Ok,,,I have played a ranger for many years and know that Dex/AC augs are the way to go, but i really have no background with caster augs, specificially ones designed for a Mage, do i go with the Intell/wisdom ones or i heard someone say that Agi is the way to go..i know spell damage augs play a part in this too...i just need another experienced person to give me the low down on mage augs, why and what for...etc......Thanks
Personally, I gear 100% for spell damage, with the exception of two DD proc augs in my primary. A lot of Mages do that... some go for all SD augs (no primary proc augs)... some go for Mana augs. It basically amounts to personal preference. However, be sure to get the 15% Conjuration and Evocation specialization augs, either the ones from LDoN or CotF HAs.
What Sancus said. I go for Spell Damage primarily but with a proc in my primary plus the 15% Conjuration and 15% Evocation augs, which are more than worth their weight in gold, and any serious mage would be a fool not to have them. It took me about 120 runs of the zombie HA to get the Evocation aug to drop, so you might want to run through the LDoN that also drops a slightly lesser version in the interim to tide you over. After completing the Parrot aug over the weekend, I now have what I consider to be the best game-wide augs. Check out my Magelo for the specifics: http://eq.magelo.com/profile/3171508 Additionally, you can use raidloot.com to search for augs in a very user-friendly format.
Magicians get more benefit than other classes from +spell damage, due to the multi-hit nature of their primary dps spells (rains and ~ofMany's). So after the big deal +spec mod augs, and procs that only fit primary, +spell damage is what to pursue. This is different than enc, who prioritize surviving their CC role with +hAgi, and different than wizards for whom +mana via hInt is pretty much king, and different than necros who just get a pile of hp because fuckit. For your 1h, which will already have its own +mana proc native to it too, that you bust out when goes loooong: The Murderer's Heart For your 2h, the highest tier of sympathetic nuke proc you can get, best right now is Bone Shards of Frozen Marrow. Just be careful not to accidentally get a dot proc one, your crits won't work right. #1&2: Bixie Summoner's Stone, Splinter of Potency. Each one is a +million mana aug over the course of a long grind / intense event. #3, but a serious project: Prayer Shawl of the Duke 4+, various degrees of project: Jonas Dagmire's Skeletal Parrot Hero's Calling Frozen Orb of the Fabled King Splinter of Fear Stone of the Crystal Circle Limited availability: Golden Nugget of the Eleventh Hour Polished Stone of the Eleventh Hour Flame of Vox Gem of the Eleventh Scholar Fragment of Purethought Blue Stone of Power Raids: Fragment of Nobility Red Dragon Scales (also limited availability) Dropped augs to fill, can actually camp these: +Spell dmg 8: Arx Mentis Mana Gem Old Spirespine's Spine Heart of Rot Doomscale Gem Candle of Hollow Souls Quicksilver Globule Red Eye of Gosik Blood-Soaked Spellstone +Spell dmg 7: Tantarene Gem of Heretical Power Double Pronged Grendlaen Incisor Krucidon's Inverted War Charm Honorable mentions, for having a pile of mana: Issis' Fang The Warden's Glacial Stare
Agreed. Wizards are pretty much the same but we get less benefit from SD than mages do. I went Spec Evoc, dd symp proc from primary 2hb with the best 3 dd symp proc augs you can get elsewhere followed by spell damage augs.
Like has already been said, spell damage is the way to go. Other than the spec evoc, spec conj, and your charm Aug, the rest of your augs should be 7 or higher spell damage when done. On a side note, if you raid and get the fine silk sash waste item I dont believe adding multiple dd procs really helps much in the long run. The shawl proc, fss proc and 2hb proc is enough procs in my opinion. Adding more and more procs only reduces your average hit on procs and the percentage chance of a proc only increases slightly with the more that are added. I personally go with those 3 procs and put more SD augs in my primary.
Speaking of waist, recommend you get one of these: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=117406 The mages in my guild have all replaced their raid waists with it after some parsing indicated that it was significantly better DPS. I dare say it's basically a 500 Spell Damage addition with that proc.
Burning Sash of Ro is +375 spell damage specifically for fire spells (all spells already benefit from +125 via Aura of the Void II clicky on upgraded Memento of the Ungod's Suffering, so only the difference counts).
It is important to point out that aug, except the 15% evoc/conj ones, hardly matter. you are already over the soft-cap on AC... it's a long story on how AC work ( go in the tank forum if you are curious) but basicly +ac does very little in the group game, and when a raid boss is balance around a 250k hp 17k AC tank running defensive, it's dosen't matter at all if your silky bottom have 8k or 12k ac. Hagi: same as above Hdex: unlike popular opinion, it dosen't help with spell proc/crits the way it does with melee proc/crits. Hint: this is just a flat amount of mana with a minuscule amount of regen ( 1 mana regen per 25 Hint) tied to it: see below +mana: your spells cost 2000+ mana. adding a 200-250 mana aug won't change much... mages have more mana issue than wizard, but wether you are at 100k or 130k mana, in the end, it dosen't matter... especially in a raid setting where you regen 1k+ mana per tic. spell dmg: all the spell damage you can gather won't add up to 10% of your DPS, maybe 5% if you are lucky and include stuff like burning sash of ro. Also, keep in mind many augs are just best-in-slot no matter what stats you aim for: Jonas parrot, Shawl aug Hero's calling Stone of the landing (charm) PoWar group/raid aug 14th anniversary mission aug orb of the frozen king ( RoF T1+T2 ach) ... Along with the augs, keep in mind the difference between the non-visible armor piece template is, also, pretty small: wiz-mage / chanter template are basicly the same, give or take 100 mana /hp and some AC a piece. the difference between those 2 template and the necro-shaman one is a minuscule amount of spell damage (a stats that's already a small amount of your DPS). heck, even if you go for tank/zerker template, you'll only cut off your spell damage by 50%, wich is 1 or 2% less DPS on your end...
+Mana is worthless. Neither Wizards nor Mages need mana at this point. Hint is worthless, same reason as above. SD is mostly worthless. 1 point of SD is ~ 1.5 points of damage for a Wizard. For a Mage it will be more because they use more rains and their of many nuke, but even so, the amount you can possibly get from augments is like... 100ish? Maybe 200 at most? So ~300 per hit or 900 on a rain and 12-1500 on a Of Many. We're talking minuscule amounts of damage even in the best case. AC is ok, but not the best. The softcap on AC doesn't mean more AC is worthless, it just means it isn't the full amount you see. It works out for Wizards to be something like 3 AC = 1 real AC after the softcap, so the difference between 8k and 12k AC (4k display) is about 1333ish real AC. Mages get a little more than Wizards, but not much. Hagi is the most useful by far because there is no kind of cap on Heroics. Every 25 points is like .8% chance to avoid damage.
Everquest is a game of miniscule increases, regardless of stat. Players with 44 ac/150 hp augments go crazy wanting to upgrade to 46 ac/160 hp augments. Mana augments may not help much in the raid game, but they have some use in the solo/group game. Those with higher mana can last longer before they have to med than those who have to sit after 10 minutes. And even though SD provides some small amount of increased damage, the point is... it does increase damage. And for the high end that enjoys min/max their toons... SD is the way to go. It could mean the difference between one mage doing 90k on a parse, and another doing 89.2k. If that happens every time, then one mage will always finish first For magicians, the most important augments (as previously mentioned) are the conj/evoc spec augs and shawl aug. If you do not have a proc belt, then a DD aug is needed in your weapon. Then just go for SD augs, maximizing them.
From level 100 onward it doesn't make a difference to Mages or Wizards. If either of those classes ever run out of mana in the solo/group game they are doing something wrong, period. The unofficial design goal during RoF beta was for casting classes to be able to play for approximately 30 minutes before running out of mana, and in one of the few times in EQ history, that goal was actually met. It is possible to go down faster if the group is going hard and fast enough, but 95% of players will never be in a group like that. No, they won't, that is my whole point. The difference between fully augging for SD and augging for something else is small enough that you can realistically only tell the difference mathematically. In an actual parse you will never be able to tell the difference. The difference 200 SD makes for Wizards on an average cast of our level 100 Fire Ethereal (my test cases are all setup for Wizards at level 100 still, sorry) is approximately 700 damage. 132.9k to 133.6k. That is a .5% increase. Or to put it another way: Wizard A augs for SD and has 1200 SD on gear. Wizard B doesn't aug for SD and has 1000 SD on gear. Wizard A casts 189 spells. Wizard B casts 190 spells. Wizard B did more damage than Wizard A. (On average). It would take approximately ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY spells for that extra SD to make up for casting ONE more nuke. Now, it gets a little more complex for Mages because they gain a higher benefit from SD than Wizards do, but it still comes out to be small enough that it's not worth it. I don't think you understand the concept of Min/Maxing all that well. Min/Maxing doesn't mean make one stat max and all others min, it means choosing the maximum benefit in all areas, and the defensive bonuses provided by Hagi far outweigh the damage gain from SD by any reasonable standard And it gets worse as time goes by because SD doesn't scale since it is a flat mod. In the above example the 200 extra SD equated to half a percent increase on the level 100 Fire Ethereal. It will be less than half a percent increase vs the level 105 Fire Ethereal. At level 110 it will be even less, etc. Now, you do get more SD on new augs vs old augs, but not nearly enough to offset the relative loss. On the other hand, If you are getting 5% less chance to be hit from Hagi at level 100, it is still going to be 5% less chance to be hit at level 105, level 110, etc. until they change how it works.
Don't mobs, especially raid mobs, have so much strike through or whatever, that they ignore dodge pretty much?
Me? I haven't changed my augs in almost a year, I have a bunch of newer ones just sitting in my bags unused. I kinda stopped caring about it a while back. I'll get to them eventually. Hell, I haven't even done TDS progression or maxed AA yet, and if you know me at all you know that's way off from normal.
Depends on the size of the group and what they are killing. If we are talking TDS (and I'm only in T2 TDS atm), then I absolutely expect a mage to go oom before 30 minutes are up. Spear and servant are huge mana hogs even with the spec conj and evoc cotf augments. Pretty much the only thing on my mage I didn't have maxed out in regards to mana regen/conservation was tribute (CotF Raid2 shoulder focus, max mana regen AA, both cotf augs, shawl, 2 sympathetic mana procs). So I started running the max of all mana-related tributes. If the group is small and it is against TDS mobs, and I want to be doing above-average dps (meaning spears, salvos, and gargs spammed whenever they are up), I am going to mod rod + gather potential + force rejuv + gather potential, and still oom before 30 minutes of chain killing. Maybe not with a group of mostly players, or a full group of players+mercs. But I meant small groups, 2-4man, players and mercs
