Those asking why they aren't doing as much damage as some others need to keep in mind that a lot of a Rogues (not just Rogues, most melee classes) dps comes from their group not from themselves
If you click two CAs one after the other the second will go off after the recovery time following the first attack. This is queuing. There is an instant in between the two where you can swing a weapon if you weapon is ready to swing. If your weapon only need 0.1 seconds to swing, too bad, it will get delayed a full second until after the next CA. This is why so many people have bad luck wiht low delay weapons. So if you are fully hasted with a 1.0 delay weapon you will swing once per second with CAs going. Basically it will be like you arent' hasted at all.
I never really pay attention to the swash boards, but I think I might after reading this thread. I have seen quite a few questions on DPS. What is the best group setup for a swash? etc Here is the AA's i went and this is not what most swashes did. STR 4-4-4-8 STA 4-4-4-4-8 WIS 5 Wehn raiding it varies what group I get put in becase a swash is very versatile. I am usualy with a fury for Agitate. I love that spell. Procs from other caster I don't usually have like phonexblade. ok let me give you a better example In Nizara fighting the x4 as the x4 with 2,000,000 hps grouped with a Guard, Monk, Temp, Fury, Coercer (No DPS on me). I Have agitate along with other long term group buffs and when they use their short term buffs that they have. Also keep in mind I just now find out about this Ruthless Cunning spell I didn't know I could get. Add me to the list of those who didn't know about it. On that x4 fight I average 900-1000 DPS with only the buffs from that group using GM Caustic at the begining for hte extra damage and then switching to Mental breach for power to keep using my CA's cause that is where most of my damage comes from. On a x4 raid I can get up to 1450 steady spiking up to 1800ish on a good fight with varios buffs but nothing that is exceptional to boost my DPS. This is with tanking specced AA's when the WIS line is suppose to be the BIG dps for a swash. I would say timing of using certain spells in a particular order to avoid a laspe in recast along with a good delay weapon to avoid not auto attacking between CA casts. IE use Guile and Whirl of Blades before using your big CA's for hte extra boost in damage. oh and i don't have any special equip either. just a 23% haste forearm item from Nizara and MoA. 37-44% of my damage comes from auto attack and the rest is from CA's. Hope this helps a little. P.S. I think the WIS line is a bit overrated but it is a different way of doing damage.
With zero outside DPS buffs the STA line and WIS line will give similar results. Every 100 swings: Wis line = 172 swings with normal damage. Sta line = 100 swings with 50% dps boost. Like swinging 150 times. Figure a hit rate of 75% as a low end average and the wis lines 72 extra swings turn to 54 extra swings. So on tough to hit named raid mobs or when hitting a mob from the front that has decent parry chance the Sta line is equal or better unbuffed. Now, in my typical raid situation I have an inq with 26% dps. If I cast rutheless cunning for 41% (perfect finesse is better yet) things get skewed. Every 100 swings: Wis line = 172 swings (150 against tough named) doing 167% damage = 250 - 287 effective swings. Sta line = 100 swings with 100% dps boost = 200 effective swings. Capped DPS (+100 from coercer and dirg/inq) Wis line = 150-172 swings doing 200% damage = 300 - 344 effective swings. Sta line = 100 swings doing 200% damage = 200 effective swings. That is a 50% boost to auto attack damage over the STA line. If you are doing 35% damage from auto attack and parse 1k, you would have parsed 1.175k with the Wis line. If you never recieve any outside DPS buffs and you never use STR proccing dps rings then you will nearly break even with a 75% hit rate. This may be the situation you are in. So, in summary Wis line is not overrated. It is the best damage line the rogues have. STA line gives you the effective damage of duel wielding while carrying a shield at the cost of not being able to boost it as much with dps spells. When EoF comes out and raises the DPS the gap in damage between the two will shrink, but the Wis line will always come out slightly ahead unless you are talking about a 50% hit rate or something really low. Oh, and since we are talking EoF, coule is going to be even more useful with the ability caps being raised and being made more meaningful (I bring this up since you took the top tier STA ability, I personally have traumatic swipe so coule doesn't play a factor). Message Edited by SmCaudata on 10-03-2006 09:34 PM
If you look purely at damage done and you assume that people will always have all the best options for weapons available to them, then the WIS line is probably best. I think my problem with the WIS line is simply that I am "wasting" an equipment slot. There is more to raiding than just DPS; you have to survive AE as well, for instance. A shield will help with avoidance and stats for AE; two dual wielding weapons have a little more stats as well, generally speaking. DPS is hugely important, but only when you are alive.
"With zero outside DPS buffs the STA line and WIS line will give similar results." Basically that means this only holds true for soloers. Double attack comes in to its own with high dps and Haste. Swashies have high haste anyway most of the time so the moment you have a dps buff added double attack (wisdom) line will run away with the parser. the reason for this is very simple. autoattack is 1x damage , +100 % dps is 2 x damage , +100 % haste is 4 x damage , +100% double attack come in at a whopping 8x damage. So if you are theoretically at 100% DA/haste/dps you would be doing twice the autoattack damage of someone with stamina line at 100/100 haste dps. Swashies are one of the easier classes to max haste and dps making Double attack very very powerful.
900/1600? At first I thought maybe he's exaggerating, but then - what if he isn't? If it were a 1-minute fight, what were YOU doing for 26.25 seconds? Seriously, the first step is run your own parse after the raid so you can look at the details, and compare yourself to him. Is EVERYONE idle for 26 seconds? Achieving the high-dps numbers you see here requires good equipment, good play, running 100%/100% "all" the time, staying "poisoned-up", good mates who shorten fights and/or provide power, and even getting some proc-buffs. Your equipment, CAs, and in-raid buffs may not be up to his level of course, but there are some simple things you can check to see if YOU are doing all you can do with what you have: - Do you have the Bloodlines DPS self-buff Ruthless Cunning? Some folks dont know it exists. - Does your UI provide real-time display of your Haste and DPS so you can make efficient use of your self-buffs . . . not waste them? Hopefully you have 15%-23% equipment Haste, enough rings to get the right procs when you are with (eg) an Illusionist OR a Coercer, and dont use Ruthless Cunning and Perfect Finesse when you are already near or at 100%. - Rogues have several "anywhere", one frontal/flanking, several rear/flanking, and one (Swashie) or three (Brigand) rear-only attack. Some rogues camp the target's butt during a raid, and never fire the frontal/flanking attack. Poof! Goodbye 40+ dps. - Some rogues move to the flank to fire the frontal, and don't fire other CAs while they move. Lost DPS. - Some rogues can't return to the rear of the mob accurately and lose time firing their rear-CAs. Lost DPS (EG, once at the rear, you can actually fire a CA while jumping to the front of the mob, fire the frontal, jump back while firing yet another with no time or position lost.) - Some rogues do not open every fight in stealth to open with Brazening and lose 1k damage per encounter. Or even fire Artic Blast while moving in on the call if that works in your raid setup. - On multi-mob encounters, some rogues do not fire Lucky Ploy soon enough, and lose a chance to fire it a second time, losing 1k-2k every encounter. Much rarer is the lost opportunity to fire a second Dashing Swathe. - Can you move well enough to not lose time firing any of your positional CAs, and still keep multiple mobs in Hurricane's frontal cone? Lost DPS. - Are you as Hasted as you are going to be when you fire Inspiration? - Is your MA slow to select the next target, and do you wait for that while he does not (hitting TAB and firing CAs until a new target is chosen)? - Overall, do you "swing" as often as he does? - Do you check your poison after each encounter, and re-poison if its got less than 4 charges left . . . before entering stealth to prepare for the next fight? Your Brigand knows when Dispatch - and even Devitalize - are coming while you don't. But you should have higher DPS, all else being equal. So something isn't.
The single most important reason for sucky DPS is raid displacement. I have turned off all spell effects because I can't see the mob otherwise. On multiple mob encounters, things get so busy I can spend 10 seconds trying to see where the back of the next mob is, or worse still, where the mob is our MA or MT is targeting. Mobs get pulled in walls, get pulled hugging walls facing out. If you assist your MT or MA at all times, you hafta wait until they retarget. If you don't, you have to retarget them and then wait for them to retarget or you risk a wrong assist. In short, your DPS can be amazing if your raid is. I know I suck because our other swash parses twice my DPS, so I know it's me :smileywink: But I still have the excuse of being a newbie raider with only very few M1 arts and relatively sucky gear. I still have all the problems mentioned above, though. I am in the wrong place at the wrong time way too often.
All it does is take practice. You will learn how your MT / MA pull each enc soon enc for each zone and you will naturally know what the next mob you are killing is. If your MA is unable to target the next mob fast enough if you use an MA then I suggest yoru raid force should find a new MA. IT isn't hard to hit F8 or Tab. Using all of avilities at the right time is key to parsing high. Do you use Hurricane? You will get a hell of a lot of extra attack with that spell up on multiple mob encs. Still pisses me off that one of our Conj beats me consistaly almost every fight but it gives me something to strive for and I keep him on his toes. We have fun with it. Using every spell in your arsenal helps. They do not take long to cast soo you should be able to cycle through them quickly and get a second shot of many of them off on the same enc. More if hte enc is a long one. I just found out about Ruthless Cunning and haven't had a chance to see how much it helps on raids but I didn't have it. There is 3 pieces of gear I am getting ready to get just for proc effects to help boost my damage without outside help. Once again it just takes practice.
Your doing your math wrong. Hit rate affects both STA and WIS equally. IE: 100 swings + 72 double attacks turns into 75 swings + 54 double attacks with 75% hit rate. STA lines 100 swings * 1.5 turns into 75 swings * 1.5.. So 100% hit rate = 172 'hits' WIS, 150 'hits' STA. 172/150 = 14.67% advantage to WIS 75% hit rate = 129 'hits' WIS, 112.5 'hits' STA.. 129/112.5 = 14.67% advantage to WIS. Hit rate affects all our AA's equally, so it has no effect when comparing AA lines whether you are at 10% or 100% hit rate. STR is best for raiding because the Crits scale with all buffs and all equipment/skills. WIS is second/tied for best because the double attacks scale with all buffs and equipment (not skills), and auto-attack damage makes a bigger chunk of raid fights. AGI and STA fall behind those two, because AGI's extra damage proc only scales with Haste buff, and STA's DPS bonus scales the same way as WIS, but caps out early on DPS%.
Yep. I did. I added that as a last minute thing and didn't really think. I started out with base damage, then only figured my hit rate on the double attack hit. Not sure what I was thinking. I probably would have caught it if I read it over again. On a side note: Where did the other STR/WIS rogues put their last point if they went max double attack, crits, and traumatic? My thoughts: Toporous strike: Small damage increase but increasing casting/recovery timers on the mob means less damage and a slightly higher chance at interrupting. I guess it all depends on how long the base cast timers are for the mob. Lunge Reversal: More damage. But an extra 50 base damage every 20 seconds is at best 5-10 dps in a raid situation. Defense: Easy to cap defense now, but with EoF it won't be. Parry: This will make lung reversal fire off closer to the end of the 20 sec cooldown. Also, my parry chance is 12% so adding another 1% seems like a big buff. Also, unless I am mistaken it doesn't add to your parry skill, making it better than defense. I have that last point sitting there and I am just not sure.
I am speced str 4/4/4/4 agi 4/1, wis 4/4/4/8/8 myself. I saved some extra AA's cause I wanted walk the plank. I might respect out of it but I doubt it. If I hadn't gone for walk the plank, I probably would have put my last point in torporous strike or lunge reversal...tough call, honestly.
This thread is about "Raiding Swash". There is only one thing important to a swashbuckler and that is survivability. If you can't survive and AE or take a few hits if you pull aggro (Which is hard to do with as much hate as we can get rid of) then you are of no use to the raid. The STA line offers you 9% more Health and 24 STA if you only put 4 into those ranks. You also get 420 Mitigation if you complete the line. NONE of these require you to have a shield on. These are passive abilities. The WIS line can offer more damage from the 72% double attack rate (If you put 8 into the 4th bubble). You also get a chance to deal some damage EVERY time you Parry or Riposte AND when the mobs Parries, Blocks, Deflects, or Riposte. You gain no defensive abilities what so ever going down the WIS line except a chance to riposte a frontal attack (Why would a swash be in the front of a mob consistantly?) Does this line offer you more damage? Yes it does in most situations. Dead Swashbuckler = No help to the raid. I am not saying that swashs that go teh WIS line die a lot cause there isn't any thing that should hit a swash that they cannot live through. What I think you should ask yourself is, do you want to limit yourself to 'only' being effective at DPSing or do you want to make yourself useful in other aspects of the game. I chose to make myself useful in other parts of hte game besides just Debuffs / DPSing. The game is more fulfilling that way. Tanking is one thing Swashs can do VERY well when geared and specced right. 70th Tanking Raiding (Not at the same time. YET) Swashbuckler.
I haven't ever had a problem with survivability on raids, so I chose to go with STR/WIS for maximum DPS. Having 1000 health left after an AOE and doing 1000 DPS is less helpful to the raid then having 500 health left after an AOE and doing 1200 DPS. Riposte in front quadrant and parry all other quadrants is actually quite useful by the way. 8% omni-directional damage avoidance that doesn't get reduced by ANY cap is quite useful. Not all swashies want to be mini-tanks. Anyways, with Coule and the 8% riposte/parry, I find I can tank quite well. Not quite as good as if I had a shield going too, but quite good enough for me, and the extra damage more then offsets the lost tankability when soloing.
Never had a problem with survivability on raids here either, and I'm primarily DPS specced. 4/4/4/8 on str and 4/4/48 on wis is the best spec for DPS, with your choice of wherever you want to put your last few points. We're rogues, the most hardy scout class....shouldn't have a problem surviving, really. Also, yes whether you want to be a mini tank or not IS relevant. Why? because, I don't know about you, but most rogues don't want to tank in a raid. Their primary job is not tanking. Message Edited by Cocytus on 10-07-2006 11:32 AM
I joust AEs and never pull aggro so survivability isn't really an issue for me. I'd rather do 1300-2000 dps than be a sub par tank. That's the crusaders job...
