Help my 51 sk be a better fighter.

[Nebul]

<p>The sk has many spells and utilities that aren't for damage or taunting, but serve a different purpose. During combat when and what spells do you use for debuffing etc? Spell order is welcomed.</p>

[evilgamer]

<p>My spell order pulling when soloing is.</p><p>Ward < Pet (long cast time) + hit range attack < disease debuff/enc taunt < wisdom debuff melee < siphon str < disease dots (grim coil) < disease nukes</p><p>Then I just keep my ward refreshed by using my knockdown CA keep the wis and disease debuff on and just cast stuff as it refreshes.</p><p>I perfer to get the mobs resistances & str fully debuffed  and then start casting dots and nukes.</p>

[Razlath]

<cite>Nebular wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The sk has many spells and utilities that aren't for damage or taunting, but serve a different purpose. During combat when and what spells do you use for debuffing etc? Spell order is welcomed.</p></blockquote><p>When pulling / tanking heroics, here is my normal order.</p><p>Prebuff with the self reactive so that the healer doesn't have to prebuff me as early (this is beefed to max with AAs). </p><p>Body pull mob and back as quickly as possible back to the party.</p><p>When mob gets to where I want it, I charge forward and hit my pull button.  This button warns the party that the mob is heroic, and to allow me to position it before they engage (IE spin the mob).  It also hits my group taunt, and siphon strength.  While I am hitting this button I am running forward (both taunt and siphon can be used while moving) and through the mob.  This is the point that my normal inquis partner begins casting her group reactive.</p><p>Once I am behind the mob I immediately hit Shield Bash.  This puts the mob on its butt and starts ticking off some hate beyond the group taunt.  The mob falling down is a great sign to the party that the mob is in position and they can feel free to begin.  The stun also usually gives the inquis time to finish that group reactive and start on the single target (she sometimes switches up the order if a mob was particularly mean to me on the way back).</p><p>After that I immediately hit my heroic opp macro which starts my heroic, fires grim coil (advances heroic), and then fires my single target taunt (completes heroic).  Grim coil has the lifetap mod added to it, so I have some health coming in as well</p><p>By this point I have triggered 3 spells for reaver to feed off of, which also helps to not need prebuffs.  After this my casting order largely depends on what is going on, but autopilot is as follows:</p><p>Kick the mob putting it on the ground again (mobs seem to really not like knockdown attacks for some reason).  Sometimes I have my wis AA melee attack trigger buff macroed after the kick, but frankly it doesn't do enough damage to be worth casting.</p><p>Trigger my macro that fires swift attack followed by agonizing strike (the wis debuffer).</p><p>Trigger my macro that casts legionnaire's smite followed by pariah's strike.  If I know I have a spell casting reactive on me from my friendly neighborhood enchanter I will use this just after kick instead.</p><p>After that, it is a free for all of what is up.  I tend to rotate through the abils listed adding in the two life taps as appropriate, and maybe adding in our normal nuke macroed with the mana seige abil.  I focus heavily on my taunts and pretty much hit my HO macro every time it is up.  Shield bash I will use if it is up unless the mob is in red.  Same for group taunt.  Once I have a feel for how fast things die I will use these two appopriately.  I try to keep a spell going in every so often so that reaver helps more than it hurts.  If the mob appears to be very locked down on aggro and not dying quickly I will throw out our snare nuke.  If aggro is a problem I never use the snare nuke it just takes too long to cast.  Same thing for the pet.  If aggro appears to be a non-issue and I have cycled all my abils I will pop the pet.  Most groups never make it through more than two cycles of taunts though, so the snare nuke and pet are rarely used in a full group.  Mostly I just use them if the group appears to be light on DPS.</p><p>Adds:</p><p>When adds come in I hit my PBAoE that does not have a dot component but does have the dispel component first.  Then I pop deathmarch.  If I don't have my normal coercer backing me up I throw painful aura followed by deathmarch instead.  The point is you have to be sure you are on the hate list before throwing deathmarch or it doesn't seem to give you the aggro for that mob.  I don't dump all my AoEs at once because I want to have something left if another mob wanders up.  If there is no crowd control happening I will throw out a Tap Veins after the adds show up which has Contagion macroed on the end of it.  This gives the healer a chance to realize, oh crap, non mezzed adds, better go into overdrive.  If there is CC going on, these two are almost pointless.</p><p>Multi-mob encounters:</p><p>When these show up (they are rare) I will treat them as I do the adds above.  However, I also will try to throw on the mit steal buff before CC can hit.  Since my CC person is insanely fast at locking down encounters I will often throw Painful Aura as soon as I get behind the mob before shield bash.  Then I cast the mit siphon.  By the time it finishes casting the dots have broken the mezzes and I actually get the mit from all mobs.  Then the CC can re-mez the mobs without trouble.</p><p>Losing Aggro:</p><p>It happends every now and then.  If your party works well with you it happens a lot less.  I tank in defensive so the boost to agression makes my taunts resisted less, and I also have a few points spent on making the group taunt less resistable up front.  Since the group taunt is the first one I throw I want it to stick (without question if possible).  Plus the group taunt is direct taunt not Over Time, very important for when the big beginning encounter stuff is dropping.  However, all that said, you can still lose the aggro, we don't need to go into all the reasons why here. ;}  </p><p>When that happens, you can rescue the mob back to you (if at the beginning of the fight, and I don't have to do it often I will choose this route).  You can hit Harm Touch for a nice big boost in aggro.  I don't like to use this one as much because I have the Lifetap AA added to harm touch so I tend to save it for when the healer seems to need some help.  Finally, you can hit Deathmarch (assuming you haven't already).  This is actually my preferred method of rescuing.  It generally makes the mob very angry, and then I go into crazy aggro mode.  I slam as many hate abils down as I can, and then as many spells as I can.  With the crit rate from the INT line these tend to crit a lot so are fairly good at pulling aggro back.  Just be sure you keep up the pressue after deathmarch or you end up helping the DPSers more than yourself and thus loosing aggro again.  </p><p>Of course another option (sort of) is to just use normal taunts / hate builds and hope you get the aggro back.  If the party member consistently pulls aggro I will often use this for a short period of time until I don't think they will survive another hit.  Then I rescue them back.  ;}  If the person pulling aggro is a brigand (or swashy I think), be aware that they have an abil to go into steal and drop hate positions.  If this is the first time they have pulled aggro, let them fix it so you can save your rescues for peeps who can't save themselves that way.</p><p>Hopefully that helps Nebular.  It is kind of long, but I tried to cover the basics in each situation of what I do.</p>

[Nebul]

Thx alot for the extended response!

[Soefje]

Few things I have noticed:Seems to me like the melee attacks with debuffs and the lifetaps are considered having a spell component and Reaver fires.Don't forget that Rescue will finish an HO.  Seems to generate a ton of hate that way.  If you have someone that has pulled aggro and you have time start the HO and finish it with Rescue.Deathmarch will sometimes pull the whole room.  Got to be careful where you use it.Doom Rays has a nice debuff and if you can use it (have the room), do so, even with solo mobs, especailly names.To me Despoiling Mist is not generating as much hate as it used to.  Not sure if this was part of nerf and not fixed or if I was just over-estimating the amount of hate it generated to begin with.  But to be honest, I have not played much since it was "fixed".Telling your group not to open up until you KB with Shield Bash is a great way to get them to let you turn the mob and get hate started.

[Razlath]

<cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Deathmarch will sometimes pull the whole room.  Got to be careful where you use it.</blockquote>How odd, I have experienced the exact opposite.  If I am not on a mobs hate list death march does not pull the mob at all.  It is part of why I like the Hate drain from party members AA.  It makes sure that if a party member is on the hate list so am I.  ;}  Of course this doesn't help until they are actually aggroed on.  ;}

[Soefje]

<cite>Dartak@Nektulos wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Deathmarch will sometimes pull the whole room.  Got to be careful where you use it.</blockquote>How odd, I have experienced the exact opposite.  If I am not on a mobs hate list death march does not pull the mob at all.  It is part of why I like the Hate drain from party members AA.  It makes sure that if a party member is on the hate list so am I.  ;}  Of course this doesn't help until they are actually aggroed on.  ;}</blockquote>All I know is that I have been in Sebilis and in KC, had a walker add, used DM, because I thought I had the room, and ended up pulling the whole room, and even mobs through the wall (which I was not standing by).  They all attacked me, so I assumed it was DM.  Might have been some other bug or someone in the group, but it has happend on several occasions and with different group set ups.

[Razlath]

<cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dartak@Nektulos wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kraace@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Deathmarch will sometimes pull the whole room.  Got to be careful where you use it.</blockquote>How odd, I have experienced the exact opposite.  If I am not on a mobs hate list death march does not pull the mob at all.  It is part of why I like the Hate drain from party members AA.  It makes sure that if a party member is on the hate list so am I.  ;}  Of course this doesn't help until they are actually aggroed on.  ;}</blockquote>All I know is that I have been in Sebilis and in KC, had a walker add, used DM, because I thought I had the room, and ended up pulling the whole room, and even mobs through the wall (which I was not standing by).  They all attacked me, so I assumed it was DM.  Might have been some other bug or someone in the group, but it has happend on several occasions and with different group set ups.</blockquote><p>Oh, that is probably just becuase the social bubbles in those places are HUGE!  If the mob went active while still within social range of his friends he brings them, and then they go active and bring their friends.  If he was outside the "safe to attack" bubble when deathmarch hit him that is probably what happened.  I don't usually deathmarch until the mob is in the middle of the party to avoid this.  I also like to let them run past me (usually to the healer) and time deathmarch so it triggers just as the mob is past the mob I am fighting.  Then when I take aggro through DM it turns itself and moving to it afterwards is much easier.</p><p>Great point Kraace, you have to be careful when using any AoE including deathmarch (it seems to have a huge range on engaged mobs it will effect).  If you activate a mob outside the "safe to attack zone" it is just like you nuke pulled it and mobs will social add appropriately.  In zones with thin walls (such as KC and Nektropos Castle) this can be deadly.</p>

[Margen]

I've also had my AOEs go through the walls in sebilis, specially in the lower parts.  I got the entire room with that bug, very annoying.