Help me find a reason to play an SK

[JarL]

I already have a 65 paladin and a 55 warrior and I enjoy playing tanks. My friends and I are rerolling lowbies (minor twinking involved) and I just cannot find a reason to play an SK since I never plan on raiding. On paper they sound like a ton of fun - an offensive tank! Yet...

After looking at their spell list and realizing that their taps are upwards of 6 second casts until 60+, their taps hit for a max of 300'ish (which seems too low to even bother casting on such a long cast time), and their pets are just plain gimp. Their only perk is FD and amazing aggro? I won't raid with it, so what makes them "fun" in 6 man content? What niche do they fulfill?

1.) What is the point of their taps if they by the time you finish casting them you could have dealt more dmg with your weapon and taken less damage than you healed for? Or do SK's not lose dodge/parry while casting taps?
2.) How does their dps compare to warriors and paladins? Is the lack of innate crit made up through spells?
3.) Is FD their only "perk"?
4.) Do the pets even hit mobs being so under leveled?

This is NOT a tank comparison post or a QQ post. I know SK's have a great niche in the raid game, but as I said I would only be playing the character casually with friends. So, please convince me to play one!

Edit: If this post is misplaced, please move it. I'm not sure it applies to classes/gear after I posted it.

 

[Vartenaal]

roll a beastlord and use pet tanking stance with slows. sks suck at the high end, now more than ever, and since you gonna be a casual player, youre not even gonna have the mana pool to really do anything interesting.

parry/dodge arent lost during casting for any class.
dps wise they really suck now, at high end they have maybe 250dps with spells and stuff, prolly less, so you prolly be doing around 50dps or so.

 

[robopirateninja]

ogre FD

 

[Glamrin]

During leveling up you might find the sk a fun class to play, he wont do a ton of dps ofcourse (main dps for sk's and paladins really is your dmg shield), but before the people you play with get tomes you will have great agro on single targets in comparison to other classes and you will do ok on taking damage. You also get fd and few selfbuffs.

Once at 65 however, you might find issues keeping agro on multiples or single targets alike if playing with tomed characters, since your agro wont scale upwards as you advance. This is especially true if you have any form of lag (since a laggier connection will make your spellgems take longer to refresh, ie you wont be able to spam your agro spells as hard).

As for perks, there is fd and a few selfbuffs. At lvl 51 you get harmshield which means that you can run past a lot of trash mobs and fd off agro to save a lot of time if youre farming nameds in some zone, or to reach a group after stuff has respawned. Sk has a lot of interesting things, but its the most difficult of the tankclasses to play. If you intend to twink these characters a little bit, you'd probably be best off with going for a twinked bard tank (more dps, cool songs, high dmg shield and some pbae spells for easy agro on multiples already at early levels).

 

[Manguadi]

1.) What is the point of their taps if they by the time you finish casting them you could have dealt more dmg with your weapon and taken less damage than you healed for? Or do SK's not lose dodge/parry while casting taps?
2.) How does their dps compare to warriors and paladins? Is the lack of innate crit made up through spells?
3.) Is FD their only "perk"?
4.) Do the pets even hit mobs being so under leveled?

1) is mitigated by a 50% cast time reduction AA, and you always have spears and dots which arent trivial while leveling.

2) They will out dps a paladin, though not by a large margin, and a warrior will outdps them slightly while using a 2h, and tremendously while using a sword and shield on the sk.

3) SKs have a number of interesting debuffs in the 60+ range, though I can't really speak for them before that. They have a few interesting stances as well, like the lifetap and mez stances.

4) FD is more of an art than an ability on SoD. There are probably a few dozen unique pieces of information you need to be aware of to be able to split (or explain failed splits) for every pull in the game. One of the tricks is to use a pet to distract a mob momentarily to make splitting significantly faster and easier. I believe there are also plans to improve SK pets in the future.

An SK isn't really going to come into his own until the 60+ spells and a few critical AAs are gained, but you will find some unique opportunities with the SK if you push the limits of your own talents and creativity even without raiding. Personally, the most fun part about leveling an SK was the flavor of the class. Find some black armor and you're good to go.

edit: 1) is actually not an AA but just an innate bonus for the cast times of most detrimental spells.

 

[JarL]

So those 6 second Taps are actually 3 seconds? 6 was the longest tap that I saw on the wiki as every new spell continued to get longer and longer. That is actually somewhat redeeming. I really like the SK playstyle and was entirely unaware of the half cast hybrid thing. Thanks guys. That may be enough to try one out.

As to BST and BRD - they just aren't interesting classes to me. I don't like the idea of a dual wield class without double attack.

 

[darksabbath]

BST and Bard are alot of fun.. trust me. Though they do require a special blend of patience and perseverance to play and master.

As for the sk, they get taps for ac/attack/and strength as they level up, dots (including snare), several self buffs (attack, dmg shield, etc.) Later on they get terrors (aggro spells), and dd spears. There is more than enough to make the class fun to play, they are just underpowered later on, by comparison. And don't ever expect good dps, and you won't be disappointed.

 

[Notpit]

I already have a 65 paladin and a 55 warrior and I enjoy playing tanks. My friends and I are rerolling lowbies (minor twinking involved) and I just cannot find a reason to play an SK since I never plan on raiding. On paper they sound like a ton of fun - an offensive tank!

Well, they are not really supposed to be an offensive tank. If there is such a thing, it is supposed to be a Paladin. At least at one time it was. Now it is a bit more confusing.

Their only perk is FD and amazing aggro? I won't raid with it, so what makes them "fun" in 6 man content? What niche do they fulfill?

"Only perk". That is quite some perk. Seriously. I mean the monk is a class built around this ability. And if you can pull, you are also getting aggro first, which is giving you an advantage right away. The ability of the tank being able to pull can be big. The other perk is single target, "snap" aggro. Which is what the other tanks have wet dreams about.

I personally find playing a warrior boring. At least it was for the 38 levels that I gritted my teeth before abandoning the project. I am enjoying my Paladin a lot now. But it took a lot of gear and AA's to make AE tanking possible. At the early stages, he could not keep aggro from anyone. It was very painful.

I am keeping my SK at 57 as a Traek/Pounders toon. But he is a lot of fun to play. He and my 57 druid do very well by themselves.

I think that any class has it pros and cons. But the Shadow Knight has some pretty huge pros in my opinion.

 

[Otcho]

1.) What is the point of their taps if they by the time you finish casting them you could have dealt more dmg with your weapon and taken less damage than you healed for? Or do SK's not lose dodge/parry while casting taps?
2.) How does their dps compare to warriors and paladins? Is the lack of innate crit made up through spells?
3.) Is FD their only "perk"?
4.) Do the pets even hit mobs being so under leveled?

2) Shadowknights have better dps then paladins on non undead targets but your really splitting hairs.

3) You have an amazing mana regen buff that stacks with everything outside of paragon and a very good melee buff for your group as well but the latter one probably wont get used much as its a mana hog and tends to get alot of resists and people are already confined on buffslots.

4) Nope, they suck and provide no form of dps past the very early levels (even then its fairly bad)

 

[Manguadi]

3) people are already confined on buffslots.

You won't be concerned with this unless you raid.

 

[Blubuds]

oh my, I have to agree with otcho :-/ .. but it's true with the nerfed dps .. and that seems to be what your looking for .. Monk, or Ranger would be your choice both and tank quite well. Monk more so dude to AC, Mitigation boost. And amazing dps.

 

[Boehm]

1. I think deflux gets down to a 1.8 second cast. There are also damage/return improvement aas. Still without mana pool expansion, expect to med every second mob if tapping significantly. Prior to that spell, you won't be tapping a lot.

2. The pet can be used to pull. But like any pulling technique you are going to have to practice it to be viable. Should you become practiced at pulling, you will probably not use it much.

You will also want to supplement your mana using fd with a mana-less clicky fd when that becomes an option around 55 and up if you wish to pursue pulling as a group trade. There aren't many good pullers and you may find a niche should you become one.

3. if you get your archery up, you can supplement dotting and kiting for solo play.

4. Ogre fd is hysterical.

The class is by design for single target tanking mobs on the edge of doable for your group. You can manage up to three, if you aren't self healing with a box. 4 just gets very busy, and while doable is something you want to avoid. Since you need a group that can assist, can be patient until you settle down, and doesn't use aoes. That's rare though and pallys do the group thing much better.

If you need advice on a box class for solo, i suggest druid. you get ds, a mana buff, resist buffs, regen, a dot line that rarely resists, and a useful cold based rain at 57. These two classes are very sympathetic.

 

[Titanas]

Also depends on what classes your friends play to make a really good group like if you already have a monk so not needed as much or a necro