Shadowknight Prestige AA's

[capricorn23]

Currently, I have (6)  AA's in my eq2Live prestige tree just in order to gain access to what i consider the 3 most valuable Shadowknight Prestige AA's Pre Beta and possibly with the new beta AA's that are coming out aswell..

They are:

1- ( Dark knight's Defiance ) Adds 25% DMG reduction to Crusaders faith.

2- ( Chaos Cloud ) Upgrade to Grave Sacrament, can cast while moving and double cast with Chaos march upgrade.

3- ( Chaos March ) Rank 1/2 adds 50% chance to clear the reuse of  Chaos Cloud, Rank 2/2 is 100% chance to clear the reuse of Chaos Cloud.

Now my only Issue Is that In order for me to gain access to the new prestige AA's, which to be honest, are not even that good at all,  I have to UN_SPEC my current AA choices.

The new AA's dont offer me much of anything, if even anything because I`d have to spend (12) AA`s just to gain access to what i have now wich i can gain access to with (6) AA`s currently.

 If i have to spend (12) to maintain what i have now with (6) then i will not be able to afford to gain access to the new aa`s and upgrade them, leaving me in the same position i was pre CoE, which isnt an upgrade at all for me, rather a very large Nerf Bat as far as i can tell.

Ive gotten use to these abilities in the last few months, and now only see see that im going to have them taken away from me if i want to try some new aa`s or i could keep them but lose out on the new content.

*I`d personally like to see both the defensive and offensive lines, Left & Right opened up freely from the top of the Tree towards the bottom with only 6 of the Pre Beta AA`s selected, as in eq2Live`s current state of play instead of the 12 on Beta, in order to allow  the players the choice of  maintaning their old AA choices they are now accustomed too along with the chance to try one of the left or right prestige skills and possibly adding as couple of point upgrades into one of them aswell.

*This seems like a promising fix as far as i can tell and balanced aswell, this way we wouldnt even be able to have both the new abilities or upgrade both either only gaining access to one of them, and slightly upgraded, not even able to upgrade it fully, if chosing to keep our current choises in eq2Live....

Only issue I see.

ANYONE else feel this way ?

[Shotneedle]

I don't.

You spec single target defensive or aoe offensive. Or you take what you have now and try to middle road it but get nothing new.

[capricorn23]

Yes, i am fully aware of what my current beta options are, just as you stated, Left or right, or maintain what i have now and gain nothing.

 But i was asking if that was fair, because I've been using  both double conversions for some time now, and  im being rewarded with noithing new by keeping them after CoE goes live.

That to me doesnt seem fair, and im not sure how you can justify taking away my abilities that ive been using when CoE goes live, forcing me to take the new AA's or keep my current setup and gain nothing new.

I mean, if i could spend 6 AA's to unlock both tree's instead of 12, then thats a whole different story altogether and then  and only then does it seem balanced to me, and not even to a huge extent because id not even be able to upgrade teh new aa's fully.

[melaine_dvarvensplitter]

I don't see an issue specing ae or st.

The blood siphon ability needs a boost for sure if it has been tweaked I won't know until ican test tomorrow

[Orthureon]

capricorn23 wrote:

That to me doesnt seem fair, and im not sure how you can justify taking away my abilities that ive been using when CoEgoes live, forcing me to take the new AA's or keep my current setup and gain nothing new.

Trust me you are not alone see this thread: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=523325

[TheGeneral]

I think pretty much any raid SK is running that same prestige spec that is going to get changed by this.  Honestly thought I never thought what we were running was the intended use.  I fully expected eventually to be forced to choose one side or the other.  I think our efforts would be better spent getting our existing prestige abilities balanced to get them where we think they should be.

[Bevz]

Sorry for offtopic here, but a friend asked to post this:

Can you make  Bloodletter  usable in combat? SK is the only one fighter class that have this  ridiculous mechanic.

[Drumstix]

As it stands now it more beneficial for an SK to simply spec both conversion lines for DPS. The AOE endline is too dependant on there "always" being adds around to get extra Stacks for the proc / Stack.

Right Side:

The base AOE itself can be good with 3 points and 2-3 points in the initial damage boost. However, it still does less damage overall than our blues that have DoT's, and might do even less dps than Tap Veins.

It is simply not desirable beyond very short burst DPS (aka Trash mobs, yay!). As you get more gear, the conversion will just continue to do better for sustainable dps.

Left side:

The left side ability is pretty much crap all around, damage wise, and healing wise. The only perks are the very short damage reduction and/or the group cure/heal addition. Obviously the short damage redux is very useful, but more for a single target tanking situation (not really what I see our class for, but flexible to do it...)

However grabbing the dmg redux fully (3 points / 90% redux), you wouldn't be able to get the right-side conversion (not a big loss). The potency conversion is much better, especially if you factor in using Recklessness on easier content/fights.

There is almost NO incentive to simply just max out one side or the other though.- The extra time on Furor is neat, but not really that much of a game changer. It's only blocking autoattacks... And another thing is Furor is one of our bigger DPS boosts (spell damage increase), but it's still a defensive ability.- The double stacks on the right side isn't even remotely worth it. The recast is fast on the AoE, the extra stacks aren't really going to be used in that much content, again except for burst dps scenarios. Even on nameds with adds, they're not gonna be up all the time. I can see group content cause Reap to do more DPS, but I feel the ability should just be changed. More damage?

My true suggestion for Reaper's Mist:The "Reap" proc should trigger on our AOEs and on all targets. If you want to give us AOE boost damage, this is how it should be. Let it Stack up to 5-6 instead, and let our AOEs trigger Reap on all targets.

And yes, Bloodletter should be castable in-combat, or for a short duration after being rezzed (if the reuse is up obviously).

[Drumstix]

Saw the changes that went in, and while a step in the right direction (IMO) for the right side SK endline, I dunno if it really is enough in a longer term fight. I tested against 8 dummies and was still parsing slightly higher w/ double conversion.

There's gonna be a bigger disaparity when adds are only up for seconds at a time.

Anyway, if there is anymore attention done to this tree, I'd like to see a couple more of our AOE's thrown on that right-side endline at least. Either let more AOEs cause the Stacks to rack up (Tap Veins, Lance, Hammer Ground) and/or be on the insta-cast list when that buff hits.

Reason being: 50 stacks is a lot especially if no adds are up, and being that you need to use the aoes to get the stacks, your abilities are gonna be on cooldown for the majority of the buff's duration unless you purposely save your AOEs. This will just lead to DPS loss and then DPS burst in only optimum situations.

At this point, the conversion endlines would be nice if they could be chosen between when reaching that part of the tree.

Hopefully this feedback is considered...

[none]

 well 90%  DMG reduction on the left side (Chaotic Blade)  is of course cool...but 1.5 sec-are you joking? it is almost imposible to use it on hard AOE and in this  case it is usless. I think duration of DMG reduction should be at least 3 seconds!

also : please make bloodletter castable in battle

and about SK mythic -  physical dmg absorb is useless in the most raid encouners - please make all dmg absorb

[Drumstix]

1.5 seconds is plenty. There are NPC casting bars, and the ability is now instant cast.

[none]

it is plenty if AOE has long cast and if it is not lugging! i dont think that it will be too cool if duration will be 3 sec  still i am sure guys you have a good sence of humor)

and btw if it is possible to use it on AOEs, but i dont know how to use it for example to absorb Touches of mobes like Tagrin and comander (on the left side) - (of course i am talking about 1st damage of touch)

[Netty]

Its instant cast and you can cast it even if you are casting something els... Just hotkey it if you find it hard. This ability will work just fine and will reduce kinda much every hard hitting aoe and some death touches on the SK.