Shadow Knight Guide
By Kguar.
Shadow knights suffer from a combination of factors that make them less effective than others at end game. I don’t know that talents can resolve these issues without changes to their base skills, but I’m hopeful something can be done. I believe I have a pretty good idea of the subject matter as the current highest Shadow Knight in the game with a very solid knowledge of the game’s options for gear as well as the other 2 “tank” classes (which is who shadow knights need to be compared against).
Shadow knights have a few major things working against them at the high end when everyone starts to focus gear on optimization.
First off, their abilities are spread amongst too many different types. Their only spamable skill is a low dps taunt skill and everything else has such large cooldowns that you need to use all of them in a fight. If you look at all other end game builds, most build around a type and a small set of skills. Warriors, monks, rogues only do physical so they can stack str/atk/crit, casters (and crusaders) pick 1 element type/skill and use that…shadow knights cannot be easily built this way and therefore cannot keep up at high end when damage is more about available gear options.
In addition to the inability to focus type and lack of a core dps option, many of their skills come in the form of a long duration DoT which are weak for all classes (including the classes with superior DoT). If shadow knights do try to push dps (which doesn’t get them extremely far given their skills/cooldowns), they cannot sustain well as a tank, because healing is based off their hps/blood as opposed to the same type as their other skills. Threat wise, the shadow knight have a harder time holding aggro due to their low dps, compared to their crusader counterparts (because it’s hard to out aggro their healing).
Skills / Spells
This is a rundown of the shadow knight skills/spells with my thoughts. I’ve broken them into 3 groups: utility, life stealing and dps/threat.
Utility: These are a mixed bag of skills used very infrequently. In analyzing these skills, they may be more useful than people think, but they’re mostly “hidden” benefits that aren’t obvious to people.
Sanguine Harvest: This buff needs some help. It is relatively underwhelming and suffers from people not knowing what it does. A 10% chance for all melee attacks to trigger a 88hp life drain and absorb 7% health on a kill (seems like my 7% of my max) (PS add life absorb heal to the log also not sure if it heals everyone or only the person landing the killing blow). Unless talents completely change this, I’m not sure I’d focus on this skill. I think this talent should anchor the start of a leech tree as a form shift via self only (aka vampire type transformation)
Mark of Remphram: 10s cooldown, 2s cast, 90s duration. Fire. A buff/debuff used only on tough mobs for the bonus. It is the SKs only fire skill (why fire?) and does ~2k total over the 90s. It adds 15% hit and 8% crit for all allies attacking the target. Can this cross the 50% crit max? Minor rant: Nothing annoys me more than finding a nice piece of gear only to see this skill on it. It is not DPS skill, how does increasing it’s damage by even 100% matter, let alone 5-20%? Very situational, can’t see talents helping it be used much more unless a full AoE and/or adds additional affects.
Blood Terror: 30s cooldown, instant, 12s duration. Blood. A DoT/debuff…fears your enemy for 12s to do half damage, solid against tougher elite, but short lived. Damage isn’t terrible but not a “dps” skill, primary use is damage mitigation. A situational skill that I use on bosses and really tough elites only. Given the cooldown/duration needs to have -cooldown or hit multiple targets (and/or add effects). Most likely will stay a situational use skill evden after talents.
Life Stealing: These are the SK’s primary method of sustaining their own life which includes 2 main blood skills and a physical. These skills are heavily used unless someone else is healing you or you aren’t tanking due to low threat. These skills just CANNOT sustain you if you are not tanky enough though, so for them to be effective, you need to be more defensive overall. It’s usually more effective to use a sword/shield than the SK 2H axe with its massive blood damage bonus because the extra healing from 25% blood can’t compensate for a loss of shield and the dps isn’t high enough to make sense to use over another 2H.
Death Strike: 15s cooldown. Instant. Skill is unremarkable at best. It does multiple things but none of them extremely well. It is a physical dps skill that always heals 5% of your max health and taunts the target but its damage is low physical mostly irrelevant and doesn’t affect the heal, so there’s really no reason to power this up. It is basically a 500 hp heal (on 10K hp) that does 1k damage on a 15s cooldown. Costs mana instead of spirit. Talent wise: better cooldown, +hits, raise the % max hp stolen.
Life Tap: 16s cooldown, 2s cast. Blood. Cannot be resisted. One of the two primary healing abilities of the shadow knight, a blood drain attack that heals equal to the damage it does. The base shadow knight heal…the cooldown is longer than I’d like but it’s a minor complaint. Talent wise, improved cooldown/cast time and improved damage most likely make the most sense
Vampiric Embrace: 24s cooldown, 2s cast. Blood. Cannot be resisted. Full AoE; Amazing heal/threat against full room of mobs, less so when only a few. It heals the total damage done to all opponents. Often need to use it early to get threat on the room (if you tank) and then by the time it’s recharged it’s less useful. It already hits the whole room, so just needs a better cooldown, more cooldown and anything to bump damage would help threat and sustain greatly as well.
Threat/DPS: These are the primary skills used by the shadow knight to do damage and try to hold threat. Use these all the time because this is all you have…
Shadow Break: No cooldown. Instant. Physical. The near equivalent to warrior shield bash – and even fully talented warriors don’t use shield bash. This is their only spamable skill and it’s terrible. Needs +hits/targets/damage, it just needs help. Could give it everything shield bash got and it’d still be an underwhelming skill to build around.
Decaying Doom: 15s cooldown. Instant. 36s duration. Arcane. This is more of a debuff (armor -15%) than a damaging spell. For the debuff duration is great, for the actual DoT part not so much. It’s used, but mainly because we need the debuff. It needs damage, more targets (so you only cast once), maybe a boost to the debuff (although that will help warriors, rogues, monks more than SK). I’m not sure of the right direction to go with this skill.
Astral Blade: 12s cooldown, 2s cast. Arcane. Probably the top SK skill for damage, aggro, etc. Weapon has no impact on this spell, it’s all about additional arcane power/% to boost off base. Strikes 5 times (targets or multiple hits on same target) and continues casting if target dies. Biggest negative is the 12s cooldown. Cooldown, damage, more hits. If you create trees similar to other classes, this will be the dps skill to build around just because it’s NOT physical.
Crescent Cleave: 9s cooldown, Instant. Physical. 5 hits on up to 5 targets. The weapon has an impact, but tooltip damage is not all that different for a top end 1H vs 2H. It suffers from the fact that it’s physical and only does ok damage per hit (but given mobs parry, riposte, dodge, you’ll miss at least 1 of the 5 on average). With all these negatives, it’s probably still the SKs second best damage option and sadly the one with the fastest cooldown! It needs a damage, better cooldown, additional benefits (hits/sweep the screen & penetration) as a start.
Doom Thrust: 10s cooldown Instant. 36s duration. Physical. This skill is ranged and penetrates which are the best 2 things about it. Has a physical initial damage (mediocre) and a blood DoT “skill” over-time, but can’t be raised by +blood, only be raised by raising your physical attack. It is also extremely low and lasts 36s…needless to say, this DoT part isn’t adding a ton of damage and neither is the initial hit…but it’s one of the few skills available on cooldown often, so it’s used. The backend damage needs a severe compression from 36s to something like 12s or less or it needs to add in a leech or some other effect to warrant it being on for 36s. I’m not sure of the point of the backend damage at all except to make this less optimal to use on the same mob twice in a fight. I would say it could use a cooldown improvement, but that is useless without fixing the backend damage and overall damage issue, especially since it can’t be boosted by +blood/%. I’d think the best options are +hits/target boosts.
Ravaging Plague: 12s cooldown, Instant, 24s duration. Poison DoT. This is an underwhelming poison DoT, it does better damage than decaying doom due to having a 24s duration, but it’s the SKs only poison skill, it still has a large cooldown and it’s still a DoT which are terrible. This is a DoT, theres not much to say about them, they are all weak, this one has the double whammy of being the only poison skill so no SK is going to build for it. Without an overhaul this will not get used after talents unless it’s an extremely large/full AoE and/or adds other effects. I’d like to see this changed into a blood skill! Some thoughts…as a ravaging plague, change the base (untalented) property to bounce to another enemy when the mob dies….then talents could make it bounce to multiple mobs. I still wouldn’t invest into it most likely, it’s too niche to build around and with AoE nukes everyone is still dying before it does damage.
Regarding potential trees… I think something groundbreaking needs to be done, not sure what…here are some obvious thoughts.
A blood/leech tree that at the top end improves your leech abilities and has life tap/vampiric embrace and which other 2 depends on how you do the other trees (sanguine mark, blood terror, death strike, ravaging plague (if changed) and even maybe shadow break could go in here). My personal feeling is that sanguine mark (changing to a form buff) and a modified ravaging plague (to blood/leech) would be best.
Second I think there is a physical tree that allows for 2 – 2H weapon utilization at 41 like goliath in warrior. I believe SK should get bonus to base 2H weapon damage across the board as part of this tree (and therefore would boost the whole tree). I’d suggest crescent cleave, doom thrust and most likely shadow break and death strike in here, although mark of rephram works in place of one of the other 2 as well).
Final tree for casting, astral blade, decaying doom and whatever is left from ravaging plague, blood terror, mark of rephram.
Other thoughts that have nothing to do with talents…
SK have no skills without GCD so they cannot sprinkle in “free” damage like warriors with double throw or rogue with backstab, etc. They are unique that they have 4 physical, 8 casting skills and only the crusader is similar but crusader casting skills (dps, threat and healing) are all based off a singular type. I would love to see all shadow knight spells all go to blood to make them more viable to use/build around. Gear needed for physical vs spell is completely different and there are pieces that “try” to do both but they don’t succeed at end game.
I’ve certainly got to flesh a few of these ideas out further, but I think this is a reasonable first assessment for anyone who is familiar with the shadow knight.
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