I am a terrible sk, please help me

I have been informed that my Solo/molo play sucks, can others help enlighten me and help me get better. I guess I need to change my spell sets, haven't played around with changing them in a long time, and probably need to learn how to swing a sword better.

new spell set I am going to try when beta spells are tuned and set:

115 lifetap
spear
115 dire
110 lifetap
dicho
105 lifetap
insidious denial
refute
stance
skin
bond
plauge dot
blood dot

Currently I don't use any dots at all, as I never actually solo, I only get on when my friends are on.

My group spell set

115 lifetap
spear -- ae group I switch to bargin
115 dire
110 lifetap
dicho
105 lifetap
insidious denial -- switch to level 100 lifetap when I cant AE (in ae group I move to front of spell line)
refute
stance
skin
terror
touch for hp/agro (cause im lazy and don't like switching them out)
last slot depend on who is in group, might be a second terror if we are fast and heavy agro, might be alliance if another sk is there (yeah i play with other sk's), if in ae group I put sacrifice in here

My raid spell setup:

115 lifetap
spear
115 dire
110 lifetap
dicho
105 lifetap
insidious denial -- switch to level 100 lifetap when I cant AE
refute
stance
skin
terror
terror -- switch this out depending on the situation
bloodletting cov

(I will do touch hp/ago line before most raids on an eye)

Re-roll a paladin, problems solved!

I have one of those too, been told I suck at that too!

The issue with your parses isn't that they are too short, or that you're solo without adps. it's that your fights against the dire wolves go for too long.

I went over to humor myself. I was raid buffed (missing NET/ranger str buff. Some buffs were new spells, some were pre 111).

I was not using our new SHD spells.

Solo: A dire wolf in 22s, 27780k @1262731sdps | Drogbaa 27628k@(1,255.8k dps in 22s) {GH} | Drogbone 152k@(8008dps in 19s)

..I forgot to hit chattering bones.. and I think I toggled attack off for 1 second, so I may have lost a round. ..I was pretty quick to correct it though, so maybe not. I was happy enough being a little off, and I was not going to fight the same dog multiple times to get that perfect fight, because the only purpose was to demonstrate a better ballpark for roughly how long the fight ought to have gone.


Seeing as you separated burns, I killed another one with something of a melee burn (So therefore, no HT,LT,TL,quick spear, glyph, unholy aura, unholy guardian proc, intensity or first spire) I did however use forceful rejuvenation (and Bifold). I felt that I played a bit sloppily on this one too, I used impenitent influence 20 seconds into the fight (no leechcurse, no chattering bones), and I think a couple of my buffs had worn off (e.g. ferocity/burning salad). I am not max luck (50 luck) and on beta server only 2200 Hdex:

Solo: A dire wolf in 64s, 27695k @432734sdps | Drogbaa 27179k@(424.7k dps in 64s) | Drogbone 516k@(8187dps in 63s)

Your post of melee burn on the same mob was almost twice as long as mine, at 107-110 seconds. Better buffs/dex/luck/forceful rejuvenation account for a part of that.

You also have a cast of refute (waste of a DPS cast), and none of insidious denial. You only used Dissident once, despite yours being a 110s fight..

..I clicked off potions/raid buffs except for shm/ranger and attacked a third wolf and got a 69s melee burn (this time without using forceful rejuvenation and I may have lost some melee rounds to positioning at the start), and I was a few seconds late on carmine... for disc I only used leechcurse (could've transitioned into impenitent).

If I made more attempts and were less sloppy, I'd expect a 60s or just-under fight for melee burn.

I didn't bother fighting a fourth wolf with spell burn, because I'd seen enough at that point.


I'm not going to fully examine your entire parse to try and work out what's going on, but your spell casts otherwise at a glance looked like the right things. I don't know why your fight is going for 40 seconds longer. Want to come hunt wolves with me on beta and see if we can work it out?

TY drogbaa, an honest post of capabilities.

yes I was missing a bunch of buffs as I didnt want to wait for them and dont have a second account on beta, this would have upped my dps a good bit.

You dropped the kitchen sink on this one, I was trying not to do that because its not representative of real situations, at least not for me, I spread stuff out to do more dps longer.

I have always said we have an amazing burst, but it hurts our sustained to lump everything together like that. Unless things have changed, and if they have, please tell me.

This is true.

I went sta, so your dps is going to be a bit higher from going Hdex, we had that conversation already.

I only used dissident once because it is at the bottom of my spell set, yes, I should have cast it first and then again sooner, and I did forget about forceful, these were very quick parses. and I dont have a bifold, i can see where forceful and bifold could add a ton by using to for dissident specifically. I keep dissident at the bottom so that its in the weave but its more of an "Oh Crap!" than just dps, guess thats just being cautious.

When i beta copied over i was in a raid where I dont use AE and so had the 100 lifetap which is close to the damage of insidious, but I have been thinking for solo (which again i dont do much of) if putting insidious ahead of higher damage lifetaps might be more dps, if you have tried maybe that is something I should be doing.

I used refute to pull, not during the actual dps weave. I was spiking a lot cuase 2h was on, wanted the ac boost

I am genuinely curious to see what you did different than I did on this. - the wolfs also have a knockback, which lowered mine a bit, think i got knocked back twice.

Maybe we should set up some time to do that, I like learning

Those parses were 4 mobs in a row, and I was exactly 0% mana when i was done with them. I saw some stuff that I messed up, my pet wasn't up, no jaans, and some other stuff after I posted, they were fast and dirty cause any parsing like that usually is, heck just the difference on a quick melee burn between critting all the claret, reflexive, wounding and not makes a huge difference.


And thank you for taking the time to post.

I can come and "Heal" on my cleric if you wanna just focus on DPS, scheduling with Drogba is a pita though -_-

Sounds great yeah I have a hard time scheduling too because of a very active life. Darn them wife and kids!

*Business or ForumQuest

One thing I am noticing more and more, and want to see if others are seeing this. I have a hot button that switches my bandalier to my sword and board and activates shield flash. because of lag on raids, the shield flash part of the hot button activates around 50% of the time now. I have a /pause 1 in the button between the bando and the flash. I am having to retrain myself to check that shield flash actually fired before AE agroing because of this and leads to many deaths.

I usually try and ae agro and lock stuff for other tanks to grab off me so that dps and healers don't die, but this is starting to not work so well cause of the raid lag.

Pause 1 is 1/10th of a second, I don't think I've ever used one that small, shortest I've ever gone is pause 5 and that typically seems to be all gouda. When I used to 12 box I would generally have to adjust my pause timers by 3-4/10ths of a second vs what I'd use in groups to ensure lag didn't lose me a cast.

there is no cast time with either of the abilities, i added the 1 pause just to give the server a spacer, only time I ever really see issues is when a zone lags, mainly on raids.

Aye, the lag seems to affect everything, When you click the hotkey it tries to activate shield flash 1/10th of a second after being clicked (Not necessarily after Bando swap is registered) if there's any delay to the bando command there's no hope of flash firing. I'd try upping it to 3-5 at least and see if it resolves

Yeah, sorry was thinking about what you said even more and I think i will put it out to a /3 and see if that helps. I just hate training my reflexes to be slower. Cause that means i have to put a mental delay in my agro cast.

Or might just got back to manually hitting bado then shield flash.

I manually hit everything on my toons when I'm just playing 1 *Nod*. Didn't ner trust nun der hotkeys a`tall

(Aside from stuff that requires a Channel message to inform others I've used it, STOP YELLING AT ME GARWYN)

That is the only one I have set up cause I used to forget to check my weapon setup and would shield flash with my 2h on, and well, that never works well. I just have to readjust my hot bars and get use them again. I have my shield flash near my defensive stuff, and my bandolier keys near my assist and tanking hotkeys.

I've got the same problem and have died because of it, I just spam my bandolier button now until I'm sure it changed

A man after my own heart. I feel like there’s not many of us left, brosef. Is this what it feels like, when doves cry?

Stay strong and mash manually for life!

Try looking at this youtube video

look at hot keys and pay attention to him.

hope this helps