How I Solo My Level 75 Shadowknight

• Role: Self-sustaining solo. Lifetaps and dot ticks cover incoming damage from level-80 reds without a healer.
• Rotation: One key fires the full combat sustain stack, plus pet attack, pet swarm, and merc assist on the same press.
• Pull tool: Terror of Vergalid, instant cast, lets you turn mid-pull to drag the mob to your pulling spot. Also gives the merc something to grab aggro on.
• Off-rotation: The three dots and Challenge for Power land before the rotation starts.
• Scope: Anything used every fight goes in the rotation. Decrepit Skin lives off-rotation, refresh the moment the 40-charge bar runs low.

• Blacktalon Bite: Quick group heal-and-mana-regen nuke. Fast cast, returns mana, the rotation opener.
• Touch of the Wailing Three: Lifetap, ~1,000 damage / ~1,000 healed. Primary sustain tap.
• Rot Root Spear: ~1,200 nuke, fast cast. Filler damage between taps.
• Ignite Blood (level 61): A holdover dot, only 158 damage with focuses, but it's a dot tick stacked on top of the others. Replaceable; kept here because more dots = faster kills.
• Bond of Blacktalon (level 71): 293 damage, heals up to 1,300 over time. Lifetap-over-time, value comes from the heal half, not the damage.
• Blood of the Blacktalon: Pure dot, 370 base damage, hits 400–500 with focuses, 924 on crits.
• Touch of Sever: 1,200-point lifetap, 1,700 health back. Burst-heal slot when health spikes down.
• Terror of Vergalid: Instant-cast pull. Doubles as the merc's aggro hook.
• Challenge for Power: 27-second debuff that increases your AC and feeds 666 hate every 6 seconds for 30 seconds. Later ranks add melee absorb, at 75 it's hate + AC only.
• Decrepit Skin: 40-charge / 6-minute melee absorb. Permanent slot for the rest of the spell line. Refresh whenever the charge counter gets low.

Dot priority: Bond of Blacktalon → Blood of the Blacktalon → Ignite Blood. All three running before the rotation starts swinging.

• Shroud of the Nightborn (level 72 shroud): Adds a chance-to-lifetap proc on melee. Doubles the natural lifetap throughput.
• Marrow Thirst Horror: Proc attack that returns healing on the next several attacks.
• Cloak of Corruption: +HP, +AC, and a damage shield.
• Remorseless Demeanor: Buffs the size of the next lifetap after a kill, fires constantly while soloing.
• Dark Bargain: Skeleton form, converts HP into mana. Looks great with the SK epic.

• Grim Aura: +attack. Lower priority, sometimes won't stick over external buffs, but worth it when buff-light.
• Banshee Aura: Damage shield, stacks with Cloak of Corruption's DS. Requires a pearl in inventory to cast.
• Mortal Coil (passive): Killshot proc. Fires whenever you land a kill in solo play.

• Shambling Minion: The 75-tier pet. ~55–80 DPS in field-test parses, meaningful chip damage, not a primary DPS source.
• Amplify Death: Pet haste buff. Always cast after summon.
• Tank role: Pet eats some incoming damage but will die against red mobs without merc backup. Plan for resummons.

• Blacktalon Bite: Opener. Mana-positive nuke + group heal.
• Rot Root Spear: Filler nuke between taps.
• Touch of the Wailing Three: Sustain lifetap.
• Touch of Sever: Burst lifetap.
• Challenge for Power: Hate + AC tick. Optional in the rotation, run it off-rotation if you want the melee swing windows back.
• Taunt: Fires on cooldown.
• Pet attack / pet swarm / merc assist: Bound on the same key. Spamming the rotation keeps the pet and merc locked onto your target without a separate /assist.

Held back: Chattering Bones (10-minute reuse swarm pets), saved for burn windows, not the rotation. The swarm pets can foul up pulling.

• Terror of Vergalid
• Ignite Blood
• Bond of Blacktalon
• Blood of the Blacktalon
• Challenge for Power
• Decrepit Skin

Pull pattern: Pull with Terror of Vergalid → land all three dots → roll into the rotation. The rotation handles the heal-up; the dots handle the damage floor.

• Decrepit Skin: 40-charge melee absorb on a 6-minute timer. Refresh on cooldown, the floor of your defensive uptime.
• Soul Carapace: Mini-defensive discipline. Reduces incoming damage. Pop on add or when you take an unexpected spike.
• Challenge for Power: +AC for 27 seconds. Later ranks add absorb, not yet at 75.
• Deflection: Shield-only. Doesn't fire with a 2H equipped, keep a shield in the bag if you want this option.
• Lifetap sustain: Touch of Sever + Touch of the Wailing Three + the Shroud of the Nightborn proc + Marrow Thirst Horror return are the actual healing engine. Heals don't come from a class spell, they come from the rotation.

• Solo parse: ~1.8k DPS sustained. Pet at 55–80 DPS.
• With Melee DPS merc: Player ~1.8k, merc ~1.4k, combined ~3k+. Mobs die roughly twice as fast.
• Healing: 100,000 self-healed across the run. 35,000 overheal. 214 of 444 potential heals landed. ~335 HPS.
• Big heals: Largest landed 4,300. Max potential 13,000 (the rest was overhealed off).
• Average heal: 510, most healing comes from many small lifetap and dot-proc returns, not from the burst tap.
• Overheal rate: 24%. Acceptable headroom, not wasting much, not at risk.
• Killshot procs: Mortal Coil firing on every kill, plus Remorseless Demeanor priming the next lifetap.

Add handling: Two-mob pulls survived clean, Soul Carapace pop, snare the new one, dot it up, rotation. Lifetap throughput scales with the dot count, so adds make sustain easier, not harder.

• Burn buttons: Not yet wired, the explicit burn window comes in the 80–85 bracket.
• Harm Touch: Available now but not in the rotation yet, a burn slot when the kit fills out.
• Epic 2.0: Target around 80–85. Unlocks the swarm-and-burn play pattern this character is built around long-term.
• Challenge for Power upgrade: Higher ranks add melee absorb, moves it from "hate tick" to a real defensive layer.