Illusionist raid guide - ToT

Discussion in 'Mages' started by MrWashek, Jan 12, 2016.

  1. MrWashek Member

    This is guide for returning players or raiding alts. Currently raiding players will find little additional information (I hope hehe) and will have more gearing options, which are not included in this guide because this is focused on gearing in heroic instances.

    Stats
    Introduction
    Balancing hardcapped stats should be done ideally with full raid sitting at reforger. This expansion there is no fight that siphons casting speed, recovery speed and reuse speed (correct me if I am wrong), so there is no need to go over 200%, 100% and 100% respectively. I, for example sit at 95% reuse, 200% casting speed, 65% recovery speed and 75% AE self buffed, but these stats may vary based on your group and raid setup.

    Summary (raid buffed, idle):
    Crit chance: 2000%
    Crit bonus: 1500+
    Potency: 2000%+
    Fervor: 4%
    Ability modifier: 70000+
    Reuse speed: 100%
    Casting speed: 200%
    Recovery speed: 100%
    Doublecast: 100% (64,1% from belt, neck, cloak, shoulder purple adorn)
    DPS modifier: 1000
    Attack speed: 200+
    Multiattack: 200
    AOE auto attack: 100%
    Accuracy: 25%
    Flurry: 40%
    Weapon damage bonus: 100+

    Gear
    Gearing in this expansion is extremely easy, the only "hard" to get items are cloaks, belts and weapons. Finishing all solo quests in this expansion provides two mandatory items, Crystallized Cosgrove Pendant and Klick'Anon Signet Ring (this one being priority until you obtain Chromatic Cloak).
    Cloth armor among tiers (quest, solo advanced, heroic, raid) makes little difference. Raid jewelry after january update is a bit different but still there are very few truly unique effects so it comes down to "get the right effects from whatever tier you have at the moment."
    White adornments can be tricky, but you should get potency and or crit bonus in every possible slot, rest magical skill, int and crit chance. You should get primordial adornments, but it is time consuming.
    There are options with green adornments, but you want Marksman's Lens Spirit Stone or Stygian Core Spirit Stone.
    Same goes for purple adorns, in terms of choices, but unless you have Exceptional Jewel: Marring, you should go for 6x Superior Thalumbral Rune (Heroic): Power (or raid - haven't seen this one, crafted, solo equivalent) and 1x Rune: Doublecast.
    There are three no brain choices for War Runes, Winds of Obol, Bolstered Attributes and Truespirit Legacy. The other two slots can be filled with Magnitude and Overbearing Onslaught. But there are other choices that help the raid.
    Cyan adornments are straight forward, One Handed Rune: Greater Offensive Focus and Secondary Rune: Greater Offensive Focus.
    Weapon slots should be filled with Lacerator, The Sacred Flow and Blight Launcher (Bar Brawl, Submerged Lair, District of Ash). Those are easy to obtain (but rare) and have very dominant effects.
    There are quite a few options for charms but the best you can get are the ones with Kerafyrm's Rites (easy to get Blood of Xoth and hard to get Uzulu Stone) and with Growing Power (Relic of Hate).
    There are many jewelry choices but good effects are Furious Barrage (two do not stack, stacks with Furious Bolster), Aura Share, Amplifying Combination, Amplifying Power, Uplifting Criticals and Brotherhood of the Underfoot.

    AA
    Current expansion offers no additional AA choices. Enchanter, Illusionist and Shadow trees offer next to nothing and you can get a bit "creative" in these trees. However Heroic, Dragon, Prestige and Prestige Illusionist trees are 95% dogma. Use this AA template.

    Rotation
    Introduction
    Your overall DPS builds up from two factors. Time Warp phase and Temporal Mimicry. Here you can see the damage composition on raid fight that is +/- 50% single target, 50% two target (forgot to equip food and use temps, but this still gives you some representative sample of dps).
    [IMG] And timelapse of dps in that fight.
    [IMG]
    Summary
    When tank calls 5 seconds to pull use your Growing Power charm
    Cast Prismatic Chaos (scouts are good targets)
    Chronosiphoning
    Time Warp
    Peace of Mind
    Spellbind
    Flash of Brilliance (as you cast joust into 9 meter range)
    Blinding Shock (if your doublecast is low, use it after Unda Arcanus Spiritus after Time Warp ticks)
    Chromatic Illusion (as you cast joust back to 19 meter range)
    *Time Warp ticks*
    Theorems
    Unda Arcanus Spiritus
    Prismatic Chaos (if you have illusionist cloak, you do not have to include it in your TW rotation)

    Now you wait for next Time Warp cycle, keep in mind that using TW without Unda and Theorems ready is a waste.

    Pick two highest parsing guildies (wizard, assasin ideally) and ask them to macro a tell with "mimicry" in it and add this trigger <Trigger R="&#92;&#92;aPC -?\d+ [^:]+:[^&#92;&#92;]+&#92;&#92;/a tells you, &quot;.*(?i)mimicry." SD="Mimicry" ST="3" CR="F" C=" General" T="T" TN="63" Ta="F" />
    Make two macros for Temporal Mimicry (for each of your dpses) and just hit the right one when you get corresponding tell. If your Mimicry target is in your party, use your other charm with Kerafyrm's Rites after you get mimicry tell and cast Temporal Mimicry. If your target is not in your party, use Kerafyrm's Rites with Time Warp.
    Your dps highly depends on your ability to joust in and out for Blinding Shock and Unda Arcanus Spiritus. Blinding Shock, Flash of Brilliance, Peace of Mind, Spellbind, Chromatic Illusion can be cast while moving, so use these to move around without losing cast time.
    Toxify, Eles and DoomDrake like this.
  2. DoomDrake Well-Known Member

    Great information even for not illusionist - quick question thou
    How compares Finisher V and Furious Barrage effects? - what is better
  3. MrWashek Member


    Last time I checked (somewhen during holidays), it did not provide the boost, tested out on dummy. They might have fixed it.

    Furious Barrage is major boost for whole group, Finisher V is just your personal buff. 6 x 110% = 660% potency for each person in group or 80% and 205% below 50% for each? :) Aura Share for your second earring, as Finisher V is just on earrings. Furious Barrage procs all the time, also stacks with Furious Bolster, giving 230% pot for whole group per person.
    DoomDrake likes this.
  4. DoomDrake Well-Known Member

    Interesting - thank you. I'll keep in mind that for group environment I should swap my Finisher V for Furious Barrage. I got confused a bit with low proc rate on Barrage thou - just 1.8 per minute
  5. MrWashek Member

    I do not know the exact math behind proc rate but there is a lot of evidence that for example attack speed affects it.
    DoomDrake likes this.
  6. Eles Well-Known Member

  7. Jsnappy Member

    Good post. It's worth noting Prismatic Shock shouldn't ever be in the top 3, or even top 5 some encounters, of your parse IF you do not have the Chromatic Cloak. The casting time and base damage doesn't even come close to as damaging or efficient as Theorems without the Cloak.
  8. MrWashek Member

    Without the cloak it is not in top 3. It is usually Mimic, Unda, Shock, Autoattack, Theorems, Psychic Trauma and then Prismatic Shock (Chaos). But still it is worth casting in TW sequence as there are no other spells that benefit from it in illusionists spell book. And if you manage your sequence and movement right, you can cast Theorems, Unda, Blinding Shock and Prismatic Chaos in one TW sequence if you are low on DC.
  9. Dooh Member

    If anyone cares, last channel was dead but I have created a new Illusionist channel since the server changes. Its now /join Maj_Dul.Illusionists
  10. Sylke Well-Known Member

    Just curious, but what are the thoughts on DPS purple armor adorns instead of Power ones? :eek:

    Also worth mentioning Molten Devastation on either symbol or ranged for AE fights. (Probably secondary to keep the % damage increase on ranged, or Mythical ranged if you're fancy)
    (Not an Illy currently, but considering reviving mine for some raids when we're low on utility)
  11. MrWashek Member

    Since you cannot reforge into CB or Potency (you can regorge into potency, but it wont stick through zoning), it is preferable to get those stats before other stats obtainable via gear and reforging.

    Regarding weapon effects, I think it is definitely worth switching between Blackanvil Strike, Molten Detonation etc based on number of targets (easiest way to find out is dummies, I will post some parses once I get to that). There is also Anguish effect for your mainhand from weekly (or daily, not sure) mission, very nice 0,5% dmg increase debuff.
  12. DoomDrake Well-Known Member

    Potency no longer decay with zoning .. but for all purpose most of the casters tend to pick up gear w/o AMOD and reforge something like excess or casting speed or haste into AMOD (gloves from event heroic of stigians are good example)
    As for weapons .. for primary I am not sure if one want to lose early advantage for anguish but with absence of lacerator It might worth it.
    I could be mistaken but from what I see set up many of casters looking for lacerator (early advantage) - sacred flow (essence lich) - mythical range (early advantage) with 100% AoE you should proc early advantage left and right
  13. Sylke Well-Known Member

    That's the weapon setup I run on my Conj. I swap Wild Caller (Molten Detonation) in for Sacred Flow on AE heavy fights.

    I also opted for the DPS adorns (and 2 AE auto) since it made reforging so much easier.
  14. DoomDrake Well-Known Member

    Yes I forgot 2 war runes that will push your AoE - Screams of Battle and Wild Swings (22+35 AoE). I am still not convinced that DPS adorn are superior over Crit Bonus (or and AMOD) but I need some experiments
  15. Laiina Well-Known Member

    As far as I know, that was fixed a couple of weeks ago.
  16. DoomDrake Well-Known Member

    It were but to begin with - it was absolutely not worth while to reforge anything into POT - yield was laughable like 1.4% Pot for 50% Spell Casting speed....and what good do for you 1.4% POT when you already at 1500+? AMOD/AoE/DPS is different story
  17. Laiina Well-Known Member

    I agree with that. There are almost always better things to reforge into than a 1-2% increase in potency, which you can probably get just by upgrading a single purple rune from solo to heroic.
  18. DoomDrake Well-Known Member

    Even easier :) just get next rank of tithe (or what ever it calls)
    Basically from what I have seen best yield is either AMOD or DPS .. I went with AMOD ... mostly
  19. Hest01 Member

    Nothing is drastically wrong with this... It is a fairly typical TW rotation without mentioning use of Clicky's. I would for sure not do a TW rotation on pull though.

    There are allot of other things left off here... Mimic target choices and when to Mimic are key...so understanding what dmg is Mimicable is critical.
  20. MrWashek Member

    It is just my personal preference, my Mimic target is ready approximately 1 minute into the fight anyway and I have ethereal wand so I just do not like to hold back with anything, loss of dps. What really matters is jousting out and in for Unda and Blinding Shock. I can not stress that enough.
    DoomDrake likes this.