Sky scouts

[Jorquin]

Sky scouts are in a pretty weird spot at the moment. Don't get me wrong, they still own face in larger groups.  However, in the 2 character system they're awkward.

You need someone to tank in order to shoot, but if your secondary character is a tank you have no healing. You could try and make a shaman-tank, or a white robe with boon to tank, or various other self-healing tankish builds... all of which would be fairly sub optimal for different reasons. It's very difficult to make it work. It's not impossible, but there's no real incentive to do it other than to feel special because your're totally off-meta.

My suggestion is some sort of instinct that has a targeted curing (cure crit-ish) effect with a 2-3 tick cooldown or something. That way you can actually have a tank and some curing, which makes the class somewhat viable for smaller players while being far from game breaking. I'd suggest reworking vulture, it's pretty useless and compared to the other 5.1's (grizzly and crab) it's hot garbage.

Alternately you could make their melee capability / instincts / defensive capability just not entirely suck balls...

Just a thought.

[Zozen]

Paladin, dk, barb all have ways of tank healing... Combine it with a sky, sounds good to me? Not sure this is the right route to take with scouts in general...

Sky are a one trick pony. But that trick is buff as hell which makes them fine.

[corey]

Paladin, dk, barb all have ways of tank healing... Combine it with a sky, sounds good to me? Not sure this is the right route to take with scouts in general...

Sky are a one trick pony. But that trick is buff as hell which makes them fine.

I played two legend barbs as my main characters. Legend healdance isn't working, and if it were, it's still not strong enough to really *do* things on your own.

Sorry to bring our beloved spell into this, but animate needs to be nerfed into the ground or other classes need to be moved upwards. This post is a perfect example of why.

A barb and sky scout can do nothing. A barb and cleric/shaman? pretty much everything in the game except for a few of the very top fights. I think that's his point.

[Jorquin]

Agree with Corey.

Saying that some self-healing tank with a sky is viable is a bit dishonest. You will be able to do some weak areas, but any tank/healer combo is going to leave you in the dust.

To be honest, any combination of shaman / druid / cleric + barb / war/ spelled_mage / thief / pala / dk / non_sky_scout is going to out perform you. Note - I just listed every single other class in the game.

But yeah, if you want to do ranks and cap-out at last gaard, then sky + tank is "viable". That is, unless, you have a bunch of high tier equipment from large group zoning.... but then you're outside the scope of my point that sky scouts are fairly inaccessible to small scale players.

[Gnua]

that sky scouts are fairly inaccessible to small scale players.

yes totally agree. 

to get vulture/roc you need either a clan or deep game knowledge.  sky scouts and mages are the two things that neither cure nor duo well with cures - and so they kind of suck for the same reasons mages suck - except new players rarely fall into the trap of playing a sky scout.  the two options i see to address this is to give them cures or to allow them to tank.  sky scouts also suffer at the high end as well.  on any fight harder than frostbyte, i find the skies to be useless because the mob has some sort of "make sky scouts useless" ability.  it could be a special that engages despite evade often enough that the sky is just spamming fade and wingsweep and never actually doing anything.  it could be a no-shoot flag.  it could be stone skin.  it could be monsters that keep appearing mid fight and getting engaged by the volley.  if the fight is hard, there is always something that shuts the sky down hard.  imagine superman without invulnerability (still has heatvision) in a world where kryptonite was as common as silver. so they are in this bad spot where they need a clan to support them but they dont contribute anything meaningful in return.  a bit like mages.

that being said, i love my sky-paladin combo even though it really isnt viable. the damage is so sexy and i dont need to compete with the other melee classes for damage items. i'm gonna spend some time seeing how far i can push this duo using the paladin dragon for cures.  i sort of like how skies arent really viable though.  there are about 7 decent bows in the game and 6 active sky scouts.  if skies didnt stink so much there would be more and then there wouldnt be enough bows.

[Jorake]

The only thing im seeing in this post is "Why can't my sky + (insert random tank here) do the same shit as my healing class + tank class.

You really think a sky + barb combo should be able to do the same things as a dedicated healing class + same barb can do do? That's silly. You're silly. You're talking crazy man. Your sky + legend barb or legend dk or legend paladin can do a ton of shit. Can you 2man through shoal or some such? Probably not. But then again, why should you be able to? Neither of those classes has dedicated massive consistent healing.

[corey]

That's exactly what he's saying. It's literally a post about the two-character system...

[Rhys]

Easy fix. Make 3 char playable. 1 tank, 1 cure, 1 damage.

[Jorquin]

My suggestion has been completely taken out of context.

I suggested an instinct with a 2-3 tick cool down that cures for 200ish to make tank + sky slightly more viable. They will still be inferior to any tank healer combination, and that's appropriate.

I'm not sure why elite zones come into the conversation at all. One 200hp cure every few minutes isn't going to open many doors in that regard....

[Gnua]

My suggestion has been completely taken out of context.

I suggested an instinct with a 2-3 tick cool down that cures for 200ish to make tank + sky slightly more viable. They will still be inferior to any tank healer combination, and that's appropriate.

I'm not sure why elite zones come into the conversation at all. One 200hp cure every few minutes isn't going to open many doors in that regard....

maybe vulture could let groupmates consume corpses as well

[Jorake]

Yeah but its the same shit.. if you want to do those zones, use a class combo that works. Don't try to make your off meta combo into something its not.

I'd like to petition that warriors get 2 6th circle spell slots for heals and 1 8th for steel. So i can duo warrior 95% of the game

[Jorake]

Also, elite zone were brought into it because that's the limitation. You can 2man things like ft or dko etc as a sky plus barb or paladin or dk. I guess it seems like you want more than that out of classes that don't have healing. So you want to put healing on them to make up some of that.

[Gnua]

Yeah but its the same shit.. if you want to do those zones, use a class combo that works. Don't try to make your off meta combo into something its not.

I'd like to petition that warriors get 2 6th circle spell slots for heals and 1 8th for steel. So i can duo warrior 95% of the game

I think you already can duo warrior 95% of the game.  mage and sky scout are the two things that cant.

[Jorake]

Nah. Not even close for duo warrior. 2x mages would have a way better shot at it. Even duo skys

[Jorake]

After thinking about it.. the goal shouldn't be to bring skys up; it should be to bring all other OP classes down. Nerf everything by a good 20%