Feign death sk vs monk
 

How much of a difference is there between the two? Is one much better/more useful or are they about the same?

One has a cast time, one is instantaneous

What about the fail rate? Monk has a skill for the fd right? And sk is just a preset fail rate?

Pretty sure Monk fail rate scales down to 5% @ 100 skill.

SK fail rate is a bit higher. Lucy says 13%.

I don't have a Monk, but do have a 60 Shadow Knight, so here's my take on the differences between ability and spell feign:

a) Monks can feign on the run; a Shadow Knight has to stop to cast. This, alone doesn't hurt too much in practice until you want to split spell-casters: The cast time on SK feign makes it much harder for that class to time feign between monster casts.

b) (Edited) Monks presently have a shorter re-use on Feign. A Shadow Knight has to wait 15 seconds in the event of a failure. With Velious, level 60 SK's will have a replacement feign spell with a 4 second recast and all 45+ SK's who can afford it can acquire Blood Ember Greaves for a second (albeit slow-casting) chance at feigning.

c) I don't know what Monk fail rate is, and never parsed the fail rate of SK feign on P1999, but it's surely less than 13% (which is a bit more than 1 in 8--very high..."Lucy" isn't always perfect). Maybe it's 13% at level 30 when you first get the spell? Whether that's the case or not, in practice at 60 I don't fail feign nearly that often. If I did I'd be afraid to even use it. Through many hundreds of uses my fail rate is significantly lower than 1 in 10 and probably nearer to 1 in 15 or 1 in 20.

d) Shadow Knights don't have Sneak, which means they can't do quite a few of the pulling-related tricks a Monk can do. Much of what some players think of as a Monk's splitting ability actually comes from Sneak moreso than from Feign as the two abilities synergize together quite well.

e) Shadow Knights have access to an item which lets them cast invisibility instantly, including straight from feign. This plus some of their other spells gives them access to some options a Monk lacks, making the SK the arguably better puller in a limited number of situations.

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I feel Monks have a general advantage over Shadow Knights in terms of Monks' ability to use feign effectively as a pulling tool. For general travel and getting around the Shadow Knight maintains closer practical parity; at least I can get to most anywhere in a dungeon like Sebilis from the zone-in as an SK. Monks generally have a larger margin for error and can be considered more user-friendly.

Danth

For reference, I played a 60 epic monk on live and pulled some of the major raid dungeons..Didn't play an SK beyond 30 or so, so I'm more commenting from a monk's perspective.

This is the biggest advantage. Jump-feigning is particularly awesome.

No, there is a re-use timer on the ability. I think it's about 10-15 seconds.

Sneak is quite handy. Feign behind a mom's spawn point, let it reset (forget aggro on reset), sneak, stand and slowly walk away, bandage, whatever.

Yup, Circlet of Shadows is pretty darn awesome.

Also, come velious, SK FD gets a major upgrade with Death Peace. 1 sec cast with a 4 (i think?) sec re-use, which makes FDing a whole not easier.

Also, being an ogre, I love not getting stunned when I'm trying to FD :D

the fact that sneak is so insanely powerful on this server makes monk feign death way, way better alone

you can feign death, sneak, and as soon as the mobs turn around your aggro is permanently wiped as of the latest patch

Monk FD reuse timer is 10 seconds.

Krey

Only mom I know of in EQ http://wiki.project1999.com/The_Brood_Mother