Hm, since people still seem interested in this discussion I have another question I developed while noodling around with Coercer. I noticed Enchanters have some stuff in their AA lines encouraging Melee attacks. Is this one of those "vestigial organ" developer ideas that went nowhere, or are you actually intended to be up with the Scouts meleeing between casts, like a Warden / Inquisitor healer?
The Enchanter AA Quickening adds .300 base auto-attack multiplier to your melee attacks only. This is the equivalent of about 30 weapon damage bonus. Melee Vs. using a wand as an enchanter gives you that edge and no more. I am fairly certain the base damage on both melee and wand are even without that AA. So overall melee damage has a slight edge, however most enchanters opt to go ranged since you can cast more spells. Basically even if your perfect at timing your casting order around your auto attacks you still have to cast less. So you loss DPS that way. Most viable 2 handers have a 6.0 second delay, all wands have a 8.0 second delay. With the Quickening AA damage between the two is close, slight edge to melee. At the haste soft cap your melee weapon will swing every 3.1(19 times per min), wand 3.6(16 times per min). Prior to the changes made to wand damage, melee was the way to go. The WDB stat did not exist and wands did minimal damage with quick delays. The gains from Quickening had a higher overall impact. Unfortunately enchanters did not get any improvements to either wand or melee base damage as the WDB and SWDB stat came into the game. I for one would love to see enchanters gain improvements to base weapon damage like summoners and sorcerers gained to base spell weapon damage. Priests and enchanters have the lowest base weapon damage, and spell weapon damage in the game.(not sure about channelers base bow damage) Play in what ever way suits you and gives you the most enjoyment. If you master your casting order you can perform as well or close to another player who prefers to use a wand... but it is not easy. Gnomad-Crushbone
Ahhh, OK. So those are trap AAs and Enchanters are not the Inquisitor of clothies. TY for clarifying. =)
I'd put it the other way. A enchanter that only uses wands might be able to match the output of a melee enchanter if they're really good, but meleeing is the way to go if you want to do the best dps.
Not really. I outparse melee enchanter by very much on all range fights and we are even on close encounters with me ranging. So there is no much difference b/w two styles.
Some clarification please. When saying melee enchanter vs a range enchanter are you meaning coercer vs illusionist? Or will a coercer set up with a wand spec always(or close to it) out do a melee based coercer? I thought the coercer was the melee and lilly was the ranged when I picked coercer. But if coercer is llimiting herself by avoiding ranged I may want to change how I play her. Right now it seems (not parsed) that mobs are dying quicker when she melees. But that could be biased because I want her to be better that way(if that makes sense)
Melee is better for both until 95. After you get to 95 using ranged and stacking spell stats on a coercer is more dps, but for some reason everyone is fanboying melee even though it's inferior.
-Quickening is still worth the 10 points IMO for the Haste, MA, and DPS mods. - no either -It will be close -Again IMO your not limiting youself when you melee as an enchanter. You are sacrificing spells cast per min for melee hits per min. At the haste soft cap your melee weapon will swing every 3.1(19 times per min), wand 3.6(16 times per min). The question you need to ask yourself is what will do more damage. The extra 3 melee hits per min or the extra spells you can cast in a min. -Absolutely, I enjoy melee and I tried very hard to make it superior to using a ranged weapon when ToV launched. Bottom line is the extra .300 base weapon damage is not enough to give melee enough of an edge when sacrificing the number of spells you cast per min. The mage only necks that give the caster 30,35,40 WDB is also not worth it. This much WDB sounds like a very good option. However there are a few other necks(that are not that hard to get) that will give you CB and potency, and this will always be a superior choice because it has a higher impact to your overall dps.
~ Some damge spells.... yes ~ Lot's of CC... no, this goes all the way back to Rothgar who hated and slowly destroyed CC in game. Had you played a Coercer or Illusionist 6 or 7 years ago you would have see CC. Now? No, hit an miss if your spells will even effect the target. ~ A lot of Threat control... again, nothing like what you used to have. Again, hit or miss on usability. ~ A lot of power management... yeah, not enough of a problem to keep you awake though. ~ Yes the buffs... but again, no real effort. ~ Melee mages... say that 10 times you yourself real fast and see if it still sounds like a good idea, especially for a raider. Coercer's role is mana battery and buff bot. If you throw in some good dps, great. But too few Coercers out there who know how to truly get good dps out of their toons. For the most part, keep people in mana and you can slide.... Now you know why many of us OLD coercers don't raid on them anymore.
and I"m the illy Cailee for our raid force on Guk our main wizard gets my time compression and EV buffs as well as syngergism when I'm in his group if not the TC and EV go to who ever gets lucky in teh group they put me in, if we have a scout or i'm put in a group with a off tank they get my illy arm. I also cross mana flow when I can I"M not as good of a dpsr as Gregore but I do my bit. chanters are very much wanted and needed in raids one persons statement to the contrary.
I macro my buffs to the name of the toon i'm buffing which cuts down the time to buff by quite a bit. sigh which I had my new rig I might be able to give gregore a run for his money dps wise.
I decided to come back and put in 2 more pennies... Buffbot: Being a buffbot sucks. Power Drain: If there is a power drain fight, like teklardo (2nd to last name in Maw, whom I do not recall it's actual name), Mystics' Spirit Tab works find...and that's if you don't burn faster than 22 increments. There is a need for flows on Vulak (and a mez). I hit about 3-4M DPS on the Commanders' Fight in the 2nd wing...I do decent DPS on my Coercer. I normally hit 2.5M or so. It's not only about DPS, it's also the class itself. There main role is buff and go to sleep. Bards are more fun due to their VCs. I'd like a dev (hint hint Gninja) to give some feedback to the Xelgad on the class and how to make it better.
I find myself using both melee and randed wand auto depending on the encounter. single target lots of movement and moving parts i will go ranged just to make sure i dont have to do some stupid timing thing waiting for an auto to tick off. big groups with thumb up my butt strats i will go in melee because i can sit there and hit two spells and wait for the auto.. I will always beat an avg melee mezzer if they clip even just one auto i will crush them with ranged. its easier for sure and a higher top end dps because your sitting there waiting for your auto to tick off while your shockwave just came up on a free refresh. if you forced me to choose i will go ranged wand auto every day of the week and twice on sunday.. faster play doing more just more fun in general..
Bad enchanters will use the slacker playstyle of using Ranged over Melee Auto. Melee is obviously the best choice by math alone!
So basically this thread has taught me that by 95, Melee is the best choice for Enchanters, who shouldn't Melee because Ranged is the best the choice for Enchanters. I'm gathering that this is just really, really close overall and it's kind of a personal-preference battle more than an actual issue either way, yeah? Like for every X DPS you gain from a Melee swing, you lose Y DPS to holding a spell on CD a weensy bit longer. And for every Y DPS you gain from casting that spell and letting ranged auto fire in the bg, you lose X DPS to not having a meatier melee swing go off. So the preference for ranged could boil down to it being close enough that the fact it's less hassle = more practical gain for most people?
Here's the thing, Lovestar. With the correct gearing, reforge, and stat allocation, your melee auto will be doing over 1 million dps easily while your spells will be doing less than half of that. Obviously, to get to this point you must be almost full raid gear, which not a lot of people have access to. Now, the point i'm trying to make is, if you're an enchanter that has access to raid gear, my recommendation is to make a set of armor that will prioritize your Melee Auto attacks WITHOUT neglecting your potency and casting stats. The difference between a Coercer and Illusionist is that with Coercer you will want to focus more on flurry because Spell Double Attack does nothing for you, while an Illusionist will want to get a good amount of both Spell Double Attack and Flurry since they get a lot of benefit from SDA. If you can manage to create that balance where your Melee Auto attacks are doing over 1 mil dps in a raid setting and your abilities are doing around ~300k i would say you're golden. If you don't have access to this kind of gear that you get mostly from raid, then I would just suggest to go whichever direction you feel most comfortable with and make sure to pick up the correct AAs depending if you're going melee or ranged.
My best advice is to find the play style that works best for you and enjoy the game. If you want to range then do it. If you want to melee then do that. It's your $14.99 a month enjoy it as you see fit. And to restate what the great one said earlier: "Melee is better for both until 95. After you get to 95 using ranged and stacking spell stats on a coercer is more dps, but for some reason everyone is fanboying melee even though it's inferior. "
The only way melee is the best choice by math alone is if you refuse to accept the fact that you have more time to cast more spells when using ranged. Don't get me wrong I actually like to melee, and on single target fights with no lag I prefer it some times. I do toggle on ranged for my time warp cycle when I choose to melee. I don't do this anymore due to the fact that my wand has a superior damage rating. Absolutly! I think the pros and cons for both enchanter classes on this topic are about the same. However I do not play a coercer so I can not say for sure. From the Illusionists perspective I want to point out that three of our top parsing spells will gain little to no benefit from double cast. Theorems and Prismatic Chaos are not effected by double cast, Psychic Trauma only the first tick can double cast. In addition a substantial percentage of your parse including auto attacks, gear procs, and group procs like peace of mind, victorious concerto, and elemental toxicity will not double cast. Take all that into account and I don't see much of an argument to be made for double cast as a high priority stat for enchanters. I choose flurry, and this is why. Being an illusionist with Time warp I know already that my spells with high damage with long recast timers like Master Strike and Arcane Bewilderment are already going to double cast 100% of the time 50% of the time. Making double cast a useless stat half the time in regards to those spells. I did much testing on dummies a while back with zero flurry and zero double cast, I have also spent time in both gear builds.
