Deule

QFE

SKAR

KoS SK's owned. Plenty of AE encounters. Nicely done and well mixed. Everyone got to mix it up and really use all their spells. People had to watch AE agro. It was the way this game should be.

EoF was OK, but started tapering off most AE content. Castle MM was a great zone to be an SK (minus the continual stuns and spell timer debuffs). If you look at the raids, it started leaning toward single targets. Overall though, SK's were still viable at this time.

ROK did away with most AE content. BOOM, the tide shifted almost fully to guards, wizards, assasins and away from warlocks, sk, pallies, and the rest of the ae classes.

The content pretty much made us obsolete. Now, too fix us, they can change the content, or the idea of what an SK is. Either way, the content changed and SK's didnt, and thus our downfall.

Note: any reference to SK could be somewhat aplied to Paladins - however I do not believe they have been affected as much as we have. New content would fix us both though imo.

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www.anathema-unrest.com
Skar Tissue
80 Shadowknight
Leader of Anathema

Faelgalad

We retired our Raid SK for broken morale.
Our Bruiser and Monk doing the job of our third plate tank now.
(when one of our two guards can't come)


In Comparision, there are only two skills that fully and two more, that help the Paladin in comparision to SK.
- Amend, otherwise we (Paladin) would also had to run after the DPS cow.
- Hero Line endskill, solving Avoidance problem

The two other are aggro tools, SK lacking.
- Sigil
- Holy Ground



Would a "evil" Amend an solution?
Casting as an buff, with generating hate for the SK depending on damage the mob does to the raid.
As long as the SK is the target and is loosing hitpoints, he gets aggro.
When someone else is hit and takes a big hit, the SK gets aggro and take it from the poor DD. Would depend on the %.
Benefit, it would work on whole encounters, giving superb encounter aggro as solo aggro.


My demand:
- Dual Wield close to Zerker/Guard, they have edge in miti and contested avoidance.
- revamp of wisdom aa line
- special shield skills
- revamp of divine favor
- more special effects on our attacks, especially resist debuffs divine/whatever SK use) that stack, so that we work as an special resist debuffer, that build up after a few moments.
- being equal in fighting power to guardians. We are four plate tanks, so it should be four options, depending on skill of player, not choice of class.
(and deflection = uncontested for our Monk/Bruiser fellow comrades)




DPS like, we are fucked up in T8.
My Raidtroub is doing more damage in the Magegroup, then my Paladin when MT'ing SoH Trash. (Also Troub is geared much better)

Tynx

I am sorry to tell you but crusaders don't get parry on their def stance, or thru AAs. Let alone any form of riposte in AAs. Warriors and brawlers get parry and/or riposte in some form other then gear. Hell even scouts get parry and/or riposte in some form other then gear.

That being said, hitting cap on avoidance is easily plausible as you say, for those classes ( mostly warriors ) not crusaders. Even if a crusader does get within the cap they sacrificed any other type of gear to achieve that.

Paladins were tossed a bone with EoF bc there is major gap in the plate classes and SKs didn't get a block increase that I know of . Personally it's not fair to SKs that they don't get the block ability that paladins get. Both classes can benefit from it and it should of been offered in the KOS tree to be in balance with other melee classes. The increase to block would make up for the lost of parry IMHO. I for one would give up block mastery for this. Better yet call it block mastery and put in the KoS tree.

Then again another unknown fact to you Ower, crusaders get no double attack. Again warriors, brawlers and even those dam scouts have access to double attack other then gear. I personally pointed out Battle Fervor - EQ2i bc it's got crusader written all over it not cleric. If SOE would listen and pesky guards like yourself then a whole shit load of crusaders would stfu. IMHO

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Giralus

i think the exact opposite of the sk class, it's actualy how all classes should work.

shadowknights need to chose the stats,gear,aa's to perform the role they want, if they wanna tank they need to pick aa's, and increase the stats for ability to take the damage and have to do less dps and have less agro , if they want to Dps they will lose out on there survivability and will get alot of agro that increases there chance of getting killed, if they want to OT they do a mix of the tank and dps set ups

all the tanks should have to make these types of chioces , and have them realy effect the class over all, for every gain in one aspect be it tanking,dps,ot, you lose ability in the other aspects = Balanced ,,, other tank classes arent balanced this way, they need less stats, they have more gear that plays to thier strenghts so its easy to consentrate on bringing up the weaknesses, and dont need to make themselves very vulnerable to do dps like an sk does


the reason Sk's ( IMO) never seem to work right is becuase on paper side by side the 4 plate tank abilities all can be added up and then seem to come out to equal numbers based on just class skills alone ...
It's when you add in the Factor of the Method diffrent tanks use SK's actualy come up Short and that doesnt show on just a side by side comparison of just class skills(not talking about Other classes Buffs those also widen the rift)

lets take Agro , Sk's use Tuant over time,DOTs and Spell casts(spell casts are easy to interupt, some have long recasts, and thats Alot of time we arent doing any damage,or creating any agro,or able to do anything else wyle recasting) , also Hate Decays over time, so wyle we are building hate , its also decaying and thats a double strike against us (as stated by previous Dev moorgard"Hate Naturaly decays over time) ..... Compared to Tanks that use Upfront hate,DD, and fast Melle attacks ... you can immediatly see that Sk's should have something Extra to m,ake up for how much more difficult it is to achieve the same result , but on paper this doesnt present itself and so Sk's dont get anything to make up for the differance of the method used to achieve the same result ,
IMO , our DOT's and Our Tuants should have had a Large Direct amount added to the termination of them ..example " Cast Tuant Does XX amount of Hate... deals Xx amount of hate for Xx amount of time,,, On termination this Spell will Deal XXX Amount of Hate " Same for all our DOTS they should all have large Damage on termination to make up for the Time it takes to get Casts off then DD

same with our Gear , and this is something that atleast Finaly in ROK< we are starting to see Crusader items with +Spell/Melle on it, this is how crusader gear always should have been , Compensating for the fact that on paper we are near equal, but in real Game play the Method used to achiece the Same results is very differant.

taking KOS / EOF as an Example of when i beleive the 4 Plate tank classes were as near to balanced as they have ever been in eq2, and i saw alot of posts saying there was basicly about an 8 % differance in using an SK to tank Raid mobs Vs a Guard/Zerker ... so with Proper itemization back in EOF that could have made a 3 % differance, to bring it to a 5 % differance, and Minor tweaks to our skills to make up for the Method SK's use to get the same end result would have brought us to Near equal ability, at that Point Guards/Zerkers would still be a better Chioce becuase they have More Ability to take Heavy damage , But niether would SK's be Gimped becuase of there Method/Gear to not be able to Compete for MT/OT always (still be harder but would be more balanced becuase the Sk would give up the Def,but with Harder hitting Dots/Tuant's would have GReat agro, and Better Dps in a MT/Ot position)


Soe needs to Figure in Spell cast interupts(and i personaly would Love for the SK mythical to have " Immunity to Spell cast interupts on it When in Defensive Stance to help with Dps and Agro when MT/OT) figure in DOTS and TUant over time for Damage/Agro , to see why Sk's aren't equal , again Just some Minor tweaks to some of our skills to even us out


P.s. i personaly feel Sk's should Build agro to a point thru fights where by the 1/2 way to the end of the Encounter SK's would have agro locked so tight it would be difficult for Anyone to rip agro, sicne we have to Build agro thru Dots/Tuants we dont get the Upfront hate of other tanks, but again we get NO payoff in the end for it, Possible making our tuants/Dots do More and More agro/damage thru the Course of an Encounter to build and build and build so we would make up for the differance they get Large Upfront hate and we get Huge Bottom end Hate = balance .. Sk's should get a little extra at the end for having to have 23 other people have to wait around for them to Build agro, the pay off should be 1/2 way thru fight they can Nuke like crazy and almost Never get agro. to me this is fair and balanced

Pitty

Nice post

Thats why i dump most of my big stuff at the start of a fight anyway, the longer i hold aggro at the start the harder it is for people to rip the mob away

When tanking i always cast deathmarch a few seconds in, it gives me a hate buffer to cast my other spells.

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Giralus

thanks pitty

i think another issue is that when sk's do lose agro it can be a real pain to get it back,we cant run and cast,and we arent doing our normal spam athon to be holding agro,so our hate is decreasing as soon as someone pulls agro ,and wyle we are trying to get it back our hate is slowly increasing ... so us building more hate thru the encounter over time would also help us to retireve agro when it gets lost.

( when an Sk dies its a differant story and its a real Muther to get agro back, but i think the Touch of Death clicky on the mythical is a great addition to help us get agro back if we die and one thing i dont want to see touched when the mythical is re-vamped)

Ower

Hahaha you are an idiot! The only shit that made sens of you post was the evil amends. That would help SK:s for sure.. but i dont think it should work the way you writed it tho... since the mob should stay on you at all time not the rest of the raid.

guapo1

Dont stop there ower becuase 80 % of them are infact idiots.They all believe they are the red headed step child every one is better then them.They are the only class that suffers problems with the current unbalanced system.

All of them state guards need stfu they have no idea what there saying less play sk/pally.Yet guards have to know to be at all good ,the capabilities of all outher classes.Where as obviously it is the outher way around they have no clue whats actually wrong.

No as they say guards have never been nerfed we have never had our share of ninja nerfs that was not on patch notes.Guards have never been hit bad at all.

Lets see when rok was being released all guards where pist off ,and hate transfer classes as well why?.Soe decided becuase they where increaseing lvls and aa.Guards agro capability would be overpowered giveing no challenge to any encounter.So they decreased our tuants % of not being resisted, and increased the amount of hate transfer classes could give us.Then they also fucked up our hit rates.

So to regain what we had lost we had to boost up our str and dps.Through gear and lvls this was semi achieved.Then epics came out yay!!! not really ask any guard if they used there regular epic over sod ,or the legendary from coa.Soe also nerfed buckler line right before rok/plant ,and tos.

Guardian epics/buckler line is not the problem.The problem is alot of the outher classes did not get properly balanced out.Crusaders are not the only ones.Soe did not properly balance out your dps structures,aa,or spell dmg according to lvling up .

Truth of it being guardians in hardcore raiding guilds pre rok where parseing then 1.5k near 2 k.Increaseing our lvl by 10 adding new lvl 80 gear higher stat increasers.Not to mention the + ca dmg gear.That is why our dps is where its at not just becuase of epic.

Soe did not fully balance out these additions with the outher classes.On how they would compare.

Lets talk of differences amoung the 4 plate tanks.

Agro tuant

Guardian=dependent on outher classes hate transfer.
Zerker= gains excessive agro through rage and dps.
Paladin= dependent on high dps spell caster typically wizard/warlock
SK= debuffs dots and life taps.

Any of you see the differences there on agro?.

Example fully defensive right now with just epic not mythical.In tier 1 pr im parseing zw average 2 k as mt.Before rok i was parseing between 1200-1600 zw.


Yep guards way overpowered with epic 400 dps more on average ,with 10 lvls higher and better gear with higher stats.

Guards are where they should be you just missed the dps boat.Soe does need to rebalance something your classes, spell ,dps structures.

So keep blameing guards mythicals ,and epics hell take them away and we still be out parseing you.like i said guardians are used to getting nerfed every time some one breaks a nail.Every year soe fucks with our hit rates mit/avoidence and hate transfer agro.

No guardians are the elite never fucked with class yeah right.

Deule

Guard Power!!!!

Seriously both of you are fucking annoying as hell. And Guapo the more you post the more retarded you sound. You obviously have no clue on how this game works and specifically on how the other classes are played.

All the tanks had the resists on their taunts fucked with with EoF, and the classes getting their hate transferred lowered affected all the tanks. You make it sound like any other tank can jump in the MT seat without hate transfers and be fine....that is so far from the truth it is not even funny.

Also, you need to go get your Mythical before you start talking about how it is on par with what it should be dps wise. I will agree that your fabled is meh, hell everybody's fabled is meh and SoD is hands down a better tanking sword. But, where shit really went out of whack is when Mythicals were disco'd and the Guards allowed them to parse pretty close to 4k consistently while being completely defensive.

Yes, yes...we all know how DPS is better than taunts for agro atm...but don't you think that that could have been remedied with Mythicals instead of made worse? Can you even think outside of the box a little bit?

This thread is turning into a joke because a couple guards that have no clue really on what they are talking about are trying to give their side on a class that has fallen deep into the shadows.