Toes SK guide to Tanking and DPS

[rabid.pooh]

<p>I see lots of questions on how to DPS and tank as an SK so I decided to wip up a little guide on how I DPS and MT/OT.  These are things that work for me, and I do not assume that this is how everyone should play an SK, and I'm not the end all be all SK or do I pretend to be so please take it with a grain of salt <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.   </p><p><b>Spell Damage Myth</b></p><p>First lets deal with the 75% spell damage misconception.  Our damage is not 75% based on the spells you cast doing damage, auto attack damage should (depending on weapon 1 hand vs 2 hand) should range between 22% - 35% (from a meh 1h .legendary to a kick but fabled 2hander).  Our CA's kick in about 10%, and then we proc Grim Strike for about 7% - 11% (this is a spell, but it's damage requires you to swing that weapon).  Usually Mele, CA, and procs due to your autoattack will be 40% - 55% of your total damage.    </p><p><b>Weapon Delays</b> </p><p>For an Sk/Hybrid weapon speed is very important, fast weapons with a low delay (under 2 seconds) means you will be missing out on autoattack swings alot, our spells and CAs take from 1 to 2.5 seconds to cast (including recovery time), during this time you will not swing and you want to swing.  Lets take a look at the damage done with a 1.2 delay weapon and a 2.5 delay weapon;   </p><p>Weapon A - 1.2 delay 500 damage            Weapon B. 2.5 delay - 1000 damage. </p><p>1 sec CA (smash) - 400 damage              1 sec CA (smash) - 400 damage </p><p>2.5 sec spell (Wrath) - 1500 damage       1.5 sec Spell (anger) - 1000 damage </p><p>swing - 500 damage                                 Swing - 1000 damage 1.5 sec</p><p>spell (anger) - 1000 damage                     2.5 sec spell (wrath) - 1500 damage </p><p>swing - 500 damage                                  Swing - 1000 damage </p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- </p><p>Total damage - 3900                                Total Damage - 4900   </p><p>Weapon A could have gotten another 500 damage if he/she had not qued up there spells and waited .2 secs, still more damage is done with the slower weapon.   </p><p>What we need to do when we equip our weapons is figure out exactly how fast we're attacking with how much we are hasted, this number of course will change if your in a group/raid setting.  To find out the true speed of your autoattack type /weaponstats.  This will give you the true delay (you can also look at this in your persona tab now too).</p><p>Now if you know that your weapon is swinging once every two seconds you can base what spells your casting/queing around this delay.   </p><p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Example of /weaponstats read out </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Primary: Name:Soulfire Gladius </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Base Damage:44-250 Actual Damage 136-773 </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Actual Delay: 2.3      <--- (This is the number you want to know) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Proc Percent: 9.0% </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Procs Per minute: 1.8</span>   </p><p><b>Spell/CA hotbar layout</b></p><p>Okay, so now we know our weapon delay how can we base our casting orders around it, how do we figure out which spells take how long to cast and based on that which ones can we que up, and which ones can't.  Well there are two methods, the 1st is to examine the spells and remember the casting time for each spell or arrange them according to how long the take.</p><p>My spell hotbar is based on casting times, the primary hotbar has all the 1 second spells, secondary hotbar has the 1.5 second spells and the 3rd bar has the 2.5 second/miscalanious spells.  More so on the primary, I have also arnaged the spells acording to refresh timers, the quickest spells are numbers 2 - 6 for fast hitting.   </p><p>The reason for the spell arangement is quick math, if I have a 2.5 delay weapon I can hit one 3rd row spell, or one 2nd row and 1st row spell for each autoattack.  Also when using something like death march which gives us 50% spell haste (well its 62% at master 1, but I round it down because I'm lazy :p), the math can be done quickly again, like hitting queing 2 2.5 sec spells, or 3 1 sec spells, and 1 1.5 sec spells... etc.  quick and easy math to get the most out of your swings.     </p><p><b>Conclusion of Weapon Delay and Casting speeds.</b> </p><p>The above concepts are pretty important to get, without a firm understanding your DPS/Tanking will always lack, that autoattack is so important to get in.  I didn't really go into spell haste and it's effects, with spell haste your casting timers changing accordingly, just examine the spells to see the impact.</p>

[rabid.pooh]

This spot is reserved for the tanking portion of the guide

[rabid.pooh]

This spot is reserved for the DPS portion of the guide

[Coica]

 good job Toesmash <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[RobF]

Great work here - i have a 70 sk and youve made me rethink my hotbar setup <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />Im looking forward to the rest of the guide - this could well be sticky contender <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Hugsnkissums]

Toesmash to post a screenie of his hotbars IMO *begs*

[Dead Knight]

Your hotbar setups don't matter much as long as your casting order goes something like this: Taunts > Debuffs > DoTs > Small Nukes on short timer *DISPATCH* > Long Recast Nukes

[nodaisho]

I am assuming that by Dispatch, you mean a brigand using Dispatch, right? Or do we get it?

[Grimfort]

He probly means that when you get the call for dispatch (which brigs usually shout out) then you got for the big hitter spells.

[Dead Knight]

Yes, Brigand Dispatch.

[Coica]

 yeah, but I think this was meant more for newer/less experienced SK's.  I wouldnt change my hotbar now for the life of me, but  a year or so ago I would have found this info really helpful .  and y'all still do teach me new tricks sometimes,so thanks to all of you SK's that post here past/present.

[Solarax]

this made me re organize my bars BUT for now i dont think i will see a big improvement at low levels because having haste and t4 fabled weapons and all masters and soloing i wont see that big a diference in auto attack damage . as i gain level i can see how it will widen but at low levels there just isnt that many high delay weapons.what i want to seeis your hot bars screenies =)i currently use profit UI with about 6 bars so i can make some logical groupings including gear hotkeys like<a href="http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?eq2item=16037" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/item.h...l?eq2item=16037</a> unfortunately it takes up screen realistate

[Nole]

I have to disagree with your original assessment. Spells may not be 75% of our damage in RoK, but at a lower tiers autoattack with a 2h in offensive stance was barely 14%, Grim Strike 7% (and if I'm not mistaken, the damage and crit chance of GS are calculated like a spell... so it goes up based on int).

[rabid.pooh]

<cite>Aiya@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have to disagree with your original assessment. Spells may not be 75% of our damage in RoK, but at a lower tiers autoattack with a 2h in offensive stance was barely 14%, Grim Strike 7% (and if I'm not mistaken, the damage and crit chance of GS are calculated like a spell... so it goes up based on int).</blockquote><p>Our two procs do indeed run off intellegence based spell damage, however it requires you to hit the mob in order to proc.  These are actually based on a raw % chance too and not normalized like other procs (eg, will proc 1.8 times a minute).  So again it's important to maximize the number of swings you get in.</p><p> As we go back into the lower tiers spell damage goes up, however it is because of how we pulled in those tiers,  It's not uncommon for an SK to pull multiple groups (my personal best was 6 pulls to the last named event in the nest).  However that being said if the SK was spec'd in the AGI line for AOE attacks you would see mele attack jump up.  Even with a 1 hander my mele attack was rarely under 20% and my grimstrike would always be 2nd on the parse list, first of course being mele.  Tap Veins would of course be up there too when facing multiple group encounters.</p><p>If your not thinking about timing I can see your auto attack mele being at 14%, because of the auto attack swings that are missied out on.  And the lower tiers sucked for 2handers, most being 2 sec - 2.5 sec delay.  Took me forever to get a good one.</p><p>For me this is how I worked, and this had the greatest impact on increasing my DPS/AGRO.  Back in EoF I figured it this way, what could I do to increase my overall DPS, spaming a spell everytime it comes up gave me pretty much the same DPS numbers, when I worked on timing I got that number to climb.</p><p>For the higher level SKs there is an excellent place to work on your timing, it's called the wall in fens, many classes use it.  And this guide isn't meant to be a this is how you do it, it's a this is how I do it, I'm deffinately not the end all be all SK (more so now, as I don't play toes nearly as much as when I wrote this post).  I can tell you in Rok tho, the biggest parses I've seen is when the SK's autoattack is over 40% of his damage.</p>

[Nole]

<p>In lower tiers, whenever I looked at my parses, I did about 14% from slash (with a 2h in off stance), 14% from tap veins, then go down the list. To be fair I had +spell adornments on the gloves, neck, and symbol. Without the proliferation of melee stats in RoK, your auto-attack's just not hitting that hard. Then again, with multi mob pulls sometimes I could keep up Death March almost full time for the sweet, sweet cast speed and CC immunity.</p><p>Are you sure Grim Strike isn't normalized? I read somewhere that all % based procs were actually normalized to a 3 sec delay, i.e. if you use a 6 sec base weapon you have double the chance of making it proc. I'd really have to look at parses to see if that's true or not. I didn't lose nearly as much Grim Strike damage going to a 6 sec weapon as I thought I would.</p>

[Solarax]

there is a wall in fens?i know of one in KJ at the monks but im to low to get the faction to approach the area.oh quick question about bow adornmentssay i have a bow adornment that is a dps mod like this :<a href="http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Scintillating_Judicious_Composite_Gear" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Scintilla..._Composite_Gear</a>. I only see one space on window in game for dps mod so was wondering if this would modify all dps or only that of the bow when in use

[Nole]

<p>OK, so I actually have a parse from a KC group tonight.</p><p>My new damage output in Kunark is terrible. I thought the awesome stats on the devout would make for some good damage, but I'm seeing numbers I wouldn't have been happy with in KoS zones <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I guess I'm comparing sub-optimal group to raid damage though.</p><p>Breakdown:</p><p>33% slash</p><p>9% grim strike</p><p>8% putrid coil</p><p>6% drain vitae</p><p>5% abominable anger</p><p>5% Gleaming Strike</p><p>5% Abominable Wrath</p><p>4% Anguish</p><p>4% Legionnaire's Smite</p><p>4% Swift Attack</p><p>4% Insinuate</p><p>3% Unending Misery</p><p>2% Lucan's Boot</p><p>2% Themal Shock (clicky item thingie)</p><p>2% Unholy Strike</p><p>1% Death Circle</p><p>...</p><p>The big thing I notice is I'm missing all my AoE damage. Also I wasn't tanking so no barbed guard, caress feedback, or Grave Blessing. Slash is up to 33%, but there's a lot missing there. Maybe I should go play with some KoS stuff solo and see how low slash falls with some good AoEing.</p><p>Though if I look over at the tank, 2% of his damage was done by Voracious Soul, and 25% of his incomming healing was done by Voracious Soul (that's the Grave Blessing effect). It's unfortunate that the parser doesn't credit the SK who casts Grave Blessing for the healing or damage done. We'd look a bit better then. I'd have about 1/3rd as much healing as the healer in this group, would be much higher if I were actually tanking and taking damage.</p>

[rabid.pooh]

<p>I think you may be getting hung up on numbers here and an exact % is not important, as there are many factors, like mele crit, DA, quality of weapon being used etc.  What it really comes down to is by paying attention to what your casting and how long it takes you can maximize how many autoattacks you get in that do more damage and raise your DPS.  And I think we can all agree this is a skill that's needed for the one mob pull that RoK is full of (thanks SOE), speaking to other SKs they've seen they're autoattack damage jump up from 40% - 50% of their damage.</p><p> When I tank/DPS on toes, I'm not sitting there waiting for my swing, so half my spells are up, I'm plowing through them normally, and get messed up once and awhile (more so now because I'm rusty),  I'm just grouping the cast orders to help time it out better so I don't miss those swings, and don't miss the oportunity to have my weapon proc whatever buff is on me at the momment from whatever class (ie, Dirge CoB).</p><p>And as Rippz said, get those taunts/debuffs in first on the pull.  I'll look for older parses all I can find right now are raid parses which are naturally skewed a little higher.</p><p>Sorry meant the wall in KJ not fens.</p>

[Nole]

<p>Well, the reason it matters how much your auto-attack does is that it helps determine gear decisions. If you're getting 20% of your damage, each DPS mod is only like .2% damage increase, whereas if you're getting more it's more.</p><p>Tonight did some much better damage "tanking" HoF. I hestitate to call it tanking even though I held the mobs almost perfectly and whatnot since I was in 2h/off stance, won DPS by a significant margin (was grouped with monks and pallies, and 2 wardens lol)... I actually won healing done by a huge margin too, but I had 7 levels on the wardens. It almost felt like I was soloing, except I had people adding damage and healing to the process. I did actually get pretty good about casting the group taunt first, which I often don't do while solo <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (Group taunt should really be the first thing that hits a mob due to the disease damage debuff on it.)</p><p>Damage breakdown in an AOE heavy instance (This matters because it helps me/other people at T7 decide which spells are most worth upgrading):</p><p>23% Slash (This is much higher than it would have been back pre-ROK even though I'm back in pre-ROK content.. I have way more DPS mod now)</p><p>8% Tap</p><p>8% Unending Misery</p><p>7% Grim Strike</p><p>5% Voracious Soul</p><p>5% Death Circle</p><p>4% Doom Rays</p><p>4% Putrid Coil</p><p>3% Drain Vitae (Pretty sad for a Master, fully upgraded)</p><p>3% Barbed Guard (Best adornment ever for it's price?)</p><p>3% Caress Feedback</p><p>3% Swift attack</p><p>3% Abominable Anger</p><p>3% Anguish</p><p>3% Gleaming Strike</p><p>2% Insinuate</p><p>2% Abominable Wrath</p><p>1% each: Leginnaire's Smite, Fetid Smite, Thermal Shock (still awesome... usable while stifled!), Sanguine Feedback... all the other stuff</p><p>On the healing front (now that I was tanking):</p><p>26% Voracious Soul (I believe the best words for this are... pure awesome!)</p><p>14% Verdant Bliss (FROM WARDEN)</p><p>12% Reaver Mania</p><p>10% Wild Chloroform (FROM WARDEN)5% Chloroplast (FROM WARDEN)</p><p>5% Grim Strike</p><p>3% Tap</p><p>3% Demonstration of Devotion (FROM PALLY)</p><p>3% Drain Vitae (Disappointed in this one <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />)</p><p>3% Putrid Coil</p><p>2% Protecting Grove (FROM WARDEN)</p><p>2% Spores (FROM WARDEN)</p><p>2% Lambent Rejuv.</p><p>1% Gale of Healing, Prayer of COnsecration, Wild Growth, Heal, Sylvan Waters, Death Touch, Fervent Aid, Winds of Healing, </p><p>0% other stuff... </p><p>So looking over this stuff... the Grave Blessing line is probably our best spell ever: 5% of my damage output and 26% of my incomming healing. Grim Strike is also awesome and worth upgrading. The AoEs (Tap and Unending Misery) are great, but they'll be less awesome in Kunark. All my spells are AD III if 71+ or Masters (usually if 70-), so the relative damges says something about their relative utility at T7 content; though, I was 74, so I'm sure some of the spells were more recently upgraded than others. Grave Blessing is 6 levels old, but still sooo awesome.</p><p>Interesting to note, I account for 57% of my own healing in a group with two healers (Both wardens 7 levels under me). This number would fall in Kunark where there'd be fewer hits comming in harder or if I had higher avoidance so that Grave Blessing didn't have all of its charges used before it came back up.</p>

[AndrewSquared]

<p>*please delete hate my work browser*</p>

[AndrewSquared]

<p>This is a somewhat related topic, so I'll post my question here.</p><p>I've played this game for years, and something I've wondered for the longest time as an SK:</p><p>If I keep queing up my spells/CA's will my auto-attack work itself into the in-between of those when it's due, or do I have to "pause" and give my auto-attack a chance to swing? I've always gone with a slight pause to try and ensure it goes off, but if I can just que up my abilities in a best-time style and not have to worry about artificially pausing, that would make my life so much easier AND far more efficient.</p><p>Thanks.</p><p>(Oh and glad to be back!)</p>

[Nole]

The queue is smart. If you queue everything the auto-attack will go off between spells if it's ready. (At least that's what I've seen.)

[Solarax]

you know i have been wondering the same thing for years

[Solarax]

a quick question about the autoattackok so say we have re arranged our weapons and we know our weapon delay .so i have a 4.9 second weapon ( after haste and everything)so i see an auto attack damage bubble and then cast spells . say i cast a 2 second a 1 second and 2 half second spells totaling 4 seconds.now do i just have to manually pause and wait to see the next auto attack damage before i start the ruotine again?say i am at 4 seconds total and i hit a 2 second spell to start off again. the auto attack swing will never hit right because i started a new set?<span style="font-size: medium;">if i have to wait manually for the time to expire and see the next auto attack damage i could be wasting more dps like i was today because i cant tell when it is with all the dot damage popping up as well</span>

[Wytie]

<cite>Aiya@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><p><b>Though if I look over at the tank, 2% of his damage was done by Voracious Soul, and 25% of his incomming healing was done by Voracious Soul (that's the Grave Blessing effect). It's unfortunate that the parser doesn't credit the SK who casts Grave Blessing for the healing or damage done. We'd look a bit better then. I'd have about 1/3rd as much healing as the healer in this group, would be much higher if I were actually tanking and taking damage.</b></p></blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><b>QFE</b></span>This is by far one of the most painful things for an SK, we struggle as it is to make our mark, and 99% of the player base worships ACT. It practly make an SK not want to use his best ability if not MT due to the simple fact he gets absolutly ZERO credit for it and in turn gives it to the MT and makes the SK look even worse. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /><img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /><img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[Nole]

<p>Of course, that's a problem with the people who do ACT more than Sony (unless there's absolutely no way to correctly assign reactives from the log file). I mean, if you know what you're looking for, and there's only one SK in the raid, you can say things like hey... I did 9% of the MT's healing!</p><p>The more I do stuff though, the more I realize T7 raids were sooo much better for us DPS-wise and tanking-wise. AoEs for nice damage, multiple mobs for keeping On The March procced a lot. Well, that and doing pug raids, I don't find it at all hard to outDPS people I should never be able to beat normally <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Here's the damage breakdown from a Labs Raid. I was 75 and got no single target buffs, and I don't think my group gave me very many buffs either. So basically me, self-buffed and buffed with whatever the raid was getting. I'm actually thinking I should <img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff157/vgalis/LabsRaid719.jpg?t=1216520700" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" />start a separate thread to try to figure out what an ideal group for an SK would be. I think with some more single target buffs, my auto attack might have contributed more than this.</p><p>Edit: For some reason the picture isn't showing up, but this is just a screenshot of ACT's handy damage breakdown by source.</p><p><a href="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff157/vgalis/LabsRaid719" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/...lis/LabsRaid719</a><img src="http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff157/vgalis/LabsRaid719.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /></p>

[rabid.pooh]

<cite>Solarax wrote:</cite><blockquote>a quick question about the autoattackok so say we have re arranged our weapons and we know our weapon delay .so i have a 4.9 second weapon ( after haste and everything)so i see an auto attack damage bubble and then cast spells . say i cast a 2 second a 1 second and 2 half second spells totaling 4 seconds.now do i just have to manually pause and wait to see the next auto attack damage before i start the ruotine again?say i am at 4 seconds total and i hit a 2 second spell to start off again. the auto attack swing will never hit right because i started a new set?<span style="font-size: medium;">if i have to wait manually for the time to expire and see the next auto attack damage i could be wasting more dps like i was today because i cant tell when it is with all the dot damage popping up as well</span></blockquote><p>No, I would drop a ca or a .5 sec cast/ .5 recovery spell, if ones not up then go to a 1 sec spell for 1.5 seconds, your going over but not by much.  At this point you would be loosing out on that spell your gonna use to come back on second later.  Just use rounding.  Also you should be spec'd STR line, which would give that CA a .8 cast/recovery fitting it in nicely. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.</p><p>In a long fight your never going to time it perfectly, as things have different reuse timers resulting in everything not coming up at the same.  Personally on my guard I have a CA order that I almost always go through in the same order, because I know the timing and reuse times of my abilities.  Because of this it makes me a horrible OT as I rip through it not thinking about not needing hate.</p>

[Solarax]

so if we go over just a small ammount the auto attack will wait then right? thats what im getting atso i dont have to worry that if i go over it just wont auto attack for a whole round ( weapons actual delay ) right?may sound stupid but i play mostly casters and up until now being low level with all masters and fabled gear just spam based on refresh and kill mobs very quick . sometimes to fast to worry about auto attack at all. but i do realize as the tiers go up it will become important because fights will last longer especially solo