I was playing my alt beast the other night with my friend (zerker) and we got on the discussion of sustained dps. I always save every dps ability that isn't available every fight for named encounters. He typically uses his shorter refresh timed abilities throughout the rounds while saving his biggest dps abilities for names. He chooses to lose a little dps on full out name burns to raise his grinding sustained dps. I use the whole enchilada on names. My question is what abilities do you all use in group grinding to raise your sustained dps even if you lose a bit of dps on full out boss burns?
Well, it will depend on your group, camp spot, and ability to handle things going poorly. Strong group in a spot w/ only one named chance, or don't really *need* all your burns for a name? Keep BA or your disc one available if stuff gets , burn everything else as it pops. Weak group, bad pulling, need to burn on nameds, no CC, whatever? Keep GBA and other short stuff down, save main discs for bad situations.
If your grinding and your confident in your group mates: Burn it if you got it. Going full burn on a group content named is just a complete misuse of the resources in todays eq. A halfway decent tank + even a marginally effective healer + Some DPS = /loot, you'll get more XP/hour + more chance at nameds if you roll through more trash/PH's then you will on big numbers on 1 mob. The beast lord I normally group with burns everything, Short and long cooldowns as soon as it comes up if we are plowing through trash, If we are after a particular named and we know it might be a tough fight we might wait to pull it or save a couple burns. The difference between a group geared beast lord burning everything when its up (and syncing GBA/Ruabri with your group mates DPS cooldowns!) is pretty huge. Id fancy a guess not operating like that your probably 30 to 40% less DPS. Also None of your burns are on that long of a cooldown timer... So if you had to you can always wait till something pops up for a named.
Usual group make up when I play my Beast is SK, Zerker, Wizard, Mage and merc in end game content. We are always after something so name spawns are always a possibility. So that I'm not mistaken your saying keep Ruaabri, BA and GBA available to names and throw the rest at the trash to bump sustained dps?
How much burn is actually needed for these named mobs? That is, how beefy is your SK, how fast would names be killed w/o burning, is it easy with one merc? The more risk of death and longer that fights go, the greater the need for burning. If your dps stacked group kills very fast and the SK tanks quite well, then burn away as much as possible. If you think it adds a bunch of risk by having them down for a named, then don't burn. Otherwise make decisions based on the strength of the named in that camp.
