Hello New here and have a couple questions
 

So i am new just rolled a barbarian shaman, and am trying to get my friend to play who wants to know if shadow knights are viable tanks for 6 man group stuff. Its been so long that i do not remember. The only thing i really remember is that on raids shadow knights were door stops and picked up the SK only loot.

Secondly Halas seems to be a particularly terrible starting zone is there somewhere better i should try and make it to? I remember back in the day you always wanted to try and make it to misty thicket.

Thanks in advance.

ShadowKnights are just as good as the other tanks, use Disease Cloud on everything and generate tons of aggro. I think you can get to Qeynos Hills through the everfrost side of Blackburrow, but you'll have to have someone run you through unless you're like level 40.

SKs aren't as good as a Warrior as far as mitigation goes, but for groups an SK may be better for snap aggro reasons. Paladins are also great tanks and can heal pretty well out of combat too.

I would try for Qeynos area to level if you're working on getting together with multiple different class/races to level.

You can make the run pretty safely at level 4... Black Burrow is usually cleaned out or even if it isn't, the zones are about 100 yards from each other and you can run it with some merbs on ya -- they are level 4-7 on the top part.

SK's are good tanks.

Hi there Moons and welcome on the Classic! SKs are great tanks. As already pointed out, warriors boast a slight advantage in terms of mitigation, but due to life taps SK is generally the least in need of heals in grouping situations. FD can be an added bonus for tough splits and of course SK have fantastic aggro control, though not as easily built on messed mobs as it is by Paladins.

Your recollection of SKs on raids is probably because due to defensive disc, Knights cannot compete with warriors as main tank from Velious on. They do just fine in old world/ Kunark content though.

Good luck!

QFT.

Also you can cast the Armor theft spell (forget the name) and Siphon Str on mezzed mobs to build aggro without breaking the CC...

Thank you for all the responses its good to know and hopefully i can pull my friend in.

Made level 5 last night and got my new set of spells Halas maybe more dangerous but seem to be getting a good amount of money from all the weapon drops.

Is the Polar bear cloak worth getting still? i dropped a pelt for the quest yesterday and am pondering if its worth the 5 plat.

By level ~5 you can run through pretty safely.

I forgot to take into account mob density and such. I just looked at the wiki page for Blackburrow, honestly.