Lifetaps and Utility

[Nole]

<p>So I got to thinking. Our lifetaps are a huge and central feature of the SK class, but they're almost useless to us if we're not the ones taking the damage.</p><p>How about giving SKs an ability that makes it so if you lifetap at 100% life the healing goes to a raid/group member instead (maybe the most hurt one or maybe give us a buff to put on someone that directs extra life at them?). However it works, the combat log needs to make it clear where that healing is comming from (I'm sick of putting Grave Blessing on the tank and getting no credit for either the damage or healing it does). The point is we'd keep doing what we're currently doing, but we'd end up doing some healing on other people as long as we ourselves are at full health.</p><p>Would it make us worthwhile, who knows? Would it help make us more useful? Yes.</p>

[evilgamer]

<p>In Eq1 Sk's had a lifetap that healed the group and returned power to them.  It was quite useful and well loved by many.</p><p>Sk's in EQ 1 also had a aggro buff and the best aoe taunt.</p><p>Ahh the good old days.</p>

[Stuge]

<span style="font-family: courier new,courier;">This is a neat idea.  Could work on a targeted basis and be very effective.  Add a, <i>'If caster is at 100% health, siphoned health will be applied to caster's target'  </i>clause to each of our lifetaps.  I like it.</span>

[Uggli]

I like like this line of thought.  But I would not add a group/raid healing ability to it, leave that to the pallies/healers.   I would make it add to our DPS.   If we are at 100% life, it does x1.5 damage.  (or what ever the magic number is)   It will not boost our already good solo ability as you don't sit at 100% too long, especially if Reaver is running.  It would give us a bump for aggro in the start of group battles when you are more likely to have 100% HP, which addresses one of our other issues,  aggro generation.Another idea is to allow us to self over heal.  Each life tap puts a differnt "buff" on us for X time where every point we self heal from that spell over 100% is added to our total health pool for the duration of the buff.   Balance it with buff duration to make it a small window or to limit the recast of it so it's not a permanant buff.  Both of the above ideas as AA lines for a future expansion would be a good idea also.....  Can have two profiles.  One for DPS, and one for max HP.  And depending on how the 2nd option is limited, allowing both might not be too powerful.

[Nole]

I imagine having healing spill over if we're at 100% also adds to our aggro. Like if we're the tank, we get hit healed, then lifetap lands at 100%, having that spill over into a heal on someone else would give us some healing aggro that we wouldn't get under the current system.

[MirageKnight]

<cite>Aiya@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>So I got to thinking. Our lifetaps are a huge and central feature of the SK class, but they're almost useless to us if we're not the ones taking the damage.</p><p>How about giving SKs an ability that makes it so if you lifetap at 100% life the healing goes to a raid/group member instead (maybe the most hurt one or maybe give us a buff to put on someone that directs extra life at them?). However it works, the combat log needs to make it clear where that healing is comming from (I'm sick of putting Grave Blessing on the tank and getting no credit for either the damage or healing it does). The point is we'd keep doing what we're currently doing, but we'd end up doing some healing on other people as long as we ourselves are at full health.</p><p>Would it make us worthwhile, who knows? Would it help make us more useful? Yes.</p></blockquote>I don't know if you can call as "TAP is SK's central strength" as Itemization Developer totally screwed on this by allowing (by creating) items that give other class to do tap more than SK.By looking at SK's combat arts and spells too, SK has very limited choice as tap by command :which lead to question about SK's epic weapon, regarding if Itemization Developer really knew about SK.(making it luck trigger (proc) and tap generate more hate for duration after that? knowing how many CA/Spell SK really do have (2 if single target), this is unbelievable.)<b>Selected Tap by SK</b>1) Fetid Strike line (CA) single target2) Vitae line (Spell) single target3) Tap Arteries line (Spell) AoE (8 targets) cast time 2secIF SK take associated AA4) Grim Coil line (Spell) single target<b>Buff (up to luck type trigger tap)</b>Self Buff : Unholy Weapon line : auto attack > tap (self)Group Buff : Unholy Hunger line : any melee attack (include CA) > tap (grp)<b>Tap Ward (semi selected tap by SK) can be casted to others</b>Infernal Blessing line : 5 triggersAnd if some think Reaver is tap, it is not. (means won't get any boost by spell dmg item nor counted as tap at all).Tap amount is not par to how much mob's can do the dmg (epic/heroic) to SK as well.I think this is one of the SK's problem as class as well; tap has became NOT the center of SK's strength as class strength.

[Nole]

<cite>MirageKnight wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Aiya@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>So I got to thinking. Our lifetaps are a huge and central feature of the SK class, but they're almost useless to us if we're not the ones taking the damage.</p><p>How about giving SKs an ability that makes it so if you lifetap at 100% life the healing goes to a raid/group member instead (maybe the most hurt one or maybe give us a buff to put on someone that directs extra life at them?). However it works, the combat log needs to make it clear where that healing is comming from (I'm sick of putting Grave Blessing on the tank and getting no credit for either the damage or healing it does). The point is we'd keep doing what we're currently doing, but we'd end up doing some healing on other people as long as we ourselves are at full health.</p><p>Would it make us worthwhile, who knows? Would it help make us more useful? Yes.</p></blockquote>I don't know if you can call as "TAP is SK's central strength" as Itemization Developer totally screwed on this by allowing (by creating) items that give other class to do tap more than SK.By looking at SK's combat arts and spells too, SK has very limited choice as tap by command :which lead to question about SK's epic weapon, regarding if Itemization Developer really knew about SK.(making it luck trigger (proc) and tap generate more hate for duration after that? knowing how many CA/Spell SK really do have (2 if single target), this is unbelievable.)<b>Selected Tap by SK</b>1) Fetid Strike line (CA) single target2) Vitae line (Spell) single target3) Tap Arteries line (Spell) AoE (8 targets) cast time 2secIF SK take associated AA4) Grim Coil line (Spell) single target<b>Buff (up to luck type trigger tap)</b>Self Buff : Unholy Weapon line : auto attack > tap (self)Group Buff : Unholy Hunger line : any melee attack (include CA) > tap (grp)<b>Tap Ward (semi selected tap by SK) can be casted to others</b>Infernal Blessing line : 5 triggersAnd if some think Reaver is tap, it is not. (means won't get any boost by spell dmg item nor counted as tap at all).Tap amount is not par to how much mob's can do the dmg (epic/heroic) to SK as well.I think this is one of the SK's problem as class as well; tap has became NOT the center of SK's strength as class strength.</blockquote><p>I ran Halls of Fate last night with two wardens and my lifetaps outhealed them both... combined. I'm not exactly sure what class you're claiming can do better than that. On a different run in KC where I wasn't tanking so most of my taps were wasted I managed to make 25% of the tank's healing come from Voracious Soul (the Infernal Blessing proc). Now normally I don't outheal the healers, but it's usually close. I imagine if I were tanking a raid, it wouldn't be so close.</p>

[Tiberuis]

<p>Nice post, and an interesting idea.  </p><p>I personally would like to see the group heals stay in the realm of the Paladin.  Let's see the Shadowknight's DPS get fixed.</p><p>How about a 500% increase in damage on Harm Touch, and a reduction in re-use timer of about 5 mins?  Not usable in PVP comabt in that context.  That works for me.  Killing and weakening opponents is the mantra of the SK.</p><p>My Guardian friend parsed over 5K zone wide in his guild's SOH raid the other night.  a well geared raiding Shadowknight will be lucky to hit 3.5K.  </p><p>Considering how the Guardian is superior to the SK in the realm of tanking and aggro management in every conceivable way, it makes me sick to see us hurting so badly in in DPS compared the the warrior plate tanks.  It is obviously a very poor game design, and lousy work by the class design devs.</p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;color: #ff0000;">FIX SK's DPS in 2008!</span></b></p><p><img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Stuge]

<span style="font-family: courier new,courier;">SK taps passing life to allies isn't unheard of (EQ's Zevfeer's Bite for example).Though I do like the deal as well of excess lifetaps going towards damage to our target.  If we aren't going to get the same level of survivability as other plate tanks, I'm all for being armored DPS/hate machines.  Frankly no other tank class should be able to manage aggro as well as the SK.</span>

[Levatino]

good idea by the op, maybe then we would be a nice addition to a raid force.

[Uggli]

Healing others isn't something I would want to be pulled into a raid for.Tanking(coupled with aggro), survivability, and DPS should be the order of focus on the raid front.   Tank utility should be almost nil for raids, and only there to fill gaps in group situations.It would also help if raid encounters were engineered a bit better so it's not just "aggro lock a mob,  time the AE, and spam the DPS!!!" for close to every mob.   Just making the AE's nastier or mob hitting harder is not innovative.  The scripting ability in EQ2 can do so much more as we have seen in a few places,  frelling use it!

[Nole]

<p>The problem with that idea though, is unless they start requiring 6 tanks for raids, tank classes are going to miss out if they don't have a utility role. While it would be nice to be as viable as guardians for the MT role, the reality is that regardless of what they do one class will be the best MT, and the others will suffer. (That and the likelyhood of them making us better than guardians is slim to none.)</p><p>The advantage of my suggestion is that you'd end up healing without really doing anything different. It's not like a pally who has to actively heal and change his spell rotation to switch to healing. You'd just go on DPSing, and health that would have been wasted because you're at 100% would go to someone else.</p>

[Margen]

<p>I know some SKs snear at the idea of Utility and want us to be even with Guards in tanking, well I would love to be even with them, but lets be honest we have never been even with Guards in tanking.  Its just this expansion its become more and more clear that the Guards are way over powered compared to other tanks.</p><p>Plus tanking is two slots in a raid force, with Guards controling the MT role and also stepping into the OT role that leaves the rest of the plate fighters in the cold (monks have a postion in raids, but Brusiers are having their own problems also).  So that leaves either dps or utility.</p><p>Raids now are built around dps and utility, why do you think so many raid forces are running with 4 bards and 3 enchanters.  So you have limited slots for six classes (2 or 3 if lucky) so you have few slots for an entire arch class and one class in that group is king.  So you need to have the fighter classes bring something else to a raid besides just tanking, or this situation will never improves.</p><p>Personally I think SKs should be upgraded to close to tier 2 dps, we have been so dumped on for so long by Sony they owe us some serious love (so if some scouts get upset about that I really don't care anymore), plus we should have major upgrade to our debuffs, that seems to my way of thinking more inline with the SK concept vs healing another player (not hammering the OP, least it is an idea to help us).</p><p>I would love to be equal to a guard in standing in front of the mobs and taking the hits, but I really don't think sony will ever do it, because the Guards would scream and we can't upset the golden boys (girls).  So they need to up the dps for SK substantially (you know like say a DPS tank) and bring some utility that actualy makes some difference.</p>