@ Xaices & Avair - Skill Change Request

[velzevul]

i think making cull exploit bleeding makes even more sense than making it exploit stun.

what role would Ominous Fate have than? How about confirming to its name of "Ominous" and giving us some sort of counterpart to a new paladin ability to block 75% heals, maybe we can get something akin to that. Pallies get a anti-mob-defensive ability, and maybe we can get an anti-mob-defensive ability, like punishing a mob for being healer, like if a mob heals, we get a chance to damage it in a significant way to negate the heal that a mob just did? Sounds pretty DRKish, punishing mobs for being healed.

From a LORE standpoint - As a mob is healed and is hit with Ominous Fate right after, it realizes the hopelessness in fighting its DreadKnight opponent and doesn't rejuvenate for the intended amount of a heal.

in addition I would much rather have Ominous Fate creating some significant exploitable weaknesses, like Bleeding than stunning a mob. At the moment stunning has only 1 use - to interrupt casting. But if we do not see what the mob is casting "khe khe where is my combat stack", there is not much use to it.

[Garn]

Omnious fate is great for when you see those long wind up blue and yellow spells being cast. Having a way to knock a healer mob off his big heal is very nice and I use it all the time for that sole purpose.

[Xaices]

Avair just came back to me about 30 min ago and he said he liked the exploiting a weekness idea, you may very well see it in the future.


I fully understood that not every one was going to like the changes, I still understand that nor every one likes them.

The SoF/DB change was put in there because in its old state it was Exploitable and coule be stacked. This was Sigils fix to stop many a dread knight from exploiting the ability and achieving insane AC. At it its highest point it was only suppose to achieve 600 AC or 900AC depending on what DB you had. I could easily stack it and achieve over 2k additional AC.
I tried to get them to make it where the buff would remain at what ever DC level you were last at. It did not make it. It is still a decent buff, you need to just work your DC to achieve what you want.

Stances are not complete yet. SM is getting plus to DC on hit, and resists, AoD is getting the -10 dmg taken off of it, so as where Warriors get 40% to block we just don't have the negative dmg.

Slay was changed because it had a bug in it causing insane dmg numbers which were not correct. By far in large the ability is more usefull more often now than what it was. Of course this is opinion on being more usefull.

Just play with the changes for a while more, try mixing things up. I garantee you you will see that you have better agro management and survivablity and are more self reliant.

[Meldryn]

Originally Posted by Xaices

Avair is off working on another class atm. I understand your disapointment with Cull not having the stun component. So were Avair and I. I liked because of the dificulty and Avair well he kept saying he liked the "Flavor" it added.

Towards the end of the night we were discussing the probability of bringing in some things for twitch players and those that like a little more chalenge in playing a class. Avair said he would think on it a while and see what he could come up with and he stated he has some more things comming in for the DK later on when he has more time to be crative rather than fixing bugs and issues.

For now you are going to have to live with the changes that went live, and the changes to the forms that didn't make it in for this patch.

We probably will not get another round of fixes for another couple of weeks as they cycle through the other classes. You may see a fix here, a change there, but nothing like this patch untill its our turn in the rotation again.

After seeing what Paladins got in their evaluation, I'm fairly irritated at ours. We all gave great ideas/feedback, and we got a band-aid.

Bane still does basically the same damage as our highest rank WoD, and it's on a much longer timer. I used it exactly once just to see what it hit for, and 4k is a little underwhelming for me. I regularly crit both Wrack and Ruin for that amoount.

SoF/DB scale, which is good because it allows you to use them early in a fight and let them build, but it's bad for anything but 5-6 dot named because on anything lower we never get past DC3. Having it stick at the highest DC we get for the duration would have been much more manageable.

Incite/Inflame now cost end. No one really cares, because there is still no reason to use them over Wrack/Ruin. The hate increase on Incite was nice, but they really need to add a hate portion to Inflame to make this combo work.

Cull now has a cast time.... I can't see myself actually bothering to cast it unless I'm soloing. 1.5 seconds is an eternity when you have mobs beating on you to interrupt. And if they increased the damage, I can't really tell. Cull 2 looks exactly the same as it did before.

Vile Strike/Anguish now drain energy. With Psi buffs I can't use my energy fast enough. Something else that is only good for soloing.

AoD still only adds 9.5% mitigation, not enough hate generation, and no block chance.

Shadow Meld now works, but no one will ever use it. The only benefit I ever saw to this stance was the fact that at DC 5 it actually added 30% evasion because the parry, evasion, and dodge mods all scaled individually. Now it starts at a laughable 2% and scales to 12%. I'll pass, thanks.

I realize I sound a little bitter, but I was expecting something that would put us on par with some of the abilities Paladins have. All I see are some minor bug fixes, most of which make the abilities less desirable rather than more. The only positive changes out of this entire mess are Nexus of Hatred (Assuming it actually works. Haven't had time to test it yet.) and Word of Doom. And Word of Doom is still nothing but a spell to tag runners with. No debuff, no stun, just damage roughly equal to a Wrack/Ruin. Is this really their vision for DK's?

*Edit* Just trained Retaliate. Excellent skill. Exactly what we needed. Makes some of these changes a bit less agravating. That's also excellent news on stances.

[Garn]

Thanks Xacies for the fast response.

I think very soon we are not going to have much left to do other than play

Things realy seem to be coming around IMO. There are a few known bugs now that are going to be addressed obviously, but other than that I think we are really coming into our own and overall are already a very solid class.

With the lack of realy heavy hitting raid mobs I don't think anyone could claim we are broken ATM. Tweaks here and there, a fix to this and that sure. Far from not playable however.

[Garn]

Originally Posted by Meldryn

After seeing what Paladins got in their evaluation, I'm fairly irritated at ours. We all gave great ideas/feedback, and we got a band-aid.

Bane still does basically the same damage as our highest rank WoD, and it's on a much longer timer. I used it exactly once just to see what it hit for, and 4k is a little underwhelming for me. I regularly crit both Wrack and Ruin for that amoount.

SoF/DB scale, which is good because it allows you to use them early in a fight and let them build, but it's bad for anything but 5-6 dot named because on anything lower we never get past DC3. Having it stick at the highest DC we get for the duration would have been much more manageable.

Incite/Inflame now cost end. No one really cares, because there is still no reason to use them over Wrack/Ruin. The hate increase on Incite was nice, but they really need to add a hate portion to Inflame to make this combo work.

Cull now has a cast time.... I can't see myself actually bothering to cast it unless I'm soloing. 1.5 seconds is an eternity when you have mobs beating on you to interrupt. And if they increased the damage, I can't really tell. Cull 2 looks exactly the same as it did before.

Vile Strike/Anguish now drain energy. With Psi buffs I can't use my energy fast enough. Something else that is only good for soloing.

AoD still only adds 9.5% mitigation, not enough hate generation, and no block chance.

Shadow Meld now works, but no one will ever use it. The only benefit I ever saw to this stance was the fact that at DC 5 it actually added 30% evasion because the parry, evasion, and dodge mods all scaled individually. Now it starts at a laughable 2% and scales to 12%. I'll pass, thanks.

I realize I sound a little bitter, but I was expecting something that would put us on par with some of the abilities Paladins have. All I see are some minor bug fixes, most of which make the abilities less desirable rather than more. The only positive changes out of this entire mess are Nexus of Hatred (Assuming it actually works. Haven't had time to test it yet.) and Word of Doom. And Word of Doom is still nothing but a spell to tag runners with. No debuff, no stun, just damage roughly equal to a Wrack/Ruin. Is this really their vision for DK's?

*Edit* Just trained Retaliate. Excellent skill. Exactly what we needed. Makes some of these changes a bit less agravating. That's also excellent news on stances.

Didn't read all of your post because I got to get going. One thing jumped out at me though. The comment about Psi's negating the need for energy drains/taps. That is very true but not every group comes with a Psi. And many of us, myself included were running out of energy rather fast in group situations. The new energy drain/tap is just what the doctor ordered for many of us.

Remeber there are several thousand DK's out there. Things have to reflect the many and not the few. Take the changes to Cull for example, While very managable while soloing it had very little use in a group setting. Being a level 30 skill, which by that time most DK's are grouping in order to see any real progress, it was most likely analyzed as not serving it's purpose as a utility spell of it's level.

Not to mention the fact that we are DK's damnit and we need our lifetaps if we are going to be able to hold our heads up in public!! :twisted:

[xythalia]

Originally Posted by Garn

If we needed to give up a weakness spell I would vote for loosing it off harrow. We almost never use it in a group situation in a way that it gets taken advantage of anyway. We all know the moving mobs around in group or raid situations is normaly a no no.

I personally would give up the weakness on Ravaging Darkness. Please tell me otherwise, but I would assume no one uses that skill for its OWN damage, so we definitely don't need to have a weakness / exploit on it

[velzevul]

i cant believe it wasn't their own vision to have Shield/Bastion stay on you at level where it was cast/reached.

why do other 2 classes get mitigation buffs than that stay up for a set period of time at a set level of utility?

[Uthal]

I think there is a relatively simple solution to some of the DC issues. Instead of basing DC on the current mob, make it based on the player and decrease it over time. The rate of decrease could even be different when agro does not exist, dropping it more quickly. This helps address DC not working well in multi-mob encounters and gives an advantage to aggressively pulling mobs. It also helps with abilities that lose a lot of their effectiveness until DC is built up. The rate of decrease for DC can be changed until it is balanced, so devs still have control over the mechanism.

[ssri]

Originally Posted by velzevul

i cant believe it wasn't their own vision to have Shield/Bastion stay on you at level where it was cast/reached.

why do other 2 classes get mitigation buffs than that stay up for a set period of time at a set level of utility?

I honestly think that stacking shield/bastion was not intended.

The way they changed is unacceptable though because DC resets for each mob when fighting multiple mob currentl, which means ac and block bonus resets after each mob.

They should fix DC to stay on when fighting multiple mobs.

ssri
<Phoenix Rising>
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