So my friend, that I group with, who is a 120 mage has gotten all his AA's for the FOCUS for the XXX of many spell and has the type 3. For his level I believe it's BARAGE of Many and it's 80% focus for the AA? My main is a 120 Necro. We always group together. At this point we coordinate with pets on our targets in our camps. Always. With massive killing, in our camp I always have AT LEAST 5 availabe corpses for my WTD all the time on cool-down. So that is 5. I have my Necro MAIN pet; that is 6. I then always launch my swarm skeletons, that is 3 more which brings that up to 9. Then he has his MAIN pet (our tank) which is 10, and then his "servant spell" and usually 2 going at the same time. So usually we have 12 pets. Then when it's up I will use the other 2 AA's I have for my necro, the archers and the stupid little red pets if WTD is not up. So now we have a zillion pets, and even stupid bunny clickies. My question is when he casts his "XXX of many spell" as he does every second it's up especially after servant to take advantage of the synergy from servant, why do we not see a MULTIPLE barage of hits? It's just one hit and usually it's like 1 hit from a Spear DPS wise. Is it like necro dots where it's consolidated as a whole? And at the end of the day it's based on luck and crits and twincast for the big hits? Also to make sure, are ALL PETS considered for the count for that spell (barage of many) or ONLY actual real pets (necro, bst, mage?). From his parses I do not see it as a HUGE hit. Are we missing something? I am sorry I am not familiar with mages so I am NOT sure about how "XXX of many works". Pretty much every mob we fight has an army of pets on it. I just don't see these HUGE numbers. Am I missing something from my parses possibly?
Barrage only hits for one line; the base damage of that line depends on the number of pets. Swarm pets that are on the mob's hatelist should generally count. I have no idea if wake the dead counts (that does not use the normal swarm pet SPA). I think maybe your expectations are out of line with how much the spell does. Here's a rough comparison for a group player: Spear of Molten Luclinite Rk. II: Base Damage: 76,665 Effective Base: 76,665 * (100% + 37% + 7%) = 110,398 Incl. Robe Foci/Type 3: 110,398 * 107% + 5,750 = 123,875 Barrage of Many Rk. II (10 to 14 pets): Base Damage: 56,502 Effective Base: 56,502 * (100% + 80% + 7%) = 105,659 Incl. Type 3: 105,659 + 2589 = 108,248 Barrage of Many Rk. III (15+ pets): Base Damage: 93,561 Effective Base: 93,561 * (100% + 80% + 7%) = 174,959 Incl. Type 3: 174,959 + 2,589 = 177,548 Note that Type 3 augs/Robe foci are worse than true base damage, but the damage they add does crit and is important to account for. Including them, Spear is going to do more damage than Of Many (though Of Many casts faster) until you have 15+ pets. If you hit that final threshold, Of Many will do more damage (very roughly, 45-50% more), but it's not going to be in some other league vs Spear.
It's also silly to focus on big hits. The spell also has 1/3 the cast time. Compare parses when they're using barrage in their lineup to one without it.
In the brief time i tried to optimize my 4x mage group to maximize of many hits i got pretty frustrated by how frequently i was in the sub 15 pet band with 20+ pets up and being told to attack the target. Spear is just a really good spell. A lot of balance issues with mages would be solved overnight if they just deleted the entire line.
Thank you Sancus for the detailed explanation. Yah I gave that spell way too much girth. I had no idea it needed a sustained 15+ pets to max out. I will do more testing with the WTD pets to ensure. Also Kizant will indeed compare apples to apples -- good point. Thanks folks
Thanks for the information. Btw, I think Theft of Essence alone makes it worth casting. I pet tank a lot though. The extra atk for all pets doesn't hurt dps any either
As it's been explained above Of Many and Spear spell have own time and place. A typical sequence is Swarm Pet (to initiate the Synergy) - then big hit spell - second big hit - Chaotic. Repeat until the mob is dead. When number of pets on mob's aggro list is low'ish, typically Spear outdamages and is prefered to use Synergy effect. And sometimes the situation changes - with horde swarm called up, especially if more than 2 characters synch-up on that - then Of Many definitely pulls ahead. In a typical boss-burn a duo mage/bard can call up 27 pets (Host of Element +9, Song of Stone +9, Lyrical Prankster +5, 2 Servants, main pet, Servant of Ro) for meaningful burn duration, in which case Of Many is a better choice for Synergy effect. Spear is better damage in a steady low-pet-count dps group, followed by Of Many for Theft of Essence effect (which whole effect by the way you can't see on your DD log) For a synchronised burn with more than 2 characters calling up a horde they switch: Of Many past swarm pet with Synergy, followed up by Spear. That's what my mages do. For exact numbers and tune-up the resident caster experts (posted above) can provide much better guidance than me.
