A Concern: Dread Knight Defensive Stance

[XeroKill]

EDIT: Added a poll to get a census of who thinks our Defensive stance should NOT rely on our DC being maxed in order to be the same as the other tanks.

Ok, we all knew some one was going to bring this up and I feel it might as well be me.

I feel that we are getting the shaft with our defensive stances early on in the game. For those that don't know this is how it currently works.

Warrior = 15% Mitigation (W/ buffs to raise it higher, if I am not mistaken)
Paladin = 15% Mitigation (W/ buffs to raise it higher)
Dread Knight = 10% +1%/DC level (W/ Resistable debuffs to lower enemy damage)

Now consider these things about how we are set up against our tanking brethren. We cannot even max out our own defensive stance until into our 40s because in order to reach the 15% that all the other tanks get at level 10, we need 5 levels of Dreadful Countenance against our foe. We don't have the ability to use all 5 levels of DC at level 10 so we can get a max of 12% mitigation from defensive stance when we get it. And even that is only after 30sec or more in a fight with a creature to build up our DC.

We can't even match them shot for shot until mid 40s and even then we can only do it after we have been in a fight for a good amount of time. Once the fight is over we are back at 10% for the start of the next fight.

Also consider the Warrior and the Paladin have ways of directly buffing their own mitigation, while we have debuffs that, although they are nice, are resistable. Considering the fact that it is a lot more common to fight higher level enemies, it can take 5 or more casts to get it to stick. Even when it does stick, if you stack the buffs of the Warrior/Paladin to their defense, our lack of defense, and the fact that a debuffed mob will do less damage to ANY ONE IT SWINGS AT, we are definitely sucking hind tit in this department.

Warriors will still end up on the top of the pile because they have their own mitigation buffs, that stack with the Paladin mitigation buffs, that stack with the Dread Knight debuffs, and the fact that at the start of ANY fight we are at a 5% mitigation disadvantage, we will be last choice for tanks hands down.

I had sincerely hoped that we would not end up being the Shadow Knights of EQ or EQ2, because any one that hung out at SK.org can remember what a sad bunch of whining that was.... but I see a trend when it comes to this class, and unfortunately I see it happening again here.

Thoughts? Corrections? Bitches, moans, complaints?

[Blood_Raven]

I tend to look at things as an optimist, so i put it into view like this. We are on a hard curve to meet the 15%...lvl 40 if I remember right, you said. so finally have a slow grueling 40 lvl climb, do we become superior to them? And might I add when it counts. lvl 50 end-game raids. If we match them at 40, will we surpass them? I like to think, Sigil did this for a reason, if we fight 40 lvls to match out tanking brothers, then we will be rewarded for it. Maybe DK specific gear, maybe lvl 40+ is when we get to shine and become what every DK hopes us to become the Main tank in most to all situations...any thoughts?

Much love

Raven

[XeroKill]

I used to be one of the optimists on SK.org way back when. I never listened to the BS, but any more it is like they have a personal grudge against the Dark Knight genre. Every time they make a class like this, we end getting the shit end of the stick. You think that because we are sucking for the first 40 levels of the game, we will be majestically better at the end.

-Nothing changes the fact that we need to spend a minute in combat to reach maximum mitigation.
-Nothing changes the fact that both the other tanks can buff themselves with raw mitigation (not resistable and all stackable).
-Nothing changes the fact that our debuff works just as well, if not better, for them than it does for us when you add in their naturally higher mitigation from defensive stance and their buffs.
-Nothing changes the fact that our debuff is resistable and their buffs are not. You think raid mobs are just going to roll over and let us debuff them? I doubt it. I highly doubt it. I have a hard enough time debuffing two dot even cons sometimes. You think a 6 dot purple/red con is going to make it easy for us?

Now I know it sucks to already be starting this trend where the other tanks look at us like a bunch of whiners, but for FFS they always do this shit to us, and after 4 generations of playing the punching bag, I am getting a little tired of it.

What the hell is so wrong with just giving us the same 15% the others get? Why do they always have to try and be so damned creative with our class, and do shit that is only there to add to the "flare" for the class. I don't want "flare" I want the same utility and usefulness as the rest of the damned tanks.

Can any one deny that EQ1 SKs where the worst tanks available and usually got relegated to the roll of lesser off tank or puller. Can any one deny that SKs are the LEAST wanted class hands down in EQ2, and can any one deny the trend that is already starting here in Vanguard?

[BigGino]

I guess this is one of those things that wil have to play it self out. Hopefully with some tweaking we will have our own rolls which make us the prefered tank for certain encounters. At least we should always be wanted in raids as is now, even without being the MT since our debuffs will stack with everything else.

[velzevul]

Can any one deny that EQ1 SKs where the worst tanks available and usually got relegated to the roll of lesser off tank or puller.

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.

[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.

[velzevul]

that would suck ballz.

[TeamSKKeris]

Yuck. Did not even realize this. I think they need to really do a pass of defensive tanks again. Maybe defensive form can be 15% + 1% bonus mitigation to party per level of DC. So DC5 DRK would be 20% in defensive but so would any warriors/paladins they are grouping with.

I believe the warrior / paladin buffs are sharable. But that was from reading other posts, and I could be wrong.

EDIT: recognized later that velzevul posted this same thing in the ask the class lead thread, didn't want to seem like I was stealing his idea and reposting somewhere else.. GMTA

[Eclipse]

I'm willing to trust in what the class lead says. If we are to be tanking in raids, or if we are to be supporting the tanks in raids...I believe he would know by now.

If Xaices says (and he does, about a hundred times) that we will be tanking and not just support, then that's all I need. There are other factors that we will never be privy to until we play.

No pressure on Xaices of course. If we end up like WoW Paladins, there will be a lot of angry people! haha, but come on, it won't happen.

Cuz I said so!

-Eclipse

[XeroKill]

With all due respect to Xaices, he is but one out of what will eventually be thousands. His success and experience is not only in a very limited theater known as Beta, but it could also be a product of the people he hangs out with. His guild may not hold the same biases that 90% of the people in the MMO genre cling to.

I would love to sit here and believe that everything will be just fine, but I have been playing these games for a decade now, and I have seen this dozens of times.

The biggest problem that we have is that we not only have to contend with the ignorance that already exists about tanking (I.E. Warriors = TEH ALL!) but we will have to deal with the ignorance that the numbers will eventually generate. People have a tendency to look at the numbers and only the numbers to determine a classes value. We all know that no matter how hard Sigil tries, and how well they succeed, the populous at large WILL come to the conclusion that X class tanks better than everyone else. It is a fundamental truth, and although there will be a small percentage that will see beyond this bias, a good majority will cling to it with their dying breath.

Ultimately, I don't want to start this struggle at a disadvantage. In terms of raiding a 5% difference in mitigation will be seen as a disadvantage. Even though we have an ability that shoots us straight to DC5, people will see it as a defect. I just wish they would quit being so creative for us by giving us all these neat little things that come at the expense of needing to meet certain requirements to be at the same effectiveness as the other tanks get as a default. That is all it really boils down to.

As for the Warrior/Paladin buffs, the Paladin buffs can be shared, but I don't think the Warrior ones can be... which is why inevitably the Warrior will succeed in the fight for the throne to the MT kingdom. They have a head start due to the common misconception that the Warrior is the only true tank, and a distinct advantage when they add their buffs, with Paladin buffs, with our debuffs and our DC. In the end they will be the most defensive tanks available, both in the minds of the masses and the numbers as well.

I know I am sounding like a nagging nanny, but damn it all if I don't see the same trends that I have seen in the last 4 major MMOs appearing here as well.

I will state, for the record, that if it turns out I am wrong, I will be all to pleased to hear every single one of you come back to this thread and laugh at me constantly. This is one of those rare cases in which I would much rather be wrong than right.