AA Question?

[Kanne]

HI all

I have a 85 shadowknioght and have been trying to get all my def aa;'s done.
I just finished combat agility and stability ..finally :), atm i am finishing up shield block working on #8 out of 9 .

Now the question, I seem to miss alot when swinging at the mob, i have been in Loping plains lately and was wondering what aa's i could get to decrease my miss's aswell increase my dmg and survivalability.

any ideas would be appreciated i normally group him with a ranger (high end) aswell as a necro or cleric.

http://eq.magelo.com/profile/1768683

Edit Also if there is ANY aa's that i am missing or must haves please let me know, thanks all :)

[Kraetos]

You are missing tons of ranks of touch of the cursed, soul abrasion , spell casting fury, fury of magic, destructive fury and theft of life that I consider key survival (and therefore tanking) aa.

Your best bet to raise your hit ratio is to grab unity from a shaman and the 2 ranger attack buffs before heading out. Sks don't have an aa line that raises our attack or accuracy directly but planar power and earthern brawn raise the strength cap which raises attack (if you have the strength to fill it), and enhanced aggression that raises the attack cap on your gear (you currently would benefit you are 361/250). Alot of the misses are attributable to mobs' parry, reposte and blocks so tactical mastery also would help. You are better off finishing your tanking aa and doing your swing increasing aa (knights advantage, speed of the knight, flurry, bop which you almost have maxxed anyway) before you do any of these imo. Stun resistance from gear and stun immunity aas (steadfast will) also would help you kill faster as well.

[Drakang]

Actually we do have the old Theft of Hate to increase our attack. However, there are better spells to have memmed for increasing DPS.

[Okami]

SK's are forced to miss x%
Solution:
Turn off miss messages.
Now you never miss!

[Ashiko]

Knight's Return Strike, it eliminates incoming ripostes, making you a better tank and meaning you'll never eat enrage again (1 rank is enough, cheap)

Shield Specialist, 25% increase to 1hander damage (25 aa for 25% boost, hard to beat)

Death's Effigy, an instant feign that drops you off all hate lists, and gives you an invis that lasts till you zone (cheap)

Hate's Attraction, pulls mob to you and gives 3k taunt per rank, max it and you've got an awesome pulling/agro tool that along with Death's Effigy and Encroaching Darkness will change the way you pull. If the ranger and necro normally give you a few seconds to land a hate spell or two, tell them they can burn the second they see the mob arcing through the air (cheap)

more ranks of Harmtouch are a huge increase to the damage

Spell Casting Mastery 3, 10% mana preservation (cheap)

Veteran's Wrath will greatly increase the value of your melee crit aa, and make mortal coil and epic click more useful. (first 6 ranks cheap for the % increase, last 6 ranks only 15% increase per rank, not as good)

When you get your 2.0 epic done, buy Spell Casting Reinforcement and SCR Mastery as your very next aa, those aa will extend your clicky buffs, self buffs, and most importantly your epic click by 50%
also consider Visage of Death, it roughly triples your damage, which is awesome with your double riposte and lifetap from epic click

The previously mentioned TOTC, SA, SCF, DF, TOL is well..., costs quite a bit but the net effect is incredible, random proc double crits that nuke the mob for 6k+ while healing you for 12k+.


I was in your shoes a few months ago, just hit 1580 aa. Buy Shield Specialist, Death's Effigy, Hate's Attraction, Steadfast Will, and 1 rank of Knight's Return Strike as your next batch of aas, you won't regret it.
Steadfast Will and KRS may not be as WOW~! as the other utilities and power increases you can buy, but the frustration of bash/kick stuns and enrage deaths will be gone forever once you get it over with. Shield Spec is your quick and dirty dps boost, and DE/HA... I'd buy em for 100 aa each if I had to, they're a steal at the current price.

edit: forgot Hate Step, at 2 aa another steal, get it next

[jonnypanic]

Knight's Return Strike gives a raw 1%-per-rank bonus to riposte, btw. Don't just buy rank 1.

Hate's Attraction rank 1 is bugged and tends to really fling the mob around. If you buy it, buy up to at least rank 2 before you fiddle with it.

Kanne, you are the kind of newb that pisses me off nowadays, the kind that joins a forum and doesn't read the rules or anything, just join and post. There's a STICKIED AA guide, as well as a recent "Updated AA Guide" post if you'd have used search.

If you'd poked around a little, you'd have realized how potent ToTC, SA, TOL, FoM, and DF are together. You know why? Because I've posted about them myself. Mind you, I'm not the only one, but if I've posted about it myself... several times... then I know the information is out there and dragass little pissant bastards like you just piss me off even more.

Get off yer ass and do some homework.

[Tearsin Rain]

since nobody has actually answered your question, let me do so:

your "miss" rate is a function of 3 things:
1. your level vs. the level of the NPC you're attacking.
2. your weapon skill (ie, do you have 200 2hs skill? 300?) and offense skill.
3. your Accuracy mod2.

there's no AA or buff or spell or skill or special thing you can do to reduce how often you "miss" other than to make sure your offensive skills are capped and try to get Accuracy at 100.
we're knights - we miss a lot. that's just how we roll.

[Khaguk]

There's a chance you meant "didn't hit" instead of "miss," which means you could also cap worn strikethrough and get tactical mastery.

Even including those, you're still stuck with missing a lot, just filter it like they suggested.

[Edit - see how I went with saying "missing a lot" even though I was referring to the entire shabang of miss/parry/riposte/etc? That's why I bring that up, it's easy to call anything where you don't hit the mob a miss. Same problem you run into when describing things like your parry/dodge/etc. rates as part of your "avoidance" when there's a gear mod that's expressly labeled as that.]

Past the missing issue, if you want to plan out how to boost yourself from this point, while everyone already threw out our high-power AAs, it's hard to know what to grab first. One problem is that SK AAs layer on top of one another exceptionally well. I think our class, more than any other, gets incredibly excited at the prospect of an expansion featuring mostly passive AAs. Those are our bread and butter. Unfortunately, it means there's a lot of stuff that happens to affect both healing and damage. Most of the time when you boost your damage, you're boosting your healing. Similarly, many of your healing boosts are also enhancing your damage. Whether you're focusing more on damage or survival, you're getting both, but there are a lot of things you want.

Your real goal should be to work towards being able to swarm because it's a game-changer in AA gains. Part of this is gear-dependent, but a huge chunk of it is based on your AA count and finding a proper spot / technique. Everything is still useful swarming, but it depends how you're doing it. For example, single-target melee (melee boosts that wouldn't affect riposte rate/damage, like extra swing chances) and dot DPS AAs are important to help burn through individual mobs to make sure your mortal coil buff stays up, but they do comparatively little to the entire pack of mobs. Same goes for your other spells. Proc healing is incredible 1v1, but doesn't do nearly as much to keep pace with mob dps when you're fighting 30, 40, 50 or more mobs at once. Little spikes can patch you up from exposing your side or getting summoned and whacked from behind, and I've had blind luck and ToTC double-crits save my ass when leech touch was down, but it's not consistent enough to rely on.

Unfortunately, the most important things you'd grab for swarming survival involve riposting, whereas the most important things you'd grab for 1v1 grinding are your tap procs. (This would include both ToTC/SA and your crit mods). If you knew you were only fighting 1v1, you probably wouldn't get riposte mods for quite a while (besides a rank of KRS), and if you were only swarming, you wouldn't place as high a premium on your tap procs. The only thing shared in importance equally that you'd want immediately is Mortal Coil. And, again, unfortunately, even this varies because in group settings it's not that good. Even if the cleric isn't there (assuming same guy on necro/cleric), that ranger will probably get the killshots. If the necro's there, even if the ranger swaps targets when stuff gets low, dot ticks will probably gank the mob. DPS is obviously important to both fighting methods, but things like Veteran's Wrath are more important to swarming than 1v1 killing since swarming puts a premium on anything that's affecting EVERYTHING you're fighting. Since you can crit while riposting, and veteran's wrath boosts crits, it's effective against everything you're fighting. You get the idea.

There's no way around the fact there's a couple thousand AAs that'll be hugely useful to you. You'll still be getting ranks of cool stuff up to 4000 AAs. A lot of people have downplayed MC and expansive mind, but when I capped those two abilities I noticed a huge difference when I was grouping with a fellowship. I don't care if OOC regen exists, I was always my group's puller and it was a huge amount of extra wiggle room in terms of keeping steely and skin up, using aggro abilities and still having mana left to dot or tap occasionally. If I wanted to tap-burn on a named, sure, the regen won't do jack, but I love having the AAs and could most definitely notice a difference.

We have a LOT of useful AAs. That's why I'd put a nod towards working on your swarming capabilities first, but if you're going to be with friends a lot of the time, you'll get a lot more mileage out of working SA/ToTC and tap mods first. Considering you've already capped CA/CS, and those are some of the AAs that work on every mob you're fighting in a swarm, that's another nod towards focusing on swarm AAs. There are lots of little things that add up swarming, but the big hurdles are your riposte rate vs damage intake. CA/CS are MUCH more important for swarming than 1v1 fighting. 1v1, I could not possibly recommend having capped CA/CS this early, I would've said maybe 18 each. Probably more like 8-13 each and then getting some of your tap stuff, then going to 18, then waiting a while. Your various other abilities would simply do more to keep you running. But for swarming, there aren't THAT many AAs that have a noticeable impact on how much you're leeching. And there's also a big dropoff, it doesn't take long before you're looking at enhanced aggression and thinking "maybe I should go back to single-target stuff again."

[Darksidhe]

Originally Posted by Kanne

any ideas would be appreciated i normally group him with a ranger (high end) aswell as a necro or cleric.

FWIW Auspice of the Hunter increases your accuracy.

[Umbraeques]

Originally Posted by Khaguk

But for swarming, there aren't THAT many AAs that have a noticeable impact on how much you're leeching. And there's also a big dropoff, it doesn't take long before you're looking at enhanced aggression and thinking "maybe I should go back to single-target stuff again."

Apologies for minor thread rez, but I was thinking about this today, when it came time after my swarming session to buy AA's. Thinking what can I get that will increase my melee damage so I get more health back.

ATK has an affect on the average damage of our melee hits right? (or am I completely wrong there?) Would increased atk have an affect also on our riposte hits or is the damage on them calculated differently?