SK Race Choice

[greatdane]

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

No idea what you people are talking about with FSI for splitting. Splitting does not involve face tanking at all and if you're splitting blues 1) those mobs do not stun you and 2) taking an extra round of melee from a blue is a non-issue.

Splitting can often require facetanking briefly, depending on the nature of the pull. Not all pulls have enough space to start from max range. In indoor zones without SoW/jboots, you can't gain distance from mobs that are already on you--and in dungeons with many shaman mobs, most mobs will have SoW (and sometimes haste as well) if they've been up long enough for a split pull to be necessary. A failed FD in particular literally guarantees that you will be facetanking multiple mobs on the second attempt.

What do you mean, blue mobs don't stun you? Like 80% of mobs in the game have bash. Blue mobs absolutely can stun you. They might miss their bashes, but they might not.

In cases where you're split-pulling and don't have the space to do it without mobs reaching you at all, you're not taking one extra melee round from a blue. By definition, you're pulling more than one mob. If you get stunned, you're taking a minimum of two rounds (and possibly more if they're hasted) from each mob before you get off a second cast of FD. Like, that's just a mathematical fact. If you get bash-stunned in the first round, you will take at least one more round from every mob before it's mechanically possible for you to have cast FD again.

Not sure what people get out of inventing these completely imaginary scenarios where somehow bash never stuns regardless of race. It's self-evidently not true.

[Keebz]

I'm not going to respond to your contrived scenario, but

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

What do you mean, blue mobs don't stun you? Like 80% of mobs in the game have bash. Blue mobs absolutely can stun you. They might miss their bashes, but they might not.

Maybe DSM can give you the normal distribution of a mobs bash stun chance over a fight.

[greatdane]

Mine is not a "contrived scenario." Anytime you get bash-stunned by a mob (as a non-ogre, obviously) and follow it up with a cast of FD/DP, you are literally guaranteed to take at least one more round of melee. From every mob that is currently aggroed onto you, which - if you were split-pulling - by definition means more than one mob. There is never going to be a scenario where the pull reaches you, bash-stuns you, and somehow doesn't get to swing again before you have sat through the stun duration and the cast time of FD/DP. That is a mathematical impossibility, unless those mobs are affected by a slow from some very recent previous encounter (please don't go there, you can't be that dumb).

If you can somehow contrive to believe that this is never meaningful in any way, I suppose you're welcome to live in the fantasy reality that you've concocted, but it takes a special level of idiocy to claim that it's somehow just not something that ever matters. While mobs certainly don't land all of their bashes on a tank class, they land enough to where it's noticeable if you're a non-ogre, especially when multiple mobs reach you and every one of them bashes. After all, you're never FD-pulling one mob. It is by definition multiple.

If a blue mob has a 20% chance to actually land a succesful bash-stun on you, what about when there's three or four? But if you wish to draw your conclusion off the assumption that you are, for some bizarre reason, FD-pulling a single mob, you're welcome to live in the world of the deeply irrational.

And most importantly, when would any other racial ability have given you a better chance of success than FSI? Keep in mind that you're the one who specifically pinpointed FD-pulling, so please don't reel it back to something truly inane like "uh, if I had 5% more maximum mana pool..." You tracked this discussion directly into the specific topic of FD-pulling and made the claim that FSI is literally never even relevant because, according to you... blue mobs cannot stun with bash? That is absolutely moronic, not to mention - even if we briefly pretend it were true (it isn't!) - would only be relevant to blue mobs. Can I please pick your argument further apart? It's fun.

Granted, not every bash is a guaranteed stun (unlike the original implementation from years ago), but it is the most common outcome of a bash. If you get bashed, more often than not, it will stun you. Less commonly, it will interrupt your casting even if it doesn't stun you. That's less likely. It happens, but the stun itself has a higher probability. Ogres are immune to that. When facetanking multiple mobs - as will literally always be the case when you're trying to FD-split a multimob pull where you didn't have room to simply feign before they reach you at all (because you're never fucking splitting a single-pull) - the odds of avoiding interruption from a bash are quite high if you have FSI.

[greatdane]

In my experience, I would loosely napkin-math it at approximately a 75% chance that a successful bash stuns you (if you're not an ogre) and a 25% chance that a non-raidboss (and not red-con) mob lands its bash on you if you're at the AC softcap. If you've got three mobs connecting with you as you cast a spell, all of which immediately bash, that's ~50% chance that one of them will in fact land a stunning bash on you. While the numbers are guesstimates, I don't think they're far from the truth. Some of the time, a bash will interrupt whether or not it stuns you, but that's comparatively uncommon. By far the most likely outcome is a simple stun, and ogres ignore every one of those for all their lives.

Anyone who says that has no value is out of their mind.

[Snaggles]

It’s not contrived. Typically the first thing a melee NPC is blow its cooldown skill (bash). One blue bashing a quick casting skill is a very low chance, but three makes it more possible. If splitting a pack without sow your lead won’t be far ahead of then, they will try to bash you once in range and during your cast.

Does any of this result in more deaths or justify playing an ogre? I doubt it and not for me. I do think it’s by far the best argument for bash-immunity one can make.

[Toxigen]

50 pages to arrive at "it doesnt matter play what you think looks cool"

[Troxx]

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

50 pages to arrive at "it doesnt matter play what you think looks cool"

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

50 pages to arrive at "it doesnt matter play what you think looks cool"

That is the default and lazy answer people always give, but it doesn't answer OP's question. If people wanted the default and lazy answer, they wouldn't make a new thread asking a question. They already have the answer. We could just shut down the forums and have a splash screen that says: "Just do what you think is cool".

To answer OP's question:

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

Is Iksar SK worse for end-game solo crawling than other races?
Do the armor clickies account for serious mana saving etc?

Blood Ember will help with solo dungeon crawling. This is due to how much mana it saves you. Mana is the bottleneck of an SK typically speaking when soloing. Here is an example of me using Blood Ember Boots/Gauntlets in Sebilis: https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...&postcount=468

If you are worried about itemization based on race, I would advise against picking Iksar for the Shadowknight class. Greenmist is not as good as Blood Ember factually speaking. Greenmist will be replaced eventually. You can pick Troll and get Racial Regen + Blood Ember if you want both. Otherwise any other race will work fine. You can get a Fungi Tunic/Iksar BP to make up for lack of Racial Regen. For the first 50 levels, a character with Iksar BP is regenerating faster than a Troll/Iksar without one.

[Sizar]

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

Mana is the bottleneck of an SK

This more than anything is the what OP needs/needed to consider if solo dungeon crawling

[Cecily]

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

50 pages to arrive at "it doesnt matter play what you think looks cool"

I think Dark Elf SKs look cool. Does anyone else think Dark Elf Sks look cool?