Conjuror AA Guide for Sentinel's Fate (not DoV/GU61 updated)

Thanks for all the great info. At this rate i might make a decent Conjy some day...hehe

Added a section for "Advanced AA Tips". If anyone has some suggestions for full builds, feel free to post a Beetny link, as well as comments they want to share.
Here's my two builds (I only use one in reality, but I provided a variant).
Sess's Group/Raid DPS Build w/ WIS tree
Sess's Group/Raid DPS Build w/o WIS tree
Details:
Since I'm required to spend 70 in the Summoner tree to unlock Sentinel's Fate stuff, I loaded up on Possess Minion for the raw STA/INT boost, and maxed out Parrying for the defensive boost. INT tree is mostly maxed out save for Magic Leash (the extra deaggro isn't significant when Elemental Blast hits as hard as it does).
The difference between the two is: I either max my Crit Chance AAs, or I max Minion's Uproar. Leftover points go into Animist Transference (it's a VERY nice emergency heal when maxed out) either way.
I don't have the spell haste to completely move out of Evocations, so I have 4 in each ability. I kept Crystal Blast maxed just because.
I'm fairly defensively spec'd with Geotic Rune, Stoneskins, and Minion's Constitution.
Right now I can't justify spending the points for Enhance Plane Shift.

Sorry to say this, because I liked your aa post in T8 times, but for a true raider this dps build is complete nonsense.
Raiders need points in everything that makes damage. For "protection" other classes take responsibility.
Furthermore the "protection" does not really work.
Summoner Tree
- 10 points in parry? What do you want to parry? AES ? Or do you stand near the mob
- 10 points in minions warding? - I rather want my pet to live so that it can dps, for my
health I have healers and gear
Conjuror Tree
- Enhance earthen avatar & enhance summoning - complete worthless - my mage pet almost never dies,
so why enhance summon it (t9 easy clear, some hard modes and first wing underfoot depths a lot clear).
- The complete foundation tree is a waste of time and points. The group stone skin is useless. There are so many
aes and dots that it is nearly imposible to time this right. So you might shield "nothing". I never heal my pet ,
and I rarely need the pet stone skin.
- Enhance Petrify - the spell is not worth one point, recast far too long and cast time as well
- Runes of Geomancy (took this as well) but I have the feeling - no impact at all
Shadow Tree
- Minions Constitution - rather worthless.
- Dimensional storage - what for ? my pet does not die , i have good healers
I woud put the wasted points in Arcane Barrier, Fire Seed, Flameshield, Winds of Velius, Roaring Flames , Aqu. Swarm
Plane shift (the pet has not always a 100% cap), Magic Leash (you will need it then).
If you want to be top on the damage list, change it.
Dear F.

Franzl28 wrote:

First of all, I raided in this spec. A lot of top end Conjurors raid in a very similar spec (see: EQ2Flames). It's a proven effective spec, and variants exist depending on personal taste (such as Foundations vs not Foundations). When I raided I consistently topped the parse.
Your suggestions, on the other hand, are complete garbage. Here's why.
Summoner Tree
Parry is a personal preference, but what else are you going to spend points in besides defensive stuff? WIS tree is wasted on Conjurors, STR tree is wasted if you can cap crit without the crit AA. That leaves nothing else offensively to take in the tree until you unlock Sentinel's Fate stuff. So why not go the defensive route and boost your survivability?
Parry does sometimes prevent a trauma AE from hitting you. It's also a defensive tool to help you survive heroic mobs beating on you.
Minion's Warding does not hurt your pet. How is a 20% chance to only take 10% damage a bad thing? It gives us perhaps the best survivability of all Mage classes because 20% of the time we'll need the least healing from a big AE.
Conjuror Tree
You recommend Enhance Plane Shift, but you don't recommend Enhance Summoning? How else do you recommend getting Enhance Plane Shift? Get the equally useless swarm pet AAs? If you even cast those on raids, you are lowering your DPS substantially.
Speaking of Plane Shift, a well geared Conjuror's pet will sit at around 40-50%+ Crit chance solo. Add another 10% from a bard, and 20% from the myth proc. Plane Shift by itself is therefore providing more crit chance than necessary to reach the crit chance cap. Adding another 12.8% crit chance is not going to change that. The only reason to take Enhance Plane Shift is if (and only if) you have the Enhance Plane Shift red adorn. To me 5% Potency every 6th minute is a pretty heavy investment for a small return (ending up being an average of 0.83% Potency over the recast cycle of Plane Shift).
Forget AoEs for a minute. If you're not curing your pet of reactives, your DPS is going to be terrible. Healers do not know when your pet gets a reactive, and will often refuse to cure it even when it does (unless they use a group cure). Multiple points in Heal Servant ensure a faster cast time (guaranteeing the cast speed is capped with 5 points) and reduces the reuse time (guaranteeing you can re-cure it faster).
Foundations line has some value. It's far from a perfect line, however anything to reduce damage or keep the pet from dying is significant.
If you don't want Petrify, don't take it. But at a base 3 second cast time without AAs, vs a 1.5 second cast time with, it's going to see no usage at all if you don't invest AAs into it. Not to mention it fills a good spell rotation gap if you ever have one, and does slightly more damage than Crystal Blast.
Winds of Velious AA is only useful if you let the damn thing tick. I don't let it tick, I toggle it off immediately so that I always have another DD spell ready to cast. There's advantages, and disadvantages, to letting it tick versus toggling early. With that being said, if you don't let it tick, the AA is wasted.
Runes of Geoticism is, by far, our most powerful defensive AA when dealing with trauma AEs. Flat out negating a full 10% of incoming trauma damage is significant. Not to mention it's a pretty awesome buff to grant others if you're ever in an offtank group that lacks a dirge (which can be often depending on your guild). You wouldn't ask your dirges to not run Percussion of Stone would you? I wouldn't. Runes of Geoticism is one of our signature AAs this expansion, and you'd be stupid not to take it.
Shadows Tree and Other
Good healers or no, survival is not exclusively the responsibility of the healer. Personal responsibility is required, otherwise why would you take the Magi's Shielding red adorn, Runic Protection AA, and Max HP and Trauma Mit character traits? A squishy Conjuror is a dead Conjuror who's not contributing to the fight, and probably healed the raid boss by 2% when he failed to survive that big AE.
And if your pet isn't dying, you aren't doing hard enough content. Your pet can and will die on raids; to say otherwise is naive. And not to mention, so will you, which will often force you to resummon a pet after you are resurrected. So putting points in Dimensional Storage and Enhance: Summoning ensures your pet will be resummoned faster when it dies.
Sure, Minion's Constitution isn't much. But it's still extra HP to help the pet survive a nasty AE. And it's not like there's better options to take in other trees (no reason to spend more than 90 in Summoner, and odds are you're capped out on Conjuror at 100 or near it). Master Strike maybe? /shrug
Arcane Barrier, Flameshield, Fire Seed are all completely useless AAs to take. Arcane Barrier does absolutely nothing to boost your damage output, just provide a piddance of a power pool boost and elemental resists. Flameshield scales poorly on raids, is often resisted, and is completely dependent on your tank taking damage (and if your tank is smart, he's trying not to take damage). Fire Seed's proc is equally worthless, and not worth any points invested at all. 5 points into Fire Seed will maybe boost the zonewide DPS by 50.

Finally, since you took the time to troll criticize my AA spec, why don't you show me your AA spec so I can criticize it back?

Franzl28 wrote:

Clearly you haven't raided any difficult content yet. First wing of UD doesn't qualify. Take a couple pulls on Ark or HM Vaclaz and let me know how many times you end up re-summoning.
I use a similar spec to Xalmat, though there are some differences.

Banditman wrote:

Incidentally, your spec's differences to mine all have valid justifications.
I'm just curious, why Flameshield, and why Arcane Barrier instead of Runic Protection?

Flameshield, while small, is still DPS. It's definitely a very minor DPS consideration. Because I have Animist Bond, I don't find myself needing Vehement Skin as often. At that point, the whole Foundation line becomes kinda hard to justify. I still lose my pet, but its only on really hard encounters, and on those, there just isn't any saving him sometimes.
On Runic, I like the extra resists, it's also not huge, but I like having the resists. I guess the HP versus the resists probably work out roughly the same, but with Arcane Barrier, I'm applying that to an entire group instead of just myself. If I were rocking the red adorn for Magi's I would probably think of this differently.
Some of my choices revolve around knowing what buffs I'm getting. For instance, I know that I will have Upbeat Tempo, thus I took the WoV upgrade that makes it tick faster. When you get UT (with the two extra DoT ticks) and then stack on Harmonization (10% decrease to DoT length) and then the upgrade to WoV, you get a DoT that ticks pretty stinkin fast. For me, I just let it run. The fact that our gear doesn't lend itself well to high ability mod, and the fact that procs no longer crit really took a lot of the good reasons for toggling WoV away.

Thank you for your input. I think there are some points that have merit.
Here is my changed AA setting now.
http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?502i14...@11@115@255@111
You are right, that the choice in the summoner tree is very limited. If parry really works for trauma Aes, than this is very useful. I will test it.

"Minions Warding does not hurt the pet". If you go in pet modus it states this in the buff. If this is true than the AA line is really good, but I have the feeling that the damage does not simply disappear. I changed this from 4 points to now 10 , and yesterday I had the impression that my pet died a lot more than before. So lets see in a long term observation.

Enhance Plane Shift is a must. It raises crit to 100% and it also improves cast speed and base damage. There is no cap
for base damage for the pet. So this adds dps. If you take 3 or 5 Points to at least raise crit and base damage to 100% is discussable.
My pet is usually cured by the healers via group cures. There are so many reactives that single cures do not really do the
job.
I keep to my statement that the foundation line is very very discussable.
I rather go for arcane barrier as group buff and for the little dps extra from flameshield and fire seed.
In the end I now changed my setting to maximise pet recast and pet constitution. If minions warding works as it should , this is a value. If minions warding kills the pet because it takes 90% of ae damage, than the extra point to recast it or the dimensional storage is a must. If this is the case I will change it back to 4 points, because I want my pet to survice. The healers are more focused on me than my pet , so I have a better survival chance than my pet.
Has somebody got a parse or evidence that the pet is not hurt through "minions warding" ?

Fire Seed and Flameshield are two completely different mechanics.
Flameshield is simple. It just raises the base damage of the spell. More DPS. Minor, but simple.
Fire Seed on the other hand is different.
The first AA that affects Fire Seed simply increases the proc rate. What good is that? Once it procs, it just sits there and ticks. For a Scout, the proc is always up. There is no need to increase the proc rate, it's already up. It's five wasted points.
The second AA is the one that adds 5% Strikethru. Also useless. Take a look at the hit rate of your Scouts sometime. It is usually sitting around 98% already. If you assume that the 2% misses are all due to the mob actively defending itself (which is a pretty big stretch, but go with it anyway), then adding 5% Strikethru will move their hit rate up to 98.1%. For 5 AA? I don't think so.

Since you have the impression that Minion's Warding is killing your pet, why don't you do the work to prove that it DOES damage the pet? It wouldn't be that hard. Just look at all pet deaths for a night, see which ones were AE deaths and then compare the damage that the Conjuror takes on that AE to the damage other folks in his group take. 90% difference should make it pretty obvious when MW triggers.

Fireseed is not useless, but most of the AA for it are.

Sorry to ask,

Any recommandation for Velious AA builds?

I'll be revamping this guide once the GU61 changes are known.