[XeroKill]

Originally Posted by velzevul

I can deny it.

In early EQ - yes, i can distinctly remember refusing SKs a tank role in my group because VAST majority of them sucked. This was because I was a prejudiced morron at that time, and had a few bad encounters with idiot SKs that made me think all of them are not viable.

After GoD expansion in EQ, they revamped SKs to have the most benefit from AC. You had smart SKs running around with 3.5k AC and tanking raid bosses like no tomorrow. I had my own pet SK, whom I got to 3400 AC buffed WITHOUT raid gear. And he could tank 2-3 mobs in the Nest without much trouble, and without losing aggro to pimped out Monk, Wizard, and Berserker all at once. Of course those 3 knew WTF they were doing also.

What made SKs so mad powerful in late EQ1 (post GoD) ? It was that they were AC favorites, and their AE agro spell. Add mana tap and hp tap and atk tap on top, throw in some nukage and some self healing... you had uber Tank/DPS/Puller in your group, if he knew what he was doing, SK was irreplacable.

I havnt seriously played VG DK yet, but I see relatively close array of spells - debuffs, snares, lifetaps, Enthralling Nexus AE Aggro, aggro generation...

I agree we need a tweak to make our skills matter more. Some spells should not tie in into our long term DC skill, they should be usable right away and to a great extent. We shouldnt need to wait for a minute to get into a tanking position, that is dumb, i agree.

What I think needs to happen - they need to boost DK's dexterity bonus, to make them a favored avoidance tank. While warrior can be a favored STR tank and paladin can be a favored CON tank. so than in cases when a mob needs to be beaten down - warrior, in cases where mob hits fast and mediocre hard with a high ATK rating, u got a paladin - he can live through all that, and in cases where mob hits SUPER hard but with a low ATK rating, you put in a DK because of his bonus to avoidance.

Well I will say that it only took what... 6 years of suckitude to finally catch a break. I played a Shadow Knight from launch, and when Kunark came out I re-rolled another as an Iksar. I know what it was like, and I quit right after we killed Quarm for the 3rd or 4th time. I never saw GoD because by that point I'd had enough, both of the game and the class. Even in PoP they made SKs nice all round, but there was not stealing the crown from Warriors. We made the best group tanks because of our pulling and mad agro skills, and I loved that. But even for that to be true only took a little less than 5 years to achieve.

I remember filling in as a Rathe tank during a Rathe kill where we were horribly short on tanks. Warriors with worse gear than me lasting for 2 hours. I was on the last member of the council, only had to tank for like 20 seconds at most. I was deader than Napoleon within about 10 seconds. Not because I sucked, not because I didn't know my class, but because my class just wasn't built for it. Of course after they nerfed the hell out of that encounter a trained monkey could stand there and tank it with a Druid healing, but that is neither here nor there.

Any way, I am hoping it doesn't turn out to be as I predicted, I really really don't. But so far, the way I see things stacking up, it is going to. I just want to make sure we are looking at these things before they start adding up, that way we don't have to wait 5 years and 5 expansions to get to where we need to be.