Trying to boost my dps and just want to understand some mechanics and advice I've read here and elsewhere. For the record, I'm going melee. 1. Which Illy spells/abilities benefit from Doublecast? AB, UB, PT are ones I notice DCing. 2. Why is 200 the recommended attack speed? Is it because the bonus over 200 towards flurry isn't worth it because flurry doesn't proc anything? I'd also like to know how any melee illys out there allocate between DC and flurry.
1. Which Illy spells/abilities benefit from Doublecast? AB, UB, PT are ones I notice DCing. -Not enough to make it a valid choice imo, and you will only get first tick on PT to DC. *Only encounters I find worth having high DC for are large linked groups. 2. Why is 200 the recommended attack speed? Is it because the bonus over 200 towards flurry isn't worth it because flurry doesn't proc anything? -If you want to melee not a bad idea to push to 400 on your attack speed solid conversion to flurry, slows down a little beyond 400. I'd also like to know how any melee illys out there allocate between DC and flurry. -Best bet on cloak/belt/shoulder adorn, either flurry or potency. Flurry for personal melee DPS, potency for higher overall damage and group damage. -On a side note my preferred two hander is the PK two hander. Only 7.0 second two hander available. Vulak drops a decent 6.0 second. -Green adorns Eye of Draazak, solid melee neck fabled darkfaith beads, think it drops form one or all of the fabled KoS zones. Hope it helps
during TW I always tend to cast theorems and the green AE move (since dots TW as well). and maybe master strike if possible. Also PT doesn't DC, only the first trigger of it does 200 haste is the goal because as an illy you have quite alot of other stats to get. as far as classes go I would say illies are the most hybrid, you want the most out of basically every stat except strikethrough. but if you can get more than 200 haste without giving up other things, go for it. it's very easy to decide between DC or flurry belt/cloak. just ask yourself which does more of your damage? your auto might be the highest on your parse, but it will only account for maybe 15% of your overall dps, which means your spells count for the other 85%. DC > flurry atm my illy is something like 610 cb/pot, 615 dps, 17 flurry, 30 SDA, 130 casting, 100 reuse, 67 recovery, 400 haste, 23 acc, 23 ability mod, 80 AE auto. this is all solo of course. I would advise you to switch to your ranged weapon over melee as well. but of course others will talk about how great melee is. but we have been over this a million and 2 times. having tested it myself (having both 50 wdb and 50 swdb). I would say your melee would pull at most, 50k more dps single target, and maybe 100-150k more dps on big AoE fights. but that's if you are good at timing, don't have to joust, or if your pet never dies. cause if your pet dies even just once, you will have a delayed auto attack while resummoning him. if you have to joust you will miss a few autos, if you are just slow on timing some you will pull less dps. all in all range and melee are about the same dps 90% of the time. range is just easier. the only way your melee will do much more than your range is if you wear that mage neck that only increases wdb by like 35 or 40. I wear the avatar finisher neck since once again, spell damage > melee damage overall
-it's very easy to decide between DC or flurry belt/cloak. just ask yourself which does more of your damage? your auto might be the highest on your parse, but it will only account for maybe 15% of your overall dps, which means your spells count for the other 85%. DC > flurry -I certainly could be wrong about this but I don't see DC being a stat worth raising as an illusionist. I have not taken a close look at the sum of the spells that make up none melee/wand damage. I know most of it is comprised of spells, and such that will not benefit from raising DC. Some spells with slightly longer recast times that can DC can be used in tandem with Time warp redundant at times. I think at best flurry vs doublecast would be a wash or close. Potency or crit bonus is probably the best choice in the slots that take flurry or doublecast I would think. -Trying to boost my dps and just want to understand some mechanics and advice I've read here and elsewhere. For the record, I'm going melee. I'm assuming Tamon wants to melee. I personally enjoy melee on my illusionist. You wont have to look for long to find alternative gear for the few fights that require you to fight at ranged or joust often. You may want to level up additional green adornments. For most to all of the current content outside of GE you can get away with meleeing more often then not. With the vast array of gear that came along with ToV and the changes to wand mechanics you have a choice. Both have their merits, neither one is far superior to the other. To any Developer that may drop in on this thread I say unto thee! If I hit you with: http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/3047594765 or http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/1133466764 :which one do you think will hurt more(I'm a newb no idea how to post a pic of them.. log in a view them for dramatic effect!)?
you can melee if you want, but since the OP made a thread about tips to improve his dps, I gave it to him that he should probably range. also he doesn't list his, but I am sure you could probably gain dps by changing your AA some OP
Apart from your primary, what sort of gear/aa/stat goal differences are there between melee illy and ranged illy?
I'm not sure I'm following you here. The vast majority of our abilities are spells with a handful of CAs mixed in from AA spec. Off the top of my head I can't think of any damage SPELL that does not benefit from DC. The reactives get more triggers. I also can't think of any of our damage spells that are on a 1 minute cycle like TW (assuming 100% reuse.) With TW only lasting 5 seconds I'd much prefer to do what I can to also DC as much as possible for the remaining 55 seconds of every minute. Flurry is nice but nothing I'd pursue too aggressively. For what it's worth, in heroic content with only a few exceptions you can still stand at the edge of melee range to use the couple CAs that are decent. That's what I tend to do while still using my focus weap for auto attack damage. To the OP, I'd follow the recommendations that Ucala is giving.
The original poster posted the semi-newb illy questions. His opening statement included the words For the record, I'm going melee. I was just doing my best to provide advise in regards to the question he asked. You have the option, you can melee or use a wand. Both are viable options outside of some of the higher end raid encounters. I'm not sure if the OP will be spending a fair amount of play time in those situations, at the very least it would be wise to have some alternative gear to swap in and out for different circumstances if you do in fact want to melee. Wand damage was brought in line with Melee damage with the overhaul done to wand damage. The edge an illusionist will receive outside of gear choices is from the AA that gives .300 base auto attack multiplier, the equivalent of 30WDB if I understand the math correctly. I am 99% sure the reactives do not benefit from DC only time warp. I logged into game raised my DC up to 31% cast both Theorems, and Prismatic Chaos 50 times each, every cast resulted in 5 triggers. Psychic Trauma will only benefit from DC on the first tick, with this spell same is also true when using time warp. Of our heavy hitting single target only spell on a one minute reuse time, master strike. Arcane bewilderment is on a 30 second reuse time, and I can see no reason why not to use this in your time warp rotation on single target or small encounters. So 100% of the time Master strike will DC and Arcane bewilderment will DC 50% of the time. I am 99% sure group procs like peace of mind, elemental toxicity, victorious concerto, etc. do not proc. I am 100% sure item procs do not Double cast. So the next question would be of every spell in your parse excluding crushing damage, combat arts and the spells and procs listed above with 0% flurry and 0% DC would that damage be greater then your crushing damage? I am fairly sure that even in the encounters that you are forced to fight from ranged you will not be leaving much DPS on the table going for flurry over DC. Best choice as a team player in a DPS raid group would probably be critical bonus and/or potency over flurry or DC.
Gear : Only a few that are truly melee based, I listed one of the necks above. Its not amazing but it is a solid neck for any chanter that melees. White adornments : Either spell skill or weapon skill. I have not checked recently but when they changed spell skill to impact the minimum damage of a mages spells, many of the illusionist AAs and spells where not effected for some reason, but they may have fixed that. Green adornments : Eye of Draazak Vs. Essence of the Duality or equivalent, listed are ToV raid crafted. AA build : not sure what would vary melee vs. ranged not much I imagine. Stat : After you hit all your soft caps under offense and auto attack, if you prefer to melee push DPS mod as high above soft cap as you can. Attack speed up to 400ish I would say returns diminish slightly beyond 400. Accuracy 25-30 for either melee or ranged. AE auto 100%, if you run with a conjurer a lot 75%. Again I am not 100% on this but from a cursory glance I cant find a valid reason to raise my DC even when I am fighting from ranged flurry seems to be either close or equivalent to DC.
I could be fairly wrong, but I am sure Theorem's had more than 5 triggers to begin with.... but this goes back to my needed a better AA set up to gain more dps. he is accurate though that theorems won't DC. Theorems on Timewarp will give you 9 triggers. normally it will only give you 6. and it won't DC. I would still argue that the DC/cb/pot belt/cloak is the way to go though as your green AE moves parse good on both AE and single target, and they can be DC'd (atleast fairly sure) and it doesn't hurt any. I would use melee green adorns on whatever spec you are gonna use though, melee or range. as for the difference, well the gear you will want is completely different. atleast if you want to take advantage of it. just like that one illy that kept claiming that melee was the way to go, and that his melee was beating other illies range by 500k dps. if you check out his toon the guy probably has atleast 100 more wdb than any other illy (since other illies don't take that foolish gear). so of course his melee will hit higher. I wouldn't really say AA is different, cause with 350 AA you will get whatever you want and than some you don't want but just cause (in other words I have everything I want in my AA, but also take the str line that gives the .300 multiplayer to melee only even though I range, since you also gain 50 dps/MA/haste). Gnomad is accurate.
I'll readily admit that I did my testing by using TW and didn't know that about reactives. I just now went back and reread TW and it specifically notes adding triggers to reactives. It's BS that normal DC doesn't affect those. Now I'm really annoyed. (Not about being wrong but about the mechanic itself.)
I could be fairly wrong, but I am sure Theorem's had more than 5 triggers to begin with.... It does, my mistake. I was double checking the double cast of PC, Theorems, PoM on a training dummy using ACT and spell timer add on. 1st trigger was getting gobbled up by recasting it on the testing dummy. I need a tinkered fact checker developers please and thank you! New level 96 tinkered recipe go!
yea I noticed that too, TW adds triggers on it. quite sad it won't normally DC but like I said during my TW I usually cast Therems, chronic shower (or whatever) and either master strike or the other reactive we have
I have 40% DC and 30% flurry (in raids) and i'm allocating more points into flurry now with the next gear upgrades I have in mind. Personally, i think 40% DC is a good point to be at, should be enough to DC the spells worth DCing and TW will take care of the rest. I just got the Zlandicar 2h (as Ucala found out, sneaky bastard!) and seeing my crushing increase so gonna focus on getting more flurry to further increase those melee DPS numbers. I always DC Arcane Bewilderment, Theorems, Chromatic Illusion and Prismatic Chaos. Master Strike if available, if not then Chromatic Shower or Psychic Trauma. If neither of those 3 are available then i go directly to Speechless or Paranoia.
