AA placement

[Vortos]

<p>I just got back into the game recently and haven't played for about 3 years.</p><p>I have a lv 17 sk and I really dont know what to do with my AA points.</p><p> What are some good builds to look forward to?</p>

[Whatyastarinat]

What I am doing, as most from what I have read.  4 - 4 - 8 INT and then  STA Reaver line for Grim Coil, Infernal Blessing, Unholy Weapon, and Consume Vitae 5 in each is what I am shooting for. I have to respec my SK AA to get the points out of Leech Touch and invest in Consume Vitae. Hope this helps. Get other opinions too. I have been playing for like 3 months, but I have asked a lot of questions and read a lot of posts.

[Nor]

<p>4-4-8 Int first</p><p>After that, probably depends on what you want, but reaver line is a good solo option.  Personally, I skipped the leach touch aa, and went over into the hate line as I knew I'd eventually want that line anyways - and HT is pretty much never used.</p>

[Vortos]

awesome, thanks for the help guys.

[jagermonsta]

<span class="postbody">I feel this setup is pretty solid... solo or not.Crusader TreeSTR <span class="postbody">8-8-6-0-1There really isn't a need for passive hate gain in my opinion. With adapt 3 spells and coercer/dirge hate gain you're going to be at over-cap or near it.</span><span class="postbody">STA 8-4-8-8-1Higher max hp, higher melee crit chance, 10 second damage absorb...INT 4-4-8Int boost and spell crit chance</span><span class="postbody">SK TreeMax all of hate line accept rescue buff. In my opinion it's completely pointless if you already have good hate gain, you should already be able to bounce right back to 1st using feign death, death touch, rescue, </span>goading gesture even death march. <span class="postbody">Max all of reaver line except coil & mana sieve. To small of a return in my opinion for the points spent.</span><span class="postbody">As for the decay line... max taunt debuff, doomrays (faster dps debuffs and aggro gain),  anquish (more debuff = more dps), devouring mists (spell won't expire on mob by the time you get to cast it again) and of course blood pools.</span></span>

[idropdimes]

Thats a nice setup you have for the above poster, i've been thinking about adding the WIS line to my set-up for the in combat hp regen

[Soefje]

<cite>Ranadin@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><span class="postbody">I feel this setup is pretty solid... solo or not.Crusader TreeSTR <span class="postbody">8-8-6-0-1There really isn't a need for passive hate gain in my opinion. With adapt 3 spells and coercer/dirge hate gain you're going to be at over-cap or near it.</span><span class="postbody">STA 8-4-8-8-1Higher max hp, higher melee crit chance, 10 second damage absorb...INT 4-4-8Int boost and spell crit chance</span><span class="postbody">SK TreeMax all of hate line accept rescue buff. In my opinion it's completely pointless if you already have good hate gain, you should already be able to bounce right back to 1st using feign death, death touch, rescue, </span>goading gesture even death march. <span class="postbody">Max all of reaver line except coil & mana sieve. To small of a return in my opinion for the points spent.</span><span class="postbody">As for the decay line... max taunt debuff, doomrays (faster dps debuffs and aggro gain),  anquish (more debuff = more dps), devouring mists (spell won't expire on mob by the time you get to cast it again) and of course blood pools.</span></span></blockquote>Then again, not all of us have access to a coercer/dirge for regular play.If you want to play in pick up groups, then I would suggest the followingINT  4-4-8STA 4-4-8-8-1STR 4-4-8-8-1Reaver lineHate lineI agree with suggestions for the SK lines, except blood pools.  In my opinion, lying face down on the floor while the healer tries to get you up is pointless.  If you get to that point, then you better have a second tank around to take over, in which case, you will probably have trouble getting aggro back. I don't know if the MOB actually leaves you (I don't have the skill) if you have solid aggro, but if they don't in ROK, will only take 1 or 2 more hits and you are done.  Bloodletter is much better and if the die twice in a fight, then you are probably in deep trouble in your group anyway.Oh, and add the extra SK points to FD.  This is a great help in soloing.

[jagermonsta]

<cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Then again, not all of us have access to a coercer/dirge for regular play.If you want to play in pick up groups, then I would suggest the followingINT  4-4-8STA 4-4-8-8-1STR 4-4-8-8-1Reaver lineHate lineI agree with suggestions for the SK lines, except blood pools.  In my opinion, lying face down on the floor while the healer tries to get you up is pointless.  If you get to that point, then you better have a second tank around to take over, in which case, you will probably have trouble getting aggro back. I don't know if the MOB actually leaves you (I don't have the skill) if you have solid aggro, but if they don't in ROK, will only take 1 or 2 more hits and you are done.  Bloodletter is much better and if the die twice in a fight, then you are probably in deep trouble in your group anyway.Oh, and add the extra SK points to FD.  This is a great help in soloing.</blockquote>Even still I don't see the point of the passive hate gain for an entire 8 points... even without a coercer or dirge I don't have trouble holding aggro.Blood pools has been good insurance thus far.

[Sippin]

<p>This is a general question for anyone that has ever actually used the wisdom line AA in the crusader tree.  I have started playing EQ2 again in the last 2.5 - 3 weeks after a 1+ year break.  I have read alot of the arguments against using he wisdom line AA but I am not sure if people are basing on actually building out the tree and evaluating it or if they basically just read the descriptons and decided it wasn't usefull comparitively.  What I want to know if there is anyone out that has built this AA tree out post RoK and determined if there were enough fear mobs around to make this worth while.  Plus you get the stazy title of Knight <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />.</p><p>Any case here is what I am thinking:</p><p> put the 44 points (end abilities cost 2 points) between the str and wis tree and the remainder into int and sta crits that work out to  4-4-4 for both those lines.</p><p> Alternatively build out str and sta then 4-4-8 in int  or build out sta on wis and do 4-4-8 in the str tree.  I would consider doing this if our SK specific lines don't provide enough tanking hate.</p><p>The secnario's:  Well basically I have found that the SK is versatile in most situations though I have never MT in a raid.  I have been an OT and DPS for KOS content before my long break.  I want to keep my versatility between solo, small group, and raid as tank or dps.  I don't need to be the absolute best but I want to be able to keep getting the job done.  Again I am looking for someone who has actually used the wis line up to really comment on just how useful it is and if it will actually preserve my end goal.</p>

[skycruise]

Why not go Int AA line, 4 - 4 - 8 - 8 - 1 ?I have found my heal crits to be every other crit, and with tap veins, it tends to hit and heal hard with this setup.Grave blessing, as well as the other spells,  crit on me every second one.I've found it to be especially good in a group as it gives you an extra amount of heals compared to if you did not have any heal crit %.Any other sk out there running this way?

[Soefje]

<cite>Ranadin@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Then again, not all of us have access to a coercer/dirge for regular play.If you want to play in pick up groups, then I would suggest the followingINT  4-4-8STA 4-4-8-8-1STR 4-4-8-8-1Reaver lineHate lineI agree with suggestions for the SK lines, except blood pools.  In my opinion, lying face down on the floor while the healer tries to get you up is pointless.  If you get to that point, then you better have a second tank around to take over, in which case, you will probably have trouble getting aggro back. I don't know if the MOB actually leaves you (I don't have the skill) if you have solid aggro, but if they don't in ROK, will only take 1 or 2 more hits and you are done.  Bloodletter is much better and if the die twice in a fight, then you are probably in deep trouble in your group anyway.Oh, and add the extra SK points to FD.  This is a great help in soloing.</blockquote>Even still I don't see the point of the passive hate gain for an entire 8 points... even without a coercer or dirge I don't have trouble holding aggro.Blood pools has been good insurance thus far.</blockquote>Are you playing in pick up groups?  Or do you have a regular group?  I find in pick up groups, I need all the aggro help I can get.  There is usually some DPS with a parser trying his/her best to out damage everyone else, to the point of nuking before the mob gets set or even to me.  Prior to T8, I would agree that I did not need the passive hate gain, but in T8 I have found I get resisted more than ever before and the DPS nukes are hitting harder.  DM is not as effective as it once was on snap aggro, so I need all the help I can get.  I agree with you that I could probably make this work without the hate gain, but I personally find the above set up the one that works best for me.I have tried the WIS line, but find I was having more trouble as a tank and going with the STA and STR lines.  I am curious about the post on the INT lines.  We have always believed that the heal crit is not worthwhile, b/c our lifetaps crit on the spell crit.  I would curious to see if anyone has experimented with and without the heal crit with a parser to see the difference.All in all though, with the number of points in AA and the few lines we actually have, it basically comes down to personal preference.

[skycruise]

I have done some testing with heal crits and a parser back in T7, but not recently.  It worked out that I would get a lot more overall total heal amount per fight with my heal crits maxed out, and constant use of grave blessing which accounted for over 50% of my self heals.  even though my total health was lower than if I went with sta, my heals were more than what that amount would have been.I'll run some numbers on a parser later tonight and change my AA lines.  Anyone have some tests they would like me to try?  I figure 20 fights of the same mob should be good for sufficient data, following the same sequence of attacks, just to keep it the same.  I need to test out some equipment choices too, which I may post even though it is unrelated.

[Sippin]

<p><span style="font-size: small;font-family: Times New Roman;">Here is a couple of suggestions to test:</span></p><p>Shadow knight AAs not as important but build out the reaver line so that you get Reaver.  I was looking at my logs and even in solo play I found that it procs a heal when you do spell damage. Since taunt is not logged any where its really hard to test the effectiveness of siphon hate.</p><p>Cursader AA's:</p><p>set up 1: </p><p>Int 4-4-8</p><p>Str 7-4-4-8-1</p><p>sta 7-4-8-8-1</p><p>set up 2:</p><p>Int 4-4-8</p><p>wis 4-4-4-8-1</p><p>Str 8-4-4-8-1</p><p>sta 6</p><p>setup 3:</p><p>sta- 8-4-8-8-1</p><p>wis- 4-4-6-8-1</p><p>int 4-4-8</p><p>Also any line where you also you put points into int as follows:  4-4-8-8</p><p>I have only been back in game a month and I have long thought based on previous research that our heals proc of damage crits and so the crit heals made no diffrence.  however with the above post about noticing more crits I am curious if its true.</p><p>Results I am curious about that can be parsed:</p><p>total damage and frequency of damage crits.</p><p>total healing and frequency of healing crits.</p><p>Results that will be based largely on how you feel the toon is playing.</p><p>difference in difficulty in holding agro</p><p>And how useful a permanent immunity to fear is.</p><p>Thanks in advance for doing the testing.</p>

[Faheuc]

<cite>skycruise wrote:</cite><blockquote>Why not go Int AA line, 4 - 4 - 8 - 8 - 1 ?I have found my heal crits to be every other crit, and with tap veins, it tends to hit and heal hard with this setup.Grave blessing, as well as the other spells,  crit on me every second one.I've found it to be especially good in a group as it gives you an extra amount of heals compared to if you did not have any heal crit %.Any other sk out there running this way?</blockquote>Because most of the heals we get are lifetaps, effected by spell crit chances. When the dmg portion crits, so does the heal part. That is my understanding anyway.

[Beldin_]

<cite>Ranadin@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even still I don't see the point of the passive hate gain for an entire 8 points... even without a coercer or dirge I don't have trouble holding aggro.</blockquote>Hm.. whats your level ? Before RoK i agree with you, however in RoK mostly every tank has aggro problems if the DPS-classes do full DPS.

[Sippin]

<p>I have accumlated quite a few AA points since I last posted and started building my crusader tree.  </p><p>Observations:</p><p>If there was any doubt our heals do in fact crit on damage.  I respected my AAs to build the str and sta lines and my lifetaps (both damage and heal) don't crit nearly as much as they did when I had 4-4-8 into the int line.</p><p> There seems to be a break point in ease of taunting around 5.  I also found that after I respected I had some difficulty (not alot) with 4 into idolic axe vs 5 when I got my next AA point.  Now when I say difficulty I mean I had to be far more on my toes than just simple taunting.  With 5 I found that the only time I lost agro is if I had some miss-timing on my taunt sequence order mainly for adds.  I still plan on going a full 8 points but might respect later if I want additional stuff.</p><p> The STA line for the win!!!!!.  I respected to get this full line per a suggestion of another SK in guild since I was having a tough time soling some 83^ mobs for my epic and after that decided that as nice as the added damage and heal crits I the int line is getting built last. Between divine aura and the 10% timer improvement off the str line it was worth respecting the points.  Also it was slick to be buffed to over 14k hps <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />.</p><p>Now mind you that I have only been back in game a month after a year long break and even now I still find changes in the game that what I have been use to.  One thing still holds true now that was true pre-EoF is that you have options to set your toon up according to how you play.  Try enough setups and you will find one that works.</p>

[Xanoth]

<cite>Dehiah@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Because most of the heals we get are lifetaps, effected by spell crit chances. When the dmg portion crits, so does the heal part. That is my understanding anyway.</blockquote>+damage also effects our life taps+healing does <b>nothing</b> for us.Tested it with a +1000 heal mod from a fury.Obviously there isn't really a way to test heal crits without spell crits being present.  But it would stand to reason that if +healing does nothing for our heals, +healcrit doesn't either.If you want more healing, increase the damage your life taps do, and get more HP so reaver hits for more.The end ability of the INT line might be useful once in a blue moon, but you can happily live without it.Most spec something like:STR 48822STA 44862INT 448with 8 free to spend as you choose.As I don't raid with my alt (I have been MT for all T1 RoK raid zones with no problems), I'm happy with less HP and no Divine Aura inorder to get 25% AE auto attack.  Still debating dropping 3 points from melee crit to make it 40% AE auto attack.

[skycruise]

My tests will be based on the following AA for crusaders:str: 6-8-8-0-1agi: sta: 4-7-8wis: int: 4-4-8-8-1VSstr: 6-8-8-0-1agi: sta: 4-7-8wis: int: 4-4-8-0-0I won't use reflect so that should not factor into the testing.My gear will be the same in both tests.  No food or drink will be consumed.I'll try to get a decent sized sample of data and be running Advanced Combat tracker to keep logs.Edit 1: (With the First AA Setup (Crit Heals)) and 12 encounters of fishmen. lvl 79-80^ only using the spells below.Jarsath Wastes - [12] 10:57:18 PM | All - [00:00] 11:00:16 PM | Wontonderler | Healed (Out)without 8 points of AA in crit hits:                Type                    Hits    CritHits    Damage    Ext DPS    AverageAll                        430    276    145087    282.27    337.41Voracious Soul    135    116    79364    154.4    587.88Shadow Coil        128    102    11755    22.87    91.84Grim Strike            32    24    11537    22.45    360.53Siphon Vitae         29    18    17915    34.85    617.76Unholy Strike        11    9    1894    3.68    172.18Tap                       12    7    8494    16.53    707.83Reaver's Mania     82    0    12628    24.57    154Death Touch          1    0    1500    2.92    1500Type                    Hits    CritHits    Damage    Ext DPS    AverageWith 8 point os AA in crit hits:            Type                    Hits    CritHits    Damage    Ext DPS    Average        All                        346    244    113990    265.09    329.45Voracious Soul    120    99    69884    162.52    582.37Shadow Coil        105    89    9616    22.36    91.58Grim Strike            30    24    8584    19.96    286.13Siphon Vitae         20    16    12467    28.99    623.35Tap                       11    9    2822    6.56    256.55Unholy Strike          6    5    741    1.72    123.5Death Touch          2    2    1866    4.34    933Reaver's Mania    52    0    8010    18.63    154.04Type                    Hits    CritHits    Damage    Ext DPS    Average  As you can see, it appears that the crit heals make no difference!  i'll try to get some more data later.

[Redwud33]

<cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>If you want to play in pick up groups, then I would suggest the followingINT  4-4-8STA 4-4-8-8-1STR 4-4-8-8-1Reaver lineHate line</blockquote>Would you recommed getting them in that order?  I'm new to a SK(well, new to game in general) and i'm just looking for some help.

[Soefje]

<cite>Redwud3381 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>If you want to play in pick up groups, then I would suggest the followingINT  4-4-8STA 4-4-8-8-1STR 4-4-8-8-1Reaver lineHate line</blockquote>Would you recommed getting them in that order?  I'm new to a SK(well, new to game in general) and i'm just looking for some help.</blockquote>For me,  I would goINT 4-4-8ReaverHateSTR or STAthen the other one.This is for someone that plays in pickup groups and solo.  (Well actually, I have been playing my warlock, b/c my SK is so broken right now.)

[inthere1]

I duo with my wifes beserker primarily.  I know it is alot easier to duo with tank/healer, but we already have several combos of duos with that set up and figured on trying something different.  Through our current 26 lvls I have noticed I can't hold agro even if I am the one that pulls.  So I primarily just DPS now.  My question was for an AA set up with this duo.  I currently have 14 points in the INT tree.  After maxing the spell crit should I max melee crit, then work on reaver? Thanks 

[seamus]

<cite>inthere1 wrote:</cite><blockquote>I duo with my wifes beserker primarily.  I know it is alot easier to duo with tank/healer, but we already have several combos of duos with that set up and figured on trying something different.  Through our current 26 lvls I have noticed I can't hold agro even if I am the one that pulls.  So I primarily just DPS now.  My question was for an AA set up with this duo.  I currently have 14 points in the INT tree.  After maxing the spell crit should I max melee crit, then work on reaver? Thanks </blockquote><p>In most situations its prudent to max the buff for the blessings in the Reaver line. You can cast your blessings on your wife so its still beneficial, always surprises me how many SK's don't know that 1) we can FD other people 2) cast our blessings on other people. BTW if you FD your wife, I guarantee you'll get aggro ... and not just from the mob <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>But I would think using your blessing on your wife would make things go smoother and faster. It should also allow you to tackle tougher content then without it.</p>