This is Dumb

[Muilezel]

Disease/poison counters were completely nerfed. You can't use disease cloud anymore.

You need to be using Clinging Darkness and Shadow Vortex now.

Clinging is the new Disease Cloud.

But their hate value scales with mob HP (up to 1200 on high hp mobs), so don't expect to spam them on low hp mobs to keep aggro necessarily.

Vs lower level mobs, you probably want fast weapons or DD procs, but I can't really speak to holding aggro on non-raid stuff.

I've witnessed some of the best server SKs effortlessly holding aggro as recently as the last non-draft quake.

[Octavian]

Yes... we all know DC doesn't work anymore. That's... kind of the whole point here?

I would question the circumstances of them "effortlessly" holding aggro. What exactly did you witness? What were they doing? Did you actually communicate with them about it? What were they tanking? Raid or group? How long were they building aggro before others joined and started DPSing? All of this matters because we're talking about snap aggro.

Shadow Vortex is as useless as DC, so that's incorrect. Both stat debuffs and both useless for snap aggro now - as I stated I was spam cycling, not just spamming DC on Narandi.

What are you basing your statement regarding Clinging Darkness on? What testing have you conducted or who told you about theirs? To say "clinging is the new disease cloud" is a big statement, because CD was not improved afaik. DC was far superior to CD prior to this patch, so I'm failing to see how CD could possibly serve as a replacement, especially since you're suggesting it be paired with a spell that does absolutely nothing for snap aggro. Just seems like uninformed commenting.

[Danth]

The notion that shadow knights should be expected to struggle with aggro until level 50+ due to HP scaling is absurd and nothing like the original game was. Holding hate versus other melee types is now quite hard at any level. Oddly, against some of the casters, it's fairly easy. The wife's shaman generates very minimal hate now (head-scratching in and of itself) and the patch has actually made it easier overall for my character to keep hate over hers when we do something like West Wastes dragons. Since duo is mostly what we do, I can live with this patch personally, but it's a rough time for the class more generally. Tactics used in-era such as aggro kiting with other melee classes are very difficult now. This should be another indication that something's amiss. I sincerely hope this is some sort of glitch or unfinished implementation because at present it does not feel like the original game. If anything it feels like "Warrior's dream;" knights kind of suck and debuffers are easy to manage.

Since we're stuck living with this for awhile--who knows how long--I've had the best results using Clinging Darkness and Shroud of Hate or Shroud of Pain. Disease Cloud is worth only about 1/4 of the hate of those spells and is no longer valid as a means of generating significant aggro. Was that in fact a Luclin-era nerf? How peculiar.

Danth

[Octavian]

Agreed, Danth. Also, the idea of it scaling with mob HP is absurd for the fact that many lower level mobs have a lot of HP and many higher level mobs have very small HP pools. So, my ability to aggro things depending on their HP pool is a completely ludicrous metric.

But also, the fact that my aggro is weak af regardless of level difference is another non-classic experience. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I was unable to gank aggro on incoming mobs from players less than half my level.

Here's hoping we get the patch rolled back completely. I see no point in trying to tweak/fix it. Just remove it. The game was working fine. When they messed with DC on live, they broke it and very quickly recognized the need to replace SK aggro with a new line of spells, hence the "terror" line, which has remained throughout all of live through present day. SK's were always meant to be top dog when it comes to aggro. They are now less effective than rangers.

[Vivitron]

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

What are you basing your statement regarding Clinging Darkness on? What testing have you conducted or who told you about theirs? To say "clinging is the new disease cloud" is a big statement, because CD was not improved afaik. DC was far superior to CD prior to this patch, so I'm failing to see how CD could possibly serve as a replacement, especially since you're suggesting it be paired with a spell that does absolutely nothing for snap aggro. Just seems like uninformed commenting.

I tested SK and Wizard spells with another player on Corudoth (high hp) in Iceclad. Each high aggro effect is equal (or at least very close, we weren't looking for small differences) to 1200 aggro -- where 1 point of aggro is the amount of hate generated per max damage on a wizard nuke; e.g. Ice Spear is equal to an aggro effect on a high hp mob, and so is 24 flux staff clicks at 50 hate per.

We tested high aggro effects to include Snare (tested wizard snare and darknesses including clinging), Root (Fetter), Ac debuffs (Heart Flutter and Shroud), Blind (tested w/ a cleric against a cliff golem, their blinds have both blind and ac debuff and put 2400 aggro into the CG instead of 1200 -- lucky paladins).

Darkness aggro works on immune to runspeed change mobs (Corudoth is) and when it doesn't take hold (checked on a passing wolf with wizard snare).

Others have reported slow capping at the same 1200. (Up from IIRC 700?)

I think root being high aggro is new. Too bad. It may be an annoyance for root parking adds.

I think removing disease and poison counters from the list of high aggro effects is an error for our timeline; if any of you can find smoking gun evidence that they were high aggro in velious you should open a bug thread.

[Octavian]

Others have already posted enormous chains of old zam comments about DC being primary aggro and generating massive hate during the Velious era. I've also added that the "terror" line was designed to replace it after it got nerfed on live, highlighting the point that SK's were never meant to have a timeline gap in their position as top hate generators.

It's in the hands of the server staff now. Really hoping I get to enjoy my character again at some point, because this is crap.

[Veleria]

I main Sk and I can confirm non of the spells in our arsenal compare to the aggro DC used to have. In addition, we are using 2-6 times as much mana for all the spells in rotation for aggro. I can't maintain aggro fo any reasonable period of time and the aggro I hold is tenuous. I can hold aggro for a short time in raids spamming the aggro spells on cooldown but I still lose aggro to people I never had issues with before. Mana is now a major issue. On a side note, Engulfing Darkness from the Blood Ember gloves is not a solution either. It has weak aggro and the casting time is too long to sustain aggro during the cast when spamming those nonstop.

[wuanahto]

I am more curious about the proc part of the change. My level 15 dwarf war on green just got a pair of obsidian daggers

[Jimjam]

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

Pretty sure its based off mobs HP. The agro gets better on higher HP mobs...but ya I was going oom trying to keep mobs on my 47 so in stables.

Disease cloud does nothing, I just used the ac tap cause was less mana than atk tap. It works ok but was still having to put 2-3 cast on every mob to hold it + dpsing with rocksmasher aary 2hb.

I think the issue is the scale for mob hp is broken.

IIRC max aggro should be achieved on mobs with hp in the ball park of the higher level DL giants.

I wouldn't be surprised if the implementation here doesn't achieve max aggro until the mobs have 10s of thousands of hp instead.

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

The notion that shadow knights should be expected to struggle with aggro until level 50+ due to HP scaling is absurd and nothing like the original game was.

Original game vast majority of people were using like 6/27 weapons til pas their teens. Of course it was easier for low level SKs to keep aggro against this instead of rogues backstabbing with 13 dmg weapons.

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

Others have already posted enormous chains of old zam comments about DC being primary aggro and generating massive hate during the Velious era.

The comments said things like it needed to be repeatedly cast. Obviously the current implementation seems to have underboiled the egg, but the previous was equally wrong.

2 DCs and MAYBE a shadow and you were keeping aggro an entire fight versus very twinked out melees. I don't think that fell under the scope of 'repeatedly'?

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

I am more curious about the proc part of the change. My level 15 dwarf war on green just got a pair of obsidian daggers

Obsidian daggers won't be effective at this point in the servers, even pre nerf. Maybe offhand one while your dual wield doesn't produce many swings (they can proc even if they don't swing), but you need a much better ratio primary to generate consistent white aggro.

[magnetaress]

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

I think the issue is the scale for mob hp is broken.

IIRC max aggro should be achieved on mobs with hp in the ball park of the higher level DL giants.

I wouldn't be surprised if the implementation here doesn't achieve max aggro until the mobs have 10s of thousands of hp instead.



Original game vast majority of people were using like 6/27 weapons til pas their teens. Of course it was easier for low level SKs to keep aggro against this instead of rogues backstabbing with 13 dmg weapons.




The comments said things like it needed to be repeatedly cast. Obviously the current implementation seems to have underboiled the egg, but the previous was equally wrong.

2 DCs and MAYBE a shadow and you were keeping aggro an entire fight versus very twinked out melees. I don't think that fell under the scope of 'repeatedly'?




Obsidian daggers won't be effective at this point in the servers, even pre nerf. Maybe offhand one while your dual wield doesn't produce many swings (they can proc even if they don't swing), but you need a much better ratio primary to generate consistent white aggro.

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