SK epic vs other weapons, worth?
 

So I recently have been itching to work on my SK's epic...fashion quest is definitely enticing but from a realistic standpoint of the work involved for how often it's wielded, is it worth it? The stats a pretty nice but output wise Narandi's lance is a better ratio and only 20k.

Now obviously sk's in a non raiding scene might benefit from the hp/resists/life tap but how often are high end raid SK's wielding their epics?

Interested in hearing what I might be overlooking, thanks everyone in advance.

SK's would use it if they ever tanked endgame content.

SK's don't do damage so it doesn't matter what their ratio is.

SK's are more useful as pullers in the end game. You want resists and HP and the epic has those, very worth if you want to be an endgame SK.

MMO-gamer-thinking detected...."If a character isn't the best at something, he can't do it at all." Silly, of course.

...However, that's the mindset you have to be prepared to deal with if you want to do high-end content on P1999 as a hybrid tank. Half the bigger guilds regard you as fluff and won't care what you do, and the other half will passively-aggressively whine at you to play something they like better. Go into it with a thick skin, or pick something else.

Note that Narandi's Lance, like all piercers, performs slightly worse than its ratio would suggest because piercing has a lower skillcap than blunt or slashing. The epic performs somewhat poorly on select raid bosses because P1999 has a non-classic feature where certain raid bosses are flagged as lifetap immune, blocking the proc. High-end, high AC bosses also favor fast weapons since a lot of hits skew towards the lower end of the spectrum...hence you see most high-end knights using 1H weapons most of the time. As a Shadow Knight who primarily solo's or duo's, the epic is extremely effective for me....if I wanted to do high-end raids regularly I'd regard it simply as another weapon or a situational tool. With the relative scarcity of hybrids at the high-end, Pal/SKweapons, at least the 2H examples, from temple veeshan must be able to be acquired cheaply by folks in the guilds that do such content.

Danth

I had one back on live with a Lance of Thunder and would often use it on raids just to help with supplemental damage. Yea less overall DPS but survival and tricks are the hybrid's strong area.

The Narandi is great in that you can just buy it and eventually it will be upgraded from 38/45. Hopefully sometime in the next decade :). With the SK epic being very difficult and the lance being the opposite I guess it depends how concerned you are with the bottlenecks.

SK dps is half that of a warrior

don't worry about it

Getting high dps should always be a target but since your dps will stay low no matter what, losing some dps in favor of a proc that improve your overall survivability is a decent trade... It depend on the proc and the loss of dps, obviously... Also as other stated piercing caps much lower, this has a clear impact on the damage output, making piercing weapon less good than they seems, even when narandi's will be boosted it will probably still have a worst effective dps than your epic...

ITT: "hurrrdurrr sks cant do dps you shouldnt even use a weaponnnn"

I parse most groups I’m in and have for a long time now. At the higher end of content, ranging from 57-60 and including very nice samplings across the board (high end tradables, epics, low raid and NToV/BiS ... I can say one thing:

Many high end players playing high dps classes overrate their own damage output. Average high end rogues may burst or disc/luck out some insane numbers but in general I expect a ballpark of 80-120 dps sustained depending on gear with standard group buffs. Monks? 70-90? Rangers? Less. Warriors? Not that far behind. People with raid BiS or lazy and crappliy geared blokes can always break this molds but it’s what I’ve come to expect.

Where I’m going with is I’ve also parsed well geared SKs and Pals and they, though measurably lower, aren’t as god awful as people think they are. A paladin with the 27/29 hate 1hs can put out a consistent 50-60dps. It’s less than warriors but not by as much as you might think under realistic fighting conditions. NToV weapons yield better results.

People like to strut raid burn parses fully buffed to the gills and burning discs, but 99% of new play doesn’t have avatar, CotP, trueshot, precision, etc_and_so_on in the equation.

Knight dps is anything but non-contributory unless your gear, buffs and weapons suck. Ratio does matter and dps is dps. Well geared knights can put out respectable numbers for an archetype that is expected to suck.

Great post. Thanks

Pretty much. Use a Z-Heart in your MH if you think DPS doesn't matter.