DKN

[Rothak]

Taken from Dav's post on discord, I definitely think it's a good idea to switch DKN's blindness for dirt kick. There are several reasons that I think it wouldn't be OP. First, you can't kick dirt from a nightmare's back, and unholy strength saps movement so there'd definitely be some kind of tactics when fighting other classes in that regard. If you try and compiles a mob and it fails, they're now aggro to you. Dirt kick would be a temp fix or just flee, whereas blindness allows the DKN to simply summon another in the same area if they so chose and not have to worry about the first one. Having dirt would make it harder in the long run if they fail compulsion. That's a couple of reasons why I think it wouldn't be OP for a DKN to have dirt kick instead of blindness. Thoughts?

[BlackWidow]

You used to be able to kick dirt from the back of nightmare actually. Pretty sure Knights can still do it from their stallions too...

I believe dirt kick was swapped for blindness ten years ago because dirt kick was too effective? Granted, charm person (monster?) had been removed recently and the nightmare stallion added.

Dirt kick isn't exactly thematic with a DK either... Necromancers and shamans both get blindness, which would make DKs stand out a bit too much.

Also, this would buff sliths indirectly, which I don't think is a good thing. A dirted slith can just use shed skin to get away... A blinded slith still has to deal with the negative side effects of being blind.

Dirt kick also gives DKs another way to overwhelm their opponents because blindness at least can be resisted with sufficient maledictive saves (along with many of their other spells). whereas dirt kick can't be resisted (unless you're a slith).

[Davairus]

I find dirt kick is much better vs paladins and that's more important for a DK than being able to gank newbies with blindness. I think I remember we had a spite strike (sp?) recently added that does a hobble type thing, so this isn't super top of the list of things I was worrying about.

[Rothak]

Refresh.

[Rothak]

Also, revert unholy strength back to level 20. Level 40 is ridiculous, paladins have all their good skills by then.

[Ashlyn]

Your point is valid, your arguement is false. Paladins get the best sauce later on. 30 seems like a good place for unholy strength. The perfect level for a training ganker.

[Davairus]

Yes I can see 30, similar as to just going vampire at 30. If you can literally convert yourself into a vampire you should probably already be allowed to cast unholy strength. It also seems helpful there from the mob point of view. Thats a level where you need firepower to take down sir sorrow and unholy strength can provide it. Assuming sir sorrow has the protection affect of course (I think he does). i feel that would become the most common knowledge use-case and worth lowering it for that reason alone.... that would be awesome for maintaining the power fantasy. but to have the present iteration unholy strength at level 20 was pretty unbalanced Rothak. The good aligns cannot even request their red scalemail until level 24 at the absolute minimum. and there's no challenge on the mob side. We want to keep the power curve rational. there will naturally be some ebb/flow as classes get their best skills but I can't see any point in unholy strength at level 20 anymore. That's a level where you can find some wild polearm (old halberd?) and hit demolishes on mobs so you would probably never cast the spell vs a mob. even an overlord. Unholy strength is greatly improved but wouldn't really make a difference to fights like that.. it becomes useful when targets have more hp to burn through. what I think we should do with it is figure out exactly where dkn's start considering sir sorrow and then put it just out of reach for 1-2 more levels to help foster that growing sense of impatience and irritation that a DKN would become known for. see my profile pic.
and on that note my feelings havent changed about dirt kick. its got a unique blend of self-satisfaction and profound frustration (for the guy using it) and it makes paladins shit themselves. perfect. but as I said spiteful strike is also filling the role. Also I want to make sure we are conscientious about the paladin/dark-knight anti-symmetry and the deliberate vampire assymetry, because that is all connected, if we wanted a class from going from a terrorizing status to a hunted status (relative to paladins) then a holy vuln is a good start, I think some of the vampire skills are probably on the wrong class. Wont talk about vampire skills too much but bloodlust for one obvious example.

[Davairus]

On balance I think we are good with spiteful strike for the foreseeable future. Its more than an adequate substitute for dirt.