Shadowknight Feedback from a level 30+ main.

Briggs

As of now it feels shadow knight might be falling behind the other tanks in group utility, tankiness, and group desirability. Our solo strength is still mediocre compared to many classes but is probably the best out of the tanks currently, but this doesn't bother me as I always group.

A few core things that stand out as great abilities to start with.

Grip of Shadow- ALL STAR ABILITY. This is why you pick SK right now. Its so fun, so good, and is very enjoyable to use. Functions as a taunt, interrupt, and mob reposition. Sometimes bugs out and doesn't pull the mob, but always grabs aggro and interrupts.

Soulrend- Great, its a tap, works great. Love it. Wish its mana cost was lower or it was harder to interrupt but its honestly great with a decent amount of INT stat under your belt.

Lord of Shadows- Great for what it does, but the tooltip is bugged and i'm not sure what its actually supposed to do? Right now it gives AC, and INT, and i'm not sure about mana regen or Str? Or even see invis? Unmem it after you throw it on, Great spell but for the love of god let me see buffs and debuffs on things with it like the tooltip says I can.

Feign Death- Great, saved my life so many times. Love it. 10/10. I still unmem it during a good party when maintanking and not pulling because I want more damage or utility.

Kick/Goading bash- These will never leave my bar. Must use at all times. Good.

Taunt- Always on the bar when tanking. Lives there.

Festering pulse/Palpitations line- Great damage. Love how it scales up over time. Its on my bar more often than not just for its damage potential currently.

Theft of Vigor- Kinda lives on my bar, the extra stats are great and I am loathe to give them up.

Unholy Bulwark- This has replaced Grip of Agony on my bar. Its better in every way currently as an emergency button. Lives on the bar now.

Now we get to the mediocre but necessary abilities that I have memorized a good bit of the time.

Shadow strike- Lives on my bar... unfortunately. mediocre damage, good threat generation. Its secondary use of extending the shadows spell line is almost never used at all for me because I don't have room on my bar for a 9 damage dot and 40% movement speed slow.

Siphoning slash- Lives on my bar. I love this ability in theory. It is constant no mana healing/sustain on a 20 second cooldown. Great. It scales off your weapons damage ratio, great! .... I just hope it ends up being better later than it is now, because right now its healing me for around 20ish every 20 seconds? I have around 1200 hp unbuffed. Its close to not noticeable.

Sacrifice Minion- Pretty good. I love popping this when shit hits the fan. Its the only use the minion has besides minor dps and to tank some mobs here and there. I'd rather not have the pet at all at this point. I feel like to much of this classes identity and power budget is wrapped up in the pet.

Now for stuff that remains unmem'd most of the time, or only gets put on my bar in certain situations or can persist without being on the bar. (the pet)

Soul servant- Neat, its a pet I need to manage and control. Really wish this was left behind in the rework. To much of this classes power balance is wrapped up in this stupid pet. Its okay damage if it stays alive long enough... And can tank a few hits for you in a pinch. Its main use is to pop like a balloon when your in trouble for Sacrifice.

Rend- Its only used if i'm dps spec or we are burning through mobs and I'm not taking damage. Its unmem'd most of the time. No room for it on the bar when tanking. Cool concept just.... very subpar and never useful to a tank in groups.

Grip of Agony- Its okay? Long cooldown, sad damage for how long of a cooldown it actually is. Has some utility functionality with its interaction with our Unholy aura. Will touch on that later when I talk about Unholy aura.

Now comes the stuff I never use or can ever find use for on my bar so far. These abilities make me sad.

Spirit break- I can see the use for it. If i'm fighting a very resistant mob to mine or my parties damage, sure I'll use it, but thats rare so far, and my bar space is tight enough already.

Pulling Shadows- This ability is cheeks. Its damage is bottom barrel, its slow is mostly useless as a tank, yeah its cost is cheap and you can keep it going forever, I can see myself using it if I dps off spec, but never as a main tank currently. No space on the bar for this, even with our Shadow Strike ability able to extend its duration. Maybe if I was going to dps? 9 damage every 6 seconds is negligible at this point compared to the other things on my bar.

Wreath of Souls/Crown of Souls- Really cool concept! Lets finally find a reason to not keep our pet .... oh dear this only last 8 mins... well thats never getting used. The pet deals more damage than the DS, last longer, and is better used as emergency for Sacrifice hp shield. Really sad to see this because I was very excited to use this, but If i use it in a camp, my minion is gone, I don't have time to summon it back because I'm busy tanking and holding aggro and keeping my hp from plummeting. Any consistently pulled camp, this ability is useless. You are bad if you are using this in parties.

Lets talk Auras!

Vampirism- Its amazing, SK staple. Love it. Keeps you and the party topped off and adds threat/damage/sustain to the whole party.

Aura of the Unholy- I like this, I do have some mixed feelings about it, but overall its great as an oh shit I'm getting low lets pop this on. I feel like its design does punish you for keeping yourself healthy with your mana, and makes you never wanna use lifetaps till you are below 25%. It functions great as an "Oh shit" button if you DO have mana, but if you do not, its only good for a single burst of HP from your Grip of Agony. Thats alright I guess. The extra parry doesn't seem noticeable yet compared to the Vampirism healing. I find myself struggling to use this correctly due to me being more proactive than reactive on using lifetaps to heal myself. Not sure if that is intended or not. The damage reduction is nice tho.

Now for utility, This is utility. Utility is great.
Polar alignment- Neat
Locate corpse- Awesome
Invis vs undead- Great!
Lull the Dead- Great!

With all this in mind, the class feels lacking in compared to all the other tanks. Fighter just feels tankier and does more damage. Paladin heals themselves and allies and can strip buffs from enemies, Inquisitor is amazing against casters and has some really good tools for AOE pulls and control. Shadowknights rework kinda feels like it was rushed and has left the class feeling like its the subpar tank class and thats very unfortunate.

I think the pet should go, or be something we can cast IN combat, but we don't even have enough room for most of our abilities on the bar already. It should honestly just go or be worked into being something that only comes out and hits one target like a dot for a while or something, then we pull it back into us to heal or give a damage shield. Attach it to Siphoning strike or Shadow Strike, idk just do something because right now we feel pretty rough compared to the other tanks.

Vagrant

Shadow Knight main here. The pet and its mechanics are whack. Please remove and give damage. Thanks.

Xilith

There's far more (or at least as many) SKs that want the pet than those that want to get rid of it, so that's unfortunately not something that can please everyone.

I have been considering that maybe it could be a fast casting but temporary pet lasting a few minutes, but haven't had enough time to really dig in here. I get that the damage return on the damage shield vs having the pet doesn't math out and will have to look at it.

Fighter is intended to be tankier as you have far better ways to replenish your health, but this again needs some math work to make sure things are where they should be.

If having access to a snare is never useful, then we should look at how much danger running mobs are presenting. The main use case for this is for the snare to stop runners, for pulling tricks, and fear kiting.

Run7s

Xilith the change from making humaniods flee at 20%(15%? I don't remember) to 10% negated the need to snare most of the time. By the time they are below 10% the low health snare kicks in and does the job.

Briggs

Xilith I think the pet issue stems from people that want the class to remain as close to EQ Shadowknight as possible, and those that don't. Every single SK I've talked to at this point says they would rather have more personal power in their character than have a pet. I know thats just my personal experience but It really feels like there is a divide in the community on that stuff. It's also why the least played classes are the ones that were not in everquest, and why any changes that deviate from that template get people very upset (Examples- Shamans/Enchanters recently).

If the pet must stay, let the damage shield we get from blowing it up last until we summon it again. Make it be a meaningful choice to have a pet out or a damage shield.

I do like the idea of a fast casting pet, but That would automatically eat 2 of our ability bar spaces up (Summon pet/Sacrifice pet), and when our bar already has 8ish perma taken slots (Kick/Taunt/Soulrend/Slash1/slash2/Grip Pull/Theft of vigor/Unholybulwark) that feels a bit awkward to use and leaves us with almost no utility aside from our pull and an emergency button.

I look at the other Knight tanks and they seem to have utility built into their kits beyond what shadowknight has. Inquisitor has a 10? Second aoe stun (wild btw wtf is that), can strip buffs off mobs, and can basically function as an enchanter half the time which makes the class incredible. It will be my 2nd character I level to max as I can see it probably being the best tank later in the game already. Paladin has incredible self healing, can also strip buffs off enemies, AOE Interrupts, AND can rez, while still being happy with whats on their bars. Fighter is just the tankiest thing in the world, but I have seen some complaints about bar space from them as well.

I know we are supposed to take more damage, but if so, we need some healing buffs on Siphon strike. The snare being useful for fear kiting is all well and good if you plan on solo work, but in a group the snare feels pretty useless so far. By the time the mob beings running its usually almost dead, and I can just grip them back to me if they get to far.

Fidric

the change from making humaniods flee at 20%(15%? I don't remember) to 10% negated the need to snare most of the time

Run7s this

rabbi

Why do people dislike the pet? My SK isn't very high level (just an alt I play when friends aren't around), but I like the consistent DPS I don't have to think about, it's cool thematically, and /pet rename lets me get a laugh from myself pretty consistently. The soul shards are abundant enough where I've been deleting some of them, so I never have to worry about that. I'm not even really arguing in favor of it, but I see a lot of people posting about hating the pet, and I truly don't understand it.

Briggs

rabbi Because its something I need to micro manage outside of my own hp bar and threat. Its great in certain situations, But feeling forced into using it feels really awful. I summon it, i set it to stay and either passive/defensive and ignore it till I need to pop it for a shield. Its unintuitive, and once you pop it for its shield benifit, or it dies, you gotta tell the entire party to slow down and give you a good 30+ seconds to re-summon and unmem the pet spell. Just slows the pulls down and can get you killed if you aren't managing it correctly.

thedrizzle

Run7s
Just bumping this again > hated this change at the time since mobs don’t run anymore/no risk of adds from runners which was always a consideration in dungs/made snares useful outside of pure kiting

AzDrake

100% team get rid of pet. I thought class was supposed to lose the necro flavor? Pets in MnM are a PITA to manage and clunky as heck. Tired of having to dismiss it all the time so it doesn't body pull when running around. Keep the soul mechanic for currency and use it for abilities like damage shield, thorns, etc. but without the pet summon and sacrifice aspect. Make those abilities, and the SK itself, stronger in response.

Kinyoshi

I agree, I'd rather have more damage on our spells/skills than this pet. Please let shadow knights opt out of pet use permanently and give them increased damage to make up for the lost pet damage.
The pet agros things, it breaks mez/root unless I'm watching it. It will run across the whole dungeon and agro stuff despite being told to sit and stay. It really distracts from tanking and if the group is doing enough damage, I don't summon it.
Also the summon takes way too long, considering there's sacrifice spells that only last 2 or 8 mins.
One good note though, some nec said it looked cool. I thought it gave negative rizz (Charisma) having this undead shambling servant next to me. I do enjoy the rest of the class though, I just really dislike having to play beastmaster with this servant.

Ophill

Xilith I dont think making the pet temporary is a good solution, we already have to unbind soul servant to make room for other abilities with the limited ability space.

Can you explain how snare can be useful for pulling tricks? I'm assuming you mean like separating mobs, but i haven't found a way to use it in such a way yet. You cant snare the mob you dont want to pull because the DoT will just re-aggro it once you un-feign death. And you cant snare the mob you want to pull because the mob will end up in the middle of a pack when it de-aggros from feign death. Gripping a mob to get them closer isnt a good idea because they can interrupt your feign death.

jdbertsch

Was going to write a long message to outline my experience hitting 31 at present and compare it to the previous version of shd leveling up to 58, but then feel - why bother. Just get countered by people who have not struggled through the levels as a shd

Our damage is just mediocre now. We took a few closet hits that made us more group dependent and destroyed any solo ability. We don’t shine in anything - mid to low tier tanking, mid damage, and limited utility. I mean Jesus - we are ok with massive hits rolling off paladins and clerics quite frequently, and grip of agony is circa 310 every 30 minutes? Joke ability - never used. Right up there with sacrificing your pet to get a 6 dmg shield when your pet is repeatedly pumping out around 20 damage a hit.

No offense - devs missed a mark just having this faded green ugly ghoul looking mob that does NOTHING but a buy more damage. Can’t see if weapons are equipped - it brings nothing at all but a slight uptick in damage with all the problems of managing a full time pet. lol we go from we have too many pet classes to nah - let shd keep pet but just make it a crappier version compared to what we had previously. Just a weaker version to keep a defensive ability? I hate the pet model - off all the things a soul can be, not some shadowy form or something but a glowing green ugly tired ghoul model that is more visible at night.

Reave - paltry damage, interruptible, and just not impactful. At level 31, damage ranges from 12 to 89 - sigh. Does slightly more damage than siphoning, minus the heal.

Siphoning strike - creates need to do inventory management - delete full stacks of soul regents. At least when we needed bone chips - I did not have to pick them up when I had enough. 20 health every 20 seconds is not impactful. Scaling is abysmal.

Snares: closet nerf - duration is so short we can no longer fear kite. Just have face tank now.

Was excited by the write up, but after grinding 30 levels - shd has lost a step in tanking, dmg, and utility.

Crazyeyes321

I like the pet, but I think it should be serving as a dot more than anything else. I'd even be fine with it being untargetable, have no health, and lose its taunt. I'm the tank, not these souls, or monster memories, or whatever the lore settles as.

Make it sort like a class feature that attacks your target on proc, otherwise its a swirling mass of darkness that follows you around? Would either need a high proc rate, or proc makes it stay on target 30 seconds like a standard dot.

jdbertsch

Xilith

Your idea about the pet lasting only a few minutes is intriguing and could work given the amount of soul reagents we get every fight.

That brings up two considerations:

The summon would have to be a fast cast if its shorter lived, and should do more damage than the current pet, as it will be uncontrollable besides attack my target. This will also require the button to always be on the ability bar, which will always eat up a slot. Fast casting would allow us to summon within a fight if its no longer there -- right now, there is no way i could summon a soul during a fight without getting interrupted and loosing taunt. In addition, if it was fast casting, it would make sacrifice for a damage shield more realistic, as you could summon (even in a fight) and sacrifice it right away, get the damage shield, and then resummon, which would make it more worthwhile.
You would have to make the pet summon and sacrifice pet on the same button so you don't have 2 diff pet related buttons always on the ability bar. Furthermore, it would require an additional ability slot if you wanted to fold in the sacrifice pet for a damage shield - though this ability in its current state will never be used.
**Alternatively, you could put them on the summon pet bar and we can drag them to the other bar. That would allow you to use one button on the ability bar, with the pet bar having three buttons - strike, sacrifice for shield, sacrifice for damage shield.

In addition, can we please fix the graphics so its not a transparent ghoul, but something representative of the soul fragment we rip from our enemies. Could it not be a shade or shadow of a humanoid, or a more amorphic shadow shape. I think the above could be incorporated into the game quite easily and make it more new and unique, more interesting to use as a mechanic.

Nivera

I do the same now with my Pet in the Mid 30's put it in a corner somewhere. Passive / Defender. Sac it when needed. The pet is too much liability when trying to split mobs, pull or anything else. I was hoping SK's would get rid of the pet like was mentioned. I would prefer just to drop the pet. Replace "Sacrifice Minion" with "Sacrifice Soul". Still uses the soul remnant. Focus the class a bit more around the "soul" aspect instead of the pet aspect. It's time to let go of SK with a pet. Yes, it feels ok in the single digit levels and maybe into the teens. After that, it just gets in the way.

Brefchk

The issue with SHD is that it is a class whose main selling point is the damage and self healing and while this comes into play for solo, this never comes into actual play in groups and when it does come into play, the healing is either worthless because it is based off of damage that you are NOT doing (Siphoning Slash healing me for an average of 20 every 20s with a HP pool of 1200 unbuffed...really?) or almost impossible to use when you actually need it because your lifetap has a cast time.

People will soon find out that the class is quite literally broken at a mathematical level and will keep getting worse and worse as they gain levels because gaining 1-10 level based flat damage and 10% weapon damage where in the best case scenario you have a weapon dealing 30 flat is not even 10% of the increases in AC, resists and HP that mobs receive by the time you get a new rank of that ability. Doesn't help that dealing both phys and magical damage is actually just a nerf as you're splitting your damage increases between STR and INT while also needing to go through 2 different layers of mitigation.

The class has a great kit in theory it falls flat because the math in this game makes 0 sense, regardless of class. Does this make the class unplayable or something? Not at all. You're still a slab of meat with a taunt and a good OH SHIT button in the form of a 10s aoe stun and that is enough to clear the entirety of the group content of this game. It is, however, a terrible feeling that you level up and get progressively worse rather than keeping pace with mobs, let alone getting stronger.

EDIT: Also, Reave, it's bugged. The ability states in the tooltip it cannot be interrupted. It's still terrible damage, hitting for around 70-90 on a high roll but at least it's not supposed to be interrupted.

Briggs

Brefchk ShadowKnight most def does NOT have a 10 second aoe stun, unless I've missed something.

The complete lack of party utility in combat makes shadowknight just worse than the other knights, and its lack of ability to tank the same amount of damage as the fighter.... I'd love some sort of utility that isn't just damage at this point. The Inquisitor means you don't need an enchanter nearly as bad, Paladin means you don't need a cleric nearly as bad. They both remove some need for purge or dispell as well. Shadowknight means you don't need a.... well no. You don't do anything the other knights do. Your just a worse fighter currently that does less damage and takes more, with a liability in the pet that can and will randomly bodypull if you don't micromanage it.

Brefchk

Briggs

SHD does, in fact, have a 300s CD aoe 10s stun called Terror in the Shadows and that's pretty much the only good skill in that class's entire toolkit along with the vampirism damage procs. Oh and the grip, when it decides to work without breaking or getting resisted half the time on a white mob.

Briggs

Brefchk You mean the AOE fear? Not the best idea for games like this.