So, I've taken a long break (2+ years due to RL Issues) and recently came back to EQ2. My main is my necro, who was level 95 and maxed out on Nagafen and recently moved to AB server. When I first came back, I was standing around in HKC zone-in (a zone I'd never seen before) looking for a group when someone sneered at me "dude, your gear is crap. go buy handcrafted". I was taken aback, because I was wearing raid gear I'd gotten at level 95 back "in the day", completely fabled out, adorned, all master (95) spells, and sitting on 320 "max" AA. Long story short, I thought I understood how to play my class, but my how things have changed... So, I went and got handcrafted, leveled to 100, completed the HQ line for AoM, got the mount and started running the advance solo and TS heroic zones to gear up. Along the way, I've noticed mages with better gear doing significantly higher DPS. At first, I attributed it to gear differential. I noticed the people who are doing well all had at least 4 gemmed "green" PS level gear; or at least 4 blued and/or MC gear. But now, as I've transitioned out of my solo gear into a mix of blue 4 gemmed, green, and MC gear (with expert or better level spells all around (my pet is grandmaster)), I'm parsing much better than I was, but no where near 6-12 million that I see other necros doing. Heck, I was grouped with one necro in handcrafted 95 gear doing a touch higher than 2million dps; so, my net take away - if gear isn't the issue, then it must be... me. Hence, this thread. I spent a lot of time (all day Sunday) this weekend blasting away at the Epic training dummies in my guild hall, trying to refine my AA setup (dual conversion now, thank you forums) and technique. I managed to get things worked out to where if I really timed everything perfect and didn't get fat fingered, I could eek out almost 2 million dps. I threw my keyboard across the room in disgust. 2 million DPS? That's it, if the moon and stars align, and I don't make any mistakes, I can manage to do 1/2 to 1/3 what other necros with similar level gear accomplish with apparent ease? (one fellow mage told me he could do 5 million dps when he's being "lazy", and he had to hold back to not rip aggro from our under-geared tank)... I'm hoping that someone on the forum here can set me straight. My long-time strategy for playing my necro has always been cast consumption, send pet, then set up a dot rotation that puts the longest duration dot up first, rot, the next longest, rot, etc. And fill with DD spells like lifetap, soulburn, the new killer AOE wave spell (forget the Latin sounding name), or toss up dumbfires alternating with rot. I try hard to never recast a dot that's all ready up, and to keep rot up all the time. Frankly, these days, playing my necro feels a lot like playing an EQ1 bard. Sigh. Anyway.. Doing this cast-order perfectly, never missing a beat, can yield me 1.8 to 2 million dps on a training dummy. Which is off by about 50% of what I think I should be doing. I'm not running around asking for nerfs or changes; I don't have DPS envy. I merely want to feel that I'm playing my class correctly and contributing appropriately to my group. I feel embarrassed when someone shares an ACT parse and I'm sitting just above the tank and healer, with a 2x to 3x margin between me and the next guy. Why would anyone want to take me along when that's how I perform. Wise forum mages, and necros specifically, please help!!! Syere
Maybe you are doing okay, you can still use some ToV armor at level 95 and parse well. it could be that you only need some jewelry with procs to boost your damage. Maybe you wanna check the top guilds who are their necros and try to contact them maybe someone can share his/her wisdom. You also can link your profile via EQ2U so people can check your gear, aa's, etc
My eq2wire profile is http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/446680008836 (Syere on AB Server). In summary, Level 100, 343 aa, 720K HP, 140K resists... averaging about 1.5 million DPS.
One big thing is you need to get a wand ranged weapon... mages do their dps from RNG. That's a start - after that I'm guessing your issue is an issue of what your casting with a little bit of gear problems intermingled.
Well a few things I can tell you right now that help your dps. Your dumb fire pet, those are high priorities. You need to get them out before timewap hits. Once time warp hits, flesh rot, unda, bloodcoil and if you're not lagging you can fit in a soulrot. So typically starting a fight I'll do toxicity, souldburn, pot temp buff, unload 3 dumb fires, by now TW will hit and I unload the spells I mentioned earlier. Once TW down, I'll prioritize dumb fire > souldburn > bloodcoil > soulrot > life tap > other filler spells until the next time warp and I'll repeat the sequence again. Your cb and pot is also a little out of balance. In an ideal group, with buffs and temps, your potency will be way higher than CB. So ideally unbuffed, you want your CB to be higher than your pot. You can look at my character OFricious and that's his stat right now in group since I logged my group out without disbanding. In the group his pot is higher than his cb even though I put most cb adornment on him. And that affect is even more pronounce once the jewelry and temps starts firing off. Also group buff plays a major role as well. I box my own group, so I have my own ideal setup. My necro does 10-14 mil st depending on the duration of the fight. I was trying to kill Kerridus with my group but at that time My group didn't quite have the dps for it. So I asked a Templar, a necro and a warlock to come and help. I put the templar into my group and put my necro into another group with the other necro and warlock. On the same fight, my necro went from 10mil to 4.7 mil because he was missing my group buffs. So in another word, your 1.5mil average could be 3mil + average with the right group. Maybe the other necros had a good group composition so their dps is higher. Anyway, give my sequence a try, maybe that'll help you out a bit.
The Caustic Hematic Wand I have in my setup is about as good as I can possibly get. Fabled level 100.
Ok, since I suspect my problem has to be cast order, I'm going to spell out what I just did in Guild Hall on an Epic training dummy to parse 1.82 million DPS. Given that I don't have TW, nor have I worked where TW goes into my sequence I think I'll be extremely explicit so maybe someone can point out my mistakes: Syere's Single Target Strategy (--> symbolizes goto): {start fight, send pet!} /pet attack shadowstep shockwave {consumption: try to keep up, pri 3} consumption elemental toxicity {dumbfires: try to keep up, pri 2} animated dagger soulrot awaken grave soulrot blighted horde soulrot {dot refrain: pri 1, keep as many possible dots stacked at all times} rot flesh soulrot bloodcoil soulrot vamp bats soulrot pandemic soulrot {soulburn: use as first priority filler whenever up - ideally while 4-5 dots are hitting concurrently} spellbind soulburn unda arcan spirtus (standing at 15m this hits very hard) {fillers: pri 3; use these when needed (low health) or when nothing else is up} lifetap soulrot --> dumbfires (if up) --> consumption (if up) --> dot refrain & repeat fillers as needed until <20% health, then {finishing blow: Pri 0 when mob is low health} spellbind lifeburn lifetap --> dot refrain Dead. Soulburn is my big hitter, hit for just over 6 million. I'm not sure what I can do about gear, except be a burden on groups doing green armor zones until I get reforgable items in more slots. I've adorned for doublecast as the 10% spell cast speed items are pretty common drops for me (I had a ton of them in my bags).
I forgot Undead Hord. That's my first pet spell if it's a "big" target. I also use absorb magic, mortality mark, and siphoning of souls along with reconstruction to heal my pet if needed, but rarely.
Take out shockwaves, animated dagger, shadow step, and obsorb Magic those should only be cast when you got nothing else to cast, which is unlikely unless you got low reuse speed. Shouldn't even be using shadowstep. Shockwave only when there are multiple mobs, and pandemic when there are linked mobs, otherwise don't cast them unless you got nothing else to cast. Spellbind, rot flesh and unda and souldburn should be casted early to debuff the mob and allow your big hitters to start running down its reuse timer. Elemental should be precasted if able right before the fight start. You're doing exactly what I see some people do, which is casting frivolous spells first and save their big hitters for later? I'm not sure why people do this. You need to debuff the mob, hit with with your heavy hitters early, then cast your low priorities stuff and recast your big hitter as it comes up if you're not expecting time warp. Also set the dummy to immortality mode and keep practicing. I also see some people granny click it, you need to que up the next abilities as soon as the previous spell is casting. If there's any delay between spell casting, it'll hurt your dps. Also reforge your reuse and recovery into auto attack stat. Not sure how you even got 0 dps lol.
Well, not to be defensive, but I look at shockwave and shadowstep as free damage (zero cast time), not casting them when they are up is throwing away free dps; but, since I've only been casting them once per target when I send my pet, I don't really see it as helping or hurting much. Absorb magic is an amazing spell (with TH), that heals my pet to almost full in under a second. So, I'll be keeping that as well. Auto attack stat? Excuse me? I realize that over 100% on reuse and recovery is a waste, but a lot of my gear isn't reforgable yet. Once I can reforge it, auto attack is the last place I'd have put it since I am a ranged caster and never, ever in melee range. Maybe SWD, potency, or ability mod, crit bonus or something else. But I don't understand why any mage would put any stat in auto attack (assuming you mean DPS/haste melee auto attack stats). Please elaborate.
Most ppl are not fast enough to que up the next spell to cast right after an instant spell so it's time wasted once the fight start. However if you got it in a macro and just mashing then you're welcome to do that. Unless you're soloing, you don't really need to heal your pet. In group pet will heal itself or the priest will so there's no need to use obsorb Magic to heal your pet. I'm not home right now but I'm fairly sure obsorb Magic has a lower efficiency than an AA arcane bewilderment, which is even lower in priority vs spells like life tap and soulrot which has a very fast reuse. If you got 100% reuse, there should be no reason to even cast those spells as soulrot will constantly refresh and your big hitters coming off cool down throughout the battle. Right now on your character sheet I see 0 dps, haste and multi attack. I'm not sure how that's even possible since some of your gear should at least have haste or dps. I see some of your jewelry having recovery and reuse speed, you can use those to reforge. Every little bit help. To be honest necro is a very easy class to play. If you're not worried about timing your spells for burn phase, you can litterally put all your spells with the exception of bloodcoil and bat onto one macro in order of efficiency and still pull great dps.
I've been really careful to avoid mêlée gear and stick to caster gear, which is why you see low mêlée stats on Syere. I'm using macros, but very judiciously so I can optimize the effectiveness of my DPS; I have one for {pet attack, shadow step, shockwave, consumption and elemental toxicity} which gets hit every time I send pet on a new target. It helps keep consumption and et up most of the time. I also have a macro for each dot that double up all my dots with soul rot, so soul rot is always queued. As I said when I mentioned absorb magic in the first place, healing my pet is situational and rarely cast; I don't use it when I'm grouped or parsing in the GH for example, and its not part of my rotation so lets not waste time discussing it. I'd like to understand better how mêlée stats will help a ranged caster increase his dps. Please elaborate; my autoattack is set to ranged always, which, unless I'm mistaken on the mechanics, is only keyed off my casting abilities and spell weapon damage bonus, not DPS, haste and multi-attack. If this is incorrect, I need to reconsider what constitutes caster gear vs. mêlée/scout gear and start rolling on things I thought were junk before, and start timing my ranged auto-attack better (presently, I'm all but ignoring it to spam refresh dots).
Dps multi attack and haste all affect wand dmg. With my current stat it's free ~500k dps or so on st and close to a mil on AOE fights. Just keep pot/cb gear but reforge any wasted reuse and and recovery speed into dps ma and haste. You don't have to worry about timing wand attack. It'll go off regardless of whether or not you're in middle of a cast. Also consumption is another fairly low priority spell. I only cast it prior to lifeburn or I know the group is going to be taking some heavy incoming damage. Otherwise I'm not going to cast it.
Auto attack stats were changed so that there are no wand stats. which means that DPSmod haste multi attack flurry and ae auto will all affect and boost your wand damage. Stick with your normal casting gear, but any extra reuse/recovery/cast speed you have can be reforged into your auto attack stats to boost your wand for free damage.
I reforged all my extra reuse and recovery into dps, haste, and aoe & multiattack. I think I messed something up when I replaced 2 +int adorns with +dps that I had in my bags, because while my wand damage went up (from 20k to 22k dps) my overall dps dropped from 1.88 million to 1.4m.
Do you have level 100 crafters/adorners? Make yourself some war runes. If not, pay a crafter to do so. I don't see any on your character right now at all. I suppose everyone has their personal preference but at the moment my necro has Truespirits Legacy, Winds of Obol, bolstered attributes, Screams of Battle, and Overbearing Onslaught. I don't think I'm giving you bad information when I say those first three are going to be nearly universal on mages with the last couple slots being more personal preference. I think Vasco has given you some great suggestions. It looks to me like you might be hurting yourself by allowing mediocre spells to interfere with your really good ones. Just make sure you keep the hardest hitting abilities on cooldown early and often. Do you have forced ranged set for your autoattack? If not, do so (and I definitely agree with the others about reforging excess into dps/haste/MA/AE so you get more bang for your buck out of that free wand damage.) One other thing and this may not be agreed with by others, if you are like me and pretty much just doing heroic content on your necro you might consider adding a 3rd AA spec that is right side prestige. Lots of the AoM heroics have big AE fights and I seem to do a bit better with a right side spec in that content. For single target stuff I agree that your dual/rot flesh spec is better. Might at least try a zone with it to see what you think.
This xpac fairly dramatically changed the gear focus of casters (and scouts). The fundamental issue you are having is using a pre-AOM mindset (focus on potency, ability mod, etc.), when although you still need to have high pot and ability mod somewhere around 15-25K, crit bonus and the auto-attack stats are very important to churn out higher DPS. Agree with Vasco that your spell rotation was entirely borked (shadowstep and anim. dagger don't even make it on a hotbar; shockwave on solo mob? nope; lifetap should be in your rotation and also because it can trigger reuse on LB (which is almost never good to use on grouped encounters until the last mob is left and there is enough time to get a full LB); pandemic not in any single mob rotation; but include consumption in my general rotation, and pre-cast it on fights with ET. Temp clickies should be hit as often as possible, including charms and other temps that can be cast without being equipped.
Sorry i am just jumping in here and trying to understand since i have an Alt Necro... I can not find Flesh Rot on my necro. can some one point out where this comes from? I am following and like all of the casting order info ty.
Rot Flesh is an AA Ability on the left hand side of the necro tree. You can get a couple points (2 to be exact) into it if you do dual conversion spec. It's a long long recast hard hitting short duration dot that, at first, threw off my rotation and did more harm than good. But once you get the hang of it, it's a great spell to have up/on as often as you can.
