I'm going to change the debuff that engulfing darkness causes. Run speed is no longer a factor, so I plan to change it to enhance physical damage.

I also plan to change how gasping frenzy works. Currently you need low HP to reap its full benefit. Kind of lame since you often can't take advantage of it. Since Shadow Knights are DoT/debuff oriented, I decided to change it to do a fixed number of swings plus the number of debuffs on your target.

At least that's what I have planned for now. I expect these changes will come pretty soon. I might tinker with a talent or two, also, but we'll see.

Nice.

Seems sorta similar to how you get extra volley shots from Snare/which ever buff it is on the ranger. Seems really nice .

Maybe a 20 point talent to transfer debuffs when target dies, or make the debuffs hit all targets...something along those lines would be cool. It's not very practical to put up 4 debuffs on every mob, unless that was what you were going for.

Yeah, micromanaging 4 debuffs on every mob is what turned me off to my SK too.

I'll think about this and come up with something. I might change one of the debuffs completely.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo don't change grasping frenzy.

I like your planned change to Gasping Frenzy (more DoTs on mob = more hits); right now it's a cool mechanic but you can't really take full advantage of it, at least not in hc...
As for the 4 DoTs, it's not too hard to manage them right now, but they could use some help. As previously suggested, the "transfer to adjacent mob upon death" mechanic - kinda like what shaman has - could be useful imho...

EDIT: now that mobs no longer flee, will you change Dooming Darkness? Maybe to affect attack speed ?

Re: dooming darkness, yeah I'll do something to it. Anything that had a mobility effect will now be changed to something else.

Whattever I implement for SK will likely be something that "wears down" a single target. I like the idea of changing one of their debuffs to a magical attack that also puts a stacking debuff on their target. So the longer that target is in combat, the more damage it takes. Like it's rotting the target's defenses away. Over time they'll do more and more damage because of it. Don't expect SK to be AE masters like some classes can be.

So I'm testing my SK right now and I am just chewing through mobs with dots. Stacking a full swarm and then popping dooming darkness followed by tabbing Heat Blood around is just melting everything, which is to be expected in Nightmare. Interestingly a hybrid class seems to be the only one where DoTs are favorable to other builds. However, I am seeing some other outlying issues than most of what's already been stated. I'm glad you're changing how Gasping Frenzy works, as it isn't a very good mechanic when coupled with the fact that SKs rarely drop very low when played correctly, and I think the +Debuffs idea is pretty good for it. Moving forward with that, however, the usage of said debuffs can be very tedious. I think to make a Debuff based spec viable in the current iteration something needs to be done to either cause the DoTs/Debuffs to proliferate to a mob after one dies, OR for all of the DoTs/Debuffs to work like Dooming Darkness works with 20pts in its talent, I.E. for it to spread to all mobs on the screen. This could make cycling through FOUR FULL DEBUFFs somewhat tolerable, though still likely it'd be pretty tedious. I think a really cool idea to this end is to make the SK set give you a new ability when you reach a certain bonus, maybe the full bonus, called perhaps Outbreak or something similar, where one button applies all your DoTs to the full screen. The OPness of this would be offset but the fact that it is pretty difficult to get any one full set. It would also be offset by the fact that this is, currently for all intents and purposes, a single player game so being OP in the best gear you can get should be attainable.

Another issue I'm finding is pet survivability. Even if you take the pet-focused talent, which is awful anyway because pets are super weak for the most part, I find myself recasting my pet summon almost as much as my DoTs. My pet just isn't living up to being a dignified meat shield the way he should be!

At any rate, I will likely make another post as I make my way into end game with my SK as none of the SKs on the leaderboard that I've seen seem to have particularly good gear and I want to see just what the class can do with various set ups, including a caster set up focused around buffing DoT damage and the tried and true Full Warrior Set set up where you just auto attack and Crescent cleave everything to death. More to come!

DoT's are good until you hit Hell, then they become meh and the SK struggles a lot - at least that's my own experience with my lvl 84 SK in Hell hc. But he was my first high lvl char so he's poorly geared, could try now but I'm waiting for these changes to go live and I'll give it another try...

I am interested to see how these changes affect the class. I just rolled a monk yesterday to see how it compared and holy crap....Monk plays like SK did before the bleed fix.

My level 40 monk was doing as much DPS as the SK at 97....The SK just plays a lot slower as it is right now.

I have tried all sorts of specs for the SK, they all play slow and methodical, like a good tank, just don't expect to break any records.

am i the only SK that regularly makes use of <20% HP Gasping Frenzies? i don't enjoy swarming, and i intentionally keep my level lower than the content i'm playing through. maybe that is part of it. i like for my quests to always be Yellow or low Red while doing them...

Pharm, I do low HP frenzy on Hell level but sometimes it will mess up the chain since it does so much damage. It is not a viable tactic for swarming, esp if you want to create a long ass chain IMO. You can do it, its just a pain.

i don't think that we should implement any gameplay changes that further encourage high level characters to swarm farm on medium difficulty, personally. imo grasping frenzy's current mechanics not working for swarming isn't a good argument for changing it. =p

I'm not gonna say SKs don't still need all this help but I'm doing between 11 and 17k on swarms depending on procs and crits and I've burst for 20k or so, so far.

I know someones mentioned it before; but why not alter the effect of the skill? Something to the effect of more damage the higher the HP? Or give it a bonus hp drain effect that adds bonus damage to the strikes if your hp is over 100% already. OR the higher the amount of enemies onscreen, the more damage...i guess it's based on the perception of the "name" of the skill.

I think it's fine the way he plans to change it, especially if you make putting all your debuffs on multiple targets an easier, or at least less tedious, task.

Well having played the SK extensively, I feel there's another thing that needs to be addressed.

The SK is okeish ( great survivability but lowish dps and chaining ability), the planned changes sound fine, one thing I found a bit tediuos and annoying is frequently spamming Crescent Cleave as my other skills ( Slam,Death Strike and Gasping Frenzy in particular) were all on cooldown
So imho would be great to
- reduce slightly some or all those CDs ( for example going from 15/12/20 sec to 12/10/18 )
- improve Crescent Cleave dmg ( by roughly 25% I'd suggest) so that it actually does something vs. hell mobs
or a combination of both...
And some talents bonus could be reworked also - I'm thinking Slam (useless for an Ogre or when you're geared up) and Fear.

I repeat SK is not bad (after all I've just cleared hc Hell with it, with some help from my shaman who farmed some nice pieces of gear) - and its playstyle is nice, just a bit repetitive at times...

I think a lot of classes suffer from needing a talent rework. The vast majority of classes have a single solid talent build that if you go outside of it you will probably be gimping yourself.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I'm on a bit of a hiatus to play some Skyrim (lol) since I can barely get a proper part shipped to my house. SK and Magician have both been on my "upgrade" list for a while.

Good to know, both classes need a little love ...
Have fun in Skyrim, I put a good 200hrs. in that game when it came out!

Did SK ever get buffed, or is it the same as it was before? As it was before, SK might be the lowest DPS class in the game, or at least in the bottom 2-3. Even Paladin can manage 15-18k chain DPS, and do closer to 24k burst DPS. I was barely able to push 8k dps on my SK, and that was with really good equipment.

SK could use a haste skill that buffs attack speed. Maybe a clickable multi-hit attack with no or low CD that uses HP instead of mana. Name for the skill could be Blood Rage.

Anyone planning on hitting 99 with SK will be better off grinding nightmare nimgall. The mobs can level to as high as 103-104 via chaining.

^no news for SK atm, I finished Hell HC with mine ( in the signature), his dps was like yours,around 7-8k, and little chaining.
Hitting 99 with him would be possible ( and yes probably better in nightmare Nimgaul), just really really really long, and tediuos...

Yeah, 7-8k DPS is way below average. If I had to estimate an average based around me playing most of the classes in the game, I'd say around 12-14k DPS with end game gear would be it. By end game gear, I mean BiS in most every slot geared toward maximizing DPS. Unfortunately, I see a lot of new players starting out as SK, so its popularity isn't relevant to its potential. Objectively from a DPS efficiency standpoint its one of the worst classes in the game. Definitely the lowest DPS class that I've played. SK needs to be buffed to the point where its DPS potential is at least in the 12-14k range with end game equipment. And I might give the class another shot. As it stands right now, some of the newer players who rolled SK and are having problems, I just tell them to roll a monk, warrior, paladin or enchanter. If they roll a monk and still have issues, then maybe this game isn't for them, and they should go back to playing hello kitty and farmville. And I'm not saying that to be a dick, but its the truth.