. That at least contributes to the idea that they are 'balanced'. A great brawler will out perform an SK on any role of any fight in EQ2.

I've written this post in the hopes that someone, at least one of you out there thinking that the game and tanks are balanced will read it. I realize that the hope is probably in vain, and most of you will still continue to think that the SK is a balanced class, despite the obvious deficiencies when compared to brawlers.

What a wall of text. Im not saying sk:s have the same tools as brawlers im saying SK.s should not have the same tools as a brawler. And you said bruiser. And both bruiser temp avoidance buffs are on 12sec duration. SK get 25 if speced for it. You cant really expect you being just as defensiv as a brawler when in a mixed spec now can you? I know what the problem is. Crusaders lack snap aggro but 3-4 more snap aggro tools with a recast like that would be OP yes. The biggest problem with raids atm is that we dont see any pure aoe fights where the aoe tanks can shinie. And tbh dragon fire is OP so is cranetwirl imo. You cant really have a brawler that share the tool being a aoe tank. AoE + mantis leap and you got all aoe snap you need. Add the fact that that both brawlers do to much aoe dps. Tbh i should be honest with you. I havent seen a brawler out parse a SK on a aoe fight. But that doesent mean they cant. Tbh we need more aoe fights and brawlers aoe aggro/dps need to be toned down abit to make them what they are. Singel target tanks. That way we get balance. And more fun aoe fights on raids tso style.

We would not need more (crusaders) snaps, if the recast gets lowered a bit (not drastic), or the given snaps got modifyed a bit.
But after all, i don´t see why there should be a change, the system is not perfect, but it could be worse ^^

Or the 'wall of text' so I ignored everything you wrote excuse. I should've seen that one coming. You did touch on my other point of 'sk's are an 'ae' tank but still get outclassed by brawlers' and you appear to agree with me.

No. If shadowknights were given 10 snaps for 3 positions each all on separate 30 second cooldowns, it wouldn't matter much. In fact, I doubt that they'd be in raids in the top guilds any more than they are right now.

My post is factual, and you can ignore it if you'd like, which I even assumed the majority of advocates against my proposed solutions would do, but it doesn't alter the fact that the disparities are so great between brawlers/sk's that they're blatantly obvious.

Sure. We could all just have 'kick' and 'taunt' in our knowledge books. That would be worse too. You know what would be worse than that? Just having 'kick' and no 'taunt'. So why go from having 'kick' and 'taunt' to what we have now, if it could be worse?

'It could be worse' is not a reason for lack of change.

Class balance is so far askew it would take a blind man with a blindfold in a blacked out room on a moonless night on the dark side of the moon not to see it.

That always brings a question to mind Darkonx, If I recall SKs have it on one button while brawlers usually have to combine abilities. If there is more involved should a class be more powerful?

The problem i see and the problem soe can cause to all of us is simple.... they perhaps atune the monk, which would do change nothing to the other tank classes.... so we got same situation like this, with a monk that hardly can tank any memwhiping big mobs in front ^^
I play paladin and i can´t complain big time about how he is build and the sk last night, that solotanked ST (raid) half way through, also dont complain oO

instead of letting tanks be self contained ie. they can all do the same thing. make them totally dependent vs. hard raid mobs. meaning that if you dont' have 4 tanks working together no class can tank the harder content and if they are working together then any class can tank it.

how do you do this? allow tanks to share their abilities with each other while in offensive mode.

pally needs a stoneskin? guard in offensive lends it to him.

monk needs an aoe snap? sk's transfers his aoe snap to him.


just an idea but i don't think it's ever going to be possible to make all tanks equal and that's why threads like this show up and the tanks that are doing ok say it's balanced and the tanks that are not say it's BS.

Corydonn, don't even troll me man. We both know brawlers are still OP broken despite the minor nerf to BT.

Sleepers Tomb outside of Amalgamon is doable with 2 people playing 6 toons each. It's not something that can be used to measure effectiveness of classes.

Lol. That's a neat idea, but it's not how the game works unfortunately.

Not bad at all, but you can make it general not just in offensive, like the furie can spec a grp heal/cure to give to another member.

As long as you need a tank, you can measure. Or can it be done by a wizzard in front? There a only a few mobs in CoE that can´t be or can´t be that easy tanked with an sk or any other tankclass.... Cause of those few to say, sk can´t tank is a bit odd.
-Edit- Most raidzones can be done like that.... only few encounter needs a full raid anyways.

sure and would allow tanks to be totally different yet still just as important. it would add a different angle to the tanking game and not just one tanks skills would shine.

I got to like the idea better, as often as i think about it ^ ^

Its kinda funny to see this same ol argument happening over and over since launch......just the 'players' change every few years.

Proof to me that having 6 tank classes was stupid and impossible idea from day one. Only way to make them 'balanced' is to make them the same..at which point......why have 6?