"How Do I Improve My DPS?" - A Comprehensive Conjuror Guide

In an effort to help my fellow Conjuror, I'm providing a guide to help new and veteran Conjurors alike so they can play their character to its fullest. Many thanks go out to all the Conjurors over the years who have helped me, and have been helped in return.
It goes without saying, this guide is targeted at level 90 Conjurors. Much of it applies to lower level Conjurors that want to DPS.
Part 0: Epic Weapon & Epic Repercussions
At level 90, complete your epic quest asap, and complete epic repercussions asap. It will improve your damage more than anything else in the game.
The entire epic quest is soloable at level 90, and most of Epic Repercussions is soloable at level 90. There's no excuse not to have it done.
Part 1: Pet
Use the Mage pet for maximum DPS. The tank pet and scout pet are utterly worthless at this stage of the game for DPS at level 80 and higher (although the scout pet still has some minor use in your 60s and below). Under no circumstances do you use the healer pet.
Go out of your way to make sure it's Master rank. If it's not Mastered, it needs to be Expert rank.
Part 2: AAs
(For a full run down on our AAs, please read my guide)
When people ask me how to improve their DPS, the very first thing I do is ask how their AAs are set up. You'd be very surprised how many Conjurors are running around in a tank pet build.
The very first thing Conjurors need to do before setting up an AA build for DPS is to get a mirror. This will allow you to have both a Solo spec and a DPS spec.
After you get the AA mirror set up, and you're ready to start investing your AAs, you should acquire your AAs per my guide. The main things you need are: STR tree, INT tree, Aptitude of the Theurgist, Focused Minion, Elemental Toxicity, Evocations tree, Fury of the Elements, Strength of the Elements, Elemental Blast, Shadows Summoner, Shadows Conjuror. Not necessarily in that order.
Part 3: Gear
The fact is, if your gear is horrible, so will your DPS be.
The stats you want to concentrate the most on are:

• INT: Goes without saying, higher INT = higher spell damage. Int also directly affects your pet's damage, so the higher your INT the higher your pet's damage
  
• Potency: Potency (and Base Spell Damage) affects everything you cast, so the higher your potency the better. Higher potency also raises your +Spell Damage cap for your spells.
• Crit Chance: The more you crit, the more damage your spells do. There is a point that Crit stops being effective, and that's when your crit rate is 100%.
• Reuse Speed: For a Conjuror, we're limited by our reuse speed. The more often we can cast spells, the more DPS we will do. The vast majority of reuse speed out there is hostile spell reuse, but beneficial spell reuse is also important as some of our most powerful spells work off of beneficial reuse. If you happen across Ability Reuse, it will affect all spells that we cast, and is the most powerful form of Reuse.
• Crit Bonus: Crit Bonus only really comes into play when your crit chance approaches 100%. The higher your crit bonus, the more damage your crits are. It's similar to Potency in this regard, but not quite as effective.
  
• Ability Modifier: The higher your ability, the more damage your spells will do. There is a point where ability modifier ceases to be effective, and it's half that spell's base damage. So if you notice some spells (especially Crystal Blast or Fiery Annihilation) stop going up in damage with higher Spell Damage, you should back off on this stat until your Potency goes higher.
• Cast Speed: I include Cast Speed, but only as a last option. Generally depending how you spec your AAs you do not need cast speed. However the more cast speed you have, the less you need points in Evocations and the more points you can spend elsewhere.

You should also go out of your way to boost your pet. The pet effects you need to look out for:

• Destructive Forces: This is the best pet effect of all. It affects your pet's Potency and Crit Bonus.
• Empowered Minion: This is essentially Potency for your pet. The higher the potency, the higher your pet's spells and CAs will hit for (but not the pet's auto-attack).
• Molten Carnage: This is Potency + Cast Speed. For the mage pet especially, very high cast speed = high amounts of attack, which means LOTS of damage.
• Power Flux: Pets can also crit, so the higher the pet's crit rate the higher it's overall damage. Power Flux remains one of the most powerful effects you can give your pet.
• Quicksilver Blood: The pet's damage output is also partially limited by it's reuse speed and cast speed: The higher the reuse speed the more often it can fire off it's big attacks, and the faster its cast speed the faster it will cast its attacks.

Generally, you should balance your stats with your pet's stats. The pet contributes over half your damage output, but even so you need to make sure your stats don't fall behind.
Pay no attention to the Legendary/Fabled tag on gear. There are MANY situations where a Legendary piece of equipment is far superior to a Fabled item.
Procs are another source of damage, but since the proc nerf of Game Update 52 they aren't quite as effective as they used to be. Because Conjurors cast so fast and so often, procs will tend to go off about 50% more often than the given proc rate (ie: a 2.0 time/minute proc will tend to go off 3 times a minute for a Conjuror, over a long period of time.). Be on the look out for gear that has unique buff procs, such as +Base Damage procs, +Reuse Speed procs, and the like.
Part 3b: Adornments
Simple rule: Adorn everything, no matter how trivial. Every adornment out there will boost your DPS or your survivability in some way, and if you want to do the best possible DPS (and survive every AoE) you need these adornments.
Fabled adornments are very expensive, but they are worth it.
Here are the adornments to look for at level 90. You want Ethereal Adornments, and if possible you want Superior. For example for an Increased Criticals adornment, you want "Ethereal Adornment of Increased Criticals (Superior)":
Primary: Increased Criticals, or ]Raw Power (Crit Bonus, or Potency)
Secondary/Ranged: ]Increased Criticals, or Raw Power (Crit Bonus, or Potency)
Head: Intelligence, or Endurance (INT, or HP)
Cloak: Critical Chance, or Swift Casting (Crit Chance or Cast Speed)
Chest: Heightened Power (Ability Modifier)
Shoulder: Heightened Power (Ability Modifier)
Legs: Critical Chance, or Swift Casting (Crit Chance or Cast Speed)
Forearm: Critical Chance, Swift Casting, or Intelligence (Crit Chance, Cast Speed, or INT)
Feet: Recovery (Reuse Speed)
Hands: Endurance (HP)
Waist: Intelligence, or Recovery (INT, or Reuse Speed)
Neck: Intelligence (INT)
Ears: Heightened Power (Ability Modifier)
Fingers: Heightened Power (Ability Modifier)
Wrist: Endurance, or Swift Casting (HP, or Cast Speed)
Part 4: Spell Upgrades
Two words: Upgrade Everything.
To get more to the point, there's no reason why at level 90 that you shouldn't have upgraded all of your spells to at least Expert rank. Even if money is hard to come by, there are plenty of harvest locations throughout Odus that you can be harvesting gem stones. Extras that you harvest can be put up on the broker and sold for money, with the extra money you earn going towards paying a Sage's commission fee.
With the Research Assistant you should also be working towards Masters, with one coming in every real-life month. And if you aren't spending plat on anything else, you should be saving up and purchasing Conjuror masters on the broker every chance you get.
The top priority spells should be of course your Fiery Magician, followed by your damage spells. Don't forget to upgrade Plane Shift to Master as well, as it's a major improvement over Expert.
Part 5: Spell Rotation
OK, so your gear is good, your AAs are solid, and your spells are upgraded, but your DPS is still low? It's time to look at spell rotation. Keep in mind that Conjurors excel at long duration fights, and are fairly weak in a short fight if they can't get more than a couple spells off.
Generally Conjurors are all about using their most potent spells as often as possible. What do I mean by potent ? I mean over a long period of time, it will deal the most damage.
A simple way to calculate spell potency is take your spell's average damage, and divide it by it's cast time and reuse time. For example, if Crystal Blast did 2000-2500 damage, with a 1.0 second cast time and 3.0 second reuse, it's efficiency would be 562.5 (2250 / 4). For Master Strike, if it did 4000-5000 damage with a 2.0 second cast time and 2 minute recast time, it's efficiency would be 38.9 (4500 / 122).
So what does this mean? It means if a spell with the highest potency is up and ready to cast, you cast it. And ALWAYS be casting, you don't want any downtime if you can help it.
Alright alright, I know what you're asking, "This is all confusing! Just tell me a spell rotation already!" Here's a sample spell rotation that I typically use on long duration fights. This is only roughly the first 30 seconds of the fight

Pre-cast Blazing Avatar just before the pull
Fiery Annihilation (FA), Winds of Velious (WoV) - Toggle to Cancel, Crystal Blast (CB), Vampire Bats (VB), CB, FA, CB, Petrify, Shattered Earth (SE), Master Strike, CB, FA, WoV, CB, Bewilderment, FA, CB, Earthquake...

You notice that I cast Crystal Blast very often. As it turns out, Crystal Blast is our most potent spell. It does high damage and it's got the fastest recast of all of our spells. Fiery Annihilation and Winds of Velious I also cast frequently because these spells are also very potent. Shattered Earth, Master Strike, Petrify, Bewilderment, and Earthquake I typically don't use unless my other spells are down waiting to be cast, because while they do more damage they are less potent. The least potent spell usually ends up being Ice Storm, so on single mobs it's rarely cast.
Keep in mind that on AoE fights spell rotation will be completely different, as AoE spells (including Ice Storm) gain much more potency the more mobs they can hit.
You'll also notice I don't cast swarm pets. While at lower levels (especially from the 20s to about the early 60s) Swarm pets were a major source of damage, in your 70s and at level 90 they are insignificant damage. The swarms tend to die easily to mob AoEs, reactives, or mobs just sometimes don't live long enough for them to do any serious damage. In general unless you have no other spells to cast at any given time, avoid casting your swarm pets altogether.

Part 6: Buffs and Group Makeup
OK, so you got your spell rotation down, everything else looks good, but you're still parsing lower than others on a raid? Well, how is your group makeup? Are you getting buffed properly, or did your raid leader stick you in a buffless scrub group?
Like all classes, Conjurors need buffs, and they need the right buffs, coming from the right classes. Here's a quick rundown on who to look for.
Troubadors: These guys buff our DPS related stats more than any other class. Group-wide AA Buff Don't Kill the Messenger adds Crit Chance for you and your pet, Aria of Magic gives you and your pet a chance to proc damage on spell cast, Perfection of the Maestro will increase INT and deal additional damage on every spell cast. They can cast Upbeat Tempo on a group member, greatly enhancing cast speed, recovery speed, reuse speed, and causing DoTs to gain another tick (effectively dealing more damage over the same period of time). Troubadors can also cast Jester's Cap on you, raising your spell reuse speed a very high amount for a short time. Simply having a Troubador grouped with you will increase your overall DPS significantly.
Illusionists: Illusionists are best known for their mana regeneration capabilities, but they have other abilities. Synergism placed on you will give a chance to proc damage on spell cast (and it can also be cast on your pet). Time Compression greatly increases cast and reuse speed. Peace of Mind will cause you to deal damage on every spell cast for a short duration. Destructive Rampage is a short duration AA that increases Base Damage of the group.
Wizard: Wizards don't provide much, but they do provide two useful buffs: group-wide INT buff, and Frigid Gift. Frigid Gift, when coupled with the wizard AA Iceshape, will cause all spells for a short duration to deal cold damage and proc additional damage.
Warlock: Their group buffs boost +Disruption and other casting skills, as well as Propogation which increases the proc chance for spell-based procs like Synergism.
Berserker: Through AAs they gain the ability to enhance raidwide reuse speed by 5% and improve group Spell/CA damage. Simply having one in the raid will boost DPS.
Shadowknight: Two words: Death March. Death March greatly increases casting speed and INT of the group (which is extremely useful for your pet), and their raidwide buff is Spell Base Damage.
Inquisitors: Their class ability Fanaticism improves reuse speed of the group for a short duration at the cost of the Inquisitor's ability to heal. Those inquisitors that spec in a battlecleric role can also proc a groupwide proc buff when they can melee.
Furys: Furys buff your INT, which in turn increases your base damage.
Clerics: Divine Recovery, one of their AAs, greatly improves group cast and recovery speed for a short duration, which allows you to fire off spells in rapid succession.
Mystics and Defilers: Ritual of Alacrity, which these classes get thru AA, function in basically the same way as Jester's Cap.
Dirge: Although Dirges don't gain the same buffs as Troubadors, they share much of the same AAs, including Don't Kill the Messenger.
There are of course other useful buffs that other classes give, but these are the major things to look for.
Simply being grouped with a Troubador, Illusionist, and Wizard, and other classes, and receiving the buffs they provide will greatly improve your overall DPS, well above and beyond what you can do when not grouped with these classes at all.
Part 7a: Keeping The Pet Alive: AoEs
OK, so you got the DPS part down. But now you're finding that your pet is dying a lot. And it's not because it's pulling aggro and dying either.
The two most likely causes for pet death, besides peeling aggro and getting smooshed, are AoE damage and reactive damage.
AoEs are the Pet's worst nightmare. The pet isn't as fragile as it used to be, but the pet is still susceptible to getting one shot by AEs if you aren't careful. Fortunately there's a few things you can do.
Keep the pet outside of melee range. Many mobs have some kind of AoE melee attack, be it an auto-attack or a combat art, that will hit players (and pets) close to the mob. The simplest way to survive them is to not get hit at all. So try to keep your pet at range.
While this technique is effective in most group content in avoiding melee AoEs, it's not so effective on raids where mobs have a large radius AoE that can't be avoided. In this case you want to make sure your pet is at max AoE range so it takes the least amount of damage possible.
In some cases you can also get away with a well timed Animist Bond. Animist Bond will take the damage that normally would have hit the pet, and make it take Power damage instead. Although in some cases it will leave the pet with little or no power, it will survive. If you roll with a power regen class such as an Illusionist, your pet will have mana again shortly.
Careful use of Vehemnt Skin, Minion's Intervention, and Enhanced Stoneskin will also protect the pet from an AoE, depending on the type of AoE.
There are other AoEs that don't immediately kill the pet unless you fail to cure. In this case, you or a group member need to be ready to cure the pet instantly when it receives this AoE. Some fights are absolutely brutal to attempt to keep your pet alive on though. Be ready to use your Heal Servant spell often.
Part 7b: Keeping The Pet Alive: Reactives
Reactives are also the pet's worst nightmare, even more than AEs. Reactives range anywhere from mild damage, to extremely high damage that must be cured fast. And unfortunately it's not easy to tell when your pet has a reactive on it until you see it's HP ticking away.
AoE blockers don't help at all at preventing Reactive damage.
One trick that I found was to use Advanced Combat Tracker to track when my pet receives reactive damage. If it's a reactive that I can cure myself, ACT lets me know that the pet has a reactive. Then I can cast the appropriate cure spell to remove it from my pet. You can also watch when your pet takes damage that's not related to an AoE going off, and assume it just took reactive damage.
Unfortunately this technique doesn't work with all reactives. Other reactives you have to target directly thru your pet and look at the buff icons that appear in the Target window. Depending how many buffs are on your pet though, the reactive's icon can easily get lost in the cloud of icons, and there's not a lot anyone can do.
Other Thoughts
This is basically the anything goes section of this guide, where other useful tips don't quite necessarily fit anywhere else.
Rename Your Pet to your name. It seems silly, but when you're looking at a parser like ACT, you're looking at your damage and your pet's damage separately if you two are named differently. Combining your name and your pet's name tricks the parser into thinking you two are the same entity, and will display the damage dealt as a combined total.
Cure your pet of detrimentals. On several fights there are detrimentals that you can cure from your pet with Heal Servant, Cure Arcane and Cure Elemental. Remember to do so to maximize it's DPS, especially if the detrimental reduces your pet's damage to 0.
Be sure to read my post on configuring Advanced Combat Tracker to pick up on detrimentals hitting your pet.
Keep the pet alive. Your pet is your single largest source of damage you got, and if it dies you will suffer downtime while trying to recast it, rebuff it, etc. Do whatever it takes to keep the pet alive and dealing damage. This includes using abilities like Animist Bond, Bubble, Enhance Stoneskin, Master's Intervention, Vehement Skin, Dimensional Storage, and so on and so forth.
Practice, practice, practice. From time to time, bust out a training dummy in your guild hall and practice different spell rotations and see what's best. Remember to try different things multiple times to get an overall picture, and keep in mind that every trial run on the training dummy will have some variance.
Always work on spell and gear upgrades. Never stop upgrading until you have every "best" piece of gear available to you.
Talk to other Conjurors. Get to know other Conjurors in your guild, on your server, on other servers. Find out what works for them, what doesn't work for them. The worldwide Summoner chat, blackburrow.summoner is a valuable resource for talking to other Conjurors worldwide.

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Just what I was looking for!

As always... you ROCK! .... appreciate the time you take to share you Uber Conjy Knowledge...
I can only think of one thing to make this better.. make all your guides downloadable document.

Azxira@Blackburrow wrote:

That can be arranged.
Also i should point out that EQ2Flames has a similar DPS guide.

Xalmat wrote:

*swoons*
You're my hero
*heart a flutter*

Pre-cast Blazing Avatar just before the pull
Fiery Annihilation (FA), Winds of Velious (WoV) - Toggle to Cancel, Crystal Blast (CB), Vampire Bats (VB), CB, FA, CB, Petrify, Shattered Earth (SE), Master Strike, CB, FA, WoV, CB, Bewilderment, FA, CB, Earthquake...

What about Communion?

Communion is kinda blah. Unless you can cast it right as the tank is heading in to grab a mob, it's way too slow of a spell. That being said, Blazing Avatar has a decent duration on it so you can often BA first and then cast Communion on the pull to get both on the parse without missing a beat.
Also, Crystal Blast is your bread and butter for single target DPS. You always, ALWAYS lead with Crystal Blast and then cast filler stuff only until CB is up again. Everytime CB is up, you cast it. The true art of DPS with the class, imo, is developing a cast order so that you are always casting something and always able to cast CB the instant it refreshes.

What he said about Communion is pretty much why I dismiss it. Communion pets are also not affected by most pet effects (Power Flux et al), not to mention if you're using Mage/Mythical pet, the pets that come out are Scout and Fighter, which are both inherently less DPS combined than the Mage/Mythical pet.
I don't like Communion because it also screws with ACT pet triggers. I use them to watch when my pet gets a reactive on many fights, like Kultak the Cruel, Switchmaster, Anashti, etc. Keeping your pet cured on those fights is how you keep your DPS maximized.

Very nice guide Sess, but did you really have to give out so much? I spent many hours killing walls and training dummies and here you are giving out a solid cast order (darn near identical to the one listed), AA spec and gear priorities.
Well if they didn't know, now they know.

People still need to follow good advice to be good players!

Nice guide. The part on crits/reuse/+spell etc. and pet buffs from gear will be very nice to apply.

One note: Shadowknights also get a TSO AA 10% Reuse additon to one of their group buffs.

It's an awesome guide!!
Thanks Sess!

Amending the guide with a note about adornments.

How do i vote to make this a stickie?

PM a forum mod like Kiara usually worked for me.

Awesome information as usual Sess!
Get this stickied

Xalmat wrote:

I recognize this is just a sample spell order for a segment of an (extended) fight, and that it follows the potency damage chart, but it doesn't quite match up with the philosophy I use for DPS and hence my spell order looks different.
Keeping in mind gear setup will affect your casting order (and perhaps alter your potency) let me post the casting order I use on the training dummy since we can use him to replicate test results.
Pre-cast Blazing Avatar just before pull. Cast Communion, once spell is half-cast, pet attack (so he casts while you finish and your attacks land together)
Crystal Blast(CB), Shattered Earth(SE), CB, Fiery Annihilation(FA), CB, Winds of Velious (WoV[toggle]), CB, FA, CB, Earthquake (EQ), CB, Bewilderment (since FA is just finishing timers), FA, CB, WoV(toggle), CB, FA, CB, EQ (and roughly, if the fight is not over, SE and Blazing Avatar are up again to cast again)
For my philosophy, I try to get high damage, longer recast spells out early in the fight so they refresh for multiple uses. Hence the use of Shattered nearly immediately, so on longer fights it and blazing can be cast twice at least.
(and now we get to the nitty-gritty of particulars)
I try to cast CB every other spell, and then run FA every 4th spell, and cycle in WoV/EQ depending on timing in the fight. I try to time EQ and WoV to go so that its WoV's turn when the mob is less than 25% health to tick out the remainder of the fight without penalizing me on timers.
I use Vampire Bats as a filler spell, and never cast Petrify in raid settings due to its long cast time. Generally when I start to hit timers, and theres a slight pause before my next spell is refreshed, Blazing Avatar and SE are back up for recasting which resets my CB-FA-CB-x-repeat (where x is WoV or EQ) order.
When I compared the listed cast order on the dummy, I found mine did 200-700 dps more than the one posted. Again, considering gear, the fact its a training dummy and not a segment of a longer fight, and other variables, I recognize the results might be different for different people. I do, however, think its important to highlight the different philosophy of cast the heavy, slow refreshers early, versus following the progression chart.
If this is the wrong place and this post would be better suited to a spell order thread, I will gladly take it elsewhere. I don't want to detract from the information above that will greatly help Conjurors out there on the servers trying to improve themselves.
Regards,
- Seritario

Nfilheim wrote:

What's important is that players follow the basic guidelines, and find what works best for them. The fact that you took the time to analyze your spells for effectiveness and worked out an effective casting rotation shows that you did just that
Given enough time I could work out spell effectiveness in a raid situation where you will have buffs going around that boost damage output beyond what the tooltip says. I would hope other players do the same.

I just did some number crunching as to damage efficiency, and the results pretty much fall in line with my expectations. If your not interested in theoreticals, skip this post.
The math is pretty crazy so I won't get too deep into it, but in general here are the results as to which spells have the most bang for your buck (at least in my shoes, your results will vary).
Burst Damage
Factoring in cast time only, allowing for the spell to run its course (if it's a pretty fast duration, less than 10 seconds). Higher number is better (the actual value is theoretical average damage divided by cast + recovery time, assuming 100% crit). Also ignoring procs.
Shattered Earth (versus 4 targets) - 18601
Earthquake (versus 4 targets) - 13158
Shattered Earth (versus 2 targets) - 9301
Earthquake (versus 2 targets) - 6579
Bewilderment - 5944
Ice Storm (versus 4 targets) - 5646
Blazing Avatar - 5004
Shattered Earth (versus 1 target) - 4650
Master Strike - 4327
Fiery Annihilation (full duration, 12 seconds) - 3320
Earthquake (versus 1 target) - 3289
Crystal Blast - 3070
Ice Storm (versus 2 targets) - 2823
Petrify - 2589
Winds of Velious (Toggle) - 2546
Fiery Annihilation (burst) - 2410
Vampire Bats (burst) - 1448
Ice Storm (versus 1 target) - 1411
In other words, for a short duration burst fight that's only going to last a few seconds, or faster than long recast spells are up, I should cast these spells in the order as they appear on this list.
Duration Efficiency
This factors in average Damage over time, which considers average damage (factoring in crits), cast time, recovery time, and recast. Higher number is better. For longer fights I should try to cast my spells based on the order of this list.
Shattered Earth (versus 4 targets) - 1531
Ice Storm (versus 4 targets) - 1214
Crystal Blast - 1181
Earthquake (versus 4 targets) - 1121
Shattered Earth (versus 2 targets) - 765
Ice Storm (versus 2 targets) - 607
Earthquake (versus 2 targets) - 561
Blazing Avatar - 449
Fiery Annihilation (recast-to-recast) - 430
Shattered Earth (versus 1 target) - 383
Fiery Annihilation (full duration) - 349
Winds of Velious (full duration + AAs) - 340
Winds of Velious (Toggle) - 323
Winds of Velious (Full duration, without AAs) - 251
Ice Storm (versus 1 target) - 304
Earthquake (versus 1 target) - 280
Vampire Bats (recast-to-recast) - 279
Vampire Bats (Full duration) - 213
Master Strike - 145
Petrify - 135
Bewilderment - 114
It seems kind of odd that Bewilderment and Master Strike are so low on the chart, doesn't it? Part of the reason is that, while they have incredible burst damage, their long term damage output is quite low due to their long recast time.
Other notes
It's important to consider the following:
These are the numbers as they would appear solo. It does not factor in raid buffs (which if you consider the overall effect they have on spells, will vary the list dramatically). It also does not consider debuffs which greatly boost damage. Spells with the highest damage benefit the most from debuffs from a burst point of view.
It also does not consider temporary buffs such as Jester's Cap or Destructive Rampage, which also greatly alter the list. And it does not consider proc buffs.
Oftentimes a fight requires you to deal burst damage and long term damage, such as fights where you have adds that must die in a short amount of time.
In the end charts like this should never be taken as gospel, but rather an estimation of potential. And they are never end-all-be-all.