Friday Night Dread Knight Vent

[velzevul]

let me in! let me in!!!

[Xaices]

Vaeldar
Vanguard Dread Knight Specialist Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 149



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Here are the notes I took from the 7-hour Ventrilo meeting that was held on Friday night. Every skill, stance, role, and aspect of the Dreadknight class was discussed thoroughly, and we've come up with what we feel are the changes that need to be made to put our class where it needs to be.

Thanks to Bubastes, DrK, Furdek, Kroonus, Khatiru, and Velzevul for their patience and their input. Special thanks to Xaices for hosting the meeting on his Vent server.

Without further ado, my notes:

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Skills

Abyssal Chains - No comments.

Anguish - Could use an increased chance to critical, or a damage/mana return based on a percentage of melee damage. Also, Anguish will not drain energy if the target is killed with this attack.

Aphotic Shield - Somewhat unreliable: does not block 100% of incoming damage. Decrease refresh to 20-30 minutes.

Backlash - Increase duration to 30 seconds, increase damage returned to 200%. Otherwise decrease refresh timer.

Bane - Decrease cast time significantly. Look over damage, not on par with our usual DPS for time/cost. If left as a damage ability, decrease refresh significantly. Possibly rework the skill to drain stats from the target, returning them to the Dreadknight or to the group for a period of time (30-60 sec). Possibly force target to attack the Dreadknight for a period of time upon use.

Black Wind - Fix damage scaling; increase damage at higher levels. Ability needs to generate significant hate, seems to add little to none. Possibly add more tiers of this skill to the trainer to help with scaling.

Bleak Foeman - No comments.

Cull - Skill should scale better to higher content, providing more health and damage on Cull III. Cull should generate aggro, currently it does not. Exploiting a weakness (Bleeding was mentioned) would be a good addition.

Dark Bastion - AC is not scaling appropriately at different tiers of skill. Duration should be 5 minutes. Damage should be 150% +x melee damage instead of damage +x.

Dark Ward - Possibly increase number of hits taken to 4 at rank I, 6 at rank II, 8 at rank III.

Despoil - Weaker versions of this skill need to be cast too many times. This skill should rip an enchantment successfully on a single cast unless resisted.

Devour Mind - Increase values to what they were pre-nerf (double current values). Otherwise, at least increase the debuff portion of the skill significantly and the buff portion marginally. Possibly increase range to 35m.

Devour Strength - Increase values to what they were pre-nerf (double current values). Otherwise, at least increase the debuff portion of the skill significantly and the buff portion marginally. Possibly increase range to 35m.

Dreadful Visage - Skill is very useful as is. Possibly remove global refresh trigger, so that this skill can be used to amplify DC without sacrificing aggro/damage. If global refresh is removed, give this skill a small refresh of its own.

Nexus of Hatred - Fix this skill so that it will work on multiple creatures. Change refresh to 30 seconds. Add a hate component. Add more levels of attainment.

Frighten - Fix bug that causes this skill to rarely recieve a very long refresh when resisted.

Harrow - No noticeable hate generated, could use stronger aggro from this skill.

Hatred Incarnate - Global refresh is still present; skill was originally supposed to remove all global refreshes for its duration. If global refreshes are removed, decrease skill refresh to 1 hour. Otherwise, decrease refresh to 30 minutes and increase duration to 60 seconds.

Incantation of Hate - Damage and Hate component should be increased tremendously. Possibly decrease energy cost.

Incite/Inflame - Reverse abilities. Community feels that chain would be better if Rescue component was on Incite and hate component was on Inflame. Should deal 200% weapon damage.

Malice - No comments.

Ominous Fate - Skill occasionally deals damage when it shouldn't. No other comments.

Phantasmal Blade - No comments.

Provoke - No comments.

Ravaging Darkness - Duration needs to be increased with the ranks of the skill: 8 seconds at rank I, 10 at rank II, 12 at rank III. The skill currently drains excessive endurance over a short period of time instead of steadily replenishing it.

Retaliate - No comments.

Ruin - No comments.

Scourge - Should not be resistible.

Scythe of Doom - Needs to generate hate.

Seething Hatred - Cut refresh in half.

Terror Incarnate - Decrease refresh to 5-10 minutes.

Shadowstep - No comments.

Shadowy Veil - Should be usable in combat. Should provide invisibility to undead. If not usable in combat, should have duration increased to be equal to refresh.

Shield of Fear - Increase duration to 5 minutes.

Slay - Should never miss, should force critical. Increase damage slightly. Fix to report accurately in combat log. (Immunity bug has been fixed on Test, will be live soon)

Torture - Greatly increase damage and hate components. Should deal Spiritual damage.

Vengeance - The damage dealt by this skill counts as a hit towards breaking the stun. Fix this bug.

Vexing Strike - Should exploit the weakness "Soul Wracked", should cause "Bleeding".

Vile Howl - Anything but its current form. Community does NOT want an AE fear. Ideas: AE Hate + 4 sec stun, AE Hate + rescue.

Vile Strike - Should deal 200% damage. Sometimes this ability does not drain energy, this should be fixed. Also, Vile Strike will not drain energy if the target is killed with this attack.

Word of Doom - Lower resist rate. Increase damage dealt.

Wrack - No comments.

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Symbols

Symbol of Despair - Symbol has a timer and will frequently remove itself. Also, mitigation does not scale with content - damage absorption needs to scale better. Absorb more damage per rank (a percentage of absorption that scales with DC) or at least a larger base absorption at higher ranks of the skill.

Symbol of Suffering - Symbol is terrible as implemented (damage shield is negligible). Symbol should instead return a small percentage of damage taken back to the attacker. This percentage should increase as DC rises. Could also add a Spiritual damage weapon proc for the Dreadknight while this symbol is active.

Symbol of Wrath - Symbol should cause the DK to deal +x% melee damage. This percentage should increase as DC rises.

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Stances

Remove the Shadow Meld Stance. Put the accuracy onto Ebon Blade, and the Block/Parry/Resists onto Armor of Darkness. Add a chance to increase DC upon hit to Ebon Blade. Add a chance to increase DC upon being hit to Armor of Darkness.

Otherwise...

Armor of Darkness - Change to "All percentages increase by 2 as DC rises", giving us 20% mitigation at DC5.

Ebon Blade - Change to "All percentages increase by 2 as DC rises", giving us 20% more damage at DC5.

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Dreadful Countenance

DC should behave differently. It should apply itself to all mobs within its range without causing aggro. As DC rises, the range slowly increases. Dreadful countenance should automatically increase at a fixed rate as combat continues (after ~90 seconds, a Dreadknight should reach DC5 even if they have not increased their DC through skills). Once combat has ended, Dreadful Countenance should slowly dissipate instead of drop off fully. Creatures entering and leaving the area of the DK should feel the effects of DC for a while.

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Specific ideas for new DK abilities

Slight attack speed debuff

Curse similar to Spikeskin - "Anyone affected by this ability will deal damage to themselves with each attack"

Targeted feign death, usable only on group/raid members. The Dreadknight's defensive target is knocked down and removed from combat. After 3 seconds, that party member can stand up if they choose.

Force crit ability

dropped ability: consolidate the Devour line into a single spell. Does not stack with the devour line debuffs, but overwrites them.

dropped ability: strip all buffs from target foe.

A short-duration silence spell.

Reanimate - temporarily resurrect your defensive target. After a short period of time, they return to their dead state.

A debuff that increases the effects of exploited weaknesses.

Rupture - causes bleeding.

Devour Body - DEX/CON tap.

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General Ideas

Shield-only abilities

Two-hander only abilities

Dread Knight "Oaths" or "Paths" - similar to cleric affinities.
__________________
Vaeldar - 50 Dark Elven Dreadknight of Tharridon

"If You Die in Canada, You Die in Real Life."

[Toronth]

Well looks like yall covered every hope/dream/issue possible...everything here sounds awesome

[Vladamier]

Its almost beautiful to see all the great minds of the DK community collaborate such a list.

But the battle is far from over, making a list then having it reviewed and implemented are the mountains we must climb.

[Axconis]

If 1 in 5 of those made it live, it'd make a massive difference to the class Possibly tie certain parts to the "oaths", seeing if we can get more content introduced for us, without overpowering things by giving all of it.

One idea I very much liked the concept of is turning a DK into a 2H based tank. Move shield of fear to a parry bonus, shift retaliate to work off parry aswell. Leave vengeance where it is on block though, with a stun and a cool down, it's a little bit like an easter egg.

Many good ideas. I like it.... Like it a lot.

[Jooma]

Ha, ya that was a really long night. Only got to bed at like 4:30 in the morning.

by that time creative juices were slowing down, but the important stuff did get covered and we got some understanding and insight of the Dev side of things.

[Xaices]

Yes it was a very long night. How ever I think this 7 hours was immensly productive. I thank all of you who participated.

As for the spread sheet. As those who were the know I had to cut filling in all the ability information short and just catpure the comments on bugs/issues/changes/additions so not to waist valuable time.

I Still have about half of the abilities to update the description and level of which will take me a little time. I will try and finish it up this evening if I can. I just couldn't work on it any longer last night pusing 5am in the morn I was falling asleep at the keyboard.

I will try to have the .xls out NLT Sunday.

Again thank you all I think we got a lot accomplished. Now its a matter of meeting with Avair and further elaborating on why these changes are needed and working with him to ensure these go live.

V/R

Xai

[Biowolf]

Yes it was a long 7 hours but it was all worth it. Great discussion and feed back and very involved. Btw i was Khatiru just never changed (too lazy) the vent name from EQ2 days as a SK hehe

[Azgod]

Looks good guys!

[DrK]

Thanks to everyone who had the patience and willingness to take part in this and to Xaices for hosting it.

We really were able to accomplish a lot, it was very constructive.


In my tired/delirious state I can't remember if we went over this or not or if we did what the consensus was, if there was one, but:

When discussing the Vile Strike/Anguish chain I had meant to mention the possibility of lowering the refresh from one minute to 30-45 seconds. The purpose of this would be to help offset the fact that when you miss with this ability it's such a major fubar and offset the fact the a lot of the time this ability drains very little energy, even if it does work.

That, or just make it drain more energy (which was touched on in the crit % etc discussion of the chain).