LU38 love for Paladins and not Shadow Knights! [Archive]

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HentaiB

08-29-2007, 10:05 PM

I am a serious raider and this comes from my point of view on that. Paladin <ul><li>Smite Evil should now work on evil pets. (decent at least) </li><li>Group Armament achievement renamed Raid Armament: Affects all non-fighters in the entire raid. (decent at least but if you are not the MT you get owned anyhow even with 6k mit)</li><li>Doom Judgement - Damage bonus increased from 5% to 7% per rank. (40% INCREASE TO THAT AA LINE)</li></ul>Shadowknight<ul><li>Doom Judgement - Reuse speed bonus adjusted from 20 to 8 seconds per rank. (EXACT SAME % DECREASE IN SPELL CASTING WOULD NEED TO BE 11 SECONDS TO BE CLOSE TO EQUAL OF THE INCREASE THAT PALADINS GET)</li></ul>Okay Paladins and Shadow Knights both need love in raiding guilds. This isn't much for Paladins but it is all a increase at least. Shadow Knights got 0% in comparison to 40% for Paladins on the AA line increase. Paladins also get to keep there strength at least as a solo buff. Shadow Knight lost this completly with the raid wide buff change. That is power and melee damage they lost.In conclusion I'm not saying take away what paladins got just balance it out.

Hamervelder

08-30-2007, 06:40 AM

Wow... SK's got nerfed again, and pallies got another bone thrown to them. All the more reason to keep my SK retired, and only around for RP reasons. The class is frickin neutered as it is. I can definitely think of some choice words and honorable titles for whatever geniuses keep nerfing shadowknights.

Spangles

08-30-2007, 07:40 AM

THIS IS NOT A NERF - IT IS CRUSADER LOVE OF THE FIRST ORDER.There is more to it than what you have pointed out and if you were really a serious raider you would have worked through the figures to see that. Further down in the LU38 post it mentions that Doom Judgement recast timer has been reduced from 5 mins to 2 mins for the standard spell for Crusaders. That has an impact on the changes that you did point out.Before the changes, assuming you put 5 levels into Doom Judgement, SKs would have reduced the recast timer by 100 secs, from 300 secs to 200 secs, an improvement of 33%. Doing the same sum for the new figures you have a reduction of 40 secs from 120 secs to 80 secs, again an improvement of 33% casting speed. So putting AAs into Doom Judgement gives SKs no extra improvement from what we had before. Pallies get a damage boost from 25% to 35%. It sounds a lot and looks like we got nothing, but checking the figures reveals something that you prolly never realised.What we need to do now is look at what the impact is for the new casting time. Unfortunately, I don't have the actual figures for the spell effects here at work, and people's figures vary anyway depending on their stats and gear, so I will take a nice easy figure to work with of 1000 damage per cast. Also to make things easier for numbers of casts, we can assume you are fighting a long fight of 1200 secs (20 mins) and that you cast Doom Judgement whenever it is active.CASE 1. 5 mins recast, no AAs in DJ. Both SKs and Pallies will fire it off a total of 4 times for 4000 damage. Easy.CASE 2. 5 mins recast, 5 AAs in DJ. Under the old set up, Pallies will have an extra 5% damage per rank so will do an extra 25% overall damage, doing a total of 5000. SKs get an improved casting speed of 200 secs so can fire their DJ off 6 times, doing 6000 damage. Hurray for SKs - we do 20% more damage.CASE 3. 2 mins recast. No AAs in DJ. Both SKs and Pallies fire it off a total of 10 times, doing 10,000 damage. Woohoo, big love for Crusaders.CASE 4. 2 mins recast. 5 AAs in DJ. In the new set-up, Pallies now do an extra 7% damage per rank, so will do an overall extra 35% damage, giving a total of 13,500 damage. SKs now fire off the spell every 80 secs, meaning they hit it 15 times, for a whopping 15,000 damage.We (SKs) now do only 11% more damage than a Pally instead of 20% more with a fully specced AA line in Doom Judgement, but how on earth can you whinge and whine that we got nerfed? Check out the figures - we just got an almost 400% boost in one of our spell lines, not to mention that we also get to AoE debuff much more often now. OK, so the gap between SKs and their ginger step-son counterparts from Qeynos got smaller, but I don't begrudge them that.Thanks SOE <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Oh, and also check out the rest of the LU38 post for more nice little additions to the fighter/SK armoury (raid wide buffs and Intercede now fires off twice if the MT is below 50%). Everyone is going to want us soon!

Hamervelder

08-30-2007, 09:32 AM

<cite>Spangles wrote:</cite><blockquote>THIS IS NOT A NERF - IT IS CRUSADER LOVE OF THE FIRST ORDER.There is more to it than what you have pointed out and if you were really a serious raider you would have worked through the figures to see that. Further down in the LU38 post it mentions that Doom Judgement recast timer has been reduced from 5 mins to 2 mins for the standard spell for Crusaders. That has an impact on the changes that you did point out.Before the changes, assuming you put 5 levels into Doom Judgement, SKs would have reduced the recast timer by 100 secs, from 300 secs to 200 secs, an improvement of 33%. Doing the same sum for the new figures you have a reduction of 40 secs from 120 secs to 80 secs, again an improvement of 33% casting speed. So putting AAs into Doom Judgement gives SKs no extra improvement from what we had before. Pallies get a damage boost from 25% to 35%. It sounds a lot and looks like we got nothing, but checking the figures reveals something that you prolly never realised.What we need to do now is look at what the impact is for the new casting time. Unfortunately, I don't have the actual figures for the spell effects here at work, and people's figures vary anyway depending on their stats and gear, so I will take a nice easy figure to work with of 1000 damage per cast. Also to make things easier for numbers of casts, we can assume you are fighting a long fight of 1200 secs (20 mins) and that you cast Doom Judgement whenever it is active.CASE 1. 5 mins recast, no AAs in DJ. Both SKs and Pallies will fire it off a total of 4 times for 4000 damage. Easy.CASE 2. 5 mins recast, 5 AAs in DJ. Under the old set up, Pallies will have an extra 5% damage per rank so will do an extra 25% overall damage, doing a total of 5000. SKs get an improved casting speed of 200 secs so can fire their DJ off 6 times, doing 6000 damage. Hurray for SKs - we do 20% more damage.CASE 3. 2 mins recast. No AAs in DJ. Both SKs and Pallies fire it off a total of 10 times, doing 10,000 damage. Woohoo, big love for Crusaders.CASE 4. 2 mins recast. 5 AAs in DJ. In the new set-up, Pallies now do an extra 7% damage per rank, so will do an overall extra 35% damage, giving a total of 13,500 damage. SKs now fire off the spell every 80 secs, meaning they hit it 15 times, for a whopping 15,000 damage.We (SKs) now do only 11% more damage than a Pally instead of 20% more with a fully specced AA line in Doom Judgement, but how on earth can you whinge and whine that we got nerfed? Check out the figures - we just got an almost 400% boost in one of our spell lines, not to mention that we also get to AoE debuff much more often now. OK, so the gap between SKs and their ginger step-son counterparts from Qeynos got smaller, but I don't begrudge them that.Thanks SOE <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" />Oh, and also check out the rest of the LU38 post for more nice little additions to the fighter/SK armoury (raid wide buffs and Intercede now fires off twice if the MT is below 50%). Everyone is going to want us soon!</blockquote>Pallies got more love then. If you'd read the bit about their Doom Judgment getting a boost, you'd know that, Mister Serious Raider. *rolls eyes* What has Doom Judgment got to do with raiding? Nothing.

cr0wangel

08-30-2007, 10:59 AM

Out of curiosity, where are the notes of LU38 posted?

Spangles

08-30-2007, 11:24 AM

<cite>Atelos@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pallies got more love then. If you'd read the bit about their Doom Judgment getting a boost, you'd know that, Mister Serious Raider. *rolls eyes* What has Doom Judgment got to do with raiding? Nothing. </blockquote>Sorry Atelos, was this a dig against me or the OP? The OP said he was a "Serious Raider", but your post seems to suggest that it was me that missed some crucial point in the discussion. You were the one that read the original post and immediately cried Nerf without looking at the figures behind it. /rollseyes <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I still maintain that we will be getting some love with this LU, and not a nerf. Ok, so SKs got less love than Pallies in this instance (again <cough&gt<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> but I see that as merely closing a gap that perhaps should not have been there in the first place. Do you not think that Pallies may not have been miffed in the first place that our AA improvements on Doom Judgement allow us to dish out 20% more damage than their improvements do? Do you think that is right? Do you think they are going to be happy now that SKs can still push out 11% more damage in the same scenario? I doubt it. Also, do you think that an AoE attack and major debuff that dispels 111 levels of beneficial buffs (I think at Adept 3) is not worth having in a raid?

Spangles

08-30-2007, 11:29 AM

<cite>cr0wangel wrote:</cite><blockquote>Out of curiosity, where are the notes of LU38 posted?</blockquote>They post the LU notes in the Support Forum. There are two separate forums in that area - one for the Live game updates and one for Test updates. Not everything that appears in the test update makes it into Live, but most of it does. Just keep a watching eye in there to see what the Devs are toying with. The threads get locked after being posted, but the ones that have replies to them are usually the big update notes because they break them down into readable chunks.

Boli32

08-30-2007, 11:55 AM

HentaiB

08-30-2007, 09:23 PM

The post said that Paladins get a improvement on Doom Judgement and SKs stayed the same. And as was stated it does not fix any core issues, but anytime I see anything changed I look at it closely. And I will call out anytime I see anything that I don't see as a improvement across the boards for Crusaders.So many "Serious Raiders" have quit there SK because of the gimpness of them it is scary. SKs are gimped in raids and any "Serious Raider" can tell you that. I have not given up yet, but it gets harder every time I log in to just roll with the latest LU supposed improvements. Crusaders are not the only ones brawlers, wardens also need something fixed for raids. SoE says that raiding is important to them. Please prove that it is, and balance out the classes for raiding. Don't nerf anybody improve what needs to be improves.

Cerios

08-31-2007, 04:12 AM

Actually, this update isn't as good for raiding paladins as it might appear. Normalization changes to healing adds add very little to paladins while improving most others significantly.

Hamervelder

08-31-2007, 05:56 AM

<cite>Spangles wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Atelos@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pallies got more love then. If you'd read the bit about their Doom Judgment getting a boost, you'd know that, Mister Serious Raider. *rolls eyes* What has Doom Judgment got to do with raiding? Nothing. </blockquote>Sorry Atelos, was this a dig against me or the OP? The OP said he was a "Serious Raider", but your post seems to suggest that it was me that missed some crucial point in the discussion. You were the one that read the original post and immediately cried Nerf without looking at the figures behind it. /rollseyes <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" />I still maintain that we will be getting some love with this LU, and not a nerf. Ok, so SKs got less love than Pallies in this instance (again <cough><img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" /> but I see that as merely closing a gap that perhaps should not have been there in the first place. Do you not think that Pallies may not have been miffed in the first place that our AA improvements on Doom Judgement allow us to dish out 20% more damage than their improvements do? Do you think that is right? Do you think they are going to be happy now that SKs can still push out 11% more damage in the same scenario? I doubt it. Also, do you think that an AoE attack and major debuff that dispels 111 levels of beneficial buffs (I think at Adept 3) is not worth having in a raid?</blockquote>EDIT -- I apologize in advance if this post seems to ramble. It's 5AM, and I'd much rather be sleeping, but my sinuses say otherwise. It was a playful jab at your playful jab. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" /> I was in rare form this morning, what can I say? Hehe. Okay, seriously.... I'm one of those few raiders who seems to realize that raiding is a very very small part of the game. I despise changes that remove solo and group utility to benefit the few who do (or even can) raid. What percentage of people who play crusaders raid? What percentage of people who play crusaders are even of the appropriate level range to raid? I haven't looked up the numbers, but I'm guessing it's a very small minority. The majority of players are not level 70, and do not raid. Keep that in mind as you read what I'm about to say, and as I draw a few comparisons between classes. My overall point here is that shadowknights are slowly being nerfed into complete uselessness. I played Uros as a paladin until he was level 69. I played him in pretty much any capacity (except raid main tank) that a fighter can be played. Last summer I betrayed to SK, and he's been a 70 sk for over a year. So I have a bit of experience which has led me to my conclusions about the crusader class and subclasses. Some people will disagree with me, and that's their right. First point: SK's have not gotten any subclass-specific love for a long time. Paladins' strength buff was simply moved from their group buff, to their personal. Yet SK's lost ours completely. Now remember, this change was done to supposedly "benefit" raiding crusaders. What about the rest of the shadowknight players? They just got shafted, to benefit a few who raid. And guess what? SK's still won't get taken on raids. Why? Because that miniscule dps boost is laughable with the amount of damage that casters put out already. You may get 80 or 90 points added onto an already whopping 11k Ice Nova. I dare say, the mages won't even notice that. Why not allow SK's to keep their strength buff? As it is, the 40-something (depending on spell rank) buff that we got is miniscule compared to other classes. Swashbucklers get over 100. Hell, my zerker's group strength buff is 45 at level 25! In other words, the crusader group buffs were very weak to begin with. SK's got even weaker. Taking away the SK's strength buff cost power and melee damage. I'd rather have those than the paultry spell boost.Moving on, to the latest change. Let's keep in mind that paladins made a net gain in LU37. SK's lost. Not only did we lose our strength buff, but Reaver got nerfed by 20%. Doom Judgment is now on a two-minute timer. Yippee. If you've ever used it against named mobs, then you've probably seen that, often, the debuff works for a few seconds, then the encounter recasts its buffs. So, does this really benefit raiders? Not really. You're going to use your nifty debuff, and the mob is going to re-buff itself as usual. IF you make it to the raid, that is. Will SK's do more damage overall with Doom Judgment than paladins after the change? Maybe. Maybe not. It just seems to me that SK's are slowly having their actual overall utility taken away. I admit that I'm still miffed about the nerfs SK's took in LU37, and I've shelved Uros with the exception of roleplaying. I'm completely disappointed with Sony's take on how to give Shadowknights raid utility. I honestly have to wonder if any of the developers actually play a shadowknight in any serious capacity. I used to sing the praises of SK's. Then Sony decided to give us "raid utility". Whatever....Now that you've read a long rant on what's wrong with shadowknights, let me give you a suggestion on what would really give us overall utility, especially on raids. Enhanced debuffs. SK's can put a pretty big dent in wisdom, in disease resistance, mitigation (Despoil is close to 1500 at Adept III), and strength. If the developers want to give us some real raid utility without killing the utility of the class as a whole, how about upping our debuffs? I would argue that our debuffs bring more to a raid than our dps, or this silly little spell-damage "boost" that we got. Instead of taking away what we do have to give us "utility", how about a bit of common sense, and looking at what we already do well, and help us do that even better?

MirageKnight

08-31-2007, 11:28 AM

SK should have got AA spell "Siphon Hate" at least targetable to other grp if not raid wide. After all SK hasn't be touched for hate amount (including Hate line AA) on EoF AA revisited.If SK is the MT for raid, MT grp with 3 healers (or 2) with non mage config is pretty much common. MT grp usually wont make much hate either.

LordDarthKhan

08-31-2007, 02:09 PM

I'd just be happy if they'd stop killing our class...

Solarax

09-01-2007, 12:14 AM

you know after reading about SK's and pallies for a month now i am very close to deciding NOT to make an SK. see i have hundreds of plat in the best twink gear around because for the last 6 months i have been saving it all up and buying SK spells ( all master 1) so that i have nearly every single sk spell to 50 and then a lot of the 50+ spells .my goal was to make an SK and have fun and be usefull in groups and raids . then comes the announcement of the new race so i got all excited and did research and so far i have not run into a single SK that was happy with thier raiding ability other than 1 who is in a top guild with all the best equipment and an officer and her job isnt to be the best or even good but to direct the flows of the raid so sometimes doing very sk stuff.i fear i just wasted all that time trying to get all the hard to find masters so no im thinking maybe i should scrap the masters and start on pallies masters. i can probably sell off some of these rare sk ones . at least my gear goes both ways except i think soul harvester might not be pally equipable and that was my first motivation for starting an SK.how late in the game do pallies pull away from SK's ? can i expect to play till 50 and then see a drop or am i looking at being un loved even lower in the tiers?

Beldin_

09-01-2007, 09:54 AM

<cite>Solarax wrote:</cite><blockquote>you know after reading about SK's and pallies for a month now i am very close to deciding NOT to make an SK. see i have hundreds of plat in the best twink gear around because for the last 6 months i have been saving it all up and buying SK spells ( all master 1) so that i have nearly every single sk spell to 50 and then a lot of the 50+ spells .my goal was to make an SK and have fun and be usefull in groups and raids . then comes the announcement of the new race so i got all excited and did research and so far i have not run into a single SK that was happy with thier raiding ability other than 1 who is in a top guild with all the best equipment and an officer and her job isnt to be the best or even good but to direct the flows of the raid so sometimes doing very sk stuff.i fear i just wasted all that time trying to get all the hard to find masters so no im thinking maybe i should scrap the masters and start on pallies masters. i can probably sell off some of these rare sk ones . at least my gear goes both ways except i think soul harvester might not be pally equipable and that was my first motivation for starting an SK.how late in the game do pallies pull away from SK's ? can i expect to play till 50 and then see a drop or am i looking at being un loved even lower in the tiers?</blockquote>If all you want is raiding, don't roll ANY fighter class. Roll a Defiler or Dirge or whatever is actual in need .. this will maybe also change if your character is 70 .. lol <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />If you mainly just want to have fun while soloing/grouping and levelling up .. SK is still one of the most fun classes, and in my eyes still an exellent group tank.

CHIMPNOODLE.

09-01-2007, 06:15 PM

Just seems like another small boost for us on top of the boosts from GU37 (I was never a Reaver taker...DA?...just...wow! Still loving that change <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src=" width="15" height="15" /> . Seems like we are getting stronger and stronger with every change imo.Keep it coming <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Belaythien

09-02-2007, 10:09 AM

Congratulation SOE! You killed the Shadowknight for me. It's not like I have the least bit of interest left for my SK since you've shown that you are just nerfing them. I can't stand all these unfair changes and nerfs anymore. SKs got totally cheated last GU by completely loosing strength and getting 33% less than Paladins on their new buff.

RoXx

09-03-2007, 09:05 AM

lol dont you realize pallies need all the love they can get =) sk is uber already

Darlion

09-06-2007, 01:20 AM

<cite>Dekeon@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am a serious raider and this comes from my point of view on that. Paladin <ul><li>Doom Judgement - Damage bonus increased from 5% to 7% per rank. (40% INCREASE TO THAT AA LINE)</li></ul>Shadowknight<ul><li>Doom Judgement - Reuse speed bonus adjusted from 20 to 8 seconds per rank. (EXACT SAME % DECREASE IN SPELL CASTING WOULD NEED TO BE 11 SECONDS TO BE CLOSE TO EQUAL OF THE INCREASE THAT PALADINS GET)</li></ul></blockquote>Since your first two points were accurate (they are meaningless or merely a bug fix) I will debate this one. First of all, lets talk about numbers not the actual percent increase. 5% increase to doom judgement means (for me it's about 400ish damage aoe) 20 more damage. 7% means 28 damage. So, roughly, it means 8 more damage per point.My second point here is, how often do you find yourself thinking, better hit doom judgement for that extra aoe damage? The spell is a very weak aoe, and near meaningless to enhance. Maybe it will be worthwhile when they make it a level 53 spell, but even so, it's damage is significantly worse than many of my other aoes, even fully enhanced, which are on a shorter reuse.The reason doom judgements AA recast was reduced was because the timer was reduced. It's 2 minutes now, if it was at the 11 seconds you suggest your total recast timer, fully enhanced is down to a little over 1 minute. That's a total of double the damage since you can use it twice as often, plus double the debuff. No, 11 seconds wouldn't be near close to what we get, it would be significantly greater. Do your math and actually think.

Shankalot

09-06-2007, 06:27 PM

also never make assumptions if ur not testing because quite honestly sks came out ahead with the +dmg mod change, since alot of casts were 1-2 seconds or less with certain aa's, the dmg mod of 90 somthin from unholy strength line bare gave anything now getting 90 somthin dmg just tacked on is superb in my book

quasigenx

09-06-2007, 06:37 PM

Shadow knights are awesome. IMO, they blow a Pally absolutely out of the water whether it's solo, group or raid. The Pally needs a little boost relative to the other tanks. Just my opinion.

GinFan

09-07-2007, 04:40 PM

I think Pallys are getting big love for raids. Combine their respectable healing abilities with a +heal/wisdom buff for the entire raid, and they should be able to replace a healer.

Rast

09-07-2007, 04:55 PM

<cite>GinFan wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think Pallys are getting big love for raids. Combine their respectable healing abilities with a +heal/wisdom buff for the entire raid, and they should be able to replace a healer. </blockquote>ummm, no. Raiding pallys rarely heal due to the cost of our heals. We use wards and occasionally a group heal, but our cast times are attrocious and our heals are meer drops in the bucket. What we will do is enhance already existing healers to make them better just by being there.Just ask the high end pallies out there (Viritus, Wozamil, etal) how much they heal on raids and you might be suprised with their answer.

GinFan

09-07-2007, 05:58 PM

<cite>Jalathan@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GinFan wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think Pallys are getting big love for raids. Combine their respectable healing abilities with a +heal/wisdom buff for the entire raid, and they should be able to replace a healer. </blockquote>ummm, no. Raiding pallys rarely heal due to the cost of our heals. We use wards and occasionally a group heal, but our cast times are attrocious and our heals are meer drops in the bucket. What we will do is enhance already existing healers to make them better just by being there.Just ask the high end pallies out there (Viritus, Wozamil, etal) how much they heal on raids and you might be suprised with their answer.</blockquote>Actually that is what I was trying to say... you will be "enhancing the already existing healers to make them better just by being there." Combine that with your admittedly slow cast wards and heals and you could in a sense replace a healer, especially if your raid force is on the brink of reducing the number of their healers already, i.e. trying to decide whether or not to run with 5 healers vs. 6 or 6 vs. 7, etc...