Hi.

Any of you, as a SK, was part of the pulling team of his guild during raids ?
How much was it efficient or easy compared to monks ?

I guess that having the 60' FD spell or not having it changes everything, but beyond that is it justified that monks are often more used for pulls than SKs?

I haven't played a Shadow Knight, but I can speak on this from a Monks perspective.

I can't recall ever having a Shadow Knight or Necromancer pull over myself or any other Monk within a raid team. I always assumed that this was very largely due to the fact that their FD spells are just that. They're spells, and they have a cast time that have a set time before they go off, and can be interrupted. Thinking about it, a lot of things can happen in that cast time as well. A pat could walk by, one of the mobs/the mob could begin to cast a spell in which case your FD would fail, etc., etc.

I think what it comes down to is that a Monks FD is instantaneous, and therefore considered "more reliable" than those of a Necromancer or SK.

Are there any SKs who might be able to shed some light on their experiences? I'm sure Harm will likely post here shortly.

Raid pulling in classic often involves a lot of caster mobs, especially in places like PoH/PoF. Add in low AC & HP values, no defensive discs, and a FD that wasn't as highly reliable with a longer refresh. It was doable but not nearly as efficient as a Monk.

Death Peace (lvl 60 Velious FD upgrade) helped a lot and, iirc, Harmshield was added for SK's at some point post Kunark, so pulling as an SK became much easier in Velious. The equipment upgrades at that time also helped significantly to survive.

If you are interested in raid pulling as an SK I highly suggest investing in a bow and arrows that are as long range as possible. SKs do have some advantages over monks - mainly pulling either with dispells or preloading aggro, snare and pet pulling, and pre-nerf CoS was killer at times. However, most of the time I pulled I did so in relatively easy conditions (Kael, ToV, Ssra, PoP) with some space to work with or with a team of monks, often doing the final tag and pull to tank.

As a sk who did some raiding and pulling, I'd probably rather have a mix of a few very competent SKs and some monks in there to help. With the variety of spells and tricks up the SKs sleeve, you can do alot. Only time I could think of having difficulty with FD is in really tight quarters, but even then it's not impossible.

Everything I raided saw invis, so I don't remember cos being relevant. Death Peace is however 100% needed, the spell Feign Death sucks a big one.

The places I pulled challenging content in all of my 3.5 years of shadowknight raiding were few and far between. I do recall on the shadowknight forums back in the day that some SHDs pulled for their guilds. I think that's more of a reflection of high shadowknight skill combined with low monk ability in those particular guilds.

The best strategy by the way, is to have ALL feign options available. Death peace, feign death, and the clicky... kunark leg armor if I recall correctly, memmed and hotkeyed and ready. Because if DP fails, you want to have FD as a backup instead of waiting for DP to refresh. Later on, I think in Gunthak, SHDs got a third feign spell, and when I pulled, I'd have all 3 memmed at the same time. I never did get the clicky FD armor (which is probably why I'm not even sure which piece it is). And Harmshield, which is a few second invulnerability, can help bridge the gap between FD cooldowns if you're really unlucky.

Beyond that, as mentioned, bows and spells enabling pulling from a longer distance is one of the few ways SHDs might have an advantage over monks. The only condition where SHDs might be a better puller is when the mobs can be snared AND they are tough enough to need to bring them in solo. Kael arena is the ideal SHD pulling ground IMO, because both these conditions are met. With Dooming Darkness, the giant that's snared won't path back after the feign and it'll be an easy single pull.

There was another pulling technique called pet pulling, where you cast a pet that's low green to the mob you want to pull, buff it up so it won't get one-shot, feign death, and send it in. Because you're feigned, the mob the pet attacks only cares about the pet, and because its a low green to the mob, the mob won't call for help. Then you just spam pet back off until the mob is out of aggro range of its friends, stand up and plink it with an arrow (or have someone else tag it), and bam, you've got a solo pull. Necros can do this one equally well by the way. But YL/HK have already said this technique won't work on their implementation of EQC. I had to use this technique to solo-break the Wand of Imperceptibility camp after Luclin was out. But otherwise I really didn't use it, perhaps I should have.

The power of SK pulling was due to the monk nurfs during kunark, but when velious came out they stealth buffed the hell out of monks thus making them the ultimate pullers once more. During this time SK's would pull because some monsters would run so fast that 1 SK could pull where it normally took 2-3 monks chain tagging... this was mostly due to harmshield.

A very good SK puller in our guild always pulled AoW, Statue, Vindi and Tormax.. as well as flurry drakes in ntov. It was very effective because harmshield gave him 12 seconds of immunity to damage thus allowing him to bee line into position, exploit pathing and get a feign off which was always tagged by a monk. Eventually the monks began to get better at eq and the SK pulling was never required unless it was down an extremely long hallway and we were short monks that raid night (which was never the case).

Personally I think SK pullers require more skill than monks, due to the cast nature of feign, but they also bring a great deal of utility.. the ability to snare split mobs is extremely useful.

With regards to the pet sploit to pull, my understanding is Yeahlight fixed it so the pet would be considered at the masters level.. thus meaning that green pets would always mass aggro everyone because the green con aggro AI trait was removed. HOWEVER should the master be feigned I am unsure how this would react to Yeahlights coding, since there is no master that is visible to the NPCs.. would the pet be able to split pull? Guess we will find out.

interesting, I would argue SKs became better raid pullers when velious came out just because everything was so huge and there was lots of room to work with. Honestly, I never even memd Harmshield on my sk.

I agree on the SKs needing a higher level of skill to perform at that level. SKs can do alot of things, in the hands of a great player they come in quite handy.

You all are making me seriously consider a Shadow Knight.

What race to be....what race to be...lol

I personally still can't decide for a monk or a SK.
The problem I have with monks is their total lack of CC capabilities (except by not pulling adds...). And the problem with SK is their poor first FD spell.

Thanks for all your answers

Ogre SK is probably the best, assuming the spell doesn't give you the 'fallen to the ground' message and you are not trying to feign while a monster is casting a spell on you.. the best class is Ogre. This is due to the fact that as long as monsters are in front of you.. you will never be interrupted. (That said you may miss the channeling aspect of the cast due to the push the monsters are undoubtedly hitting you with.. but that was really rare in my experience).

As others have mentioned, feign death really does suck, death peace is sooooooo much more reliable, sucks its only available at 60.

My problem is.. troll SK's look so bad ass, but ogre frontal stun immunity is just too good to pass up really.. also ogre feign is outright hilarious.

Tough choice really.

I'm pretty sure you can still be interrupted.

The only thing an ogre has going for it is no frontal stun. While stuns are a leading cause of interruptions, they aren't way. You can still very much be interrupted.

Oh you definitely can be interrupted, however that won't be because the mob has hit you with a bash/kick.. but more due to channeling through movement related damage. (Make the best out of the odds).

I had a SK that wasn't an ogre, I can't recall wishing I was an ogre because of the no frontal stun. I can recall looking at ogres in dungeons and thanking myself for not making an ogre tho

Hypothetically, an SK can pull just as well as a monk in any situation. You have to honestly factor your own player skill.

Another thing you must consider is there is some luck involved.
I would start spamming the FD hotkey at 100% HP while my character would "Ah! Ugh! Gah!" all the way down to 20% hp due to interrupts and stuns.

Now imagine the FD failing or you happened to have a Nuker mid cast. Your dead.
A monk would have much more control regarding when to FD and time it with the Nuker.

Regarding which race to roll as an SK puller, your best choice would be the ogre just because of the decreased chance to fail your Feign Death.

Even then, frontal stun immunity only.

The other two would be troll and iksar, if only for the regen while waiting on a failed FD..but as a human monk you probably know all about having an inferiority complex to Iksars.

Blasphemy! Everyone knows we are the superior, simply because we have a belly button!

I'll quit derailing threads now.

....or will I?

TLDR version:

Keeping player skill and difficulty to obtain gear constant, monks are the better choice to raid pull 99% of the time during the EQC period.

well now, that is a debatable point, I don't think ya can drop the hammer and say that's the way it is

Yeah of course, its just my interpretation of what I consider to be the facts.

In other words, my opinion.

Ima go ahead and put forth that every class can pull, and do it extremely well.. in fact better than monks. I used to pull on my warrior all the time because well.. it was just better than feign.

The person who can figure out why that is gets a +1 from me.(2 methods: 1 is terrible, the 2nd is absolutely the ultimate pulling method and is vastly superior to feign in every way).

First of all, FALSE!

Secondly, is the best method just not giving a fuck? lolololol

Hell no. BODY PULLING IS THE BEST!

You just run into those groups. It's pure delight.

That's called "facepulling". Its what's done in other MMOs, because pulling is too hard or too boring for the lowest common denominators like they to attract.

Sir this is not wow

I'm trying to determine why every class can pull better than a monk, and facepulling was my answer. Not caring is another, I guess. Enlighten us.

+1