Did Pally/SK change much in luclin and beyond?

[Trelaboon]

I main a Paladin here on p99. Knights are easily my favorite class, but at 60, their usefulness is pretty limited. There are obviously niche uses for each of the two knights (DA pulling, train up etc), but the role which they’re actually suited for (Tanking) becomes pretty impossible. I’ve tanked in HoT, I’ve ramp tanked Vindi, but I’ll never stand toe to toe with any raid mob, short of an absolute crisis.

I played live up until OoW, but I don’t really remember much about the game during that time. Did Paladin and Shadowknight ever become suited for raid tanking? What was their role after Luclin?

[XeroKill]

They became defacto off tanks, and may raid encounters were specifically designed around having knights off tank multiple adds. I am looking at you Rathe Council! The warrior never lost their unique role as THE raid tank for progression content, but the gap did narrow significantly with AA and better gearing in Luclin and beyond. After Luclin, our typical raid tank setup was: If it NEEDS defensive, then the warriors tank it and everything else is done with Knights for their superior agro control for superior DPS.

[Crede]

Yea with all the scripted raids you weren't winning without good knights. SKs had AOE aggro spells which were really powerful. We didn't have many pallies, but they were always offtanking as well. Not to mention pallies epic 2.0 was the first weapon I believe to break 100 base damage which looked badass too.

[Danth]

Class balance among tanks in EQ was never ideal because the tank classes had fundamental faults with their basic designs that were never properly addressed. The knight classes had their ups and downs. During Luclin and Planes knights had their heyday, but Warriors (being the delicate snowflakes they tend to be) screamed and threw temper tantrums until the squeaky (and whiny) wheel got the grease, the pendulum swung the other way, and by Gates of Discord the knights had their collective backs broken. I quit shortly thereafter for good so I can't say what came next.

Overall, I can live with Velious class balance insofar as the tank classes go. It's not perfect but each of the three has its own area where it performs decently. Knights are plenty useful at 60--I've been 60 on my SK for years and I remain well satisfied with it--just got to remember that there's more to the game than logging in for raids. Hybrid anything is going to be weak in a situation where you have multiple specialists present for any given job.

Danth

[Troxx]

In the early years after velious (luclin + a half dozen expansions) knights became a lot more capable but still lacked defensive disciplines. Raid roles did expand quite a bit but warriors still got the high profile tanking jobs.

Eventually class roles were blurred to the point that all classes ended up with some form of fd vs fading memories style aggro dump and all tanks had their own flavor of defensive. All priests became capable healers making clerics less of a “male or break” class.

[pasi]

Wall of text from guy with lots of time invested on SK:

Group content was where knights shined, but EQ never really placed much of an emphasis on that. You can point to the prenerf Ikkinz Trials or MPG Trials, but those weren't exactly stonewalling (pun intended) warriors.

From a raiding perspective, knights were shit from Luclin to when I quit for the first time in OoW. Every so often there would be a mob that would AE fear (i.e Innoruuk/CT) where a knight with fearless could be an option, but it was still probably better to just use a warrior.

Even if a knight outgeared the content, they're were pretty trash relative to a warrior. It's a similar situation to Clerics and Druids, but the issue is that additional healing stacked whereas tanking did not. A Vex-Thal geared warrior is going to be a far better tank for a highend raid mob than a PoTime geared Knight due to having evasive/defensive.

And despite knights having amazing threat generation, they lacked an ability like AE-taunt that would 100% put them on top of the aggro list for surefire tank switches.

Knights also lacked an ability for burst damage avoidance for when they did manage to get aggro. Even rangers had this in weapon-shield. This is pretty vital for establishing a CH chain or slowing/debuffing a target.

Anyhow, in terms of additional roles:

SKs (imo) were the worst class in the game from a raiding perspective. IMO, they shared a spot with bards for the best pulling class in the game until they made monks even more idiot proof in GoD. SKs received a single target aggro buff and a hate line of spells that basically didn't work until OoW. They could generate a small amount of group mana with Zev Bite in PoP and a moderate amount with the addition of a separate cooldown Ancient Bite in GoD. They also had a decent group ATK buff. Generally the classes that wanted mana didn't want ATK and visa versa. While their threat generation was still good, it didn't really become great until OoW fixed the terror line. SKs spam clinging darkness from the DC/SV nerfs until the OoW terror line.

Paladins just offered so much more than SKs outside of pulling.

Paladins became arguably the best rampage tank given DA hammer (as long as they weren't an idiot with it since it blocks heals too). Decent group healing and single-target spot healing. Still maintained the Brells role. Paladins generally had higher HP since their self-buff (Aura of the Crusader) stacked with Aegolism line whereas SK's self-buff (Cloak of Shadows) did not stack with Aegolism or Symbol+Druid until much later.

[Jan Jensen]

SKs became AoE agro monsters. They were simply outstanding in scenarios where heal agro actually meant something (ie., not p99 broken mechanics).

[Yasi]

Maybe I'm confusing something but I remember paladins on raids healing (somewhere around Planes of Power)?

[Nulek]

Well, when gnomes were an optional race the world was better for it.

[Glain]

I never played a main tank. But in eq that title should go to the warrior. Pre luclin, knights are pretty useless because raids don't really require off tanking from hybrids. Just need a few good wars