May I suggest you go back and test this again. I am on my 4th to 5th "Chanter" meaning both Illy and Coercer who have come to me for assistance in raising their dps up. A well played Chanter (imo) have become the top T2 dps. This means that the well played Chanter is and will outparse lower end T1 dps. But you are stating that your dps took a nose dive? After extensive testing I can assure you that it's the better spec for Illusionists. Every piece of WDB gear I got out of, and every point of Flurry I got out of increased my dps. My potency hits 1400 spiking in raid and my CB is creeping over 1200, this is creating insane dps numbers I NEVER expected to achieve. Granted, when going this route, you are dependant on group buffs and some good timing with your Temporal Mimicry target, but achievable none the less. I have seen a few using the WDB and Flurry way, but they seem to be just average dps. Good on you though if you can make it work, would love to see your character name so I can see the ratio on your numbers.
I've been playing my coercer at different levels off and on for a couple of years. I love her, truly, best solo class I've ever played. But recently my pal and I did some AoM advanced solos with her (she's finally max level!), and OMG she kicks serious pirate booty! I've developed some bad habits like, on solo mobs you can hit the mob if it's mezzed and it doesn't always instantly break it. So I'll have to move my buttons around to change the casting order. But nothing serious. Between him healing and her mezzing, and the pet keeping up the tempo of constant health drain, it's never been easier to do those AS's. So here I am reading about enchanters looking for clues how to make her even better. I'm surprised by some things in this thread. 1. People talking as if doublecast is "useless" to cast on mages. Well, have you considered how happy your friendly neighborhood Shadowknight would be if you cast Time Compression on them? They're definitely mages too, don't be fooled by the tank moniker. Or does TC only work on mages? I mean, Coercive Shout only works on fighters, so maybe.. but sometimes I think there are ingrained ideas like "coercers can only help tanks and healers" when actually we can cast those buffs on anyone, and I'm not sure there would be less benefit. 2. Why would anyone say that doublecast is "useless" to a coercer? Even if you do melee attack, you're not in "autoattack" mode like a pure tank is. You're still pressing buttons and those are spells. Even my shadowknight insists on having enough doublecast to make a difference to him. Why wouldn't a real mage? 3. Have you noticed that mana cloak has damage? And ticks? Cast destructive mind on yourself and go to town! There are several "pairs" of spells that I cast one after the other, I prefer to use one of the reactives, then do a damage spell, especially with dots. I want the (visual) damage numbers to look like they do on my scout that has flurry, except it's all spells this time - meaning, I can't pick out one number from another because they're all overlapping spells. Layered spells all reacting to each other. It seems to be the way to go, but I don't see discussion on that. Some of my favorite pairs: *I'll ignore Temporal Mimicry because it's a 12 second buff and in that time, I can get through about 3 pairs. Assume I'm casting it unless I expect to reach a boss within 1.5 min. You can also assume I'm using Ether Balance whenever possible. * Peace of mind, stupefy (ok, obvious I know) then with refreshed Shockwave * When there's a linked mob, spell curse, all/any other greens, last one: Awe then pick them off one by one (limited usefulness in raids, but I don't raid, so doesn't bother me) * Destructive mind (on self) followed by anything that has a dot component and is up right now. * I may need more practice but I find that I only joust to about 14 meters before using Unda (walls, ramps, other mobs, etc... are often in my way). So I buff it however I can, with whatever's up before casting. Hostage isn't such a bad idea right before. What have you noticed works well? Finally, I don't see people discussing the targeting before casting. It matters if you cast destructive mind on yourself, a scout, or the implied target (probably the the tank). Ditto for Temporal Mimicry. I'm going to have a fascinating time testing that out and coming up with different buttons for targeting various people. What I find is, I sometimes forget to un-target myself and go back to the tank or the mob. Does anyone have a smooth way to do that? Or do I just need to click faster? I usually make a "target tank" button, but remembering to use it is different. Anyway, in short, I've played a warlock in better gear than she has right now (in AoM), and I'm more impressed with the DPS of my enchanter. They're both good but the extras like mez and buffs are better on her and make the zones easier. That's not to say that buffs are "taking away" from the dps, actually they're adding to it. I call the buffs that do damage in a reactive form "piggybacks" and they work really well if you layer them. Exactly like warlock, you need to layer your effects, if you don't, your dps will probably look bad until you get some raid gear with crazy attributes and blue stats. I can't even say that I have her AA's all perfectly balanced, I'm still adjusting to her being max level, but it's shaping up very nicely so far. I suspect some of the "disenchantment" has to do with people reading the skills and thinking "5k? I could do that with Augmented Smite x4." But it's not the 5k, it's the 5k x each tick of your next spell, and some of them, it's the 5k for each hit your group lands, plus the damage you're doing with the big spells, and you can activate more of them before the previous ones are complete. It's icing on a layer cake. Well that's how I've been playing it so far.
dps for chanters really went up this expac. thanks to mimic counting for your dps and blinding shock (esp since blinding can SDA). both chanters are easily T2 dps raid wise, group wise I have been easily doing around T1 dps classes for quite awhile (even more so this expac). chanter roles today are simple. It's still keep group power up and dps, the dps part of the role has just been increased and the power part of the role has just been alot easier to do without doing anything
With Raid gear, even T1 raid gear, Chanters are the High end T2 dps... If you can get the good potency/cb gear from the raid gear, you will be the low end T1 dps. T1 chanter = those who time Temporal Mimicry with Wizard Fiery blast, 19 meters for the max Unda Arcanus, and T1 Raid gear with good procs. T2 chanter = Casting TM because it's up, worried more about using blinding shock under 9m than the damage increase from Unda at 19meters. It's not 20, it's 19m. T3 chanter = me 4 months ago "what is TimeWarp?"
Really wish they increase the range of blinding shock. Or at the very least, make troub's range extender work for blinding shock. Can't afford to move constantly with stand still jewelry.
I personally view are class as buffed based, the ability to add a ton of damage as stated to other groups. Also depending on group make up we bring valuable tools and extreamly high burst damage single target and consistant high AOE dps. The things a solid Illy brings to the table . - Dehate in the form of synergysm ... this allows those wizards , rangers , sins etc to push it even more. - Peace of Mind - additional proc damage - Flash Of Brilliance with Illuminate - stat modifier and making all spells basicly irrestiable. - Time Warp - Double Casts - EV - single target damage boost - Time Compression- Single target casting buff - Mimcry - The ability to copy damage of another persons ca's for 12s is the largest hit in game period if timed correctly. The main thing with illy is the group build . In a stacked caster group its easy to pull high dps numbers. I personally am pulling 7 million dps + the buffs im bringing to the group so keeping in mind if in theory I bring the buffs for additional 2 -3 million dps group wide to around 10 million total provide by me. In melee groups the numbers are not so hot personally 5 million roughly but the buffs still apply to group members in the same fashion. The major issue with Illys to be competitive is spell quality and gear. I did not start breaking solid numbers and being competitive until fully 4/4 green fully adorned and pushing 40 % double cast and mastered / grand mastered in spell quality. Until that point you are basicly a buff bot with so so dps in general.
agreed even in higher end raiding I LOVE having UT and TC and one night a week we get 2 illy's for constant rotation of Time Warps OMG the Dps goes through the roof our raid wide is almost doubled. Granted our Warlock has started beating my necro on aoe fights now when we stack TW's he was hitting 35 to 38mil i was only hitting around 25mil the Wizard was hitting 26mil. on nights we don't have double TW's and double TC's our raidwide drops way down the Warlock usually sits around 20mil wizard sits between 16-18mil and my necro is around 23-25mil. Seems to help both our sorcerer's out by large increments. So anyone that says doublecast is over rated has no idea what they are talking about. i went and looked im sitting at 44% sda, the warlock is sitting around 54ish, and the wizard is sitting at 61% so the combination comes from Time Compressions and Time Warps.
Their are a number of good targets for Mimicry its all about working with those classes to properly time it. I have three targets for Mimicry. Who I cast it on depends on the encounter. This is true, BUT it is too easy to joust in for blinding shock every thirty seconds. In an AoE encounter Blinding Shock is such a powerful spell. Firm Stance < Practiced & Amplifying effects. Honestly how many encounters allow you to plant your feet the entire time? In addition it takes what, two minutes to build firm stance up once you are in position? Double Illusionist group so much fun! Gnomad ~ Crushbone
I raided with my Coercer for six years until I just gave up. In raids Coercers are only needed for hate and mana regen. If they fixed the tanks where they didn't need the hate buff then Coercers would only be needed for the fights that have a serious mana drain. There is no real CC for enchanters and hasn't been for a long time. When was the last time you saw a raid mob that could be charmed? Illusionist are still needed, they still provide needed buffs and (maybe just in my guild) but they appear to DPS a lot higher then the Coercers. Everything else they do can be done by another mage who's output is alot more valuable to the raid. I still level up my Coercer just in case, actually more of a keep him up to date cause I miss raiding on him. I do occasionally use him in Heroic content where he is actually fairly useful. I guess as an Enchanter in EQ and although old and poor memory, I do remember how much fun he was to play in the early days of EQ2.
I specced my Coercer for melee and Flurry as well doing nice numbers, but for me the actual downside of Unda Arcanus is that you have to at 19m for max damage. I really would wish Coercers get 2 Versions of it, or the choice of 2 versions or a spell to change it to do max damage at 9m. Like i pick the Str line for Melee then Unda Arcanus should "change" as well to 9m max damage. it shouldn't be in general 9m .. just for Coercers
Been a while since I seriously played my Coercer, but looks like the old dps/melee model is out for AoM, and ranged spellcasting is the way to go.
Some still cling to the old ways, but with blindshock AA and Ulta AA SDA and ranged is probably the best way to go. Most of your dps nowadays probably comes from your reactives still...mimicry, blinding shock, Ulta, and shockwave (respectively in that order, and only cause I grouped all the reactives together). your auto attack if you melee can still probably do your normal 8-13% of parse, but that's rather small in the long game
It's impressive nonetheless. That said, he has one heck of a mimicry target. It's just over 50% of his total damage output.
I think the OP's description of the classes should be in some class guide. That's pretty much how it is.
