Frontal stun *immunity* is so ridiculously OP; not only for spell casting and repositioning mobs while tanking, but for pulling (especially AE group pulling).
Yeah can you imagine how crazy it would be to tank Seru with a human SK?? Would basically be stunned the entire fight. That would be next to impossible. Ogre is the only way to go!
I thought the immunity was only to physical (bash) stuns, does it prevent spell stuns also when facing the caster??
Its only physical stuns, not any type of spell stuns. When pulling AE trains the mobs are usually behind you anyway. Humans and Barbies tank perfectly fine and they'll do it with more style.. One of our MT's is a Barb. I see no difference, keep drinking that cool aid min/maxxers.
Pithy thanks for picking up on the sarcasm. I prefer to play characters that look interesting. Ogres are just too ugly, stun immunity aside. Not to mention, first person perspective for Ogres is garbage imo. Ogres are the remedial SK race. Ambiguity is beautiful.
When pulling AoE trains you are frequently getting tripped up by flee stuns. If I could switch my pally race to gain frontal stun immunity I would do it in a second. It's very valuable when tanking.
If your goal is to tank raid bosses then you should play a War, so imo that should not even enter into the conversation. To add my opinion to the OP: Race - Ogre. FSI is amazing, especially for FD. In general, if ogre can be that class, be ogre. Innate regen is cool and all, but it's really only useful small scale. Starting stats - INT because ogre are dumb. Again tanking raid mobs should not be the goal of an sk so cha is reaaally useless. Agi has always had small gains in my mind, but is the 2nd most important. All other stats are useless. DPS Wep- You forgot to mention Tunare 2H! It's my favorite wep for this era for dps, proc, stats, and looks. Emp ssra sword procs a ton and the proc is awesome. BBB proc is amazing because as long as you are on each mobs arrgo list (easy w/ ae debuff) it is an AE aggro proc. Runes are 2x aggro so 460 ae aggro on a proc is pretty sweet if your goal is to tank a lot of trash. DPS spells - I only use spears. DoTs are too hard (or impossible) to get off without also missing your next swing. When you have a wep like the 3 mentioned above this is more important. SK dots are bad, can be resisted, use tons of mana from your small mana pool, can be interrupted (they shouldn't be, because you should be ogre..but if not you just missed a swing for nothing), and the vast majority of the time the mob does not live long enough for it to do full dmg. Time your swings with your fast cast spears and win. This also allows you to use lifetap proc spell instead of awful mental corruption. AA - You forgot to mention the lifetap AA! Soul Corruption? I forget the name, it's amazing.
Does no one use disease cloud for agro? Perhaps when there is a necro, and clinging darkness is overwritten? Curious, does AC begin to mean more in POP because of some universal change in the code at that time? Or is it because of the higher attack ratings POP mobs seem to have?
AC returns post-softcap at level 65 are significantly better than they are at level 60. It's how the game is coded. They're also much better at 60 than they are at level 1. But that's not relevant to the discussion here. Knights currently get 1/6th (i.e., 16.66666%) of the AC after softcap. Warriors get 1/5th (ie., 20%). At level 65, knights jump up to 1/4th (25%) and warriors jump up to 1/3 (33.333333%). Basically, your post-softcap AC returns jump 50% just by gaining a handful of levels.
Disease counters are nominal agro here. Darkness and AC drains are about 30x more agro per cast than disease, at higher level. (Poison is also crazy high agro, as a raiding necro with all spell options, I literally don't even bother with spells containing poison counters)
Spells give hate even if they don't stick (eg full hate for clinging darkness application when the mob already has a dooming darkness debuff). Hate from disease counters got nerfed on Live pre-PoP so disease cloud is no good for keeping aggro.
Dark Elf or gtfo Fashion quest is life. Also, i'm fairly sure 1 STA at 60 is 5.2 hp, so 26 hp every 5 STA, not that it's that noticeable.
I forgot to mention, the Blindfoe ratio is almost as good as the the Sword of Ssrashzra as well and may be a little easier to attain since it drops from the Archlich. I'm digging mine. The proc is a dot with a heal over time recourse.
Only matters if you're a warrior and can't do shit. When your job is literally to stand there and hope that RNG keeps agro for you via procs.
i would have said the opposite, that stuns matter most when you're trying to cast spells and don't want to be interrupted, FD probably being the prime example. warriors don't have such binary outcomes; if i'm stunned for 5 seconds out of every minute it just means i did a little less of all the same stuff i'd have otherwise done. and thankfully raids don't usually run on those kinds of razor margins aggro (sure, its slightly more burden on the dps to manage their hate, but it's not the difference between winning and losing).
Yeah but given the 2ppm metric, one second as a ranger/sk/pal is worth 90 seconds as a warrior. One frontal stun won't matter when you only need to cast one spell to overcome. If discs aren't necessary, warriors are meaningless. No offense.
Slightly easier to gear up due to better HP and AC gains from stats, but yeah, they are essentially all about their stun immunity and discs. Not a horrible dps class though.
Btw on weapons that have lifetaps, such as the ones you mentioned Pithy, are they affected by either Soul Abrasion or Spell Casting Fury?