I've been playing my mage off and on for a few years now but have never raided with him, with the declining mages in our guild that raid im at a loss as to the best set up for raiding..burns and AA setup, a good spell line up ..do's and dont's and the like...currently lvl 105 with 10k+AA atm...
The basics- Water pet, ice swords, FBO, VT Salvo, Rain, Rain, Spear for spells during ITC. If you cannot use rains on the event, then Salvo, Spear, Spear, Spear. Rxxx servant at every opportunity unless during ITC/TC Force of Elements AA every 30 seconds Burn hot key is Focus, Spire, Fire Core. Elemental Union after FC if short fight...otherwise EU when Focus/Spire refreshes.
Biggest thing for a mage is to learn to use multi bind keys. (Check eqmagetower.com if you don't know what this is.) This will improve your DPS more than anything else you can do. My multi bind keys cast servant, spell twincast, then what ever 4 nukes are appropriate. I also include Force of Elements on the multi bind, (I am able to multi bind one AA hotkey, but not 2, don't know if other computer/keyboards work the same way or not.) Make sure somebody is casting maloxxxx. Watch your hate meter. Tanks get really pissed off when your pet is listed as the top agro, so summon it once in a while to clear agro. Make sure you have your pet set for focus and ghold. You probably should not be raiding if you don't have those AAs yet. Otherwise, Cicelee said nearly all you need to know.
This really isn't the case. Some might prefer it but the very best case scenario would be to go equal with someone playing manually. I personally never use a multibind because I like to be able to play reactively, and there is no benefit other than to consolidating the keypresses. If pressing multiple buttons isn't an issue for you, there's no point multibinding. For example, simply including Twincast in your multibind rather than using it when Spire/Bard Epic/Fierce Eye/(et cetera) are up is just bad. Cicelee, is it really the case you use the Raging Servants for burn? I was under the impression that nukes were always better in a burn scenario, but I'm far from an expert. Only other things I can think of are maybe to use a Rain first (to ensure enough pets are on mob) and to use your clicky nukes (Burning Orb, Icebound Paradox, Force of Elements,clicky pets etc) and pet relocate when your spell gems are greyed out - just not when ITC is running. Oh and you can use FBO/VT on a pet and suspend it for a double usage on burn.
It is possible to accomplish casting quickly without a multibind. With that being said, I've never seen someone succeed at it, and I've seen many people not succeed. There is a noticeable increase in casting speed with a multibind; very few people can achieve the same efficiency without one. I do not, however, multibind anything other than nukes; I assign things like TC to separate keys As far as RS during burn, I believe Cicelee said not to use it. However, it isn't an absolute thing (nothing ever is). RS is a very powerful spell, especially with a bard. If you can't use rains and your ADPS isn't perfect, there are definitely scenarios where RS will come out ahead of the alternative nuke. Edit: Also, you can use force of elements during ITC (it doesn't eat a charge). Edit 2: Curious as to why you wait for focus/spire to refresh before using EU on a long fight? I guess focus would help with resists (if that's an issue), but otherwise they aren't multiplicative. I usually always use EU directly after FC in the hopes that it might refresh an extra time before the fight ends. Sorry for the edits... On my phone.
That kinda boggles my mind a little, one of the best mages I have encountered on EQ didn't use a multibind, and personally, with cast times as (fairly) long as they are, I am always spamming the next nuke before the gems have refreshed. I can definitely see the value in it for some people, but to insist it is really anything more than a matter of personal preference is a bit much.
If you really want to maximize your personal dps, you'll want to keybind and multibind. If you're clicking too much you're losing damage.
You'll want to setup 2 multibinds, 1 with RS pet, 1 without. Multibinding is the only way to go... Savil
spamming your multibing shaves off the time the game says your spells ready and when its really ready
regarding spell twincast in the multi key bind set up: I would go around for hours, waiting for the perfect time to use the spell, and then realizing, that many play sessions I never used it at all. I put the spell into my multi-keybindings so that every 6 minutes it would get used. I also made an audiotrigger to try and prevent the usage of servant pet while twincast is active. This set up might not be the most effective in looking at one single mob kill, but, in looking at usage during a normal play session of 30 minutes or more, I think it helps my DPS a lot. During raid usage, I do try to use AA twincast for those times when other damage increasing songs, disciplines, AAs, etcetera are in play, but, I still keep spell twincast on my multibind keys so it gets used as often as possible. Certainly, there are times during raids that you have to be reactive, and blindly hammering your multibind key is not the best thing, I am referring only to using multibind key during those times that you want to maximize your dps, and have adequate mana and an adequate tank to hold the agro off of you.
regarding multiband vs. manually hitting spell gems: If doing it manually, mage spells are slow enough that you might already be clicking on the next spell as it refreshes. But, using multi key bindings, can throw in our AA nuke every time it refreshes, and it will cast the highest spell gem that is refreshed which helps assuming you have the spell gems in order of highest DPS top to bottom. Multi key binds only cast in order when you start the casting process, but as different spells refresh at different time, it will cast the first spell gem possible as you get going on it. I don't see how you could possibly do more DPS manually, you might be able to do equal, but, for most people, you will do much more DPS with multi key binding. If you are already clicking on spell gem #5 waiting to cast it, but spell gem #2 refreshes just a hair earlier, and, assuming you have your spells in DPS order high to low, multi key binding allows you to automatically cast #2 before #5, just in that fraction of a second before you even visually recognize which one refreshed first.
This is certainly a personal preference thing. I personally use 1, 3, and E as my multibinds, and have twincast keyed to the 5 key. Whether it goes in your multibind or whatever, I still would use it when it's up most of the time. If you look at a generic fight when you have an Enchanter and Druid (I don't ever have a bard in my group), you should get IoG at the start and then have Black Wolf carry you to the 5:30-ish mark. I use spell twincast before ITC and I have Rk 3 TC, so at 5 mins it's refreshed and I'm under Black Wolf. Around the 9 minute mark (or is it 9:30?) Black Wolf will be up again, and at 10:00 spell twincast is up, so I use twincast again. At 16:00 in, your burn AAs will repop along with IoG, and you can start the cycle over. Under that setup, I'm not sure of the logic in saving spell twincast. The refresh is only 5 minutes and it only lasts for 3 tics, so waiting a significant portion of time for ADPS is not the best use of it, at least in my opinion. Edit: And I also have an audio trigger that tells me when Twincast refreshes.
Well, I use both a multibind (when I'm boxing) and manual when I'm playing Mage exclusively. I do better DPS manually because I play reactively. I use different nukes when Chromatic Haze is up, I sustain better because I use Gift of Mana procs smartly, I can use Strike of Many appropriately, I can use Rains and swap easily when there are mezzed mobs/AE isn't appropriate, I can use Twincast with First Spire/Bard epic/Fierce Eye (which is up twice as often as Twincast, BTW. Sorry if you didn't use it once in six hours, your support was slacking). I can cast the appropriate nuke for the HP of the mob - no point casting a spear if it is on a couple of %, same with a rain if all 3 waves won't hit... and so on and so on. I have all my nukes bound to keys so there's no time wasted clicking. Also, adding in Burning Orb, Icebound Paradox, Force of Elements to a multibind I've found inefficient, and can mess with the timings. Now I'm aware that a good multibind setup can in fact cover some of what I've listed above, but if you've got the ability to do it effortlessly manually, why bother?
Cicelee laid it out about as short and sweet as possible in his original post... But more important to a mages burn than multibinding or not multibinding is coordinating the usage of Illusions of Grandeur (Enchanter) and Group Spirit of the Black Wolf (Druid). There are several other aDPS tools available, but the majority of guilds I've read/heard about don't have enough bards to spare for the caster groups. If you can coordinate the use of your burn with an enchanters Illusions of Grandeur (2 minute duration), and coordinate with your druid to pop Group Spirit of the Black Wolf (3m45s duration) you'll go from sustaining 50k to sustaining 100k, and from 100k burns to 200k burns, assuming you're using your RS>of Many>mRain>fRain>Spear rotation and casting as quickly as possible, multibind or not (And I'm not saying that there's not other crit dmg modifiers, but those are by far the biggest two to start with). I will say, rare is the player who can do even close to the damage of a multibind without using one. Most of the time casting 200 spells nets more damage overall then smartly timing 170 spells. I multibind the 5 main spells, secondarily multibind the 4 without Servant for burns, and click all the pets/nukes (Besides Force of Elements) between spell refresh. I don't know how mages are timing Gift of Hazy Thoughts procs with Spear, as the majority of mine seem to be eaten by an already-cast 2nd or 3rd pulse of a rain, or a Salvo that just let loose as soon as GHT procs, but I've heard some outlandish burn numbers that involved multiple Gift of Hazy Thoughts procs off of spears in a short time, and any kind of manual ducking-out-of-a-rain-to-try-to-get-a-spear-off technique almost exclusively results in a loss of overall DPS as I said the GHT proc just gets eaten by a rain which I've got going just about constantly. Always pre-summon your Mutinous Minion, and Mutinous Servant clickies, as well as your Icebound Paradox, and every iteration of your ____ Orbs (Molten, Blazing etc), get the Minion/Servants on the mob upon engage, never cast a click when a spell is available. Bind Force of Elements to each of your multibinds. Pre-buff pet with Virulent Talon & Frenzied Burnout and suspend whenever possible before fight, pop out just before engage and watch for VT fading/FB Fading to refresh. Virulent Talon should almost always be greyed out. Then roll your face to an enviable position on the DPS list.
Excellent post and agreed with all but this. Convince me that this isn't slowing my DPS? Indeed, mages in my guild consistently beat all except for necros and, sometimes, the wizzies.
Yeah... what Barper said Other than the FoE in multibind thing, which I'm honestly not sure about, I 100% agree. I'm glad you voiced the same experience with Chromatic Haze I had; I was worried other mages had some uber way to get it to proc on Spear...
First, you're both better mages than I pretend to be Secondly, as long as you're Multibinding your Spell Gem slots directly, and not a hotbar slot your multibind will always check for an available Spell Gem before checking for a hotbar slot. I may be ignorant to it happening if it does, but I've never seen it cast FoE while any other spell gem is up, it seems to fire exclusively during general cooldown. Force of Elements has a 0.5s cast time, doesn't eat a counter on ITC and is a decent chunk of sustained damage for the end of night parses if it's cast every 20s with the multibind (I forget to click it for stretches if I'm worried too much about other raid mechanics). As long as you're mashing quickly enough to get FoE off as soon as the previous spell gem pops off of refresh you should only see benefit, since general cooldown is what, 1.8s at the quickest on most connections? Plenty of time to get a 0.5s nuke off Icebound Paradox clicks take 1.0 seconds versus the 0.5s that FoE takes. I usually save those for the non-burn segment just in case I lose a tick from the delay in click-to-cast.
I leave the more technical aspects of things to those who understand them far better than me so would love to get some feedback on if this is true. If so, I'd be delighted to multibind FoE!
