Improvements for the SK - something to feed back to Developers

[Anselan]

<DIV>I thought it would be worthwhile to generate a list of realistic improvements we would like to see for the class, and I mean realistic - not balance upsetting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My thoughts as someone who's heading towards being fabled, and raid tanking more often are as follows:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1) Make Sacrilege an AOE taunt as opposed to encounter specific. I'd change nothing else, but this would allow taunting of 2 encounters without using deathmarch. My reason for this is purely to save the healers - DM is dependant (all my empirical evidence of it points to this) on the number of people in the group engaged in combat. If we get adds it's typically the healer that gets ganked as Sacrilege only affects thetargetted encounter and the rest of the group have not engaged the the mob yet.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2) The EOF class specific AA's need completely overhauled. Currently the hate line is going to be rendered largely useless due to the introduction of aggression on defensive stance. I'd suggest increasing the hate generated by these taunts similar to the Venemous Slam AA. The percentage increase should be balanced accordingly. I don't think this would be unbalanced given the DOT component of our taunts.</DIV> <DIV>The EoF AA's really need examined as most don't offer a a great deal, particularly the Disease line, the Hate line and the end abilities of all 3 lines are really not that functional - with the REaver end AA being detrimental to better equipped players and the bleed pool being totally useless given how hard mobs hit after the nerf. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3) As someone who is verging on Fabled I find it difficult to raise my Int to high levels, I think this is probably more true of people just starting out in the class who are largely legendary or master crafted. I'd suggest reducing the INT loss for defensive if not eliminating it completely.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>4) Give us Nefarious Sacrement as a permanent pet, I miss my pet from EQ. I'd also suggest transfering it's aggro directly to us as generated, this would help aggro retention, and increasing it's HPs so it can survive an AoE. If I'm raid tanking I'm so focused on cycling my taunts, abominable anger, blessing and snare that I have no time to cast the pet. In groups we can kill so quick that there is no point. This may also go someway towards parity of the buckler lines on the warriors.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>5) Itemisation. Although I feel this is improving, I'd like to see some Crusader specific symbols that help us tank and are an upgrade to the cobalt censer.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>6) Feign Death. Our version is almost totally useless. If I'm tanking or raid tanking then I'm generally first or second to go down. If it's a wipe then normally we're high enough on the aggro list that we feign and the mob spends those 20seconds killing other people and we stand up just in time to get ganked. Or people run away and we catch the mob on it's way to reset. It's only use is for feigning button mashing DPS. Make it a no duration spell like monks and necro's or add a memwipe/aggro wipe component to it. Doing this would just give it a use, it wouldn't break any balance at all.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>7) As a general point. Raids are 24 person max, enough for 1 of each class which I think was a deliberate design intention. However, it must be said that most guilds would be happy enough to take 2 warriors and replace the crusaders/brawlers with DPS classes or healers for most raids. Give us something that would really contribute on a raid if we are nto tanking.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I've put this out to generate discussion, if I'm mistaken or have missed something please post, and put up suggestions for what you feel would make us more useful without releaagting other classes to the short bus.</DIV>

[Norrsken]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Anselan wrote:<BR> <DIV>I thought it would be worthwhile to generate a list of realistic improvements we would like to see for the class, and I mean realistic - not balance upsetting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My thoughts as someone who's heading towards being fabled, and raid tanking more often are as follows:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1) Make Sacrilege an AOE taunt as opposed to encounter specific. I'd change nothing else, but this would allow taunting of 2 encounters without using deathmarch. My reason for this is purely to save the healers - DM is dependant (all my empirical evidence of it points to this) on the number of people in the group engaged in combat. If we get adds it's typically the healer that gets ganked as Sacrilege only affects thetargetted encounter and the rest of the group have not engaged the the mob yet.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0033>IT would work nicely with our AE setup in general. I however like the encounter taunt when running back from a body pull. Most of the time I hit it ont he way back to the group, that and despoil.. Though, I guess I would be able to adapt pretty easily (And happily) to it being turned into a real ae.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2) The EOF class specific AA's need completely overhauled. Currently the hate line is going to be rendered largely useless due to the introduction of aggression on defensive stance. I'd suggest increasing the hate generated by these taunts similar to the Venemous Slam AA. The percentage increase should be balanced accordingly. I don't think this would be unbalanced given the DOT component of our taunts.</DIV> <DIV>The EoF AA's really need examined as most don't offer a a great deal, particularly the Disease line, the Hate line and the end abilities of all 3 lines are really not that functional - with the REaver end AA being detrimental to better equipped players and the bleed pool being totally useless given how hard mobs hit after the nerf. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3) As someone who is verging on Fabled I find it difficult to raise my Int to high levels, I think this is probably more true of people just starting out in the class who are largely legendary or master crafted. I'd suggest reducing the INT loss for defensive if not eliminating it completely.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>4) Give us Nefarious Sacrement as a permanent pet, I miss my pet from EQ. I'd also suggest transfering it's aggro directly to us as generated, this would help aggro retention, and increasing it's HPs so it can survive an AoE. If I'm raid tanking I'm so focused on cycling my taunts, abominable anger, blessing and snare that I have no time to cast the pet. In groups we can kill so quick that there is no point. This may also go someway towards parity of the buckler lines on the warriors.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0033>Not that I really want to be a pet class, but it would be nice. Give us a line for where we can buff the silly sod as well. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Those that dont like it, dont use it.<BR>(Good AA thingymabob for the next expansion perhaps?)</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0033></FONT> </DIV> <DIV>5) Itemisation. Although I feel this is improving, I'd like to see some Crusader specific symbols that help us tank and are an upgrade to the cobalt censer.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>6) Feign Death. Our version is almost totally useless. If I'm tanking or raid tanking then I'm generally first or second to go down. If it's a wipe then normally we're high enough on the aggro list that we feign and the mob spends those 20seconds killing other people and we stand up just in time to get ganked. Or people run away and we catch the mob on it's way to reset. It's only use is for feigning button mashing DPS. Make it a no duration spell like monks and necro's or add a memwipe/aggro wipe component to it. Doing this would just give it a use, it wouldn't break any balance at all.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0033>Its marginally useful for soloing and grouping. As well as for duoing. Though, too long reuse and too short duration to actually be of any use.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>7) As a general point. Raids are 24 person max, enough for 1 of each class which I think was a deliberate design intention. However, it must be said that most guilds would be happy enough to take 2 warriors and replace the crusaders/brawlers with DPS classes or healers for most raids. Give us something that would really contribute on a raid if we are nto tanking.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I've put this out to generate discussion, if I'm mistaken or have missed something please post, and put up suggestions for what you feel would make us more useful without releaagting other classes to the short bus.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>

[Xanoth]

1) disagree, for AE taunt we have death march thats enough, i'm happy with sacrilage as is.2) agree, i have a 70 illusionist which has some nice EoF AA's, as does my 60 defiler, 64 swash isn't bad... but i do think SKs have one of the worst i've seen.3) kinda agree, i'd rather they gave us a seporate buf for int, and removed int from our off stance, replacing it with a spell proc or something. thus letting us have the int we desporatly need for agro in def stance, yet giving a meaning for off stance.4) my defiler got a pet i dont want, my illusionist got a pet i dont want, PLEASE DONT GIVE MY SK A PET I DONT WANT! for those that want it, make a TRUELY optional AA path. not like the defiler one, where every branch is pet, pet, pet, pet, and... pet! that way those that want it get it, those that dont can pretend it doesn't exist.5) agreed, its really pathetic that one of the best symbol options for tanking is a T6 crafted item of which there isn't even a T7 replacement. there are a few nice items in EoF too, but i doubt there is a decent symbol.6) duno, i dont find our fiegn much use other than out of comabat, making someone kiss the dirt if they annoy me (usually a certain zerker), but i dont find i have much use for it other than a crap version of what other classes FD does. its jsut too risky to try to FD someone on a raid if they pull agro, and i doubt it's realy worth it.7) i dont think we really need it, its just few raids would ever really need 6 tanks. they either need to give across the board a more appealing side to having more tanks on a raid, or have a lot more encounters that need adds off tanking. people waking up and paying attention to how things are, rather than were would help too (but devs can't help with that).my main christmas list would be:better itemisationseporating int from off stance so we can buff our real primary stat in def stancea better SK achievement tree

[Anselan]

<P>I was hoping that this would generate more discussion than it has.</P> <P> </P> <P>On the pet side it's just about making Nefarious sacrement something permanent instead of a 30sec animated pet/dot that gets wiped out by AoEs and requires recasting. I don't wish to see us become a pet dependant class, just requesting a throw back to how it was in EQ with the pet.</P> <P>I know DM acts as an AOE taunt but I'm not familiar with how the guard/zerker ones work and their recast, but I am sure they are shorter recast than DM (please correct me if I am wrong).</P> <P> </P><p>Message Edited by Anselan on <span class=date_text>12-18-2006</span> <span class=time_text>07:26 AM</span>

[Xanoth]

insolent gibe is the same recast

[Mistmoore-Milaga]

<div><blockquote><hr>Anselan wrote:  <div>1) Make Sacrilege an AOE taunt as opposed to encounter specific. I'd change nothing else, but this would allow taunting of 2 encounters without using deathmarch. My reason for this is purely to save the healers - DM is dependant (all my empirical evidence of it points to this) on the number of people in the group engaged in combat. If we get adds it's typically the healer that gets ganked as Sacrilege only affects thetargetted encounter and the rest of the group have not engaged the the mob yet.</div> <div><font color="#ffff00">Sacrilege is our only active method of maintaining aggro in a group without affecting things out of the encounter. It's also got a better range than out of encounter AOEs, and some tanks who use them have trouble on pulls because one or two mobs will be out of range. I'm quite happy with this how it is.</font> </div> <div>2) The EOF class specific AA's need completely overhauled. Currently the hate line is going to be rendered largely useless due to the introduction of aggression on defensive stance. I'd suggest increasing the hate generated by these taunts similar to the Venemous Slam AA. The percentage increase should be balanced accordingly. I don't think this would be unbalanced given the DOT component of our taunts.</div> <div>The EoF AA's really need examined as most don't offer a a great deal, particularly the Disease line, the Hate line and the end abilities of all 3 lines are really not that functional - with the REaver end AA being detrimental to better equipped players and the bleed pool being totally useless given how hard mobs hit after the nerf. </div> <div> <font color="#ffff00">Do you know that for a fact about the hate line? Perhaps it will make it more valuable. They fixed Reaver, though I still think it should increase damage, not healing, while sacrificing health. The reaver line has some excellent AAs. I don't really know how to respond to the accusation that being able to take another 1300hp worth of damage is useless. I've lost count of the number of times this kept me from dying in raids. The disease line also has some good AAs.</font></div> <div>3) As someone who is verging on Fabled I find it difficult to raise my Int to high levels, I think this is probably more true of people just starting out in the class who are largely legendary or master crafted. I'd suggest reducing the INT loss for defensive if not eliminating it completely.<font color="#ffff00">There is not a lot of INT plate, I agree. But our relic armor now gives an awful lot of INT. Labs is a good starting raid to get some nice INT plate.</font></div> <div> </div> <div>4) Give us Nefarious Sacrement as a permanent pet, I miss my pet from EQ. I'd also suggest transfering it's aggro directly to us as generated, this would help aggro retention, and increasing it's HPs so it can survive an AoE. If I'm raid tanking I'm so focused on cycling my taunts, abominable anger, blessing and snare that I have no time to cast the pet. In groups we can kill so quick that there is no point. This may also go someway towards parity of the buckler lines on the warriors.<font color="#ffff00">This is completely unbalancing and we'll never get it. Permanent pets who don't die at the slightest touch give us the tactical advantages of necromancers. We could pet pull/fd. It would be nice if we had a skeletal squire, though. A "fun" permanent pet and not just a human lackey. And yes, if you're raid tanking you've got better things to do than summon pets (who'll just get riposted/barraged for 10k damage in a few seconds anyway.) I also don't use our snare when tanking much. Smite and Agony are nice fast CAs.</font><font color="#ffff00">Oh, and parity is boring. Variety is better.</font></div> <div> </div> <div>5) Itemisation. Although I feel this is improving, I'd like to see some Crusader specific symbols that help us tank and are an upgrade to the cobalt censer.</div> <div> <font color="#ffff00">I agree. I don't think there even is a Crusader-only symbol, which is surprising.</font></div> <div>6) Feign Death. Our version is almost totally useless. If I'm tanking or raid tanking then I'm generally first or second to go down. If it's a wipe then normally we're high enough on the aggro list that we feign and the mob spends those 20seconds killing other people and we stand up just in time to get ganked. Or people run away and we catch the mob on it's way to reset. It's only use is for feigning button mashing DPS. Make it a no duration spell like monks and necro's or add a memwipe/aggro wipe component to it. Doing this would just give it a use, it wouldn't break any balance at all.</div> <div> <font color="#ffff00">This is not the purpose of our feign death. I admit, it's hard to use, but it does have it's uses. And giving us this would diminish the value that necro's and brawlers place in their FD. They will never give us this because the brawlers will raise bloody hell.</font></div> <div>7) As a general point. Raids are 24 person max, enough for 1 of each class which I think was a deliberate design intention. However, it must be said that most guilds would be happy enough to take 2 warriors and replace the crusaders/brawlers with DPS classes or healers for most raids. Give us something that would really contribute on a raid if we are nto tanking.</div> <div> </div> <div><font color="#ffff00">Yup, but this goes for all tank classes. I think this was their original intention but when they allowed buffs/debuffs from the same classes to stack they sort of threw that out the window. We do have something that contributes to raids: We are the best snap-aggro tanks bar none. We also have the best buffs for the MT than any fighter class. In fact, I'd say we make better backup tanks than Guardians.</font></div> <div>I've put this out to generate discussion, if I'm mistaken or have missed something please post, and put up suggestions for what you feel would make us more useful without releaagting other classes to the short bus.<font color="#ffff00">Shadowknights are doing pretty well. As for raid tanking, yes, they can do that too. Now other classes may have a slight advantage, but if you take a well played SK with good spell upgrades and gear you're going to be better at tanking than a lot of other tanks out there. Guardians have a head start, but that doesn't mean they are better.</font></div><hr></blockquote></div>

[Arieneth]

<FONT color=#ff0000></FONT><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Anselan wrote:<BR> <DIV>I thought it would be worthwhile to generate a list of realistic improvements we would like to see for the class, and I mean realistic - not balance upsetting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My thoughts as someone who's heading towards being fabled, and raid tanking more often are as follows:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1) Make Sacrilege an AOE taunt as opposed to encounter specific. I'd change nothing else, but this would allow taunting of 2 encounters without using deathmarch. My reason for this is purely to save the healers - DM is dependant (all my empirical evidence of it points to this) on the number of people in the group engaged in combat. If we get adds it's typically the healer that gets ganked as Sacrilege only affects thetargetted encounter and the rest of the group have not engaged the the mob yet.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>as long as people are assisting the MA, agro should be on you anyways and kept there with your AE's. if you are fighting in a zone where possible add's are an issue, learn to save certain spells (AE's) for just that reason.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2) The EOF class specific AA's need completely overhauled. Currently the hate line is going to be rendered largely useless due to the introduction of aggression on defensive stance. I'd suggest increasing the hate generated by these taunts similar to the Venemous Slam AA. The percentage increase should be balanced accordingly. I don't think this would be unbalanced given the DOT component of our taunts.</DIV> <DIV>The EoF AA's really need examined as most don't offer a a great deal, particularly the Disease line, the Hate line and the end abilities of all 3 lines are really not that functional - with the REaver end AA being detrimental to better equipped players and the bleed pool being totally useless given how hard mobs hit after the nerf. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3) As someone who is verging on Fabled I find it difficult to raise my Int to high levels, I think this is probably more true of people just starting out in the class who are largely legendary or master crafted. I'd suggest reducing the INT loss for defensive if not eliminating it completely.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>There is no INT loss for defensive. Just no gain. and it's no sense what-so-ever to give us Offensive abilities in our Defensive stance. When tanking my INT is rather low when compared to my WIS, but that is normal. In offensive I have no problem topping 600 INT, 800+ in raids.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>4) Give us Nefarious Sacrement as a permanent pet, I miss my pet from EQ. I'd also suggest transfering it's aggro directly to us as generated, this would help aggro retention, and increasing it's HPs so it can survive an AoE. If I'm raid tanking I'm so focused on cycling my taunts, abominable anger, blessing and snare that I have no time to cast the pet. In groups we can kill so quick that there is no point. This may also go someway towards parity of the buckler lines on the warriors.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>the Sacrament isn't really a pet. It's a DoT with a physical appearance that can be killed. it's just the same as Brigand's Thugs, Warden's Wolves, etc.i see no need for it to be a permanent pet; we aren't necros.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>5) Itemisation. Although I feel this is improving, I'd like to see some Crusader specific symbols that help us tank and are an upgrade to the cobalt censer.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>some symbols with procing taunts or mit (like the pearl orbs) would be nice.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>6) Feign Death. Our version is almost totally useless. If I'm tanking or raid tanking then I'm generally first or second to go down. If it's a wipe then normally we're high enough on the aggro list that we feign and the mob spends those 20seconds killing other people and we stand up just in time to get ganked. Or people run away and we catch the mob on it's way to reset. It's only use is for feigning button mashing DPS. Make it a no duration spell like monks and necro's or add a memwipe/aggro wipe component to it. Doing this would just give it a use, it wouldn't break any balance at all.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>when you tank you are the first to go down? duh? no other feigning class gets an agro wipe, we shouldn't be any different. use it strategically and there are few problems.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>7) As a general point. Raids are 24 person max, enough for 1 of each class which I think was a deliberate design intention. However, it must be said that most guilds would be happy enough to take 2 warriors and replace the crusaders/brawlers with DPS classes or healers for most raids. Give us something that would really contribute on a raid if we are nto tanking.</DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>Despoil, Pledge of Armament, Disease debuff, STR & WIS debuff, Blessing line (adds a ton of healing over the course of a raid), Intercede, DM. not to mention we can pick up loose agro and bring it to the MT or MT if the MT goes down. we have plenty of use.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>DM is very useful when used at the right time. for instance, the Essence of Fear in Lyceum. instead of having the MT group healer feared and risk losing the MT, throw up DM, block the fear...continue on.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>Also, Paladins are very useful on raids. their wards stack with other wards which adds a ton of healing. not to mention they can rez leaving the healers to heal.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>all classes have a use, blame your raid leader (and yourself) for not seeing it.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I've put this out to generate discussion, if I'm mistaken or have missed something please post, and put up suggestions for what you feel would make us more useful without releaagting other classes to the short bus.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>

[ReficulFonwaps]

<DIV>I completely agree on the pet thing. That is the one thing I miss most from my SK in EQ1, would definitely  be a good idea for an AA ability in the future!</DIV>

[Margen]

<P>The one thing I would like to see is a double attack when using 2 handed weapons, something like the warriors buckler line.  Our Guardian can put forth some pretty good dps when not off tanking, and he can even use it when tanking some of the easier raid zones.  I always felt that crusaders should own dps among plate tanks if using a two handed weapon.</P> <P>DM helped our agro a bunch, but I would of like to seen something like increase hate fro our taunts in the hate line vs the less chance to be resisted.  With the new aggression ability being given to tanks, I wonder if the higher resist are going to be worth the points.</P> <P>Would also like to see the despoiling mist ability of stealing mitigation not be lost when a mob dies.  If we cast it IMO we should keep the mitigation till it expires.  But this is just a minor complant.</P>

[MrDiz]

Like a lot of the things mentioned and have nothing to add to them but there are 2 things id like to take issue with:1) Our AA line is not one of the most useless. On the contrary its probably the most useful of all my classes. Thats probably true for me because I dont raid with my SK and love the reaver line. But really the new AA lines are a lot less impact than people had hoped for on all classes.2) Not all chars can be equally desirable in raids unless they are equally good at soloing etc. None of us are going to complain about our solo or small group abilities, so as long as we can raid and be useful, we really cant ask for more. AND We have an SK tank in our raid guild. He and I both agree that SKs are their own worst enemy in this. SKs make good offtanks. Never once has our SK been on sit-out during a raid. Not once.