Enchanter specialization

I'm a returning player from a few years break and planning on rolling an enchanter from scratch to regain the feel of the game. I've played one to 60s before but don't remember some specifics - in particular do you specialize in alteration or conjuration? I plan to do a lot of solo charming but also group when the opportunity presents itself. Or with current aas is this even still relevant?

Specialization only gets you reduced mana usage. As you will never be "chain casting" charm, I don't see a benefit in spec alteration just for charm. The argument could be made for alteration in the high end game with our use of runes these days, but I've never gone back and bothered to change my initial choices, which were Conjuration and then Evocation with the secondary forte AA.

Given the amount of nukes vs mezzes enchanters casts these days, and the fact that the only way they can run out of mana is by nuking a lot, I would say Evocation primary and Alteration secondary.

I'd do evocation first, conjuration second myself.

evo/conj also here

Spec Evocation primary for damage, Conjuration Secondary for mezzes, as these are our primary mana drains

Oops, I meant conjuration, not alteration. Mezzes.

Wow I hadn't even considered evocation. I'm glad I asked because I don't recall even memming a nuke back when I last played. It was all cc, buffs and charms. Also am I remembering correctly that specialization reduces the rate at which you are interrupted if taking damage?

Nah that's channeling.

Btw every chanter I asked when I made mine said evocation should be primary.

Yea, if I was doing it today, it probably would be evo first. It was a different world back then and nukes were the first thing that got dememmed if I needed the spell slots. That said, the difference between primary and secondary specs is so minor I never bothered with the Sol Ro quest.

This is simply not true. The difference in primary and secondary specialization is quite vast, and should be considered carefully for every caster class.

Because of what your specialized in, Filatal, I can outlast you in sustained combat, despite the difference In gear.

Do yourself a favor. Do the Sol Ro quest. Reset your spec

Doesn't spec affect fizzles any more? According to all of the old threads on The Runes, people used to take conj to make sure of no fizzles at inopportune times.

I still have spec in conj, but I see the value of evoc. Like Fil said above, it's only 25 pts of specilization, it's not gonna break you either way.

Evocation, Conjuration, etc skills affect fizzles.

Specialize Evocation, Specialize Conjuration, etc is simply mana preservation.

The last time I nearly mezzed myself OOM was when I was mezzing all the Progenitor's adds all by myself. I came close to OOM, but didn't run out, and since I wasn't specced Con at the time, I figure it's never necessary, unless maybe there's a raid event I'm unfamiliar with?

You can make reasonable cases for Evoc, Alt, and Abj, but I think I'd spec Divination before Conj.

My 'reasonable case' for conj is that it is part of dps weave. It costs more than phant assault but less than mindnuke. Use it all the time. What's situational is rune tanking. In the event of alteration overload I'm just going to pop a glyph of lost secrets.

That makes sense, RPoo. I just don't put my head into the DPS game, I suppose.

The difference between primary (275) skill and secondary (250) skill is 25 points. Based on parses, 5 points of specialization is roughly 0.25% mana savings. Therefore, you would get 1.25% better savings with primary vs. secondary. These numbers were brought up a few months ago when the new specialization augs came into the game.

So, Dandin, I highly doubt you would outlast Fil based on your assumption given the two mana pools.

Ohh, I checked my chanter and remembered why he has Alteration as secondary (Evo primary): Phantasmal Unity is Alteration! All single runes are Abjuration, but Unity is Alteration for some reason. My chanter tanks all named for me. Spamming Unity can cost a lot of mana. So if you like rune tanking, don't neglect Alteration.

Anyone but me think that's a problem? Anyone make an Enchanter to tank? I get that runes are something we've had from the start, and they're more important than ever now that they're building content (100k hitters) that all but requires Enchanters runeing the tanks, and I'm not suggesting that's a problem at all.

It's really simple, our self-runes completely out of bounds.

Now, I'm not calling for a nerf, that's against forum rules. I'm saying let's exchange our self-runes for something else. Let's go in a different direction, because Enchanters shouldn't be tanks, especially vs. the majority of named mobs.