Why get the Sk taken the Str buff away ?

[Cardasi]

dont know if this question was ask in the big Sk topic , but why we get stript of our str ( like the paladins ) in our group buff and dont get it back on a self buff ( like paladins ). dont tell me the + 90 spell dmg should make up for the str , it does nearly nothing for our dots and short cast spells.

[Rell87]

Yeah, [Removed for Content] ?

[Noktaris]

This change really irritates me...pretty much sucked all the willingness to log in and play

[Nostarn]

Are you [Removed for Content] kidding me?  +90 dmg to all our spells?? do you know how much casters pay for +25dmg augment neck item?  (On my server it's 12-15p)  I'd gladly dump strength to improve my spell dmg.  I know we're supposed to be all "hybrids" and split between melee and caster, but try checking your parse on a raid in the melee group with melee buffs, and then check your parse in the mage group with the troub.  I guarantee you'll jump 4-600dps in the mage group.

 IN ADDITION, how long have we been waiting for something to make us usefull on a raid???  I've been waiting since the game came out.  We have a couple of other little nice qualities, but really nothing to make us shine.  This will make the wizards and warlocks et all start to drool and want to go hump something.  +90 dmg by just by having a fat tank with plate armor standing next to them?  This almost guarantees my spot in the troub/mage group that i've been fighting over for months to be in.  Tell me how much your dps goes down by loosing your str buff (which btw, never really goes to use because you're either in the crappy leftover group or in the mage group where str does next to nothing but make them less burdened by all the crap they have in their bags). 

 All I have to say is I can't wait till Wednesday night's raid to try this out.  I just wish I knew this was coming ahead of time so I could start announcing to guildies how much use the crappy little shadowknight is now going to be on raids.

[Aranieq]

90 spell damage ya say... and sta for hitpoints hehe I might have to let you back in the troub group, but you better be quick on my FD darn it!  Be nice have a melee in there again for all those caster melee proc buffs =p

[Hamervelder]

It irritates me that SK's had to give up our strength buff to get the plus to spell damage, while paladins did not.  Let's add the 20% nerf to Reaver to that, while we're at it.  Perhaps not the worst nerf ever, but still very annoying on both counts.

[Cardasi]

Nostarn wrote:

Are you [Removed for Content] kidding me?  +90 dmg to all our spells?? do you know how much casters pay for +25dmg augment neck item?  (On my server it's 12-15p)  I'd gladly dump strength to improve my spell dmg.  I know we're supposed to be all "hybrids" and split between melee and caster, but try checking your parse on a raid in the melee group with melee buffs, and then check your parse in the mage group with the troub.  I guarantee you'll jump 4-600dps in the mage group.

 IN ADDITION, how long have we been waiting for something to make us usefull on a raid???  I've been waiting since the game came out.  We have a couple of other little nice qualities, but really nothing to make us shine.  This will make the wizards and warlocks et all start to drool and want to go hump something.  +90 dmg by just by having a fat tank with plate armor standing next to them?  This almost guarantees my spot in the troub/mage group that i've been fighting over for months to be in.  Tell me how much your dps goes down by loosing your str buff (which btw, never really goes to use because you're either in the crappy leftover group or in the mage group where str does next to nothing but make them less burdened by all the crap they have in their bags). 

 All I have to say is I can't wait till Wednesday night's raid to try this out.  I just wish I knew this was coming ahead of time so I could start announcing to guildies how much use the crappy little shadowknight is now going to be on raids.

90+ spell dmg is not nearly as good as it sounds. on adept 3 it is 78 only . its all nice to make sks a bit more raidfriendly but not at the cost of group and solo play , thats where the str loos hurts. as hybrid i need to take care of nearly all stats and if i go for more str gear my int goes down the drain. raid is only maybe 20% of my gametime so it looks like nerf to me.

btw the adept 3 ( 78 dmg ) adds 46 dmg to wrath witch is our longest cast spell , the dots get 5-9 dmg per tick thats nothing from my point of view

btw

[DMIstar]

No Reason For the STR buff to be given up for the 90dmg. We realy have nothing as it is for our CAs and This only lowers our Mana Pool even more.. I though we where supposed to have more mana then the other fighters ? lol as it is now i have 100 more mana then our gua rd tank. and im at 410str / 585 int dps suit guard has 483str we are both sim ilar geared if not me  haveing a bit better ;/ Next thing is. not only does it take a good bit of this stuff to raise our dots .. but its capped off. so haveing 255 to spell dmg increase is the same as 170~ due to a cap. So... if theres a cap on it how many casters are already at it for this to be null in long run ?

[Nostarn]

alright, point taken, as we do have a disadvantage in the tanking field and in the dps field, is there a reason we can't keep the str buff and gain the +dmg?

[Belaythien]

Extremely frustrating is the fact that Paladins get their strength bonus moved to another buff and the Shadownight's strength is completely removed. All others get theirs for free. This is not fair. Especially considering that +90 spell damage (you'll never get the full +90 anyway) is a lousy joke compared to what brawlers get (+15 casting speed/aggro improvements) without any loss. We even got another big nerf in this update. Ok so you like brawlers as always but please keep it fair.

[Tokam]

Nostarn wrote:

Are you [Removed for Content] kidding me?  +90 dmg to all our spells?? do you know how much casters pay for +25dmg augment neck item?  (On my server it's 12-15p)  I'd gladly dump strength to improve my spell dmg.  I know we're supposed to be all "hybrids" and split between melee and caster, but try checking your parse on a raid in the melee group with melee buffs, and then check your parse in the mage group with the troub.  I guarantee you'll jump 4-600dps in the mage group.

 IN ADDITION, how long have we been waiting for something to make us usefull on a raid???  I've been waiting since the game came out.  We have a couple of other little nice qualities, but really nothing to make us shine.  This will make the wizards and warlocks et all start to drool and want to go hump something.  +90 dmg by just by having a fat tank with plate armor standing next to them?  This almost guarantees my spot in the troub/mage group that i've been fighting over for months to be in.  Tell me how much your dps goes down by loosing your str buff (which btw, never really goes to use because you're either in the crappy leftover group or in the mage group where str does next to nothing but make them less burdened by all the crap they have in their bags). 

 All I have to say is I can't wait till Wednesday night's raid to try this out.  I just wish I knew this was coming ahead of time so I could start announcing to guildies how much use the crappy little shadowknight is now going to be on raids.

Are you kidding?

You do realised that there is a cap to the BoE effects dont you (+15% after normalisation). Do you honestly think that the summoners and sorcerors arent already pushing this cap? As a summoner this buff is useless for me, it will not increase the damage of any of my spells.

Here is a vanilla raid mage group

Wiz

Warlock

Conj

Illu

Troub

Healer (Fury or Temp)

Which one of those do you suggest you replace to benefit the raids dps? Id much rather see SKs where they belong in the OT group with illu fury / mystic and inquis. Im really cross that they have shafted crusaders (and particularly SKs) like this again.

[Jaroth Cloudwalk]

+ 90 spell damage isn't really +90 due to normalization.

• If you have a dot the spell will be divided by the number of ticks or 5 whichever is greater.
• If you have an aoe the spell will be divided by 3
• If your spell is both a dot and an aoe you have to divide by both factors.
• If your spell + recovery is less than 3 seconds then the damage is further reduced.

So if I have an aoe dot spell with a 1 second cast time you will get no more than +3 to each tick.  The reason mages pay so much for the adornment is that it is the best of the choices available.

[Supernova17]

Couldn't have said it better myself. With a 4 Caster Mage group, there is no way in hell we'd be kicking out one of the Mages for an SK +90dmg on spells lol. Talk about cutting off a Mage's legs...Sorceror's NEED the deaggro from Troubs, Summoners gain DOUBLE benefit of Troubador group buffs with their Mage pets and even Illusionist's can pull scary numbers saddled with a Troub. Of course...we'd have to recruit a SK first, not that we really would...Guild aims to raid with only Guardian, Berserker/Paladin and Monk.

[Levatino]

So you are now telling me that the changes made to the Sk to make him/her more raid usuable have effect 0 on actually getting him/her into a raid yet the solo ability of a Sk did hurt a lot cause of it. And for what?, nothing! Please let the Sk return to his/her old self, remove the Sk nerf. It isn't getting him/her a better raid place. Dev's listen to the solo'ers for a change

[Garnaf]

I'm all for keeping the Spell Damage buff, as long as we get what Paladins ALREADY have (Str on our Caress line of buffs).  With this change SKs (who were already sub-par tanks to begin with) are now the ONLY fighter without a means to buff our Str (The primary power stat for the class).  I see no reason why SOE saw the need to castrate us with the nerf bat this time.  PUT STRENGTH ON THE CARESS LINE LIKE PALADINS HAVE ON THE PENITENT LINE! (Caress = Penitent) Why were SKs the only class that actually LOST something with these buff changes?  Monks didn't lose any haste when they got spell haste.  Bruisers didn't lose any DPS when they got +Taunt / Detaunt.  Paladins didn't lose any Str when they got +Healing (Str was moved to self only).  So WHY ON NORRATH DID SHADOWKNIGHTS!

[Nostarn]

Just to back up the point of this change sucking (now that I've had a chance for the alcohol to leave my system) I ran a test through the parser before the change and after the change.  It is a small sample, but still shows how much of a non-change this really was for us.  In our raid on Mistmoore Inner Sanctum in the same group setup with the same aa spec, last week and this week, the parse ended up almost identical for me, it even went down a bit, 1019dps to 1003dps.  As I said this is just a single night of raiding including the exact same mobs each time in a merged listing of the zonewide dps, but you get the picture and I'm sure further testing will show the same.  Please, whoever decided to mess around with things, keep the spell dmg, but give us our str back!

[Belaythien]

Do you want to know what's even more frustrating? Paladins get +120 to heals. That's 33% more than we've got on top of our strength being stolen. Does SOE finally want to ruin the Shadowknight class? They nerfed reaver, they nerfed siphon armament (yea right .. cast it on fighters only as the last in line for tanking), they cheated us on our group buff by removing strength and giving us much less compared to what other classes got. They are actively trying to kill our class

[Hamervelder]

I hate these changes so much, that I'm actually considering betraying back to paladin.

[Raidi Sovin'faile]

Spell Damage is different from Spell Heals. Paladins went from having a buff that increases damage to a buff that increases heals. That's why their Strength was added to their self buff, because they LOST damage with this change to give others bonuses. Shadowknights got Spell Damage replacing their Strength. It only changed the type of damage, it's still damage. Obviously, they consider Heals on a different scale compared to Damage. Hence why it's difficult to compare the two.. it's pretty much an Apples vs Oranges situation here. Now, overall... I feel the whole mechanic of +Blah just isn't working well. If they basically just changed it so it adds damage to each cast like a proc, it'd work better. It was broken when it was added to each tick, but it's just as broken now with how little it's actually giving. Maybe if they just made it +damage per cast, instead of increasing the spell itself. This would make it work like procs only it's just 100% chance to happen, and it's a flat damage number instead of a range. At least it would be worth 30-90 damage per cast depending on the spell speed, instead of like... +3 damage per tic because you happen to have a fast casting dot. On a long recast timer, whoo.. that's gonna be some raging DPS. I think the fact that Combat Arts/Spells don't take into account RECAST timers is also a little broken. Autoattack procs don't need to because there's no real "cast/recast" issue.. there's just one timer between swings. It can truly normalized with just the one thing.. delay. "Delay" for spells/arts are a combination of cast and recast though. It really should be a combination of both when normalizing... otherwise a fast casting dot with a 45s recast will lose a LOT from the exchange. Maybe if all these were fixed, then +90 damage might actually be worthwhile.

[Belaythien]

Kaisoku@Mistmoore wrote:

Spell Damage is different from Spell Heals. Paladins went from having a buff that increases damage to a buff that increases heals. That's why their Strength was added to their self buff, because they LOST damage with this change to give others bonuses. Shadowknights got Spell Damage replacing their Strength. It only changed the type of damage, it's still damage. Obviously, they consider Heals on a different scale compared to Damage. Hence why it's difficult to compare the two.. it's pretty much an Apples vs Oranges situation here.

Paladins have heals where we've got damage. That's the way it is. If they get increased heals for free why do we have to pay so much to stay where we are? Why didn't we get better heals too? Your argument is flawed. As far as different scales are concerned it's not apples and oranges. In fact it's pretty straight forward. Simply compare the amount of damage a DD does with the amount of heals a healer does. DDs nuke for 10s of thousands of damage whereas healers heal for a few thousand. They may be on different scales but it's the other way around. You need way more damage than you need healing. That's totally contrary to the values of those buffs. It does however make it more obvious that they inteded to nerf SKs overproportionally.

[Lord Montague]

Nostarn wrote:

Just to back up the point of this change sucking (now that I've had a chance for the alcohol to leave my system) I ran a test through the parser before the change and after the change.  It is a small sample, but still shows how much of a non-change this really was for us.  In our raid on Mistmoore Inner Sanctum in the same group setup with the same aa spec, last week and this week, the parse ended up almost identical for me, it even went down a bit, 1019dps to 1003dps.  As I said this is just a single night of raiding including the exact same mobs each time in a merged listing of the zonewide dps, but you get the picture and I'm sure further testing will show the same.  Please, whoever decided to mess around with things, keep the spell dmg, but give us our str back!

I would say your example is not compelling enough of an argument.  The difference of 16 dps is marginal.  Is your STR by chance at the diminishing returns curve?  I think those that would get hit harder would be those who are not at that curve yet.  Either way, it's all around not a good change for the SK and I hope this gets revisited soon. >.>

[roces9]

I'm a troubador and I just want to be selfhish for a second. This change really pisses me off and changes the way I think about which buffs to put up in a group and Raid. I run in a 3 mage, Fury, SK Troub group usually sometimes with an Assasin instead of the 3rd caster and I would almost never run My +80 str buff because of the str that the Wizzard and SK were giving me. Now I have something like 90 lower strength. Since I usually have to run my self buff for the plus 230something int, I can't turn on my +80 str buff so there is practically no way for me to make up the str I'm losing here. I'm not talking about any game breaking mechanics, I'm just [Removed for Content] off about how this affects my stats.

[Raidi Sovin'faile]

Belaythien wrote:

Paladins have heals where we've got damage. That's the way it is. If they get increased heals for free why do we have to pay so much to stay where we are? Why didn't we get better heals too? Your argument is flawed.

Well, it wasn't really an argument.. so much as trying to make sense of the change. Like I said, SoE obviously considers Heals on a different scale than Damage, whether you do or not. Note that I didn't say that I think it's correct, rather that it's how SoE must be looking at it. Belaythien wrote:

As far as different scales are concerned it's not apples and oranges. In fact it's pretty straight forward. Simply compare the amount of damage a DD does with the amount of heals a healer does. DDs nuke for 10s of thousands of damage whereas healers heal for a few thousand. They may be on different scales but it's the other way around. You need way more damage than you need healing. That's totally contrary to the values of those buffs. It does however make it more obvious that they inteded to nerf SKs overproportionally.

Heals are needed in a different way than Damage. Damage you do right from the start of the fight until the Mob dies, in fact.. it's the reason the mob dies. The more damage you do, the faster the mob dies. Higher damage is ALWAYS useful, no matter the situation, because it will always have an effect: making the fights shorter. Heals are only needed as people get damaged. Also, you aren't healing constantly until the fight ends, basically.. having a set # of damage to heal up to to end the fight. Rather, the MT has a set amount of "leeway", his hitpoints, and the heals have to overcome the incoming damage so that the leeway isn't used up and the MT dies. Having a larger heal overall is more important, because it can handle larger damage without risk of death. Basically, Heals per Second is not how you value heal spells, and thus any numeric bonuses to healing is treated differently than Damage per Second. Lastly, there's maybe 3-6 people using this healing at any one time, whereas depending on your class choices, you could have upwards of 12-15 people using the spell damage increase (2 Crusaders, 6 Mages, Bards, some Priests, and multiples of these classes). Anything that will affect more players will have it's value lower than the one that affects fewer. Whether this warrants dropping Strength off any of your buffs is unknown to me. I don't have an SK to test it out myself. Some folks are saying there's little difference in their personal DPS (same as the Paladin) and now they can boost "some" dps for nearly half a raid force once GU 38 comes around (like Pallies boosting Heals some). Maybe their experience is unique though... I do think, however, that Heals and Damage, even if just looking at the number of people being affected, need to be viewed differently.

[melaine_dvarvensplitter]

Only thing about this is that chaps my tail is, Pallies get there STR buff back but the SK gets nothing back, yet our spell is Unhallowed Strength.. Ironic indeed, I would like to the STR go to our Pox Sword Off stance as it would make sense. Many SK's aren't at the soft cap for str, and need the additional STR they lost.  Here's to wishful thinking but in true fashion we won't see the STR back.

[Moonlance]

Odds are this was an unintentional error by the devs.  50-60 to strength is insignificant to raiders, but significant to soloers.  Report the change as a /bug, odds are they will fix it.  Getting upset about this and going emotionally nuts is counterproductive.

[Belaythien]

I guess I should have rolled a bruiser instead of an SK. Bruisers get all the attention you may wish for in all recent GUs. Talk about the Devs not being biased or anything. Really makes me sad

[tt66]

Belaythien wrote:

I guess I should have rolled a bruiser instead of an SK. Bruisers get all the attention you may wish for in all recent GUs. Talk about the Devs not being biased or anything. Really makes me sad

I sympathise with you guys, I really do. Brawlers and SKs are definitely the least required on raids. But you don't want to be making this argument right now. Of course, substitute "bruiser" with "Sta specc'd brigand" and I'll agree with you all the way....

[miliskel]

personally i think having an sk in group is great, u can get my warlock melee proc the fury melee buffs and in return u give the casters spell damage and death march which increases dpsquite abit, great to use with potm for maximising the dps of everyone including your own

[LordDarthKhan]

Not only this update cripple us once again, but it has also already hit live..