Well, haveing not played eq1 i can't give a good comparison, but i have played my SK in eq2 to lvl 44 so far, and i have to say that when duoing i find my lifetaps to be very good, to the point that with my 2boxs wards and the lifetaps for any damage that does blow by them, i don't need to use a heal even when fighting grp mobs allmost my level.
As for other things mentioned, HT is VERY usefull as an emergency taunt, just slam that on a mob and hit rescue and its all yours again (if you had only just lost agro).
When you stack the lifetaps (grp lifetap proc, periahs mark, etc) and maybe throw in an imbued BP things really look up for SK, the constant flow of healing is great.
Feign death works fine, use it very often, of course, i spent the time harvesting and got an adept3 of it....
About the only downside to the class is its allmost complete lack of sense in a raid, not enough armor/taunt to MA, not enough DPS to warrent kicking an assasin out, although the grp lifetap makes includeing a SK in a mainly DW grp good.