Hi all, I am a 105 mage/15.3kAA looking to improve my DPS in the group game. From the last few weeks of parses I've done in EoK and TBM I'm seeing myself + pet averaging around 30-40k sustained DPS, with a 70-80k burn. Especially in EoK I'm having a hard time killing stuff quickly, though it is definitely doable (just takes awhile). From what I'm seeing on parses round the boards though, 30k isn't exactly great and I want to see what I can do to be better. My spell lineup currently is to cast: Malo(AA) And then cycle: Remorseless Servant II Spear of Molten Shieldstone II Spear of Blistersteel II Chaotic Fire II I also use Force of Elements AA, Banestrike, and the summoned Firebound Orb on refresh. Pet buffs like virulent talon and frenzied burnout I generally reserve for nameds. Sometimes I'll put Shadowflares on the pet but it's not a common cast. For burns I use First Spire, Elemental Union, Twincast, and Heart of Flames. I skipped TBM so my gear is a mix of TDS rank 3 and EoK. Generally the pet does all the tanking. I'll usually patch heal with a boxed shammy if needed. If anyone has ideas or a different spell lineup or AA combo that works well for them, I'd love to hear about it! Brie
The pet buff Maloseniac Eminence can replace your Maloing against all but the hardest targets. Regular spell Twincast Rk.III should be top of the order. Chaotic Fire should be right there with Remorseless. High in the order to proc Twincasts and to refresh the Remorseless. I run it first, in fact. Spears are good times if you keep Heart of Flames and Elemental Union on heavy rotation. Those abilities aren't just named-only. They don't stack in a functional manner, so should be used end-to-end. Between them, they encompass nearly half your casting; 4 minutes Heart, 2 minutes Union. That you make full use of Force of Elements and Firebound Orb is excellent. When Heart/Union aren't on, or when you can hit two mobs, Rains of Cutlasses + Coronal Rain are the bees knees. Frenzied Burnout, like Heart/Union, has pretty high uptime these days (4min up, 10 minute reuse? I'm not online atm to re-verify). It should similarly be used on-cooldown, not saved. The Xirisst's Growl SoD robe click has the same cooldown timer, you can add its minute to your pet buff rotation, and the CoA robe click Thaumaturgist's Infusion. I make a practice of just throwing Virulent Talon out there willy-nilly, too. Not everyone does. The only bits of burning I expressly save are Improved Twincast AA and First Spire of Elements -- and tbh, I'm probably wrong to do so. You haven't mentioned Arcane Distillect - that's a significant boost to pet & swarm damage, or Storm of Many + Host of Elements. Storm keeps Theft of Essence on, and when run during Host of Elements (3 minutes out of 10?) is your very best nuke besides.
One thing you may try is grouping with another magician, one who claims like I do to sustain 70k-ish dps, or one of the pros that get 100+. Check out spell cast #s
My first question: are you multibinding? Your lineup is not ideal, but it's good enough that you should be seeing more than 30-40k. Beyond that, Chaotic Fire deserves to be higher in your multibind. Rains are also a good sustained option, but can be precarious with the significant lack of pet AE aggro if you ever end up with more than singles. For a rotation assuming you aren't going to be raining, something like Chaotic->Remorseless->Spear->Spear would probably yield more DPS and be easier on mana. You'll get more Chaotic Fire casts out that way, and Spear of Molten Shieldstone will still use Conjurers Synergy procs. You will need to be careful with Chaotic Fire getting bugged after Syllable of Refreshment procs. For AAs, you want to space out Heart of Flames and Elemental Union. Their effects don't stack, so you want to use Heart of Flames with twincast and then Elemental Union when it wears off. I imagine you are using both, but make sure you're using both Improved Twincast and spell Twincast when it's up. I personally wouldn't save FBO/VT for named, since they can help add to sustained and don't have monumental recast timers. Some growth will come naturally with AAs, Rk 2 spells (if you don't have them), and gear. Edit: Brohg said a lot of what I was going to say first
So for a comparison sake, today and yesterday I killed 85 place holders for the chef named in Frontier Mountains. Using no burn discs, I managed to reach 90k DPS (well 89,975). Here is what I did- 1. Spell rotation after AA Malo is Chaotic, Remorseless, 105 Spear, Chaotic, 100 Spear. Depending on GCD, your next spell is either the start of the weave I just mentioned or if you don't want to wait 0-1 seconds then 101 Bolt. I also used Force AA every time it refreshed. Doing this alone got me the close to 90k today. 2. If I tried hard, I would be clicking Firebound Orb every time it refreshes except after a Remorseless. I would also always summon a new one once the ten charges are up. 3. If I tried harder, I would be using First Spire when it refreshes every time. I also would be using Virulent Talon every time it refreshes. 4. If I tried even harder, I would also be using Heart of Flames, followed by Elemental Union. I would also use ITC at the start of Heart of Flames, since they both share the same refresh timer. I would also use Frenzied Burnout every time it refreshes too. And finally I would also use Focus of Arcanum and Host of Elements every ten minutes too. 5. If I cared, I also would be using mod rods. Even the solo mod rods. One thing I forgot to mention is Arcane Distillect aura and Theft of Essence buff on pet. If I don't have theft on the pet, then I am adding Storm of Many to my weave (except after Remorseless) until I get theft. Then I don't use Storm until theft fades *unless* I use Host of Elements, in which case Storm is part of the weave until Host fades. I also melee, using raid 2hb. The ability to get 55k DD procs from both melee and spells is quite nice. That is one thing I don't see magicians doing, that is melee. Now that you can with your pet, there really should be no reason not to unless the mob has mechanics that prevent melee. Even if you laugh at me meleeing, consider that the total amount of damage I get from just melee on one trash mob is equal to 1-2 spells worth of damage, in addition to the 55k procs from melee, all from just turning attack on once? With no riposte damage to worry about since I can relocate companion so that it is opposite side of me, I say it is worth it...
Both my casters melee all the time. The physical damage is negligible, but with good procs, makes it worth it. Procs from casting (obulous iirc and sympathetics), along with those melee fun times, really adds up.
Thank you everyone for such wonderful advice! I read it all thoroughly and definitely will be changing spell lineups and AA bars when I can log on tonight. I really appreciate the help. As far as multibinding goes - I did in the past (probably 3-4 years ago) but switched mostly to in game macros when I started boxing because I found it easier - though probably far less efficient. Since it's been such a long time I'll be setting that back up and trying again. One thing I'm not fully understanding is Theft of Essence. I was under the impression that it was a nuke that only worked on summoned mobs (constructs, elementals, etc) so I had not been using it. From what I'm reading it's our swarm pets that are able to proc it, or swarms that apply the proc buff to the main pet, and the proc itself can affect any type of mob?
Yes and no. When you cast either (a) Storm of Many or (b) Eradicate/Annihilate/whatever it is called nowadays that works on elementals and has a chance to do "a lot" of damage, there is a 45% chance that you proc Theft of Essence on your main pet. This proc lasts several minutes, increases attack and hit points and avoidance and other stuff, and acts as an aura around your main pet. Which means any other pets that are within range of the aura also receive the benefits. You see the Theft of Essence buff on your main pet, but there is no timer on it. Once it fades then you cast Storm/Eradicate until you get the buff again on pet...
Question: will Theft of Essence heal your pet of 10k? Target: Pet 1: Aura Effect: Theft of Essence Effect IX (IOTheftOfEssence9) Theft of Essence Effect IX - - 0s Target: Single 5: Increase Chance to Avoid Melee by 26% 8: Increase Current HP by 10000 9: Increase Max HP by 10000 10: Increase ATK by 750 I use of Many all the time, since I am in a high pet/swarm pet team, I was just wondering...
To the OP: I box, so my effort is towards using as many of my tools without having to focus concentration too much on one toon. Also, I play in a fast killing group, so having a perfect burn does very little for me, I prefer the comfort (and disadvantage) of spreading ability uses out. On my [1] button (that I use to have my toons assist) I have: ITC, VT, Fortify Companion, FB, Heart On my [2] button (that I use to initiate attack) I have: Pet attack, swarm attack, mal, 1st spire, Host of the Elements on my multibind bar [4], I have: a hotbutton (force, click orb), RS, Chaotic, Spear 105, Of Many, Spear 101 (not sure this last one is ever in use). I have a Logitech mouse that will "click" [4] repeatedly when I hold in the mousbutton, saving my tendons when mashing I have more buttons for rune/heal, debuf/pull, etc. In a group context with fast kills, I can dish out about 105 dps all in all, with good adps (bard, druid, enchanter, shaman, another mage), over a whole game session, in which there will be a number of outliers in both directions. I have 18k+ AA, group gear, +848 in +spell damage (which I try to make my main priority). I use Elemental Form Earth and familiar when I remember it. I manually click Union, Servant, Second Wind on nameds. I never use the robe, the low damage (160k) does not seem worth the mental effort . The setup is functional and practical more than optimal, given that I have two other toons to tend to as well, and given that our group dps lets us kill blues in 10 sec, yellows in about 20. Getting more dps will only make us run out of mobs faster, but if we start retroraiding, I will consider optimizing further :-D.
Multibind, and main, the magician. Not macro and bot. That is your primary issue, and why you're losing DPS. Use your long cooldown stuff as they pop, don't wait to use it all for a named. You should be around 90-100k dps sustained, maining a magician.
I mostly box a mage and enchanter with a family member playing a SK, and this was enormously helpful. Thank you! Have I missed something, or is there no faycite or focus AAs for chaotic fire? I got a rank II drop for it, but I would like to push it a little higher. Actually, very few of the spell rotations have focus AAs. The 105 spear does, and that's about it. I've been upping the rains, but if one of you more experienced mages has any group-wise AA or augment suggestions, I would love to hear it.
No, unfortunately Chaotic Fire doesn't have a focus AA. It does have a Type 3 aug, which it shares with fickle. A focus AA was repeatedly requested in beta, but to no avail. In general you're correct, there aren't many useful focus AAs for us. Firebound Orb and Chaotic Fire are both from EoK, and it seems like they weren't interested in creating focus AAs for new EoK spells. There was a focus AA line for Blazing Orb which may have been intended for Firebound Orb, but it was scrapped because SPA 413 (which focus AAs use to boost spells) doesn't seem to work with items. Remorseless Servant also doesn't have a focus AA, though there are some pet DPS AAs that came with EoK (Companion's Agression, Companion's Wrath, Theft of Essence). Companion's Agression/Theft of Essence deal with pet ATK though, which isn't quite as impactful on group mobs than on raid mobs due to AC differences. Otherwise, the most useful focus AA for groupers is definitely 105 Spear. Rains are also good to grab, and eventually Storm of Many since you'll need to occasionally use it to keep Theft of Essence up.
New /pet swarm command with Host of Elements makes Storm of Many totally usable as a fabulous nuke in the group game, for most of 3mins out of every 10. Happy to have this focus AA
I just have to say thanks to everyone who has posted their input here. Seriously this just tripled my dps on my mage boxes. I never realized how horrible their dps was until recently and this has taken them from the 30-40k range to 80-300k which I was not even coming close to before.
Returned to the game a couple months ago, does this spell line up still hold true or has it changed since then?
Still pretty relevant On a side note, anyone care to help me figure out what some of the acronyms are, specifically ITC, FB?
