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

This may be a stupid question, but I am confused on Winds of Velious. Why toggle to cancel it? Don't we want the dot to run its course?

There's many reasons why you wouldn't want to.
For one reason if you have high +spell damage (like I do), and if there's multiple proc buffs active on you like Peace of Mind, Perfection of the Maestro, Aria of magic, etc., you get FAR more damage overall toggling it than letting it tick. Procs only land on the initial hit, never subsequent hits.
Another reason is because Winds of Velious is, by far, our least power efficient spell. In a mana intense situation WoV will get you drained faster than any other spell.
The overall DPS for letting it tick versus toggling it, ignoring procs, is only better if you can reduce the duration of Winds of Velious (with AAs and the troub buffs Harmonization and Upbeat Tempo). Depending what options you take in the EoF tree you may not even have the points to spend on Winds of Velious, and if you don't have 5 points in WoV it's never better DPS letting it tick.
I also like toggling WoV because it keeps me from having dead time in my rotation.
And if you use a Najena's Ring of Readiness, the effect only works on the initial tick for Winds of Velious, NOT subsequent ticks.
There's plenty of reason why NOT to take points into WoV. Since it reduces duration, it increases the mana/second cost, which further increases the mana drain. It also shortens the duration of the spell, which means if you use it as the snare it's intended to be, it actually worsens the spell when you use it to snare a mob and keep it busy.

Thanks Xalmat. That certainly makes a lot of sense.

Nice to be back in the game again. I had enough money to buy either the L.70+ Mastery Earth or Mastery Fire book. I went with the Fire pet. Should I save up for the Mastery earth book too? I plan on soloing and raiding.

If you plan on raiding you should have gotten the Earth pet. The Mythical pet completely replaces the mage pet.
That said the next expansion is only three months away, so it doesn't matter a whole lot either way.

Xalmat wrote:

The mythic pet comes from completing that entire epic chain right? I just got back into the game so I don't even have a cluse how long it will take to complete all those steps mentioned in the sticky. Are we talking weeks or even months of getting dedicated teams to go through all the Epic quests?
Also how are the current drop rates for chests and Mastery book drops? The last time I played, it was pretty pitiful. I remember spending weeks trying to find a copy of the Fire pet Mastery book.

netglen wrote:

Depending on how lucky you are with groups you can get the Fabled portion done in a day. Typically though it takes people a week or two, because people just don't run the zones for the epic weapons that often anymore.
The Mythical portion requires raids, but nowadays they're pretty easy to do pick-ups on (plus guilds often sell the updates).
Masters are still pretty rare, but thanks to the Research Assistants (located in each of the cities and the suburbs) you can upgrade an Expert spell to a Master in about a month's time.

Forgot the add Elelmental Unity to the begining of that order,,,i ussually vcast blazing and unity pre pull times so unity finshed casting as the tank hits the mob.
Then i add my mage pet deagro and my animated dagger and my bewilderment after the first cast of WOV. all of these are almost instant casts and they will proc the elemental unity.

Nimbrithil wrote:

The pet deaggro no longer triggers Unity, hasn't for a long time.
But you're right, ideally you want to precast Blaze and EU and have them finishing casting the instant the mob is engaged. I typically cast Blaze then EU.
If I'm casting Plane Shift it's just before EU typically, but I sometimes wait til about 5 seconds after the mob is engaged for debuffs to get in so that I maximize Plane Shift; it depends how long the fight will be.
To be honest I haven't cast the animated dagger in a very long time. With sufficient reuse there just isn't a gap in a spell rotation to warrant the dagger these days.

Xalmat wrote:

Alternatively, go to the Data Correction tab in ACT and use "Rename a combatant to a new one". I use a different name for each of my pets, and I have all three corrections set up. Therefore I can see what my total DPS is easily.

Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:

You can, but your other group raid members will have to do the same. Otherwise they will see you and your pet's DPS separately.
If you and your group/guild don't care, that's fine. But if you're in a competitive raid guild and you have to fight for your spot, you should rename your pet.
Also be sure to read my post on ACT Triggers for your pet. On many fights this will make a significant difference.

I'm going to update this guide in the next few days. Some of this is out of date due to the expansion.

Updated, at long last.

There's one thing that you forgot to update in here: our pet heal spell now cures. So, unless there are some high end raids that have a reactive curse, you can use the pet heal to cure off reactive detriments on the pet.

Little bit of advice I've found as well...
With the new AA limits, Communion can be very, very useful if you're trying to solo. For example, I tend to kill the trash at the start of Library of Erudin looking for Masters. When fighting the single, level 90 ^^^ mobs, it's very helpful to WoV the mob (for the snare) and pop Communion as it's incoming as the Hydromancer is very, very useful at keeping your primary pet alive.
True you still have to heal it a bit yourself, but it makes the fights much easier.

Except that the amount of raw healing that Hydromancer does is very tiny. You're better off just going all out damage, and utilizing stuns or snares to your advantage.

Bump. Just because this post has some amazing info in it for players getting to know the class and people wanting a "refresher".

Absolutely fantastic guide for those in the 'figuring stuff out' phase. One major thing I simply don't understand/agree with:
Why does recast time have anything to do with 'potency'? Using this method of rotation, if CB, WoV, FA and EB were all up and available, EB would be last to be cast, since the others are more 'potent' when factoring in reuse. This makes no sense to me. Taken to an extreme, if you have a spell that does 1,000,000,000 damage but has a six-month recast, you'd basically never cast it due to poor 'potency'. To me cast order should be determined by damage divided by (cast time+recovery), not reuse.
Could you explain a bit more of your reasoning for those of us too dense to comprehend?
Muchas gracias.

Edit: as a more practical example, let's take Bewilderment. This does about the same amount of damage as FA (with full tics), and casts in roughly half the time. Since it has a relatively long recast, it would get pushed very far down the cast order by that criteria. To me, its high damage and fast cast means I should use it the moment it's up.
If I cast CB instead when Bewilderment is up, I've just reduced my dps, since in the same amount of cast time expended I could have inflicted more damage. What am I missing?

You're asking about spell rotations. Generally figuring out an ideal spell rotation is more of an art than a science, and there is no precise answer that will completely satisfy you in all situations. And keep in mind, for super short duration fights, you may not have time to worry about a spell rotation, as you want to use all of your heavy hitting spells as quickly as possible. Spell rotations play a much more prominent function in longer duration fights.
Sure you could blow your heavy spells as often as possible, but is that truly your most efficient means of dealing damage? Maximizing your spell damage (via a spell rotation) is all about efficiency.
Let's take Bewilderment versus Crystal Blast for example. Factoring in crits (and using my personal stats):
Crystal Blast is 5170-6437 damage, 1.0 seconds to cast, 0.5 recovery, 2.2 second recast.
Burst damage (damage divided by cast + recovery): 3446-4291.
Extended damage (damage divided by cast + recast): 1615-2011
Bewilderment is 6109-9821 damage, 0.45 seconds to cast, 0.5 recovery, 44.2 second recast.
Burst damage (damage divided by cast + recovery): 6430-10337
Extended damage (damage divided by cast + recast): 136-219
In a burst damage situation, Crystal Blast is about 2/5 to 1/2 the damage of Bewilderment. But in an extended situation, it's 9 to 12 times the damage.

So which is better to cast? They both are, given the proper situation. When should you cast Bewilderment? That's a harder question to answer. If you're looking for long term efficiency you generally don't want to cast a spell with lower Extended damage over a spell with higher Extended damage.
This is of course ignoring things like debuffs, buffs, fight duration, and other things outside of your control.
Clear as mud? Good.

I'm 100% on board with the "Plans are worthless, planning is priceless" thing, where even if you design the perfect spell rotation on a spreadsheet, you may rarely follow it in practice given the various situations you find yourself in. It's just a starting point, and a way to gain knowledge so when you're improvising your cast order during fights you have an understanding of the tools at your disposal.
That said, I still don't get it lol. I keep trying to find some meaning in the extended damage concept, but I just don't see it. All fights have x duration, so to me every moment you spend casting should be maximizing burst damage just as you defined it (using dots in very short fights being one of the exceptions to this of course).
To me, extended damage merely reflects the recast time of your burst damage cast order...I don't see why the cast order should be built to include the recast. Every time a lower burst spell is cast when a higher burst spell is available, regardless of recast, that cast time was less efficiently used than it could have been.
Another example: Let's say CB has a recast time of zero...it's always available. Since nothing else can touch it for extended damage, does that mean you never cast anything else and just cast CB over and over? At every decision point if we're maximizing extended damage, then all else being equal we should always choose CB, right? That's rhetorical of course, because burst damage tells us that for any given cast time, several other spells use their cast time more efficiently.
I don't know, maybe we're just restating the same things in these posts and not getting anywhere lol. If you can see something that could help me get this, do let me know.
Maybe what I'll do is grab an epic training dummy and just try it out on a nice long fight.