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

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

What is it you grind on, by the way? Would give me an idea what you're doing for the sake of comparison. Feel free to PM if you don't want to hi-jack the main purpose of the thread.

Right now my SK does Howling Stones North mostly. With Dooming Darkness you can use the safe ramp as a fear kiting spot. You just need to kill the three mobs by the picture drop to get the full length. You can do it with just the ramp if you spam slam (stuns shorten how far the mob can run), but that is still a bit risky with the pathers. Occasionally you can get too close. I usually only do that with the mob in the corner if I am initially clearing.

I clear the ramp and as many of the pathers as I can. That usually will keep me occupied until repops. There are enough mobs outside of the rooms to where you don't need to worry about running out of mobs before repops. This also means you don't need to waste time/resources splitting the rooms.

Before that I was doing WL goos. Those are pretty good from 55-57 or so. If you have all the goos to yourself in either room, then there isn't much downtime between clearing them and repops, so the regen is helping at that camp too.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I apologize, I messed up bad on the regeneration math from my previous post lol.

I also should have looked at the wiki hehe. https://wiki.project1999.com/Skill_Meditate. If that table is correct, an SK would be regenerating at 8-15 mana per med tick from levels 20-49, depending on level. I was thinking it was 15 points into meditate before you gained more mana regeneration, instead of 12.

Trolls/Iksars get +1 HP per tick compared to other races while standing from levels 20-49. Sitting they get +3 HP per tick from levels 20-49 compared to other races. If you sit for 30 minutes an hour, you get 300 HP from standing, and 900 HP from sitting, for a total of 1200 HP per hour. So you would be increasing your kill speed by 15 minutes at level 20 (1200 Mana spent on life taps / 80 mana meditated per minute), to 8 minutes at level 49 (1200 Mana spent on life taps / 150 mana meditated per minute). That would be an increase in kill speed of 25% at level 20, to 13% at level 49. This is because life taps from 9-50 have basically a 1 to 1 HP/Mana ratio, so if you are using them to heal, you are trading 1 mana for 1 HP.

On average that would mean you could keep pace with a race that has a 0% XP penalty, but since the higher levels typically take longer, you probably would end up being a bit slower. I am sure it does depend on what you are killing, since different mobs give different experience. That would be harder to quantify, given many mobs have level ranges.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

One more time. My brain is apparently a mess today. Please ignore my other HP regeneration posts.

Trolls/Iksars get +1 HP per tick compared to other races while standing from levels 20-49. Sitting they get +3 HP per tick from levels 20-49 compared to other races. If you sit for 30 minutes an hour, you get 300 HP from standing, and 900 HP from sitting, for a total of +1200 HP per hour compared to other races. All Shadowknights meditate at 8-15 mana per tick from levels 20-49, depending on level.

From levels 20-29, Life Spike has a ratio of 1.64 mana to life. This means it would take 1900 mana roughly to heal 1200 HP. Troll/Iksar HP regen would decrease your meditation time by: (1900 mana spent on life taps per hour / 80 mana meditated per minute) = 23.75 minutes per hour at level 20. Generally you would be fear kiting instead of just life tap spamming, meaning this is not what most players will do.

From levels 30-49, Life Draw has a ratio of 1.4 mana to life. This means it would take 1700 mana roughly to heal 1200 HP. Troll/Iksar HP regen would decrease your meditation time by: (1700 mana spent on life taps per hour / 150 mana meditated per minute) = 11.33 minutes per hour at level 49. Generally you would be fear kiting instead of just life tap spamming, meaning this is not what most players will do.

In theory that is a 40% increase in kill speed at level 20, which reduces as you level to a 19% increase in kill speed at level 49. This is assuming you are only spamming life taps, which isn't realistic. With fear kiting, you aren't going to be taking as much damage, so you won't be working with these numbers. With fear kiting my guess is you would probably be getting a 10%-20% increase in kill speed depending on player level, mob difficulty, and strategy.

[Crede]

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

One more time. My brain is apparently a mess today.

Trolls/Iksars get +1 HP per tick compared to other races while standing from levels 20-49. Sitting they get +3 HP per tick from levels 20-49 compared to other races. If you sit for 30 minutes an hour, you get 300 HP from standing, and 900 HP from sitting, for a total of 1200 HP per hour. They meditate at 8-15 mana per tick from level 20-49, depending on level.

From levels 20-30, Life Spike has a ratio of 1.64 mana to life. This means it would take 1900 mana roughly to heal 1200 HP. So the HP regen would decrease your meditation time by: (1900 mana spent on life taps per hour / 80 mana meditated per minute) = 23.75 minutes per hour. Generally you would be fear kiting instead of just tap spamming, but that is worst case.

From levels 30-49, Life Draw has a ratio of 1.4 mana to life. This means it would take 1700 mana roughly to heal 1200 HP. So the HP regen would decrease your meditation time by: (1700 mana spent on life taps per hour / 150 mana meditated per minute) = 11.33 minutes per hour. Generally you would be fear kiting instead of just tap spamming, but that is worst case.

In theory that is a 40% increase in kill speed at level 20 (worst case), to a 19% increase in kill speed at level 49 (worst case). With fear kiting, you aren't going to be taking as much damage, so you won't be capitalizing fully on these numbers. In reality it is probably half that, so the HP regen is probably giving you a 10-20% increase in kill speed, depending on what you are doing.

Using lifetaps as a means of measuring leveling speed on an SK is a really inefficient statistic. SKs start to get pretty good at fear kiting at lvl 22 with engulfing darkness & spook the dead. At that point, it's already drastically more efficient than face tanking with shitty lifetaps.

Once you add in a fungi, which is really not that hard to obtain on these servers, it really starts to tip the scale in favor of non regen races. Add in a crown of narandi, and it becomes even better. The key to SKs is to just avoiding taking hits as much as possible. When you get epic, you can start to balance it a little more. And the blood ember clickies can start to help even more, especially the gauntlets(for this reason iksars are the worst leveling sk race)

As I stated previously, the main benefit of regen will be seen at 60 with pulling & the occasional FD afk.

The data doesn't exist so we will never fully know, but based on me leveling 4 different SKs to the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60, I would say that the regen advantage maybe offsets around 5-7% of the xp penalty at best. The biggest advantage I found with my Troll when leveling was being able to slam with a nice 2h while fear kiting. But once you obtain epic, you can easily swap that in for bashes(and the occasional proc), so it's more of a convenience at that point.

[Snaggles]

When the game becomes a real slog you will prob be doing a spawn or two and sitting until repop. At that point mana and hps will be full by the time you need to kill another round.

Best case for regen seems FD recovery (when you don’t want to stand for a bit for fear of death) or killing green cons that barely tickle you. Running from point to point it does recover more hps. 10 min run + 800hps over a non regen class.

I just can’t see that making up for a 20% penalty. The Greenmist is very tempting for many reasons. I like the way trolls look. Any geared up sk is great at 60. You can say that about any class or race though.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Using lifetaps as a means of measuring leveling speed on an SK is a really inefficient statistic. SKs start to get pretty good at fear kiting at lvl 22 with engulfing darkness & spook the dead. At that point, it's already drastically more efficient than face tanking with shitty lifetaps.

I agree. I am just making a rough guess since I didn't save my leveling data from 1-58 on my Troll. What I probably will do at some point is test roughly how many hits you take via fear kiting, and use that as an estimate for how much HP you lose per hour. There's a lot of variability to this based on how/what you fear kite, but we will see.

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

Once you add in a fungi, which is really not that hard to obtain on these servers, it really starts to tip the scale in favor of non regen races. Add in a crown of narandi, and it becomes even better. The key to SKs is to just avoiding taking hits as much as possible. When you get epic, you can start to balance it a little more. And the blood ember clickies can start to help even more, especially the gauntlets(for this reason iksars are the worst leveling sk race)

Agreed. You want to avoid taking hits (fear kiting), and not having Blood Ember Gloves is a huge problem for Iksars when leveling. Those save you a ton of mana. Fungi and Narandi Crown will take you to 50 for sure, regardless of race. My calculations are NOT assuming the player has a Fungi and Narandi Crown. If you have that kind of money to spend, the real solution is just to pay for power leveling if you care about leveling speed. That will be faster than the Fungi/Crown solo path[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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

As I stated previously, the main benefit of regen will be seen at 60 with pulling & the occasional FD afk.

The data doesn't exist so we will never fully know, but based on me leveling 4 different SKs to the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60, I would say that the regen advantage maybe offsets around 5-7% of the xp penalty at best. The biggest advantage I found with my Troll when leveling was being able to slam with a nice 2h while fear kiting. But once you obtain epic, you can easily swap that in for bashes(and the occasional proc), so it's more of a convenience at that point.

The nice thing about Troll/Iksar Regeneration is you get more kills per hour while leveling (assuming you are at a camp that supports killing that many mobs). Lets say the 5-7% number ends up being correct. Being able to kill 5-7% more mobs per hour means you are spending 5-7% less time doing things like farming money off of mobs that don't give experience. If you are killing guards from 20-55, for example, a Troll will end up with 5-7% more money than the Human/Dark Elf by the time they hit 55. So in theory that would increase your kill speed by 5-7% and decrease your time spent money farming by 5-7% as well. So the total reduction in time from leveling 1-60 is more like 10-15%. That still may not end up beating the xp penalty, but it could come close depending on how you play.

This is a super crude example, but it illustrates the basic point:

A Human SK with a goal of obtaining 40k while leveling:

The Human spends 100 hours getting 200pp/hour and XP via killing guards.

The Human spends 100 hours getting 200pp/hour, gets no XP via killing guards due to leveling out of that guard spot.

A Troll SK with a goal of obtaining 40k while leveling:

The Troll spends 120 hours (20% xp penalty) getting 200pp/hour and XP via killing guards.

The Troll spends 80 hours getting 200pp/hour, gets no XP via killing guards due to leveling out of that guard spot.

Both end up at the same spot in terms of XP, money, and total time spent. Obviously there is a lot of variability in play, but that is an example. I did indeed spend quite a bit of time killing guards for no XP on my Shadowknight, so I could afford upgrades like better weapons, haste, regen BP, etc. He wasn't twinked, so I had to make all the money I used for items.

[Jimjam]

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

I chose Human, because I liked the Bloodsabers

Big (if admittedly disease ridden) todger energy here on character creation logic.

[Encroaching Death]

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

Big (if admittedly disease ridden) todger energy here on character creation logic.

I had my main man, Typhus, Herald of the Plague God, in mind during creation:
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[strongNpretty]

Man oh man, but those Erudites in their cultural armor?! Wooooooooooooooooooo they look so good!

[Encroaching Death]

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

Man oh man, but those Erudites in their cultural armor?! Wooooooooooooooooooo they look so good!

They do look cool, but I always wished their plate graphics looked more like the guards in Erudin.

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