Troll SK STarting StatS

[Ennewi]

Paladins have the luxury of being able to consistantly med during server ticks when they joust solo, making them less dependent on mana regen than Shadow Knights who don't really have that option if they want to stay in melee range of their feared target. Although, technically SKs could ghetto joust using snare/pet outdoors and root-joust undead using gravebinder and wooly nets. Paladins have efficient heals, especially now in Velious, and free heals since Kunark's release; Shadow Knights have inefficient lifetaps that can be resisted and better, but unreliable lifetap procs. Paladins can Lay on Hands when OOM worry-free; SKs gamble with Harm Touch, knowing it can be resisted. Divine Aura costs virtually no mana with no noticeable delay and it cannot fail once it's channeled; Feign Death requires just enough mana and time to cast for problems to occur more often than not, repeat fizzles and interruptions, not to mention failures which all but require mana to lifetap while waiting to recast another Feign Death (in dungeons where running to buy time will usually mean taking more damage from additional targets). This is what makes Blood Ember Greaves so good; no mana cost or recast time does away with the problem above, in that you can train away until out of LoS and right-click Greaves until successful. You lose the solo kill, but avoid needing a corpse run/rez.

Even so, emergency reserves for mana always felt more important on a Shadow Knight. Late game, it's easy enough to compensate for low starting INT (even excluding Velious) just by attending sky raids; most of the resulting pieces have a ton of INT on them. As others have mentioned, HP Regen is crucial at times for SKs. Lying on the ground, waiting for mobs to path away, it helps having an innate counter to the DOTs that are eating into your last bubble of health (again, another area where Paladins are not opened to a great potential risk, having cure spells from very early on).

TL;DR...
HP/MANA first and STA/INT later, ideally without sacrificing those initial raw stat inreases. Starting points won't make or break your character, but do help towards min/max if you're into that sort of thing.

Ok I'll shut up about knights now.