Earth Revamp!?!?

Figured I'd run this by you guys; not all hope is lost for Earth DPS at this point. Ran Nexus last night and at the end of the raid (which proceeded without problems while having a freshly converted Earth tank that I taught in 20 minutes), I had 5 million damage out, while the other two DPSes hadn't even cracked 1 million. The raid wasn't slow by any means. Granted, all I did was DoT stack plus Crystal and then went into DW and clipped with Pebble Blast or Tectonic Break, but it's still completely viable as DPS if you know what to do.

That being said, I do think it is indeed in need of a revamp, specifically the PIs and the Aftershocks on the DPS side, however the tanking aspect works perfectly fine, I've tanked every raid no problem with Earth, you just need a decent healer and the ability to focus and not just do an inane rotation again and again. I think there just needs to be more variety in loadouts via PIs and less relying on weapons for DPS, and in Tank role there should be fixes to Aftershocks and perhaps a pet tanking revamp.

DPS loadout: Crystal, Debris Field, Jackhammer, Totem, Reinforce, Tectonic Break, replace JH with Pebble Blast for range.
Tank loadout: Brick, Gemstone Shield, Jackhammer, Damage Shift, Epicenter, Stone.

What's your dps specced what gear etc like all might gear mixed might and prec mode all prec gear mix might prec heavy on prec mods? What powers were the other dps? Tactical mods? You used dual wield which is one aspect I hate is that earth is really only great with op weaps... I'm not taking anything away from you and I see you Also acknowledge that it requires weapons to do good damage. I'm just asking these questions as to help those who want to spec and try it out to get an idea. At the moment my earth too is strictly tanking content i don't even bother dpsing anymore until it receives love.

As far as tanking goes do you use brick in dox nex and ab? Is that working ok? As I see you have both pet transfer tanking and jackhammer tanking on your load out. I assume the pets there for the easier things and the jack hammer tanking is when it's about to get rough

oops meant for my last post to be a rea

Man, I forget my exact DPS stats, but I have almost full 90, I'm about 3500 might and 1600 prec, my gear is a mixture of whatever Vestment drops I get, be they might or prec, and I purchase Scion Striker gear. I basically go for a mixture of might and prec as Earth DPS, because my Debris Field and Totem stack is nice DoT, plus Totem buffs Crystal's Crit%s so she does extra damage. I'd prefer not to use DW, but it's just so ludicrously strong that ignoring it would be selling myself short. Just make sure you use Tectonic Break frequently to keep the PI going, and when you have to stay back or there's only one boss, replace JH with Pebble Blast, it clips DW really quick and it hits well when Dazed is up.

I'll hop on in a little bit and get back with you on my exact stats as well as tactical mods, but basically I just go for a mixture of Prec and Might.

As a tank I've done Nex no problems whatsoever and Dox was challenging but doable. A&B was a piece of cake up until last boss where I had a little trouble, but that's about it. I use Epicenter for initial aggro clipped with Gemstone + Aftershocks x3, then I wait for a good opportunity to unblock and pop Jackhammer. A lot of my tanking revolves around creating openings to use my Aftershocks in, so I try to block counter or interrupt whenever possible. I rarely use Damage Shift, truth be told, but it's good for when both my Aftershocks are on cooldown, although I'm going to be looking into Unstoppable to replace DS. I generally try to use Jackhammer first, after the initial aggro is through with, and if I miss a couple Aftershocks from a juggle or a block counter, I immediately hit Gemstone shield. Also, I'd recommend specing into straight Dom for Earth Tanking, because the buff you get from using powers is 100% of your Dom is added to your Def and Tough.

At this point I'm just babbling lol, I'll hop on soon and give you my stats and Tac mods, and anything else you want to know.

Oh and I forgot to add, my tank gear is at best CR99, so I'm not by any means an OP tank, Earth Tanking is mostly about paying attention for openings to pop Aftershocks.

couple things i noticed... gem stone shield when you say after shock 3 times you mean..three shards or 4?.... gemstone shield is glitched right now... if you do the full 4 shards around you its actually weaker then having just 3..

source : https://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/earth-gemstone-shield-bugged.6856/

also gem stone shield isnt an aftershock like jackhammer... it only shields you it doesnt give you the 50% damage absorption..however upheaval works just like jackhammer...im sure you know this..im just clarifying for those who might be reading this and not know....

have you tried dual wield charge cliped to sand blast then back to dual wield charge?... im curious how that clips..cause if you kept doing that over and over youd have a 50% buffed dual wield charge everytime..of course you wouldnt get the extra damage from dazed pi but dual wield would always be buffed.. ive not tried it just curious

Wow, I was not aware of that, I do indeed use all 3 Aftershocks on GS. I'll have to adjust that.

And yes, although I do have a question. I know the Aftershock Absorption doesn't stack, but if you miss an Aftershock with one power, can you get the full effect by using the other? Although honestly I wouldn't ever consider using Upheaval as a tank, the power cost is enormous, the animation is too slow, and it blows away adds, so it's just something I don't want to be doing.

I've tried clipping Dual Wield with various powers, and the Pebble Blast and Tectonic Break rotation seems to work the best, simply because Pebble Blast clips so quickly. Sandblast slows down the entire rotation a bit and honestly the big damage is with Dual Wield, so it should be the focus of the clipping rotation, however you still get good might numbers using Pebble Blast with Dazed PI. The main thing you need to focus on with my DPS rotation other than the DW clipping is to keep the PI up and the DoTs going. The only reliable DoTs that can be set up easily are Debris Field and Totem, and while Totem doesn't hit very hard, it has upwards of 35 ticks of damage and it buffs Crystal, which is like a permanent Debris Field on your target. I've almost completely stopped using JH unless it's to clip DW in a room with a lot of adds and even then I only do 3 or 4 hits of it, so I may end up removing that from my loadout entirely, although if you can't get a DW then it's your second-best bet, nothing else really compares. With a JH loadout, the same deal applies; set up your PI and DoTs, Reinforce for the prec buff, and if you have a prec buff trinket pop that as well, and then do JH for awhile. Reapply Dazed frequently, as if you do JH without Dazed it is significantly weaker.

I have a loooot more experience with Earth DPS, compared to Earth Tank, although I can do both sufficiently well

you an use upheaval and you get the same 50% buff if you activate 1 aftershock... same with jack hammer only takes 1 after shock for the full effect so 2 taps the intial tap plus one melee tap.... however if you get knocked out of the aftershock... you still get 25% damage absorption...this should by you some time before jack hammer is up agani.... or upheaval whatever it is you are using... this is why i never activate gem stone shield when i have a full 50% damage absorption unless i know 100% for sure that im bout to be hit with something very hard..... that way if i miss my aftershock i get the 25% absoprtion plus the gemstone shield protecting me til jack hammer is up....

We'll weeks almost up I was hoping liberty would have posted a public confirmation by now maybe he just forgot but really hoping he comes through by weeks end

For what it is worth, he said next week during THIS Sunday, so he may very well of meant... well, next week.

The sooner the better, though.

Yeah I just want a pi
Unlicensed clarification to end the debate on whether they are or aren't, I mean I know what he told me but more will believe it when a dev flat out says it on the forum. I don't think any one should expect a. Answer for exactly when and to what degree, at least I don't expect that

Earth more than any other power drives me nuts by the trees. Before T5 i sacrificed Iconic crit power just so I could have the powers I wanted. At t5, have had to give up on daze PI except from consumables.

Earth def needs revamping!! +1

earth tanking was perfectly fine then phase dodge got nerfed.....earth dpsing was fine and now JC is going away or something....now im starting to see a need for earth revamp

Tectonic Break has the exact same range as Jackhammer, so if you drop JH in favor of Pebble Blast for range then it makes sense to drop TB in favor of Stone as well. Or just stay at JH's max range, you'll be perfectly fine in Nex/Wave/A&B.

And your strategy is similar to what Earth dps did with 1H spam; the power itself is still weak, most of your damage is coming from your weapon, an op weapon at that. And 5 mil vs 2 mil combined? They were undergeared dps, no way anyone can quintuple a similarly geared non-garbage dps in a raid. Not hating on you it's just of the few Earth dps I do see, pretty much all of them are using DW. RIP Earth dps Update 35.

Any tank that had to rely on Phase Dodge was not much of a tank to begin with.

Earth dps has never really been fine and jump cancel isn't as integral to Earth dps as it is for other classes.

jump cancel yes it is. and to say that a tank is not a tank using moves to effectively mitigate damage and improve survivability while maintaining agro means you dont know what you are talking about.

Only Sandblast and Striking Stones can be jump canceld I think? I don't remember but no jump canceling isn't a huge part of Earth dps, especially for the Daze tree.

I'm of the camp that believes Phase Dodge is a crutch. Phase Dodge is to tanks what Dual Wield spam is to dps. Sure it works, but it's cheap and removes some of the skill involved with playing.

EDIT: No need to mention maintaining aggro, every power does that just fine.

We obviously disagree on tanking but as for dpsing go rifle sandblast jump clip into pebble blast (hit em with a stone to daze them first) set up a debrie field and totem. so 2 ticks from debrie 1 from totem and ur stab damage from 2 grenades sandblast tick and double tick from pebble blast.

I'm not Earth anymore but I remember when I tried to jc Sandblast i only got the first tic, not both. Imo not worth it to jump cancel (grenade/power/jump has never been my playstyle anyways), although I have seen similar rotations for players who decided to go for a more might based dps.

you're supposed to cancel the second tick because the overall damage from the first tick being used in succession outweighs the damage from the second tick.