[Toxigen]

Originally Posted by 7thGate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well, it is true people don't gear check you. I leveled Jayya with ALS gear in probably 40% public/60% guild groups, and noone ever kicked me or even mentioned that I was swinging a Burning Rapier and Iksar Berserker Club around in my 30's.

That being said, its not just DPS that you don't need for a group. There's no real absolutely required role at all, though healing is close. I've been in plenty of groups that don't have tanks or don't have healers, and the ones with no tanks are fine but the ones with no healers tend to slow a lot.

Noone is going to gear check a tank for a group and one of the best groups I was ever in was just 5 rogues and a shaman aggro bouncing and slaughtering stuff over and over. One of the most fun events I've ever run was just an all-rogue group in Siren's Grotto whacking sirens one by one with a pocket factioned enchanter/cleric pair to patch up between kills and keep us buffed.

In any case, I would have to vote Shadow Knight. I think they have the least unique, useful niches out of all the classes. Mage might be a contender except for CotH, which by itself is incredible for getting people to a group/raid and pulling. Mages also get a boost for being really good at soloing.

Shadow Knight can still do cool stuff though, its just they kind of get overshadowed by Necros, Warriors or Paladins depending on what it is and don't really have a lot of truly unique things other than 1 or 2 AC debuffs.

I'll play devil's advocate and argue the case for gear:

True Story Time

The best XP I ever bore witness to was on my 58/59 (epic, fungi) rogue soon after they changed the Hole ZEM (the original mega boost, not current iteration). Found myself in a trio with a fungi / epic monk (pretty sure he was rocking sap encrusted branch and wurmscale fistwraps) and an epic (fungi too?) bard...all of us were 58 or 59. The monk had beads to boot. You can bet your sweet elf ass they gear-checked me before I got the invite...they were doing just fine without me.

No dedicated healer but the pulls were so insanely smooth I literally did not stop attacking on my rogue for over 4 hours. There was never a single moment where there was not at least 1 mob in camp with more on the way. Now, that was complete dirty-diaper-nerd-zone levels of commitment from all 3 of us but it utterly destroyed any XP I ever made leveling my enchanter, necro etc.

This never would have been accomplished if the bard/monk were trash tier players, but I doubt it would have been possible or even remotely efficient if their gear sucked. They were basically playing at the skill cap/ceiling and in godlike gear. They didn't "need" me to keep going, per se, but I was providing far more than enough dmg to make up for them going from 50/50 to 33% split.


All that being said, its still SK as the most underpowered class when you consider all aspects of the game. This is primarily because the paladin basically does what the SK can do but it brings Soulfire and DS. Mages are required to raid for any guild going after contested targets because of CotH. You could have literally zero SKs and be the #1 raid guild on p99. You cannot ignore raiding just because you're a SK main and don't got guild. Hope this helps.