I currently run a 120 SK, Shaman, and Mage (or 115 bard). I never really parsed myself, but someone told me that my mage was doing the lowest damage in the group (I'm obviously not very good at boxing a mage for maximum dps). My shaman is apparently doing the most DPS. I tried swapping to a necro since they are DoT based as well, but when I'm killing light blues, I can barely fire off a macro to send in pet and debuff, and the mob is practically dead by the time I'm hitting my next macro. Someone suggested a bard, and that's what I'm leveling up right now (currently 115), but the melee positioning can be a pain in the butt sometimes when boxing, which is why I originally went with the mage. I'm about to start working on my trade skill earring, and some folks suggested using a ranger purely because headshot is so powerful for grinding through humanoid mobs. I wouldn't have to worry about melee positioning as much, but I would of course have to worry about mobs sneaking up from behind if I park him too far behind, and making sure I have him in the proper range. I do have a 110 ranger that I could start to focus on, but I want to get some feedback from others before I put in substantial time and effort into leveling, gearing, and AA'ing a ranger to 120. Thanks for your input.
To me, the simplest, easiest and quickest option is to try learning how to DPS better with your mage. Ask some questions, do some searches, and practice on some GH dummies, and give it a few days. Then you can avoid the whole "level up another alt" deal, and still keep CotH available for your box crew And yes, when fighting light blues, there isn't a whole lot for the DPS classes to do. When I three box, I have 2 melee mercs running, and between them and my SK tank, there isn't much else to do. I have the other two chars just cast a couple spells on incoming, and that's all they need to do. The other option for when you're fighting light blues, is to skip all the debuffs, and just start with DPS. That might allow your boxes to improve their DPS numbers. Which actually makes me think of something else..... if you're having short fights, and you have the mage doing debuffing, his DPS may not be as bad as you think. For example, if the mage is doing X damage in a 20 second fight, but he spends the first 10 seconds debuffing, a DPS parser is going to divide X by 20. If you skip the debuffs, now you're doing 2X/20, which is twice the DPS. Which is why some time spent DPSing against a GH dummy for a bit longer (2-3 minutes, to smooth out crit spikes) can give you a better idea of just how well you are DPSing. What you're doing right now may not be all that bad.
If mobs are dying so fast that you dont have time to hit more than one macro then why does parse matter?
So, I did that actually, and what most folks told me was to avoid nukes and use all of the swarm pets. Using Riotous servant (or the equivalent) is the only swarm pet that's easy to box. The other requires placement from cursor, and the other one is a summoned artifact, so it's really hard to box that type of stuff.
My point is that the necro's DPS is very situational. The necro doesn't do great dps when killing in older content or T1 zones where mobs have less HPs. The necro is much better at named mobs, giants or other mobs that have a ton of HPs, etc. As a side note, the other reason I was thinking of swapping away from bard is that my friend has recently picked up a bard and is making that his main, so now when we play, having 2 bards can be redundant (yes, I could switch to a DoT lineup or something), but having a ranger would always be consistent DPS. At least, that was my thinking.
Mage is good DPS and easier to one button than a necro. You need to invest in the levels and AAs for the mage and insure you have all the focus items for their level for the DPS spells you use. Secondary option would be a wizard or druid instead of the mage for porting but I like the mage for your setup the extra pet tank can come in handy at times not to mention great damage shields if you're pulling multiples. The beauty of the bard box is afk /melody I wouldn't really think about them in terms of melee dps unless you have a mob will a zillion hps.
It's very strange to me that you have mobs dying so fast your mage can't engage but yet somehow your SHM is out DPSing your SK tank. And NEC is considered a solution yet they take way more time to ramp up DPS? Something is not right about the picture being painted. Mage is probably the easiest box. About 1/4 of it's DPS comes from it's pet so you can get as much DPS from a mage as a rogue merc by hitting pet attack and doing nothing else. I can't see how switching out the mage can make your life easier. Also note that SHM give melee aDPS but no caster aDPS. It will boost the pet but not the mage. I do not know if SHM aDPS works for ranger bow. The ENC pumpkin proc does not. aDPS is a big part of DPS and mage aDPSes itself. Roiling Servant swarm pet procs Conjure Synergy and Chaotic Calamity procs a similar buff type. These need to be cast a lot and order matters. My mage box can out DPS raid mains because of cast rate and cast selection/order. I'm nothing special I just do what Raneern tells me to do. Not using RS pet / synergy gives up a 90% increase in base damage of the next cast. No using Calamity gives up a chance to prop Flames of Power which is a bunch of buffs. Here are my two hotkeys... SOCIAL /pause 3, /assist Vumad /pause 3, /pet attack /pause 3, /pet qswarm /pause 3, /mark 1 /alt act 1041; Malaise If you don't have Malaise maxed AA, you can just use /cast instead. You can also use /alt act 2064; Wind of Malaise. You can also increase DPS on lower level mobs by using Burning Malosinara instead of Malo. Using the AA skips the spell cooldown let you start casting RS sooner. I use mark because my SK is set as MA and mark makes it easy for me to see if I screwed up on my mage target. Hotkey 2 SOCIAL /pause 24, /cast 7; RS pet /pause 28, /cast 1; Calamity /pause 35, /cast 2; Spear /pause 15, /cast 8; Of Many /alt Act 8800; Force of Elements This is what I am using currently but It might be better to do RS pet, then spear, then chaotic, instead of RS, Chaotic then spear. I'll have to swap that later. /pause 24, /cast 7; RS pet /pause 35, /cast 2; Spear /pause 28, /cast 1; Calamity /pause 15, /cast 8; Of Many /alt Act 8800; Force of Elements
Wow. People are really mis-reading what I wrote. I never EVER said all mobs are dying so fast that I never have time to fire off a second macro on my MAGE. I repeat, " I tried swapping to a necro since they are DoT based as well, but when I'm killing light blues, I can barely fire off a macro to send in pet and debuff, and the mob is practically dead by the time I'm hitting my next macro." So, that comment was literally just meant that it's not worth casting tons of DoTs with the necro because he has slow casting and long lasting DoTs, especially on some content (like like blues or previous expansions, and yes, there are also some quick DoTs I could swap to, but at that point, I might as well play the mage). The reason my shaman does so much damage is because of the combination DoTs. Even though there are higher level DoTs available in my arsenal, I use Chaotic Venin (lvl 115 combo Poison DoT plus possible nuke), Bledrek's Pandemic (lvl 114 combo Disease DoT), and then Lenrel's Curse (lvl 120 Magic DoT). Those 3 casts do so much damage that my Shaman does the most DPS generally (plus I throw in epic, roar, and some nukes once the DoTs land). My mage spell lineup is pretty similar to yours, actually, but in a slightly different order. Hotkey #1: /timer 110,/pause 8,/xtar 1 /pause 10,/pet attack /pause 30, /cast 2 (riotous servant) /pause 39, /cast 4 (Spear of Molten Komaltite) /cast 8 (Composite Companion) Hotkey #2: /time 156,/pause 30,/cast 3 (chaotic pyroclasm) /pause 36, /cast 5 (Bolt of Molten Olivine) /pause 36,/cast 2 (Riotous Servant) /pause 12, /alt activate 8800 (Force of Elements) /cast 4 (Spear of Molten Komaltite) I also have a macro/social for AE damage (rain spells), and another one for when calling in swarm pets AA that also casts the Barrage of Many line. I have tried using the Barrage line more often (some people swear by it because of the Theft of Essence AA line), but I never have enough pets out to justify just casting it normally. Even with this, I was doing super pathetic damage. My buddy said my parse was less than 100k DPS on the mage. I also have all Mage AAs maxed out, including the Focus tab.
Spell choice is an issue here. Why are you using a Bolt spell? The level 115 spear (assuming all are rank 2 spells here) does 8,600 ish more damage. Use the 120 and 115 spears in your lineup.
I had that a while ago, but I swapped to Bolt of Molten Olivine because it is much more mana efficient for slightly less damage. I only have Rank 1 of the lvl 115 Spear, but it only does 4K more damage than Bolt of Molten Olivine, but Bolt costs about half the mana, so when I made this switch, I was running out of mana far less often, which means more uptime.
Where is your /pet swarm? Able to use Molten komatite orb? Drop the AA nuke and your mana issues will get much better. Drop composite companion.
Never knew about pet swarm. I'm not sure what the benefit is if I'm only able to cast swarm pets every 10 minutes though. I don't use the orb, as I mentioned above, because that's hard to macro/box. Because that requires summoning an item and putting it into your inventory before you can use it, that requires a lot of manual intervention, and I haven't found a way to make that work. Why drop Composite Companion? It makes your primary pet do a lot more damage, right? And primary pet is a big source of damage, correct?
A few opinions: sk/sha/mag is a really good combination for DPS. Mages are really good boxed DPS because they are relatively simple sk/sha/brd is generally better for a simple box because the brd can improve your sk/sha DPS without much effort required. A bard provides quite a bit of utility due to double invis, track and selos speed. Mages have coth which is great Your boxing ability will be limited when using alt-tab boxing. Integrating inner space boxer can help get the most out of your mage. Necros are really strong right now, but generally don't make for good box options because you need to multi-dot to really get the most out of them. A range is fine for headshotting but they suffer from mana deprivation issues that make them less useful without an enc/brd/bst there to dump mana into them
Thanks. I didn't mention it specifically, but I am using inner space and using the video FX option to show the main 2 hotbars of my other 2 accounts on my primary screen so I can click on macros without having to swap screens. I previously used click bars, but Video FX is a more flexible option for me. I know you are one of the boxing kings (I've read some of your posts/videos), so I appreciate your input.
Video FX is great. I imagine you've got a couple buttons you spam on your SK to cast and activate abilities, tying those to your mage's cast / AAs will dramatically improve your mage's DPS.
I'm not sure I understand, but I social/macro everything. I don't like to use "mash keys" where a whole hotbar is multi-bound to the same key so that one key fires off everything. Even if I did do it that way, how would that work via Video FX? You have to click the item on in the Video FX viewer in order to fire off that ability on the other account.
well shaman group pact of the wolf = 75 % haste ,and 20K hp and mana + end good for summoned pets who got it as well, and composite roar = if your mage melee as well , it proc a decent amount of time and can crit over 120 K here and there, plus the group hot it bring. pact of lunar wolf ( can proc summoned wolves when shm cast damaging spells ) that help mage barrage of many to do more damage . so for me a shaman can bring some decent aDPS ...for mages,
So, my warrior uses the Q button to trigger random short cooldown damage abilities like Shield Splinter and the 1 button to trigger random short cooldown aggro non-dmg abilities like Taunt and Bristle. When I hit Q on my warrior's client, Inner Space Boxer picks that up and sends a "Q" to my mage, who casts their random damage abilities like Force of Elements, /pet attack etc. When I hit 1, similarly, my mage's multicast is triggered, causing them to cast their swarm pet, spear spell, etc. I stack all kinds of nonsense together in those binds to keep my boxes running.
A few classes that could replace the magician and increase the grp DPS also on short duration fights had not been mentioned yet: Druid (Ports, evac, short duration DoTs, nukes, elemental+magic debuffs, DS, nuke and regen auras, emergency heals) Wizard (Ports, evac, theoretically more DPS and burst dmg than magician; double malo from SHM+MAG not needed) Rogue (requires mob placement) Zerker (requires mob placement)
So you're using a KeyMap that takes Q and sends it to the other boxes, also as Q. This way, anything bound to Q gets fired off at the same time, right? What happens when you're typing something in chat and use "q" or "1" in your statement? Does IS Boxer pick that up and send it to the other boxes?
