Pal VS SK end game

[Danth]

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

Can you name off the camps/areas where FD pulling is mandatory … or if not mandatory then preferable? And if so if so the types of camps that with a balanced group you want your tank pulling to begin with? I can think of a very … very few where maybe a SK as the tank would be preferable with a less than balanced group or a small squad.

My memory says:
-Kael arena hunting inside the building +/- PoZs
-deep in DN on the harder/nastier rats (if you don’t have a monk/bard)
-deep deep seb … protector/fungiKing (if you don’t have a monk)

If you have a full group usually the tank isn't going to also pull, agreed. If you're smallman, you can add places like velketor castle, most of Siren's, and much of the nastier areas of Chardok to your list above. While that's still not a huge list of zones, it does include a large proportion of the better duo/trio areas.

I include chardok even though enchanters often pull there because realistically paladin lull is a lot more limited than enchanter lull since the latter has more tools to deal with crit fails. A failed paladin lull in a tough zone usually means you're capping or dead and either way your trip's trashed, so I regard the paladin's use of that spell line as having a lower ceiling than ench despite it being the same spell.

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

I always enjoy your posts Danth; insightful and to the point.

Likewise, I'm glad to see you back active again. You've always been one to do the dirty work (parsing, etc) to prove or occasionally disprove things a lot of us take for granted.

Danth

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

DSM, problem with being both a tank and puller in the same group is it slows the group down. Full groups don't tend to like that. Usually a regular group will want a person doing one or the other, but not both. That is not class-specific and applies to anyone.

In a generic full group I'd usually rather have my paladin's toolset than my shadowknight's. Either class does fine in good groups, but the paladin has better capability to cover for mistakes or weaknesses in other folks if things aren't ideal. That being said, this thread was referring to "end game." That's a nebulous term, but realistically on P1999 exceedingly few people are hanging out in full groups at level cap. A few farm teams might, but it's a small portion of the population. Otherwise full groups are mostly for leveling.

At level cap the overwhelming majority of players are either raiding, or doing stuff smallman in solo/duo/trios. Raids have already been discussed at length. Which class is better in a smallman group depends mostly on who the other partners are. Paladin pairs better with enchanter. Shadowknight pairs better with shaman. On balance I prefer the shadowknight's toolset when not in a full or nearly full group. It's a strong class and a good choice for a player who's notion of end-game is more smallman focused than raid focused.

Danth

I disagree. It honestly depends on what you are fighting, your group comp, and how active the group members are in terms of engagement. Having the tank as the puller means you don't need to tear agro away from the puller when they are coming into camp. The agro is already baked in. Once you have broken the spawns, as long as you keep a timer you can just pull singles or doubles while mobs are repoping. And if you want a constant stream of mobs, you can always have a secondary puller. Again, once the mobs are broken and respawns are stringed out you can have anybody in the group do pulling. You could even have an SK tank and a Monk DPS/secondary puller!

If your group is so unfocused that they are consistently missing stuff like heals, I doubt the group will last very long, regardless of whether you bring an SK or a Paladin. A full 6 man group should have enough people paying attention at all times.

Shadowknights can contribute to more important camps like Fungi, whereas a Paladin's toolkit doesn't have a specialty in any group camp as far as I am aware.

Again, I am not saying Paladins are bad or significantly worse. I am simply saying SK's offer something more unique: FD pulling. If your group is a 6 man and doesn't have enough lulls/roots/heals, it's probably a poor composition to begin with, and your efficiency is being drained by that more than by a tank puller.

[Danth]

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

If your group is a 6 man and doesn't have enough lulls/roots/heals, it's probably a poor composition to begin with, and your efficiency is being drained by that more than by a tank puller.

I don't know that we even disagree. This quoted bit is not inaccurate. The paladin gets stronger as its group gets worse; it can cover for group weaknesses better than the other tank types can. As such it's a good class for a player who does a great deal of pick-up grouping where he routinely has to make do with whatever he can get because his alternative is sitting around twiddling his thumbs. That's not really "endgame", though, as said before. Speaking of which.....

Shadowknight tends to win at fungus king, as much for snare as feign since the other snare classes tend to be shunned from that specific area. As a rule as the content gets harder and the levels of opponents increases the SK tends to pull ahead of the paladin. Lulls get iffy when stuff resists all the time, stuns don't work at all on 55+ opponents, etc. On many occasions a paladin might join the wife and I and turn our duo into a trio and it'd always end up the same: paladin would be on pulls starting out because lull is faster when it works, then once we got to the tougher areas we'd switch out for me (on my SK) pulling once lull couldn't be trusted anymore. Feign is slow, but ultimately it has a higher ceiling than lull has. My shadowknight can pull about anyplace a paladin can, even if it's slower, but the opposite is much less true and there are some places a paladin/shaman duo would hesitate to even try.

Edit: Add in guardian wurms as another thing I'd hate my life if I had to do with paladin lulls. They're annoying enough to snare/feign split, resistant jerks with a large assist radius.

Danth

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I don't know that we even disagree. This quoted bit is not inaccurate. The paladin gets stronger as its group gets worse; it can cover for group weaknesses better than the other tank types can. As such it's a good class for a player who does a great deal of pick-up grouping where he routinely has to make do with whatever he can get because his alternative is sitting around twiddling his thumbs. That's not really "endgame", though, as said before. Speaking of which.....

Shadowknight tends to win at fungus king, as much for snare as feign since the other snare classes tend to be shunned from that specific area. As a rule as the content gets harder and the levels of opponents increases the SK tends to pull ahead of the paladin. Lulls get iffy when stuff resists all the time, stuns don't work at all on 55+ opponents, etc. On many occasions a paladin might join the wife and I and turn our duo into a trio and it'd always end up the same: paladin would be on pulls starting out because lull is faster when it works, then once we got to the tougher areas we'd switch out for me (on my SK) pulling once lull couldn't be trusted anymore. Feign is slow, but ultimately it has a higher ceiling than lull has. My shadowknight can pull about anyplace a paladin can, even if it's slower, but the opposite is much less true and there are some places a paladin/shaman duo would hesitate to even try.

Danth

I agree with you.

I think my main concern was that I find it an interesting logical conundrum that people keep arguing about group efficiency, but ironically a group is usually pretty inefficient if the Paladin is doing a lot of clutch saves. Obviously there are exceptions to this, like if you are trying to run a low man group without a pure healer.

[Ripqozko]

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

I agree with you.

I think my main concern was that I find it an interesting logical conundrum that people keep arguing about group efficiency, but ironically a group is usually pretty inefficient if the Paladin is doing a lot of clutch saves. Obviously there are exceptions to this, like if you are trying to run a low man group without a pure healer.

We get it ya play an sk

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

We get it ya play an sk

You can be objective regardless of what classes you play. Monks are harder to gear and have less utility. On average they don't solo as well. Now I don't have a fully ToV geared monk, so it is certainly possible they are better at soloing when raid geared. But that is also a much harder task to accomplish compared to raid gearing an SK.

Paladins are great, and I never said they weren't. But it is a fact that more classes have overlapping function with a Paladin. On average, they are less specialized in a group.

[Toxigen]

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

We get it ya play an sk

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I get it, you don't have anything meaningful to add to the conversation.

[Ripqozko]

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

We get it ya play an sk

[Crede]

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

I agree with you.

I think my main concern was that I find it an interesting logical conundrum that people keep arguing about group efficiency, but ironically a group is usually pretty inefficient if the Paladin is doing a lot of clutch saves. Obviously there are exceptions to this, like if you are trying to run a low man group without a pure healer.

It's because they are referencing KC lcy/velks ent groups where mobs are all over the place. So yea, some extra roots/heals can be helpful. But in reality I think it's just enabling the support classes to slack off more, so that necro can /pet attack and cast splurt on mobs dieing in < 30 seconds and the cleric can watch netflix and toss a cheal every once in awhile.

Sk will bring more dps to the table, unlock more group content with FD, and can rip aggro on incoming mobs safer/faster with DC than blind/stun. I have a pally, but I'd rather play my SK in 95% of situations. They are a better overall class, and there's a reason you have 4-5 times more sks on at a time than pallies. Pallies biggest edge is collecting soulfire dkp in the raid scene.