Skill vs Gear, KotBS issues, other gameplay suggestions.

[Ysaran]

About healers: any healer tanking 8 ppl has a guard and another healer nearby. Setback exist on any casted skill (on contrary of live). the only healer with 1s cast is dok/wp. shaman and zealot have both 2.5s cast on aoe heal and 2s cast on big ST heal. They can get the casting time halved with Focused Mind, which is a M2, so i think is ok. You have to use your interrupt on AoE heal and rezzes, no point interrupting ST heal, unless you are very skilled.
P.S. Focused Mind alse makes you immune to setback, but again, is an M2 so they can't spam it (on contrary of AM walk between worlds).
To finish: a healer that is tanking 8 ppl isn't pressing just one button

Even with guard and another healer nearby, how is it possible to cast when 8 people are focusing you? Wouldn't u be at least 50% of the time set-back? Out of those 8 ppl, how many do u think tried to interrupt the healer? I would say all of them. Trying to time it on animation is weird, so I'd assume every1 was spamming attacks and interrupts on the healer. But the healer kept casting with no problem whatsoever. Even the Zealot, because that's the one that runs while casting, very rarely I could taunt/use casting interrupt and see it land successfully. All the time they are casting, whether they have one person on them, 8, or none. There's no delay in animation when u get set-back, right?

Go on twitch and check "aantivenom" , she plays healers POV. See how many windows of opportunity you have to interrupt her heals.

Ok, let get out some lingo. When you get "setback" your casting time increases by 0.5s. every attacks has a chance of setting you back. it doesn't matter how many time you get set back, the cast will not interrupt. To "interrupt" the casting you have to either be the target of an interrupting skill (Echoing Roar or Crushing Anger, for example ), knocked down, punted, silenced or taunted. All these skills either give immunity or have CD. So you can't stop a healer from casting for more than a couple of seconds. Then, there are a lot of insta cast heal: all the HoT, Zealot/Rune's Flesh of Chaos, absorb, M1, Shaman/AM Shrug It Of and so on. The list is very long.
Before getting specific I would like to remark something: if a healer is being focused by 8 ppl, no one is getting hitted outside of him, so the tanks and the healers can just focus on him. There's no need to heal other ppl, which means that you use ST skills, that have lower cast time than AoE one.
Let's now see the healers one by one. I talk about Destru chars, but it works same way for Order chars
-DoK has 2 HoT (insta), 1 direct heal+HoT (1s), 1 direct ST (0.5s),1 AoE heal (1s) and 1 channeling (3s, can't be set back but it's interruptable)
it's difficult to interrupt because of the short cast time, but the class is designed exactly for melee healing so it's normal. Outside of M2 he doesn't have any skill that prevent him from being setback. Medium Armor. Probably the thoughest healers around, it shouldn't be your first pick in matter of focussing.
-Zealot has 1 ritual (works like a HoT, but litle more powerful), 1 HoT (insta), 1 insta healing (insta), 1 direct heal+HoT (1s), 1 big ST heal and 1 AoE heal (2.5s).
It have a skill that prevent from setback and give 50% damage reduction (3m CD) and M2. Once focused he can just HoT himself and instaheal
-Shaman has up to 4 HoT (one is lifeleech, one require tactic and one is 13pt ability in first tree), 1 direct heal+HoT (1s), 1 big ST heal (2s) and 1 AoE heal (2.5s).
No way to prevent interrupts/setback outside of M2.
Point is: healer's tool to prevent setback/interrupt are quite limited, but so are the way to prevent him from healing. A healer with a guard and another healer as support is not supposed to die. The only skill you can interrupt are those with long cast, but that are exactly the skills you don't use when you are focused. You have to interrupt the healers when they are focus-healing another target or when their whole party is getting low.

P.S. I know Antivenom, it's a very good healer. She play with good ppl, no wonder you can't get her down.

[Nekkma]

Many times I've noticed shamans and DOKs tanking 8+ people, without moving and while dishing out damage/CC as well.

I doubt it and if you have, those 8 players are absolutly terrible. More likely you have seen a dok with a guard getting crosshealed by other healers while tank is using theit toolkit to lessen damage and then it is not an 1vs8 but rather a 4vs8.

[amagawd]

Guys, I didn't say the problem was he didn't die, I said the problem was he kept on casting with 8 ppl spamming attacks on him. Casting not the insta casts but the 1s casts or 2s casts or whatever.
I'm not saying healers are OP cuz they don't die, I'm saying the interruption for heals is like a random event. Most of the time it doesn't happen. When it does happen, I can see the healer panicking and jumping around. Otherwise they just facetank and spam.

"When you get "setback" your casting time increases by 0.5s. every attacks has a chance of setting you back. it doesn't matter how many time you get set back, the cast will not interrupt. " So for a 1s cast, with 8 players spamming attacks and skills you mean to tell me there was no setback as to reach 3s cast or more? When healers can't cast, they tend to move.
The example with Antivenom was for casting times on multiple healers (DoK, RP). The window of opportunity to stop casting with taunt or "kick" is very very low, so low that in the end I think it's not worth doing anything.

Still, the set-back should work when you have 8 guys on you.

[Ysaran]

Guys, I didn't say the problem was he didn't die, I said the problem was he kept on casting with 8 ppl spamming attacks on him. Casting not the insta casts but the 1s casts or 2s casts or whatever.
I'm not saying healers are OP cuz they don't die, I'm saying the interruption for heals is like a random event. Most of the time it doesn't happen. When it does happen, I can see the healer panicking and jumping around. Otherwise they just facetank and spam.

"When you get "setback" your casting time increases by 0.5s. every attacks has a chance of setting you back. it doesn't matter how many time you get set back, the cast will not interrupt. " So for a 1s cast, with 8 players spamming attacks and skills you mean to tell me there was no setback as to reach 3s cast or more? When healers can't cast, they tend to move.
The example with Antivenom was for casting times on multiple healers (DoK, RP). The window of opportunity to stop casting with taunt or "kick" is very very low, so low that in the end I think it's not worth doing anything.

Still, the set-back should work when you have 8 guys on you.

Oh but it works, I can tell you. A 2.5s cast can become even 5s. But smart healer don't use that kind of spell when they are under pressure. Unles they are in Focused Mind.
Also, DoK can't really cast on move. So she probably stood still becuse she was confident in her party

[Gurismar]

As a Knight main, I agree completely with many of your tooltip errors being a major letdown by the time you get higher up and get a real feel for end game on the class. Heaven's Fury would be so much more useful and not a huge topic of contention among Knights if it wasn't so useless in 95% of scenarios being 3 seconds long.

That being said. There are several specs that can be used with some proper coordination with your WB to make you knight different and allow you to work around the pitfalls of these gimped skills. 1 or so knights being Morale drain spec in a wb can be nice for Forts or Cities and the 2H punt/overpowered swings build is pretty useful in scenarios (ranked specifically).
Many of these require that you have BiS or close to it to make up for the serious drop in defensive capabilities.

Lastly, I understand fellow Knights' pain on not bothering to swap auras in combat or when getting jumped to allow for a better fight. You are just dead to the WE if you try to drop something and put up an aura that does something to help long before a new aura can be used with any impact. At this point, just embrace the suck by snaring them and punting them away as you flee for your life. Nothing highlights a noble Knight of the Blazing Sun like running for your life from a rogue class even when fully defensive tanks can usually counter them pretty hard in every other game. It's just not balanced that way. QQ

[amagawd]

U mean Solar Flare? That's an M4, usually in cities the morale dump happens before m4, I had m4 in cities very few times, and on my marauder. And in forts I'll take Vigilance any time of day and hold the door.

Today in city I respecced into To Glory/dirty tricks / stun / vigilance / focused mending. I did not drain enough AP or the chosen were running dreadful terror, even if I stayed in the middle of their zerg and healers I did not see any1 with downtime.

The 2h punt requires 1337 gear, ranked scenarios imo is the real endgame, when u get pimp geared and can run all specs I guess. And I understood 2h dps build is nerfed to the ground now so... For KOTBS it seems there's only 2, maximum 3 builds - the Unbalancing Attack one would be the last one I can think of. And all builds are pointing to being an aura bot without any real impact in fights.

Originally I had in mind To glory / stun/vigilance/heaven's fury, or drop vigilance and get some other tactics/auras, but since heaven's fury is useless and auras are weird, guess I'll reroll SH till fixed.

And yes, it's really absurd that the tooltip does not match the action, it's like playing tetris with your eyes closed.

[sharpblader]

Deleted because of repost

[sharpblader]

U mean Solar Flare? That's an M4, usually in cities the morale dump happens before m4, I had m4 in cities very few times, and on my marauder. And in forts I'll take Vigilance any time of day and hold the door.

Today in city I respecced into To Glory/dirty tricks / stun / vigilance / focused mending. I did not drain enough AP or the chosen were running dreadful terror, even if I stayed in the middle of their zerg and healers I did not see any1 with downtime.

The 2h punt requires 1337 gear, ranked scenarios imo is the real endgame, when u get pimp geared and can run all specs I guess. And I understood 2h dps build is nerfed to the ground now so... For KOTBS it seems there's only 2, maximum 3 builds - the Unbalancing Attack one would be the last one I can think of. And all builds are pointing to being an aura bot without any real impact in fights.

Originally I had in mind To glory / stun/vigilance/heaven's fury, or drop vigilance and get some other tactics/auras, but since heaven's fury is useless and auras are weird, guess I'll reroll SH till fixed.

And yes, it's really absurd that the tooltip does not match the action, it's like playing tetris with your eyes closed.

Most of the tool tips are wrong but the current functioning is intentional.

I've argued with the devs on Knight changes in the past but no way does the Knight need any buffs.

You do have multiple options on Knight build for various game modes. Instead of complaining about cookie cutter builds go out and experiment on your own. Just be ready to face some flak from others because people tend to get rattled when you're doing something different.

If you think heavens fury is useless you're not using it correctly. In a fight when you're team is dropping morales or close to getting a kill, HF can choke the enemy back line completely from supporting your teams target. In solo roaming, I never leave the war camp without HF. It's the most effective tool knights have to catch up with kiters.

2h build is still strong and used in almost every game mode btw. Yes, gear is needed to make some builds work effectively but that's not limited to just the Knight class.

As far as the clunkiness of the auras are concerned, run around with only 2 auras which are absolutely needed and are not be changed in your build like GYR and FM then activate third one just before the fight as the situation demands. Need to change it? It takes 4-5 seconds after deactivation to reactivate new aura.

If you need an actual issue to complain about, no one is talking about the ninja nerf to No Escape from 1800 damage to 1200 damage.

[Arbich]

Most of the points make absolutely no sense.

1. Heavens Fury was changed long ago to a 3sec duration, because a 5sec AoE stagger was considered too strong.I would say its mostly a defensive tool now to help yourself or teammates to escape. You can use it on offense, if the positioning of the healers is bad, but usually its better to use the RP/Zealot stagger for offense.

2. Interrupts do work and I would say good interrupts shows advanced skill play. As Kobs you have taunt and vicious slash to interrupt enemies (and the stuff that give out immunities). Instead of stopping some random heal spell, better try interrupting strong abilities like mara pull, rezzes, sorc/bw rotations or some channeled attacks/abilities.

3. I really don´t get this point. So instead of having it like now (3 active auras at the same time), you prefer the old aura-dancing of the kobs? Where you can only have 1 aura active? Thats the reason for the 4sec cooldown and the 12sec lingering btw in tooltip. This way you could have at max 3 Aura effects running at the same time, when you do the tedious work of pressing 3 different buttons every 4 sec.

You can make the proposal to change the way Auras work to disabling without any cooldown and activate them with only gcd. Would be a buff to kobs/chosen, but not a totally terrible idea. The lingering effect should not be enabled again, though.

4. When you tested it in a duel, the other person probably attacked you 3 times? Then the challenge effect is removed.

5. Good question, just test it. Maybe Toughness related?
A totally passive aura where you do nothing besides merely existing, shouldn´t do significant dmg anyway.

[amagawd]

Most of the points make absolutely no sense.

1. Heavens Fury was changed long ago to a 3sec duration, because a 5sec AoE stagger was considered too strong.I would say its mostly a defensive tool now to help yourself or teammates to escape. You can use it on offense, if the positioning of the healers is bad, but usually its better to use the RP/Zealot stagger for offense.

2. Interrupts do work and I would say good interrupts shows advanced skill play. As Kobs you have taunt and vicious slash to interrupt enemies (and the stuff that give out immunities). Instead of stopping some random heal spell, better try interrupting strong abilities like mara pull, rezzes, sorc/bw rotations or some channeled attacks/abilities.

3. I really don´t get this point. So instead of having it like now (3 active auras at the same time), you prefer the old aura-dancing of the kobs? Where you can only have 1 aura active? Thats the reason for the 4sec cooldown and the 12sec lingering btw in tooltip. This way you could have at max 3 Aura effects running at the same time, when you do the tedious work of pressing 3 different buttons every 4 sec.

You can make the proposal to change the way Auras work to disabling without any cooldown and activate them with only gcd. Would be a buff to kobs/chosen, but not a totally terrible idea. The lingering effect should not be enabled again, though.

4. When you tested it in a duel, the other person probably attacked you 3 times? Then the challenge effect is removed.

5. Good question, just test it. Maybe Toughness related?
A totally passive aura where you do nothing besides merely existing, shouldn´t do significant dmg anyway.

1. Then change the tooltip as well.
2. I never said the interrupts dont work, i was trying to say it's impossible to interrupt a healer when spamming 1s heals
3. Knight always had 3 active auras on them even in live. It was never only 1 aura active? Maybe I remember wrong, it's been such a long time since live.
4. The person did not attack me, that's why it's called a test. I used the skill and counted down, me and him both.
5. A WH will never have more toughness than a SM.