Dark Knights V Healable Classes

[bigchiefally]

When playing my current char, an avian DK, against Paladins, Healers and Shamans I usually end up fighting like a warrior who can cast the fireball or harm. I dont use the maledictives much. My thinking being it is bloody tought to land one (with me generally being at a rank disadvantage and these classes usually having high saves) and in the meantime you have to deal with wraths, dispel undeads or host of shamans spells that will come, all for an effect that the opponent can easily heal.

Do other DK players use Maledictives against these classes?

[theobserver]

I never liked fighting healers/shamans and espeically the modern pallies with their trance as a dark knight

Not really much point in using mals unless you know they are low on mana because those classes can heal all your mals so your just wasting your limited mana. Try to land a few energy drains to drain their mana supply and go after them with disarm and shield disarm. Maybe risk dual wielding against a healer/shaman and hope their hitroll is too low to break your defences.

Dont forget that you can heal also with cure light. You can get in a good five cure lights and still sleep to catch the tick.

[Aeva]

Don't bother with it too much unless you've trained it to at least 90%...lags you 1.5 or 2 rds each casting, and, while a success is awesome, most often if not trained it won't work. In the meantime, you're getting wrathed/hexed/disp undeaded, whatever. Always remember the old dirt/sleep strategy, big for physical classes. And of course use weapons that your opponent cannot whenever possible.

What rank DK, you mentioned being outranked quite a bit? Get to 38 or 40 for charm and try to get used to using and abusing the advantages you have through the spell. At 50, in my experience, it's best when fighting shaman and healers to just throw as much damage as possible as quickly as you can. Mab works well for this, although she doesn't lag or dirt. Paladin can be fought somewhat similarly, but lag comes into play there, them not having prot shield. ALso, use some sv_aff gear to guard against that mean wrath, and of course stock on purples and/or flasks. Trip if you can, especially against elves, since bash is hard to land on that high dex. Use a mob like Overseer or Onyanth that does bash, trip, dirt, something, since prot shield is not a factor.

Shrug, post more ? if you got em, ill tell ya whatever i know and my little opinions.

[Nick]

Chill touch is underrated in my opinion. Any way you can reduce their strength (including various maledictions) will possibly make their weapon too heavy, and they'll have to use something lighter and presumably less damaging. The classes you mentioned also rely on parry as their primary defense (healers and shamans particularly) and I believe lighter weapons don't parry as well as heavier ones. Just something to try out next time.

Taking the warrior approach is generally a good strategy against classes with less physical prowess (alternatively when fighting warrior-classes you should utilize spells more). Keep your opponent dirted and be sure to dual wield when fighting shamans or healers. You're going to do a lot of running around so have plenty of purple potions handy.

Avian dark-knights have it tough when it comes to their PK range, so I would definitely keep ranking if I were you. They are at their best at 50.

[Hrash]

My view is dkn is that they are just an overpowered warrior..well at high levels. Around level 35, it isn't really too hard to fight shamans/pallies. I suppose that fireball and harm are somewhat useful, but what I usually do is dirt, flee return murder so that I can get two rounds of attack in one. Of course that means you have to be able to track well..

[Rezakhan]

As Aeva says, a lot depends on if you have charm or not. If you do, you should be able to own healers/shamans through straight damage. Use two weapons, and make sure to keep them dirted--you+charmy will put them on the defensive then and keep them healing as opposed to spelling you. I also like to get a charmy that shield disarms for those classes--if you dirt and your charmy disarms it, then its gone. For paladins, the key is to make them hit your charmy and not you--wrath lags for 1.5 rounds, so time it that you flee and return right after they wrath, then start lagging them. For pallies, definitely get a charmy that bashes/trips, so that if your charmy lags, your flee/return is that much easier. Also keep in mind that a neutral charmy will do damage not blocked by protection, so at rank 40 or so something like Szorbin or tough guards will hurt pallies and healers a lot.
Also like Observer says, cure light is very important. If you can get a few areas away, get some cures in and catch the tick, you can easily bait those classes into trying to finish you off when your healed up, which means they are likely to lose sight of some very important spells. Wait for their sanc to fall and hit them with a fireball, or their protective shield to go and bash them to hell.
Energy drain is really only effectively useful if you are of equal rank or ideally a higher rank, but if you are fighting a long battle, a few of those in the middle can screw over mana dependent classes.

[Hrash]

Thought they gimped energy drain?

[Rezakhan]

They did gimp energy drain, but it just means that it no longer takes half of mana or whatever it did before--it still can remove a good chunk if used effectively.