My brainstorm on how to re-tool Dreadknight forms/stances.

[DrK]

In beta I played a Warrior up to level 46 and I currently have a Paladin alt. Between playing the three defensive archetypes one glaring problem has stood out to me: Dreadknight stances do not hold up to the other defensive fighters stances. The Warrior stances provide immense benefits compared to their relatively small penalties and the Paladin stances provide an awesome boon to the entire group while having little or no penalties at all.


IMO Dreadknight stances badly need to be reworked and boosted in effectiveness and here are my thoughts on how to do it:



Ebon Blade: Currently adds 10% damage bonus which increases by 1% per level of DC.

Has a 5% endurance penalty.


Compare to the Paladin offensive aura which adds a 10% damage bonus and a 5% accuracy bonus to the ENTIRE GROUP.

This stance has NO PENALTY.


My proposed change to Ebon Blade is to have it provide the same damage bonus as before but add at least a 5% accuracy bonus to the stance which would scale up at 1% per level of DC.


The finished stance would be as follows:

Ebon Blade

Provides 10% damage bonus
Provides 5% accuracy bonus
All percentages above increase by 1% per level of DC
Endurance costs increased by 5%

Preferably I would like the stance to provide a 10% accuracy bonus which then scales up, I think this would really bring it in to balance, but I know they might not be willing to give us that much.



Armor of Darkness

Once again, our defensive stance does not hold up.

It currently gives 10% mitigation (but is really only giving about 9.25%), 30% hate bonus, both of which increase by 1% per dc level and carries a 10% damage penalty to both spells and melee damage.

Compare to the Warrior defensive stance which gives 10% mitigation and 15% block. while lowering damage by 10% and opening up abilities that can only be used in defensive stance

The Paladin defensive aura grants 15% mitigation (yes it actually grants 15%, not 10), an increase to block plus a nice ac buff to the entire group.


My proposed changes to Armor of Darkness are:

Either have this stance grant spell mitigation (which would fit the ability description) or remove the spell damage reduction. In addition to this add either a 10% increase to block or 5% to block and 5% to parry and have it scale up 1% per level of DC and increase the base hate bonus to 35% rather than 30.


The finished stance would look something like this:

Armor of Darkness

Provides 10% damage mitigation
Provides a 10% bonus to block
Increases hate by 35%
all percentages above increase by 1% per level of DC
Damage reduced by 10%



Shadow Meld


This stance is currently all jacked up :P


According to Xaices it will undergo revision but we might have to wait a while.

According to him it will look something like this:

Originally Posted by Xaices

Thanks,

Shadow Meld is getting a couple of changes to it currently, I will add this ontop of that and make sure it applies correctly.

Those changes to Shadow meld I was refering to are.

Increases Rate of DC gain.. There was a problem with this initialy as it applied DC to every thing even if you were not in combat. So they are working on a Proc type effect now where every time you hit you have a chance to get bonus DC.

THe other change they are currently working on for SM is something with resists. not quite sure if that will make it to the form or not. Still being debated. SO if we get evering thing the Shadow Meld Form would look something like this:

5% to hit, increased accuracy
5% to Evade
5% to Block
5% to Parry
Adds ?% to Resists
Adds Chance on hit to raise DC

Somehting of that nature.

If you all had a choice between The Resists or Bonus DC what would you rather have? It may come down to one or the other.

Me personaly I rather have the resists. I know if I realy need my DC up there I can get it there fast enough. And the added resists would help in the form and fits the description of the form.

I personally think that the decision on whether it would give either a DC boost or resists (if we have to choose one or the other) will depend upon what form the resists will take.

I would like to see some more specific information on the proposed changes before commiting an opinion one way or the other.


One thing is for certain though: The parry and dodge bonuses need to return to starting at 5% and scaling up from there rather than the 1% they are at since todays patch.

[Zuul]

Originally Posted by DrK

Compare to the Warrior defensive stance which gives 10% mitigation and 15% block. while lowering damage by 10% and opening up abilities that can only be used in defensive stance

You forget to mention here that warriors also have to give up some of their abilities which are only available in offensive stance. So while the stance itself only lowers their damage by 10% it actually lowers it by quite a bit more due to the inability to use their more damaging abilities while in def stance.

I agree that AoD needs some help, magical mitigation would be enough for me though really. I think a bonus to block/parry would be nice and seems like a must for a defensive stance, however I think we'd have to give up more for it to put us in line with warriors.

I'd actually like to see the DC Proc be added to Ebon Blade, it would make it the "off tank" stance so to speak.

If AoD were to get magical mitigation and EB got the DC Proc, adding a dex buff of some sort or making the effects of dexterity amplified in a small way when in SM would be a good addition to reinforce it as the Solo stance.

[Tenbrion]

My idea would be to get rid of SM stance all together. Buff the other 2 stances. As it stands right now I never leave Ebon Blade stance regardless of what I do. I dont need defensive stance to hold aggro or mitigate damage. I just do alot of dps in ebon stance to keep aggro on me. I have made our MT reroll a different class and appoint me MT of the guild after grouping with him.

[DrK]

Originally Posted by Zuul

You forget to mention here that warriors also have to give up some of their abilities which are only available in offensive stance. So while the stance itself only lowers their damage by 10% it actually lowers it by quite a bit more due to the inability to use their more damaging abilities while in def stance.

I agree that AoD needs some help, magical mitigation would be enough for me though really. I think a bonus to block/parry would be nice and seems like a must for a defensive stance, however I think we'd have to give up more for it to put us in line with warriors.

I'd actually like to see the DC Proc be added to Ebon Blade, it would make it the "off tank" stance so to speak.

If AoD were to get magical mitigation and EB got the DC Proc, adding a dex buff of some sort or making the effects of dexterity amplified in a small way when in SM would be a good addition to reinforce it as the Solo stance.

Yes the warrior stance grays out certain abilities, but it opens up some really awesome defensive/hate management etc abilities. The warrior stances are more extreme than the other two defensive fighter stances - they get either extreme offense or extreme defense/agro management with relatively small penalties.


The point was to show the relative effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the stances.