SK Race question + item help (have never played a tank)

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Shamwowi, you have numerous 60 Shadowknights, myself included, telling you the blood ember clicks aren't a big deal at 60. Don't write off that collectively huge amount of experience. Your own SK is not 60. You get more mileage out of blood ember when you're grinding low blues or high greens. It doesn't get used so often later on, although I've heard of the clicks being used for the rare West Wastes dragon melee solo.

I don't much care about raid gear on this class. Main reason people put raid gear on a hybrid melee is so they can go solo stuff they out-gear. Whoop-de-do (rolleyes emote). That does not impress me any more than a level sixty player beating up blackburrow. That being said, not everyone is so meek as to shelve his own character in favor of a guild bot when demanded by Almighty Guildleader. Someone asks me to do that, I'll tell him to shove it. So high-end min-maxing has some relevance, albeit diminished compared to the raid-centric classes.

Iksars are objectively better than the non-monster race shadowknights at 60. Racial regeneration and AC bonus outweigh a handful of click items that don't get used all that much. As a general rule of thumb SK races can be classed into monster races (slower leveling, but stronger overall) and non-monster races (no experience penalty, but not as many bonuses). I like trolls a bit better than iksars, but it's close.

Danth

Unfortunately experience does not mean you are correct. Mathematically speaking Greenmist is inferior to Blood Ember. I would be happy to see counter data, but saying "I am right because I am level 60" is not a valid argument. Leveling to 58 has given me a pretty good idea of the class. Two more levels are not going to give me some massive revelation. I know how hard mobs work as well, because I have years of experience playing around with my 60 Shaman.

You will do better as a Troll with Blood Ember at level 60 as opposed to an Iksar with Greenmist. The extra AC bonus is not saving you thousands of mana, nor is the Greenmist proc/stats.

To me it seems like a lot of people are trying to use the example of SK's soloing level 55+ mobs as a reason for why Blood Ember is bad. The strange thing about this argument is an SK soloing Cliff Golems is already going to be well geared. You will probably have Epic, Eyepatch, and raid gear. Greenmist is irrelevant in this case, because you have Epic, which is objectively better. Also, not all 55+ mobs are spawned in a way that you get no adds. Even at level 60 you still need to split mobs with Snare/FD to get to your intended target. Saving mana during that process means you have more mana for the real fight.

I see people saying they don't use JBB at 60 or think it's a bad item in this thread and others (not saying you specifically). This screams that people have serious misconceptions about clickies in general. Honestly I used to think the same way on live. I thought clickies were bad because they took longer to cast than regular spells. So I understand the confusion, but it isn't correct.

I also disagree that Iksars are better than Humans/Dark Elves, etc. Mana is the bottleneck on Shadowknights. I would rather save thousands of mana over thousands of HP, because mana can only be quickly regenerated while sitting. This means that any meditation breaks are periods in which you cannot fight. Because Shadowknights use fear kiting in a lot of situations, mana tends to be the problem, not HP. If you want to use the example of fighting Cliff Golems, racial regeneration is not required to fight those either. Would HP Regeneration be better than Blood Ember when it comes to Cliff Golems? Sure. But if you really just wanted to make your Shadowknight as overpowered as possible for soloing hard mobs, you should have picked a Troll anyway, because they are just better than Iksar.