SK Race question + item help (have never played a tank)

[greatdane]

As far as stamina goes, it actually takes a surprising amount of gear to get there if you're not an ogre/troll. The DE magelo Snaggles posted earlier was pretty close to the best gear you can realistically get without actual raid loot, and it was like 30 points short. And that's with 2x hammered loop for a juicy -30 AC. To actually get to 205 unbuffed stamina on a smaller race, you generally need at least full Skyshrine (Kael has better AC but hardly any stam) and all the quested stuff like BoBs, and probably a handful of actual raid boss drops as well. That's not something you just get. I wager less than 5% of P99's players ever reach that stage of gearing. This is the real reason why the beefy races are generally better. For the vast majority of players, it's easily 50ish additional stamina even with shaman buffs.

And then there's still advantages to being capped in Kael gear, and especially capping without the STA buff so that you're not reliant on that. It both frees up a buff slot on raids and makes it so you're still optimized in groups that don't happen to have a shaman. STR/DEX/AGI generally doesn't matter much for a knight, but maintaining maxed STA is a pretty significant advantage. Depending on what gear you're wearing, it can amount to as much as half the raw HP on your gear. It's very significant if you're doing tough content. Imagine what a 250 HP charm item would cost. That's often what ogres effectively get for free.

[Snaggles]

Yea that exercise was fairly interesting. I think we often just assume everyone is going to cap every stat. Some of us will but a lot of people will not raid for a variety of reasons or it will always be an alt even if 60. Only two of my 60’s have dkp gear and while decently geared are not BiS trophy rooms. If a normally geared char/alt you have to make decisions and sacrifices.

I can see a deep mana pool being handy raiding as each tap for certain targets (or Pally Torp) can help offset an AoE. The longer you last the more dps you can do as a self sufficient player. That said a normal geared smaller SK will have less attack.

In the end hybrids are usually ranked by how they play. You can pull some wacky tricks with enough practice even if your gear is lacking. My vote is always to have fun, practice, and just pick whatever race speaks to you. Whatever you perceive the best, cool looking, or the weird underdog.

[Crede]

After leveling a troll SK to 60 with 20 points into STA, I would advice against it. Rarely if ever did that extra HP matter. What mattered more was hp regen like fungi & epic. If I had more INT though, it would have allowed me to go longer doing what SKs do best - fear kiting. And ultimately if you decide you want to solo stuff at high levels, INT returns are so much better(at least until 200 I haven't looked at it beyond that) and equate to a lot more drain soul hp then more sta does. I see STA as mostly a raid tanking stat, if that's what you want to prioritize that's fine but as others suggested rolling a SK to focus on raids isn't really optimal.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

After leveling a troll SK to 60 with 20 points into STA, I would advice against it. Rarely if ever did that extra HP matter. What mattered more was hp regen like fungi & epic. If I had more INT though, it would have allowed me to go longer doing what SKs do best - fear kiting. And ultimately if you decide you want to solo stuff at high levels, INT returns are so much better(at least until 200 I haven't looked at it beyond that) and equate to a lot more drain soul hp then more sta does. I see STA as mostly a raid tanking stat, if that's what you want to prioritize that's fine but as others suggested rolling a SK to focus on raids isn't really optimal.

Agreed, for Troll you should alway dump into INT as an SK. In Velious it is easy to cap STR and STA.

[greatdane]

I mean, putting 20 points in INT gives something like 240 mana. That's a single cast of Drain Soul. If you weren't capped on STA, that's approximately how much you'd get from putting the points there instead, except you don't have to cast anything to benefit from it, and the value is capitalized upon every single time you're the target of a CH whereas the increased mana pool only helps you once each time you go from full mana to OOM in a single encounter. Literally anytime you are CHed more than once every half hour or something, you got more out of putting the points in STA, unless you cap that stat without doing so. Also anytime you die, there's a chance that a few hundred extra HP would have given healers enough time to save you. Mana pool never does that.

If you absolutely never do anything that includes being the target of healing spells, it won't matter. If you live your life fear-kiting solo, you could probably have half your current HP and it would never make any difference as that gameplay simply doesn't make it relevant. But if you want to try to do some serious tanking with a knight, the #1 priority is to do everything you can to make it as efficient as possible. The only way knights get to ever tank anything on raids is if they eke out every little bit of extra tankiness to minimize the gulf between them and warriors. If that has no bearing on you, obviously it doesn't matter.

The safest route is to go with a race that ensures you'll cap your STA, even if that ends up meaning you've exceeded the cap by a bit and technically "wasted" some stat points. At the end of the day, none of the other stats have any impact whatsoever on how well you perform as a tank. At any given moment, you could reduce all of your other stats to 75 and it would literally be unnoticeable (except for your max melee hits, I guess). That's why the only race choices that are worth taking the time to discuss are regen for soloing or ogre for FSI and the highest STA. Anything else is just vague fashionquest that doesn't warrant the bandwidth it takes to post about it because nobody has ever benefitted from hearing "just play what you think looks best!" Everyone already knew that.

[zati]

Drain soul is like the best spell for SK it does damage and heals. I'm just goin at it from a solo challenge perspective, but race overall doesn't matter and str/sta is highly over-rated. INT is harder to max and the only way to get max mana before an engage is to carry extra gear>sit med to full>engage mob> blow mana> swap in real gear

Ppl shit on small races thinking their starting stats matter but once you get 60 or HoT gear it barely makes a difference in the grand scheme of things. A SK or Pally only need like 5K hp max for CH to land when tanking a ToV drake/wurm/HoT, anymore just makes it easier for the cleric to be AFK or start heals late. A warrior will always do it better because of defensive and OP taunt.

Here's proof on my stats with like only 3 or 4 end game loot when I solo'd King in 2020 before they nerfed the stay-off-rock. Only killed it once to prove that it was doable. It dropped a robe which was destroyed lol

https://imgur.com/4cfQMBg ..

185 int and 214 stamina self buffs(clarity is from spores I found) and 1 charge of cohesion(+25sta+25dex potion) 2724 mana max if you divide that by 225mana that's nearly 12 drain souls or 4056 damage / 4056 healed. That's whopping 70 points of INT missing and if you added shaman sta +50 buff you'd be capped out. I put my starting points into str/sta I think. When you're raiding you'll ALWAYS have Focus/Stamina buff.

https://imgur.com/1YhzZDK

these were my stats fully buffed with focus/aego/sta vs Lodi on my first try ..again 196 int , 255 str, 241sta (didn't use cohesion pot) with potion you'd be max sta. 2920 max mana with 59 points missing to max int.. Nearly 13 drains souls could be casted.. Remember that's a Dark elf starting w/ int 109 in my case.. Erudites start with 117 and Human start at 85 assuming no points go into it

so clearly erudite is the best /facepalm.

[Jimjam]

Right, so I decided to have some recent first hand experience.

I've popped into the hole on my 52 sk (click for Magelo - is missing many of the later spells).

I'm at zone in, splitting using dooming darkness and the zoneline (perhaps I should be using the free FD from BE greaves instead? Zoneline seems superior cos i can heal a bit out of zone and I don't take hits from add this way).

I start the battle with sword and board, cast siphon strength, shadow vortex and shroud of hate then switch to Reaver, casting Lifedraw between swings. If I remember I precast major shielding and vampiric embrace. Once the mob is at about 40% I cast dooming darkness and then invoke fear, which makes the mob flee on the spot. I'm finishing fights with about 40%hp 20% mana remaining.

Occasionally bashes are interrupting, but these are usually due to the improved knockback/interupt chance rather than stun.

In short, race doesn't seem to matter in this instance against these mobs with this gear. Xp would be faster on a smaller race, but I'm in no hurry. BnB in SolB may be faster, especially if using the bats zoneline and a short duration fear to kite.


Question: in these fights is it worth using heart flutter, etc in addition to the stat taps? The NPC is generally winning on %hp while getting the debuff taps set up. Should I even bother with the stat taps and just spam reaver / life tap for the win?

[Encroaching Death]

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

Question: in these fights is it worth using heart flutter, etc in addition to the stat taps? The NPC is generally winning on %hp while getting the debuff taps set up. Should I even bother with the stat taps and just spam reaver / life tap for the win?

The disease line of DoTs are mana efficient, but they're also long lasting, so make sure they fully tick out.

Do you have a Fungi on your SK?

If you find yourself lower on HP than on Mana for the duration of your fighting, then yeah, probably a good idea to toss in a Heart Flutter. But cast it at the beginning of the fight.

[Jimjam]

No fundi on sk, just HoTish armour. its pretty random how much hp/mana is left at the end of the fight. IDK why. Maybe cos I haven't bottomed out the curve for mitigation vs elementals? seems hard to believe cos they should be tuned for way worse gear than HoT.

[zati]

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

Right, so I decided to have some recent first hand experience.

I've popped into the hole on my 52 sk (click for Magelo - is missing many of the later spells).

I'm at zone in, splitting using dooming darkness and the zoneline (perhaps I should be using the free FD from BE greaves instead? Zoneline seems superior cos i can heal a bit out of zone and I don't take hits from add this way).

I start the battle with sword and board, cast siphon strength, shadow vortex and shroud of hate then switch to Reaver, casting Lifedraw between swings. If I remember I precast major shielding and vampiric embrace. Once the mob is at about 40% I cast dooming darkness and then invoke fear, which makes the mob flee on the spot. I'm finishing fights with about 40%hp 20% mana remaining.

Occasionally bashes are interrupting, but these are usually due to the improved knockback/interupt chance rather than stun.

In short, race doesn't seem to matter in this instance against these mobs with this gear. Xp would be faster on a smaller race, but I'm in no hurry. BnB in SolB may be faster, especially if using the bats zoneline and a short duration fear to kite.


Question: in these fights is it worth using heart flutter, etc in addition to the stat taps? The NPC is generally winning on %hp while getting the debuff taps set up. Should I even bother with the stat taps and just spam reaver / life tap for the win?

try using BE gloves to split to save mana, or if you don't have em use Engulfing darkness it works just as well... Dooming darkness is for longer pulls imo. Invoke fear is like 120m per cast and the only benefit is its fast cast/longer duration.. you could use normal "Fear" which is like 40mana when the mob is 25-30% HP n it will stay put.. longer cast time but if you factor in Resists rates 1 resisted invoke fear is mana down the drain and you get 3 chances on regular fear spell to equal the cost. That way u can use the excess mana to do a heart flutter -ac -str at the start of a fight then siphon life when you get too low hp