Really depressed with our damage

[hag]

I feel like soe has cheated us. We should be doing mroe damage in line with mages per say like maybe 10-20% less not like 200% less. With the recent patches i cannot solo worth a [FAAR-NERFED!] without using umptine gold for fulg arrows. The only way i get groups are with friends or guildies other then that they go int caster.also i have mostly adept 3's in all my abilities aned constitantly hit for like 1/3 to 1/2 of what the skill says it should do for damage.We need a fix bad, We can't tank we can't solo and we arent a good source of dps we are a 1/2 [FAAR-NERFED!] class atm that needs tuning.If you where a tank and a healer what source of dps would you choose?We have no real usefulness atm dirges for example can debuff mobs by 1k ect boost groups abilities and they still do decent dps notr too far behind assassins i get people saying you have a high hit for 189=89 i say big deal the only way i get that is on a blue mob with full dirge bruiser defilier and lining all my debuffs as well, and i can do it once every 5 mins even once a minute would still put us behind the power curve. also some arrow shots say ignore enemy armor still hit like [FAAR-NERFED!] with the best equipment you can get Any thoughts of suggestions would be nice as i'm just ranting and upset i've spent so much time on a class that isnt even worth a [FAAR-NERFED!].Hagann permafrost

[shebalse]

yeah you obviously need to learn to play your class. At lvl 50, I do more then enough damage. During Raids, im lucky if i dont die because im doing so much DPS. No tank can keep taunt off me when im using power at the same rate im regening it. Sure mabie some of our skills needs fixing. But as far as damage output goes, if im capable of doing more dps and the tank cant keep up, well i think that speaks for itself.

[Parawulf]

Im kinda low lvl to say but ive always felt m dmg output was pretty good. max hit is close to 200 with shadow blade.

 

balance wise i like to have a int DPS in a group but realy only 1 then melle DPS is better simply for HP and HO skills.

 

anyone got some DPS averages for some lvls? would be interesting.

[Darqz]

While I can feel your pain I think your looking at this a bit too harshly.  Yes we aren't doing the line of damage that we all think we should be doing.  I have started to think today that we (Assassin/Rangers) SHOULD be doing damage almost along the same lines as Mages.  Before you start laughing and think that I've been getting drunk off of the Tier 4 food we now have to buy to keep our power up give me a second to explain.  Our damage is reduced by half when fighting a mob foward, our damage mitigation is just slightly better than that of a mage.  This is no problem for us, well at least for me.  I can live with this.  I can live with the high timers and positioning for every fight.  I can even live with some of our skills being broken.  However, lets look at the pros and cons.  Unlike any other class we have to be in a special place to do damage.  Unlike other Scouts Assassin/Rangers carry the least amount of utility.  Brigands/Swashies get similar damage to Assassins/Rangers right now with more Utility.  Bringing up the rear of the Scout class comes the Dirge/Bards.  So unlike the other Scouts we have sacrificed utility for damage. 

 

  At this point in time your wondering why I still say we should do the damage of mages.  Well, we are the pure damage scout sub set.  Unlike mages who can stand just about anywhere and lay waste to any mob(s) (yes I'm including the AE effects), Assassin/Rangers have to be in a special spot.  Otherwise our damage is that of a weak tank.  With our timers and the fact that we need to cloak to pull off heavy damage it lends to some kind of sick and demented reasoning that I have that we should at least come into par with the Weaker mages.  I'm not sure if many of you notice this (I've only encountered it once), but in the higher levels Furies actually can out damage us with the new nuke spells.  I did a search to see if this was just me being paranoid but other people have noticed this too on the test server

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=testfeed&message.id=6165

 

Before I get flamed, yes I know that all scouts carry some utility to the group such as turning HOs and disarm.  However I know for a fact that Disarming traps, doesn't cross many peoples minds as I have to beg from time to time to let me trigger the traps.. er disarm the traps so I can keep my skill maxed.  As for HOs while epic encounter mobs at higher levels do take times turning an HO isn't thought about as the greatest thing in the world next to sliced bread.  Yes we do get Evac but so do mages and SKs at higher levels. 

 

What would increasing our damage do if they made it at the Mage level?  Probably make Mages complain about the damage.  It would however make it possible for us to solo again without having to burn through stun poisons and arrows.  It would also make us a more desirable tool for a group. 

 

Again this is just one person's opinion and I don't honestly expect anyone to take it seriously, but I am throwing it out there to see if anyone agrees with me or to see why my idea would break the game.

 

 

[Syanis]

I'll say two things to you:

 

1: Upgrade your skills

 

2: use poisons.... use them... just do...

 

I'm a 34 Assassin and find I outdamage everyone in my party... not by a small amount either. I tend to out damage wizards and warlocks still who are 39 plus. I tend to do 10-20dps more then wizards and warlocks.... 30-60dps more then other tank types.... even a good 20-30dps more then most other scout type class's who I group with... Now why is this? is it because I'm an awesome player and the SoE gods love me? I sorta doubt.... more likely the fact I actually invested in getting the best gear for my level.... I actually get my skills upgraded as soon as I get the skill. I actually use poisons.... not one poison... not two poisons.... but 3 stacked poisons. The poisons are a large chunk of my extra dps.... on top of that they are crafted poisons.

 

Flitch Flea 34 Assassin Steamfont

[-vali]

Ranger opinion: just surfin the assassin boards....I'm kinda having similar thoughts about my class as well - feels like a 1/2 class. A interesting way to solve both our concerns would be: Critical Hits! I'm pretty sure crit's dont exist currently, could be wrong. But I don't think they do. Crit's would be directly related to the amount of agi you got, and proportional to the damage that the CA or melee hit would have done. Ie: Landing a crit with one of your nukes would do nutty damage. While every class has a chance to hit for critical, perhaps us preds could get some buffs which increase our critical hit rolls?

[Rake]

I really dont even care about our dps vs wiz/warlock dps.  It's our DPS vs Brigands dps that bothers me.   We. Do. Not. Even. Come. Close.

 

Ruse cannot be blocked, it cannot be dodged, parried, or  in any way NOT land.  It can be used every 60 seconds,  and its MINIMUM damage is right around the max damage ive EVER done with Elaa's Perferating strike (adept2) or condemning blade (adept1)

 

The brigand I seem to always find myself grouped with loves the combat parser, love showing the group that he REGULARLY does DOUBLE the damage of not only every other person in the group, but especialy the assassin. 

 

His ruse hits for 1500 at the very minimum (in hours of killing nightbloods around CH and the lake in RV, he never once got less than 1500)  My max damage with Elaa's is just over 1500,  and might break 1k about 1 in 10 hits (even tho the description for elaa's says it does 1135-1892 damage HAH) 

 

so lets see,  potientialy:  Myself - lets say i do 1k damage per elaas (as if, but what the heck) in an hour thats 12k damage that i did from my "huge hit" combat art

                                        Brigand- lets say he does 1.5 k (remember,  thats his MINIMUM, he was getting hits for 2800+ over and over)  thats 90k damage over an hour

 

This one time was when we were both 41 , very similar in gear/weapons/power pool, and i was doing the most damage i could possibly do and not BE the main tank because of aggro.  Ruse generates no aggro and i've never seen a brigand have aggro issues while doing twice my damage.

 

Brigands get the same 100-300ish damage 30 sec to 1 min reuse type of abilities we do,  they get an equivelant to our bloodthrister with their backstab ablity.

 

So basicaly they are everything we are,  with godly Ruse instead of stupid 5 min reuse weak hits, Plus Group stealth, FD (yeah its currently broken but will be fixed soon), Stuns, etc.

 

Rangers are in the same boat as us,  the entire Predator line needs reworked. 

 

Currently there is no reason whatsover to roll a predator if your intent is to be the best melee dps u can be, or even really come close.

 

 

[Yavo]

At 31 i have the 49th highest melee hit on our server. I can solo yellows in zek without any problems and the only time i die during solo sessions is when i'm careless and trying to see more, faster.

[Fros]

You dont see much of the problem at 31...

[Stjohnph]

Well I think we do ok for damage, but we only really do it at the very begining of the fight when we are able to be invisible.  What we need is to have more powerful skills that we can use during the fight.  It is bad enough that we have no good buffs to add to the group.  In the book it says that the DEADLIEST class in the game is the ASSASSIN.  I find that yes we do have a chance of one hit kills, BUT that is if the mob is GREY with a sword under it and we are 20 lvls above it.  Im more of a solo player and I need to do high damage though the fight, not just at the begining.  And yes we have to be right behind a mob to get our high dps, but no other class has to, thats not even right.

 

With all of this and the fact that half our skills dont work anyways, like slipaway (yes im a low lvl assn.  23), and the fact that we only get one shot while invised, and so many of our skills have to be done while invised sucks.  This class needs an overhaul BADLY

[Stjohnph]

Well I think we do ok for damage, but we only really do it at the very begining of the fight when we are able to be invisible.  What we need is to have more powerful skills that we can use during the fight.  It is bad enough that we have no good buffs to add to the group.  In the book it says that the DEADLIEST class in the game is the ASSASSIN.  I find that yes we do have a chance of one hit kills, BUT that is if the mob is GREY with a sword under it and we are 20 lvls above it.  Im more of a solo player and I need to do high damage though the fight, not just at the begining.  And yes we have to be right behind a mob to get our high dps, but no other class has to, thats not even right.

 

With all of this and the fact that half our skills dont work anyways, like slipaway (yes im a low lvl assn.  23), and the fact that we only get one shot while invised, and so many of our skills have to be done while invised sucks.  This class needs an overhaul BADLY

[Stjohnph]

sorry about the double post

[Play-D]

Brigands veiw inc!

 

Rakear ruse is great but at adept 3 I am not doing near the damage that you posted. My rarely seen high hit is around what you claim your friend does minimum.

 

I have had assasins, rangers, and swashbucklers beat me. It doesn't happen all the time and it mostly depends on battle conditions, gear, buffs, player skill, adepts, poisons, levels, and the random number generator. You should not expect your class to beat another all the time no matter what the variables are. The game wouldn't be fun if it was that easy.

 

 

[Gyilok]

agree on Play-Doh, 47 brig here ruse adept 3 best hit 1600ish, the average is way lower than that (900-1200, and it can hit even lower), and afaik lvl 50 brigs don't come over the 2000 mark with adept 3 ruse, only the few that have the master copy can go higher, but never 2800,

also have to mention that its a lvl 21 skill, our only big-hitter, with fd-delay and moving around, which never gets upgraded and now seems to be resisted many times, because its somehow allocated to magic dmg

[Molando]

Brigand here with master 1.Ruse works well against mages. With them we seem to get a chance (one in 5?) of hitting for nice damage (1700-2100), the rest of the time it is stadard damage.Ruse master level is 31 or 32. My highest damage with it ever (against a lv 10 grey mob) is 2404. In most normal fights I will get from 900-1300. I get higher sometimes, but the values mentioned are most common.These numbers are with Master 1 ruse. I would be quite supprised if that on average there was more than one found per server. Adept 3 produces the values you have seen in the posts above. Yes, ruse master 1 does nice damage, but what would the master 1 of your best skill produce (not single hit damage, but damage over a fight).I have to be infront of the mob, and the mob must still be facing the same way when when the skill goes off (a few seconds later), if it is not, then we have to do it again. Being infront of the mob we also have the chance of being hit with barrage.It is a 60 second skill, so in 99% of the cases only once per fight. As Ruse damage is somewhat random, we can not rely on it to solo to any great extent. I guess that brigands find it harder to solo than assassins, but this is just a guess.The way I have seen it is that on average over time Assassin damage and brigand damage is about the same. On a single fight if your long timer skills are down, a brigand will do more damage by a small amount. When your long timer skills are up, you will outdamage the brigand easily on a single mob.like for like, levels/skills/adepts, I would be suprised (from what I have seen) over time if there is more than a 15% difference in DPS between the classes. yes at some levels a brigand will do better, and at some an assassin will do better. For anybody who feels like starting a post off 'but you do 1500,', get over it, it is one power. Look at the overall dps over a few hours.I have never been in a group who has said 'we need DPS, lets not get the assassin'. The only comment I have ever seen is 'lets not get the mage, as they die too often'.

[Molando]

>So basicaly they are everything we are, with godly Ruse instead of stupid 5 min reuse weak hits, Plus >Group stealth, FD (yeah its currently broken but will be fixed soon), Stuns, etc.Sorry, had to comment on this.Group Stealth: Since I have had this, used it once. I am not sure if it stops working at yellow or orange level mobs, I know it never works against reds. Scouts see through this. Slow movement speed. FD: Called craven walk. yet again, will not work on reds. 75% chance to FD if the mob is under level 28, 0% to fd is the mob is above 28. Scouts see through this. Half speed? It is a nice skill when you first get it to move past fighter greenies, but after a few levels, fairly pointless.Stuns. 2 Second stun on a mob, that breaks if you hit it. If you want to use it to backstab, you need to stop fighting, stun, then jump over the mob, and have around a 50% chance of your attack landing. With the casting time, stopping fighting, and percentage chance of a fail. Most times it is better to not attempt this at all. Etc?what etc? We can debuf agi by a small amount, or debuff their movement speed (not their fighting speed). They are the only 2 debufs I have so far.

[Unfeter]

Ive started to run real time parser checks with combstats.com.  I find as a level 35 assassin with Slime Coated Harpoon as main and PGT as secondry i consistently outdamage all members of the group.  Was in Nek Castle last night where i was completely out damaging our level 38 gaurdian, 3 levels above me.

 

Oh and I also solo quite well.  I see no problems with our class.

[Kokus]

Let's compare:

 

Wizards with adept 3 Ice Comet: Can do upwards of ~3600 damage every 18 seconds.

Assassins with adept 3 Condemning Blade: Can do upwards of ~2400 damage every 300 seconds.

 

I think what we are really lacking is a high end attack. Our strongest attack we get at level 38 (You can't count assassinate. 1 hour recast = dumb. It's only a flavor ability.) What needs to be done is to put assassinate on the same timer as condemning blade. It really doesn't make any sense at all that it takes an hour. In no way whatsoever is that a useful ability.

 

Also I have a problem with the spell descriptions: Bloodthirster adept 3's data shows that it can do upwards of ~1250 damage... Wow! That's amazing.. I've never seen it break 1000 =

 

What I find amusing though is that a wizard can make us out dps them. How? their proc buffs. Throw that on us when we have haste, and make sure to use spitting viper and faltering blast while they're up, be using poison, have a ykesha, maybe a bone razor, blade flurry adept 3 (swipe can hit for 40+ with it) and our dps can fly out there. Add in a fury, conjuror, maybe a berserker and you can have faltering blast doing over 2000 damage when you hit it.

 

Anyways, back to the problem. Our spell descriptions. Every ability I has says it does more damage than it actually does. If they actually did what they claimed to do, then I've no doubt that we would be doing dps that would be more to our liking. I think by them putting in the detailed spell descriptions, they let us know how broken our abilities really are. Oh, my sptting viper adept 3 claims 1k+ damage, and cloaked barb master 1 claims 700 max damage... try reversing those and that's how they really function. The data on our skills is just wrong.

[Darqz]

To the brigands posting here.  I think your missing the point of why some of the people are dissapointed with the Assassin class.  For example,  Molando you have commented on why your skills aren't all that great, but you missed the point.  You have those skills.  You can offer a group utility.  Assassins on the other hand have none of your skills and are doing the same or less damage than you.  We understand we can't be the top of the food chain for damage all the time.  That is a given.  Heck, that is partly what HOs were created for.  What we would like to see is the Assassin's for the most part to be at the top of the Melee damage chain.  Yes it may be an ignorant request from a bunch of whiners who read that we were suppose to be the deadliest, or it may be a logical thought by people that read the EQ2 webpage before the game was released, played it a bit in beta, and read the book that came with thier box.  While I myself have learned not to believe everything SOE has in writing I have to believe that this subclass who has forsaken everything in the meaning of utility to do damage should be able to do damage.  I can speak for at least 90% of the assassin boards when we say WE DO NOT WANT THE OTHER SCOUTS NERFED.  We don't want to see Brigands/Swashies do less damage.  Infact part of our complaint is you guys don't do enough damage.  The same with bards and dirges.  However we do want to see Assassins do alot more damage or at least to have a chance to do more damage.  Yes poisons are the key, but even with the best poisons, gear, and adept/master spells on us we are still limited in the amount of damage we can do in a group do to the cap on our damage and our delays.  Our Deadliest hit works on grey mobs.   Our most damaging shots have a 5 minute re-use timer.  This does sound like class envy because in some way it is.  Your ruse is on a much faster timer and while you say that the damage isn't as high as we claim if you knock that out two or three times in a fight your still going to be doing a much higher level of damage than a subclass that was designed to do damage. 

 

[Molando]

Great post (the poster before me).I like my class, am happy where it is. The comments I made about our group skills, were trying to explain they were fairly useless. In a group situation, a stun it pointless, as, as soon as anybody hits the mob the stun is over. A 19 point agi debuf probably does something, I have never noticed a difference. Craven walk, is exactly the same as other stealths once the mobs you are passing are above level 28.Burgle (group stealth) does not work against scouts, and I guess yellow or higher mobs. We can slow the movement speed of a group of linked mobs, for a handful of seconds. (I can count on no fingers the amount of times I have used this)We have no other group utility, or group buffs.What would be nice is to see the dps over a few hours for comparable brigands and assassins in the same group, when they both know whey are being parsed. Look at say half an hour sections, and see how close they are to each other. If there is more than around a 15% difference, then I fully aggree something should be sorted out.Do assassins have any group buffs, or debuffs?

[Tuc]

I am a 27 assassin, I solo since I can only play for short periods of time. My damage sucks, I am using orange dual weapons have an agility of 120 and end up in the orange after fighting a green mob. I hit for between 6 and 12 . Before the last update green mobs had a hard time hitting me now I ger creamed.  Whats up???????????

[hag]

I loved how they moved poisons/ potions to high useages like 6,7 and 8 but then like 3 days AFTER THE PATCH THEY STEALTH NERF IT. I mean [FAAR-NERFED!] soe dont do soemthign then immediatly reverse it. i love going into the alchemy shop and spending 5-7 minutes ona combine spamming durablility to get a 3 use poison 4 if im super lucky with the trade changes. Poisons help with damage alot i seem to be recasting it every 30 mins sometimes less, they are also awesome agro if you want to be a main tank. I mean i use our deagro about 15 secs into the fight after i hit bloodthirster and then every 30 secs after, and my bruiser buddy spams his adept 3 agro, and yet i still manage to get agro every single mob with posion procs without it im fine.thoughts?maybe rework the way poison procs play a part in the agro system?Hagann 42 assassin permafrost and my friends call me Hagro....

Message Edited by hagan on 02-24-2005 10:56 AM

[Rake]

Molando, all the hits I stated in my previous post were straight from the brigand's Combatstats spammer. Maybe you have heard of him on the brigand board? Crik?

 

And yeah, if assassins were top of the heap here and there that would be fine but i have yet to see, ON ANY PARSING, any melee ever outdamage a brigand even 1/4 of the time, even back when tanks were dishin out the uber dps. (this is upper 30's to low 40's game,  no clue at lower levels)

 

I've been using the parser now myself for a while and let me tell you its pretty dang depressing.

You can say what you like but when I am seeing in cold hard numbers the fact of how little damage my class does in comparison to the other dps classes, it tends to ruin the fun of the game more than a little. 

 

I have all adept1 or better abilities, top of the line gear, and am dishing out the damage as steadily as agro allows.

 

As stated above tho, maybe there is a bug with assassins that when fixed (yeah right, assassins get any soe attention? hah) might allow our abilities to do their listed damage.  Right now I seem to average HALF the damage per combat art that it has listed as the minimum, and that's AFTER I have landed all my debuffs (not that the debuffs seem to have any effect anyway)

 

Sure I can solo decently i guess,  sure i dont do the worst dps in the game, but I'm far from the top of the heap, and like it or not brigands, Assassins DID give up what little utility your class has to supposedly gain the dps edge that is sorely lacking.

 

On a side note,  anybody else notice that the assassin class problem/bug list is the only one without a single dev response ?  not even a single "thanks for input, we are actualy paying attention to you"

 

Oh was in a group yesterday that had 3 healers, so the fury just focused on doing damage,   3 guesses as to who outdamaged the assassin over half the time and the first two dont count.

 

I love this game, I realize that its only been out for so many months and the dev's are scrambling to make up for a forced early release, but a little feedback about the true purpose of the assassin class , our "niche" , would be nice.

 

ah well,  I have vented in as coherant a manner as I am capable of, now back to playing =) 

[Porkchop47]

Wanna raise your dps? Use Assassins mark. The highest quality you can afford.

 

Have fun with the agro and the crazy dmg, but this actually does put us in line with mages in limited testing at lvl 45.

 

I actually love playing my assassin again and it has been awhile since I could say that.

 

Saying your class is less powerful then another is pointless, especially since you are talking bout the ability to solo. Solo ability is based more on the players skillset and not the characters so YMMV.

 

Yes Assassins need to be fixed, but not for the reasons you have stated.

 

. 26791195428210337487100634348093144168451529718

 

 

[Darqz]

Porkchop,

  Perhaps I'm just ignorant or not using assassin's mark correctly but it honestly only goes off for me probably once or twice a fight.  If and if I don't use the current slip away to keep the "hidden on" trigger going I fail to even set off Assassin's mark.  Even after using assassin's mark I can honestly say that it does not rake up that high of damage.  Again I am only speaking for myself.  My armor and weapons are all orange to me.  Assassin's mark is Adept1 (I have not been able to find anything higher).  I did group with a wizard friend of mine who is only 2 levels below me but he still manages to outdamage me by alot.  Could you possibly enlighten me on your statement of how to get the crazy damage using Assassin's Mark?  I am also curious as to find out how you think assassin's need to be fixed.

[Porkchop47]

I have had some issues getting Assassins Mark to work with Slip Away ad1 though other have no problems it seems. For me though, with Slip Away it seems to work bout half the time but using Vanish Ad1 it goes off flawlessly.

 

This is how I do it, it may be right or wrong but it works.....

 

Use shrouded strike or surveil or whatever to drop into stealth, fire assassin mark...**wait for assassin mark to complete cast** then fire off Vanish and wait.

 

Few notes on this though...

If you use ANY stealth ability after Vanish/slip away you will lose it and start getting the "you must be in stealth" spam. So be sure your spells like bloodthirster or condeming blade are in the process of refreshing so you dont lose dps.

 

Be careful on HO selection also when AM is on the mob, alot of em need a stealth move that will cancel out vanish/slip away and thus also knock out AM.

 

Seriously, practice all diff things with this spell till you find what works best for you, its the greatest thing since sliced bread........just watch your power pool and agro. You WILL get agro.

 

Playing around in CT last night killing blue/yellow stuff AM Ad3 damage varies from 260ish to over 600 a tick PER MOB in encounter, I was easily adding 2k dmg on a single mob pull and real tasty numbers on groups. I will try to get a parse for you today.

 

As far as how to fix assassins, thats not such an easy question to answer atm as it seems all classes are in a state of flux.

By biggest concerns for our class atm are related to stacking 2 of us in a grp/raid scenario. As it is now, the second assassin is limited in his/her spell choices due to the debuff components on alot of our spells.

I would also like to see Condeming Blade's recast timer reduced/dmg increased.

Having our spells to work as intended/described would be a nice bonus.....

 

 

Edited alot cause I cant spell...hooked on foniks

 

Message Edited by Porkchop4760 on 02-25-2005 10:10 AM

Message Edited by Porkchop4760 on 02-25-2005 10:13 AM

Message Edited by Porkchop4760 on 02-25-2005 10:20 AM

[Darqz]

Sweet, Thanks Porkchop.  I'll try this the next time I play.  I think part of the problem I've had with AM is that I keep the HO spinning so that might be where I am failing.  Again thanks for enlighting me (us).

[Rake]

I for one refuse to pin my hopes on an ability that only works when using an exploit

[Porkchop47]

You can keep your HO's going, and please do so. Just watch which ones you call, avoid ones like resonating cascade which make you go into stealth to complete as that will disrupt AM rom working.

 

 

....btw, thanks one star ninja, you are my hero

 

[Darqz]

Rakear,

  You are right in that this is an exploit and not an end all to be all.  However I am thankful when I can learn something new about my class.  While I am expecting this "bug"/"exploit" to be fixed soon and well before our class gets fixed, I also enjoy learning where I may be doing something wrong or learning how to play my class better.   This is the biggest reasons I go through the boards, to learn to play my class better.  This not only helps the community but any group that I may group with in the future only because while I'm known by some people out there by name, there is nothing better than announce your looking for a group and to have a few people ask you to group with them because they know your a good assassin.  When SOE fixes the Assassin class I don't want to be one of those other assassins that go great now we have our skills fixed and we are doing the damage so pick me because I'm an assassin.  This kind of happened with SKs in EQlive.  We were perhaps one of the biggest gimped chars till way into the 3rd expansion.  Our skills worked but poorly, and our tanking abilities were feeble at best.  Yet many of the true SKs stuck it out and learned to work with what he had.