Pre-emptive "Paladin outdamage SK outrageous"

Here's the deal. In terms of lore, the dark evil SK should not the main damage dealer, because Paladins and SKs aren't really manifestations of good/evil as much as they are manifestations of their deities. Shadowknights derive their powers from Marlow, whose strength lies in manipulation, trickery and careful progress (so they manipulate aggro, fear, mez and tank better) while Paladins worship Althuna who uses a direct approach to anything (so they heal the wounded, raise the dead and unleash holy fury on the sinners).

In terms of game mechanics, there quite simply isn't room for 3 "low damage, high tanking" classes in the game. Most of the raid game is about DPS, and with their useful support + useful DPS + useful tanking the Paladin will be more reminiscent of the Monk/Ranger classes, and generally never be superfluous on a raid.

I am going to look into ways to create more need for tanks in general, and look over SK aggro, but Paladins are SUPPOSED to deal more damage than Shadowknights and Warriors now - deal with it.

Outrageous.





Not really though, I really enjoy the changes, and I realize SKs aren't a dps class, even if I can get some pretty good dps numbers on raid mobs. I am particularly happy about the reduction in their tanking ability, since they did get such a great overhaul.

Would there be any chance of upgrading Paladins spell damage to reflect this change, SK's can directly nuke a lot better than paladins even versus undead from my experience.

I think that would fit in well with the present changes. Even our highest undead spells are pretty much useless with the exception of the ae which can be nice.

Maimai said:

Would there be any chance of upgrading Paladins spell damage to reflect this change, SK's can directly nuke a lot better than paladins even versus undead from my experience.

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Maybe. I'm not going to touch anything until I see how current changes pan out.

Do you have any plans to change SK's to fit this lore role better, or do you feel they are already where they should be? Not asking for a revamp or upgrade, just asking if you think they are good where they are at.
I know you mentioned aggro being looked at for SK's, but I haven't, in my limited experience, noticed too great of a problem with SK aggro.

Nuncio said:

Do you have any plans to change SK's to fit this lore role better, or do you feel they are already where they should be? Not asking for a revamp or upgrade, just asking if you think they are good where they are at.
I know you mentioned aggro being looked at for SK's, but I haven't, in my limited experience, noticed too great of a problem with SK aggro.

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It's by request from an earlier thread that wanted to look at proc aggro getting out of hand.

Wiz said:

Nuncio said:

Do you have any plans to change SK's to fit this lore role better, or do you feel they are already where they should be? Not asking for a revamp or upgrade, just asking if you think they are good where they are at.
I know you mentioned aggro being looked at for SK's, but I haven't, in my limited experience, noticed too great of a problem with SK aggro.

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It's by request from an earlier thread that wanted to look at proc aggro getting out of hand.

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Ah, I hadn't read that one. Care to link or shoul I search around?

Do you feel that SK's are well enough balanced in their role against Pals now being a semi-DPS light-tank? I know, that as Pals were, they were a bit underpowered in respect to the other tank classes. Do you you think the SK/Pal/War as 'tanks' are now in balance with each other? Mostly just wondering if you will be tweaking other tank classes to be more extremely what their 'role' is.

Wars as bar none melee tank champion/damage sponge
Pals as damage dealing (kinda)/group damage enhancer/light tank/group healer
SK as masters of aggro and semi self-dependancy

Will we see further skills making greater differentiation between the classes under these attributes?

Reading this thread, I have no worries about the status of Paladin tanking and Shadowknights not doing DPS, I understand and its a good idea and I hope it is implemented correctly. With the idea that Warrior > Shadowknight > Paladin in terms of tanking, would it be possible for Loathing guard to get its stamina use reduced for long term tanking (at perhaps a reduced power) because its really only good for opening tough encounters.

At 305 stamina and Ancient: Sihala's Gift, it lasts for 3 minutes and 36 seconds (without Sihala's it lasts 2 minutes). Even with the Paladin stance being cut back, they can still use /s 3 (defensive) which is the mainstay of SK tanking due to the fact that we can not stay in any style forever, because any raid encounter that a SK is used for typically lasts longer than 5 minutes. Giving the SK a better tanking style would make it clear who the better tank is, because as far as I can tell, Paladins with defensive tank just as well as a SK in defensive, minus the aggro generation.

Loathing guard is 15% avoidance. 3 minutes, 36 seconds with max stamina and stamina preservation buffs.
Defensive is 10% avoidance. Unlimited Duration
Vindicator style ( Warrior Level 65 style) is 12% damage mitigation iirc. Unlimited Duration
Guarding blade is 2 hander only, increase parry/riposte? I dont think there has ever been a number released with how good it is, needless to say its reduced now, and uses less stamina (my friend says he can use it indefinately with stamina pres buffs)

Anyways, just something that I would like looked at because its something I feel has always been unbalanced.

Loathing is actually 20% avoidance.

In any case, I would rather see a stance that is better than defensive that I can use all the time, and not just for a part of a fight.

Hoping my SK brethren will back me up.

I compeletly agree with Volkov, our tanking (and most other) styles are very limited and seem very underpowered even when compared to other classes that aren't even tanks. I would love to see mitigation added to Loathing Guard(a tad overpowered I know), or Dissmissive/Seething replaced with a long duration tanking style, so I don't have to switch back to defensive when a mob is at 50%.

The seething style never really did make much sense to me, we are the masters of agro and we need a style that adds agro? Thats definitely one style I would like to see replaced with something else. Since we are on styles too I feel like our Leeching style is quite nearly completely useless even when you take certain extremely rare situations into account (you dont have a healer, run out of mana to lifetap while soloing and the mob is almost dead because thats the only way this style could save you, or you have a healer the mob is almost dead and your healer goes oom right at the end of the fight). I havent used it since the last time I toyed around with it to see if I could speed up soloing any.

Id agree that a less severe drain of endurance would be nice for Loathing Guard and such a change wouldnt overpower our tanking ability.

Nurgock said:

The seething style never really did make much sense to me, we are the masters of agro and we need a style that adds agro? Thats definitely one style I would like to see replaced with something else. Since we are on styles too I feel like our Leeching style is quite nearly completely useless even when you take certain extremely rare situations into account (you dont have a healer, run out of mana to lifetap while soloing and the mob is almost dead because thats the only way this style could save you, or you have a healer the mob is almost dead and your healer goes oom right at the end of the fight). I havent used it since the last time I toyed around with it to see if I could speed up soloing any.

Id agree that a less severe drain of endurance would be nice for Loathing Guard and such a change wouldnt overpower our tanking ability.

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You cant be serious about leaching hand stance, I use that one all the time. Think you need to toy with it more . Its not really for speeding up soloing though...

Nurgock said:

The seething style never really did make much sense to me, we are the masters of agro and we need a style that adds agro? Thats definitely one style I would like to see replaced with something else. Since we are on styles too I feel like our Leeching style is quite nearly completely useless even when you take certain extremely rare situations into account (you dont have a healer, run out of mana to lifetap while soloing and the mob is almost dead because thats the only way this style could save you, or you have a healer the mob is almost dead and your healer goes oom right at the end of the fight). I havent used it since the last time I toyed around with it to see if I could speed up soloing any.

Id agree that a less severe drain of endurance would be nice for Loathing Guard and such a change wouldnt overpower our tanking ability.

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Your logic is ass backwards. You are the masters of aggro, so you have an aggro style.

It's an agro style based on melee hits iirc(which I probably don't, it was a long time ago when the styles were actually posted), making it pretty pathetic/useless if the mob we are fighting ripostes, or can't be hit for whatever reason. But I'm proably mistaken =(

Sk's are still hands down the gods of aggro, and I really highly doubt proc aggro can even touch it.. Not even a chain nuking wizard could take it from Hodge when I use to play him for Legacy raids. Also, Sevrenth of Escutcheon can keep it locked from Zhak no matter what I do and he's got half the gear of anyone in Ruin / Forsaken so if you can't keep aggro as an sk in the end game, here's my hint that you should probably just remake another class, because you're no good at the one you play.

Is this in and working?
I was grouped with a PAL last night and I didn't see any normal crits on undead, let alone any cleansing blows.

I hit for 68 last night on a cleansing blow, and I was level 2. Go figure, its implemented well (48dmg crit on a rat at lvl 3)

Mythryn said:

It's an agro style based on melee hits iirc(which I probably don't, it was a long time ago when the styles were actually posted), making it pretty pathetic/useless if the mob we are fighting ripostes, or can't be hit for whatever reason. But I'm proably mistaken =(

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What about mobs that are Immune to or highly resistant to spells? On those mobs the style would be invaluable. Not every style is important in every situation, but on a resistant mob an SK would be screwed for aggro without a style to back him up.