Beastlord guide - My second guide in the 'hybrid' series.

Discussion in 'Hybrid' started by Zahrym, Aug 13, 2014.

  1. Zahrym Augur

    Link to ranger guide: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/how-to-ranger-raiding.1697/

    AC>Hdex>Spelldmg was and likely always will be my approach to hybrid optimization. You see higher returns on DI rounds from AC/Parry/Riposte than any other stats, you also get +rngdmg modification & spell damage has the highest pure throughput returns for hybrids (we spam nukes) than any Heroic stat does.

    So we come to the first question, if I'm DPS how do I fulfill that portion of my classes role in a raid? So first off, what is DPS? And what is ADPS?

    Well DPS is maximizing the number spells (abilities/skills) you can cast within a certain time period, and maximizing the amount of damage you can do with each spell (abilities/skills).

    A.K.A. Damage per Second.

    ADPS is an ability be it buff or debuff, skill or spell, that modifies your group or raids damage on said target, or targets via debuff the current mobs in the encounter, or buffing your damage done.

    A.K.A. Additive Damage per Second.

    The greatest impact on DPS is how you play, it's not really gear or AA's (past certain thresholds). When you look at top damage parses for certain classes you're going to see a large variation, if gear and AA's is what made the difference in top DPS for every person of every class, it would dictate they all be at relatively the same level, which is not the case.

    One of the main things to maximizing your DPS or maximizing the amount of globals or times you cast in a certain time period is knowing what you're going to cast 1-2 globals ahead of time, compensating for mob positioning, push...possible encounter mechanics etc.

    For example, if I start casting announced shots I'm going to plan if I need to move at the end of the cast during the global lockout period, to get in line of sight for focused storm or if I can stay still and continue to dps...examples of these would be CoB (for needed movement) and Valley (for not needing to move) I'm going to have these planned out before I actually ever do them.

    Once you have this planned out and know a general rotation for your class (in this example ranger), you need to know the best way to get the information from your fingers to the game. In other words, the best way to tell your character what to do.

    The worst way to do this is actually clicking the button on your bar with your mouse, the second worst way is reacting to a finished cast...in other words you see that you're done, and cast reactively based on when you finished.

    The time difference between one cast and the next in that case would be latency + your reaction time, which are both likely much larger then you'd like to admit and very significant.

    The method that's going to result in the best use of global cooldowns is spamming your keys, a lot of people like to make fun of this. But the reality is keyboards that have macros (g15, g19 etc series) can be set up to automatically for this, and you can literally hold down a key that will then maximize input to the game (something like 1 input per millisecond). If you don't have this or a similar keyboard, just mash the keyboard.

    What you're doing with this method is accounting for any error you might make, whether it be not realizing a finished cast or not pressing at all. The time it takes to find the proper key with your mouse, etc. A lot of times this error is a lot greater then people realize/would care to admit.

    Another thing that's going to help you maximizing your spell/skill/ability usage is planning your movement, the reality is any fight that has a mechanic is going to make you move. If you have an instant cast ability, use this during the movement time...or even better plan your movement for a time period where you know you're going to be dealing with the global lockout (the greyed out spell time when you can't cast).

    If you combine your ability to move and plan, with the ability to maximize spells cast and damage done you're going to see a significant increase in your total damage done as a ranger.

    The next step to increasing damage is maximizing the damage each of these spells/skills/abilities is going to do.

    If you have one buff that increases attack speed by 15% or lets say gives a global weapon speed reduction, and another buff that increase damage done by 62% and you overlap these you'll be doing 62% more damage while attack 15% faster, you're going to do more damage using them together rather then separately, now a lot of people know this but don't necessarily put it to practice. A lot of people think oh, i'll just hit these together...and get maximum possible damage, what they don't realize is if you don't sync them with outside sources (beastlord, bard, shaman, berserkers) you're not actually getting the maximum benefit.

    Spell line-up: Mine is named Dot's are useless.
    keys 6-12 are all nukes, bound to my 1 key.
    my 1 key is actually three keys on my bar all set to 1 input to spam (pummel, reflexive, fcoc, asp, kick, gorilla smash, raven's claw, feral swipe, roar of thunder, chameleon strike)

    I only have to hit one key, all the discs/kicks etc fire then I can continue spamming that one key to fire all the nukes.

    Keep Bestial Evulsing up, 50-55s buff, dmg for you and pet, class core ability.
    Keep Growl of the XXX up (changes with expansion), hp/regen/damage for you and pet, class core ability.

    Pets can only proc once per combat round, do not use hobble or any other crap but Nak's (changes with expansion) on your pet if your concern is DPS.

    Tribute:

    Hdex
    Hdex2
    Dexcap
    Flurry
    Accuracy

    Now you may ask yourself, accuracy? that's a mod two...mines been capped since OOW. This is not the case, tribute accuracy while being mod2 still effects offhand. It gives something like 2% total offhand accuracy.

    Stacking, for a short 60s burn you'll likely want to use everything. While some effects don't stack the ATK does and makes a difference.

    For staggered burns I prefer

    key1:

    /alt act 245
    /disc Savage Rage Rk. III
    /alt act 241
    /disc Ruaabri's Fury Rk. III
    /alt act 1240

    Burn 2: Used when single target BA falls.

    /alt act 985
    /alt act 127


    for pet buffs:
    Burn 1:
    /alt act 443
    /alt act 1431
    Also have seperate keys for 'everything' on things like bone crusher, where you hit literally everything.
    Other things are obvious, FPOS yourself/healers if encounter calls for it.
    Canni on cooldown as it's available.
    You can cast TB before fight starts to double dip on paragon MGB's.
    You can suspend fully raid buffed + burn buffed pets to double dip like mages on important stuff (progression).
    You can give your pet any fero/cleave items (that aren't no drop) if you want a thousand or two extra dps.
    Apex likes this.
  2. Zahrym Augur

    Additional credit to Apex/Stubar for educating me originally.
  3. Gatash Lorekeeper

    In addition to your post, there was also a good explanation of DPS optimisation at the Beastlords' Den several years ago. Although it was designed for HoT, the expansion set a lot of our spell lines off so things like the spell rotation probably still help out though might need some tweeking these days (I recall seeing some spell rotations on these boards more recently too) http://beastlords.org/index.php?topic=9009.0 It also gives some of the logic for staggering certain skills or blowing everything at once.

    I am curious though - is there a reason for you putting asp, gorilla and raven into a single key or have I misunderstood that sentence?
  4. Stubar Augur

    I can't speak for Zahrym, I however do have that one on a separate hot-key for easy situational swapping.

    I do the same for clamor and focus. If we are mezzing, it's an easy swap as well.

    Boils down to preference at the end of the day. It's a good base and can really be heavily modified to a guild/players style.
    Gatash likes this.
  5. Apex Elder

    True Love <3
    Stubar likes this.
  6. Zahrym Augur

    I use my gilded hammer until Bloodlust is over then swap to dual wield in pretty much every circumstance (that isn't aoe) but I also have a hotkey that bandoliers to the AoE spell set (kromrif roar) and gilded hammer and CoC instead of FCoC for anything more than 2 targets.

    I also use different spell line-ups based around whether or not I will reliably be getting MR or not, if you DO know you are going to be a primary MR target you can put Carbomate at the top of the 5 nuke rotation so you are firing MR a few extra times.
  7. fortuneteller Augur

    You mention these burn keys, I know others who got

    Key 1:
    245, BA,
    1st sphire,
    RF
    1240, Frenzied swipe
    241 bloodlust

    key 2:
    GBA
    Savage rage
    127 Frenzy of spirit

    Whats the benefits for yours or the other 1 ?
  8. Zahrym Augur

    The only benefit to any key is making the amount of required keys lower, mostly just saves me moving my fingers 5 times. Most of the time (as was the same with ranger) I end up thinking about exactly what to do in every fight, swapping the spell and burn keys to fit the encounter to maximize.

    Such is the life of a hybrid.
  9. Romance Augur

    Until Savage Rage fades, you're wasting the melee effect that GBA is giving you. It will still obviously benefit your group, but not you.. until SR fades.