A Guide to Everything Earth

I haven't noticed, but AI isn't a strong suit in this game.

I don't know if she's directly attacking them but does happen if she's hitting an enemy and an object just happens to be there in her aoe range.

Can I just check that if I'm using crystal and using fortify-combo-power-combo-power- fortify etc that I spec full precision.

Yep. However I never use Fortify Golem to start of a rotation. Crystal is already at full power at the start of a fight so there's no real point. I normally use weapon combo, fortify clipped with reinforce, weapon combo, power and so forth. I do use rumble crush clipped with reinforce at the start of a rotation if there's a controller, though.

Crystal spawns with no power, so you'll have to use fortifying golem 1st. If you just spawned crystal

I know. If you get into a situation where Crystal dies In battle or for some reason choose not have her out until the fighting starts (Which would be more on you)

Then of course you would start with fortify. But as some who summons her as soon as I log on and rarely see her kick the bucket, it's never really been something I had to worry about.

Well, unless she gets stuck in another area, but that's an issue all by itself.

i may be wrong but need to ask the question, I've been lightly testing my earth toon without crystal again after a break from it, and I've seen everyone saying to spec full prec, but I've been seeing more consistent "higher" parser damage specing prec and might on the Reds,as I've been using rc rein df and totem.
Now with higher might I saw an average of 14.7kps
Specced prec I saw an average of 15.7-9kps
And prec might 15.8-16kps without crystal.
I just wondered whether anyone else had tested this anymore extensively. Thanks

I've mentioned this before but looking at it more closely it seems no different from when our own aoe attacks break objects, causing damage to split. The devs have been aware of this problem but I'm not sure if they have the tools to fix it outside of making objects unbreakable.

I don't have access to test server, otherwise I would have tested this a long time ago. Whether going the regular clipping or WM route, I can't see a way where having more might would help dps vs full prec. You have some parses, but from the numbers Rokyn took a while ago (they have since become gospel) might damage is a much smaller component to our overall dps than precision.

What's your rotation, for the record?

You'll have to outline your rotation.

When you say'without crystal' does that mean you are using wm while crystal is not summoned? Or standard combo clipping? Or just powers from the tray?

My bad, cystal wasn't summoned, so I know that add brings your weapon mastery crits into play, but the weapon was duel wield into explosive shot. And the rotation was, dw mastery into rc clipped with rein weapon mastery debris field weapon mastery totem and mastery until rein is off cool down and repeat.
Not the best rotation but I just wanted a rough outline of what's going on.
I mean I'm not expert on earth, but with the might ticks of debris field I just wondered whether the extra might from prec and might mods would actually effect the overall damage by much.

Yeah that's what I was thinking when I saw your rotation. You had WM power crits happening and that skews might numbers. WM DPSing always performs better when you are might/prec balanced because of the precision damage + big power crit.

Regardless of that, I would still like to see your parses for "weapon clipping" with might attacks being might/prec balanced, don't use WM since it will crit without Crystal out. When I ran tests back in May, I saw I was performing better with full precision when I ran tests but I'm totally open to see another approach.

Yeah I'll have a look when I get on next, the only reason I'm asking is because I could only adjust each stat slightly with stat sodas, so I can't test to the same extent. if I'm wrong I'm wrong, it just seems weird with debris field, totem dots and rumble crush to just spec precision not both, but thanks for taking the time to reply you guys

Yeah you're welcome. I think the reason is because, base damage wise, how might attacks are so inferior to weapon attacks just by nature. Now if our AM buffed our might or increased might damage then we would be talking a different conversation. I'm probably going to have to rerun tests again some weekend coming up because I'm personally still basing my stuff on May results.

The Sorcery spec thread over at Gotham City got me thinking. Base damage wise, between Sorcery and Earth, there's virtually no difference between the powers. Rumblecrush and Shard of Life are exactly the same. CoD and Debris are exactly the same. Striking Stones/Shards are exactly the same as Transmutation. Why should Sorcery spec might/prec balanced and Earth go precision heavy when their might attacks have similar base damages and might attacks are inferior to weapon attacks? My theories are below.

One disparity comes from multiple Soul Wells vs one Totem but even those powers don't increase damage that much. Even if Movement SCs and Grand Summoning are similar in providing a lot of burst damage at once, there's a disparity when the two Furys from Sorcery are getting power from something like Movement SCs, Supply Drops, Healer SCs, or Battle Drone. Lastly, another disparity comes from WoD, even if it's single target, it kinda outshines Reinforce when there's a group buff up and in boss/SM situations (the group buff overrides Reinforce's 7% crit chance but not the extra precision). WoD can generate up to 4 ticks with SK clipping totaling a base damage of 64-80 (higher than Trans and SoL) .

Let's say we have Bob and Bob is a sorcery DPS in SM. Bob runs with SoL, CoD, and WoD in his loadout for the fight. Bob uses SK clipping and so it's a 3 tap and hold which generates 4 ticks for WoD. He can clip SoL, Scissor Kick, and WoD all in one sequence get all those ticks running at once. Bob can do the same thing on Adds and have Red Soul Aura up in the background and run Transmutation, Soul Well, and WoD. That's a lot of burst damage in one second alongside a good DoT running in the background. But does it even matter in a spec? Does precision damage still prevail all that?

I never tested Sorcery rotations in depth but I'm inclined to believe that WoD does make a difference in the spec but then again for a Sorcery user not using WoD, why even spec might and precision balanced in the first place when Earth isn't? And if overall I'm wrong and might/precision balanced is the way to go for Earth then that brings up an interesting conundrum. I personally don't believe speccing into Might makes a difference just because of how powerful weapon attacks are right now. The graphs I have below is with a spec that has only crits and is not precision heavy specced or might heavy specced it's just with gear on without mods.

Atm it wouldn't make sense to use Weapon of Destiny since Shard of Life does it's job 100 times better.
The one thing people forget is Red Soul Aura. It's a damage increase to powers like Transmutation, Shard of Life, etc. The tool tip doesn't state it but you'll see the difference instantly.
Bad Karma also damages things over time where as Crushing and Dazing does not, which also adds to the desparity, besides Soul well stacking.
Circle of Destruction also gets a Double tick with the P.I. where as Debris Field does not.

Those could be the things you're looking for, Rokyn.

Changing my low level alt to Earth.
Would this be a good loadout.

Epicenter
Fortify Golem
Debris Field
Striking Stones
Summon Crystal
Reinforce

Full Precision
Weapon Master: DW

Hi,
You probably wouldn't need epicenter seeing as it's Crystal's main move. She does a good job of pulling mobs together.

I would swap Epi out for Rumblecrush to set the PI for Striking Stones and Debris Field in this setup.

The rest looks good.

The logic I use for speccing full prec, is that we already get a massive amount of might just from our gear, which leaves the prec stat out of balance.

This combined with the fact our self buff is +15% precision & that we need to use our weapon heavily, makes full prec setup attractive.

Most of the time we don't even utilize the full damage of totem or debris either with things dying quickly or bosses leaving aoe range, so they are just padding in my opinion. What looks good on test dummies doesn't always transfer across to content.

Always good to experiment though.

O.K., thanks.

I mean looking at it logically, it's only around 200-300 less precision specing your red mods prec and might over straight prec, so it's not massive either way, it's more about curiosity really, i can see what you're saying Rokyn, it was just eating away at me because I couldnt test it out properly and my sorc friends are modding fairly balanced and apart from wod, the powers are fairly similar as you said

Does Earth have a power back mechanic of any sort?