Soul blister is 1 second faster cast than nebula, and also more damage with the AA into it. no reason to cast slow [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] nebula on a single target. And dont get me started on the refesh comparison.
With 3 points into Soul Blister and none into Nebula, Nebula does more damage than Soul Blister with 688 Int. With Explosives + Hastenings, Nebula will do as much more damage than Soul Blister as it will without either AA. With 3 points in Soul Blister, none in Nebula: Soul Blister 836-1552 Nebula 839-1558 It's a viable alternative now for single targets with the Soul Blister AA but not Nebula, but without either, or with both aa's Nebula will still be a better option.
Wrong. Passive beats active. Thats why the Str line without catalyst is so popular. People like seeing big numbers, and are told by everyone that "crits are good". That doesn't mean they parse better. Thats why the agi line beats the wis line for dps. Lol, and one thread away is a bunch of folks saying Wisdom beats the stuffing out of Agility. Whose opinion is this one? Not the popular one it seems anyways... Personally, I think Agility line does well because of the cast/recast isn't represented well in theories because they don't take into account everything. Thats why in the wis line you max brainstorm and only put 4-5 points into freehand sorcery. No, that's called improving the obviously more powerful ability. The 2nd tier abilities have ALWAYS been lesser in power. Find two equal level abilities for comparison. Look at the Dracomancer gloves, nice ability but long recast. You swap them on to cast it then go to another pair of gloves with a passive buff, be it FT, self-help book, or deaggro. That's called min/maxing. Note that you still use the castable ones. A better comparison would be to compare two items, one that does very low but always ticking regen, and another one that gives a lot at once with a recast timer. And then ONLY have access to ONE, EVER. The passive one will be ticking when you don't need it, wasting it's power. The castable one can be used when you need it, rarely ever being wasted. The thing is, Aftershock will proc early in fights... or on trash mobs when it won't matter, or whatnot. Already, I've run into grouping situations where an extra group added and to survive we had to burn down the original group as fast as possible. If I had Aftershocks I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.. nothing to react with. With Hastenings I could lay down a bunch of front end DPS to the original group, killing them off very quick, so the tank ended up not having two whole groups wailing on him at once. All things being equal... I'd rather have the ability to choose when I slap on that extra damage than have it spread the extra 5% or so over the whole 2 hours. Other than the fact that Aftershocks is power free damage, I don't really see the worth of it.
Two things. First, you are ignoring the recast completely. At 5 ranks (why not, you are needing 20 to get Hastenings anyways), it's 2s cast, 3s recast, 0.5s recovery. Nebula is 3s cast, 9s recast, 0.5s recovery. In a damage per second concept, we are looking at 5.5s vs 12.5s. ~2.3x more effective if you intend to cast it over and over in a single target fight. Which is exactly what I'm talking about. Not to mention it's also ~2.25x more power efficient, so for the same Power used, you are ending up with over 2x the damage when used constantly. That doesn't take into account the Explosives line of course... which brings my to my second point. You have to put points into Soul Blister if you want to expand into Hastenings. Nebula is an option. You have to weigh increasing that, vs increasing Void Absolution and Apocalypse. Or spending an extra 5 points to get the extra damage. And besides.. an extra 10% more damage won't compare to 200% you are getting with Soul Blister with recast taken into account.
This is a feeling I agree with. Being able to perform significantly better in the "oh crap" situations is to my mind more valuable than a steady (but minor) increase over the entire length of a dungeon. It doesn't matter as much if I'm not #1 in the zonewide parse, as long as it's known "you really performed in that situation" is a feeling that everybody remembers more.
I just respeced to Focused Casting instead of Aftershocks (75 AA atm). Combined that with a move from Int to Str in the Sorc line (kept Full Agi line), just to see what the fuss was about. I positively guarantee we will get Focused Casting nerfed in the next update or two at the most. This line is sick in PvP. My group was literally speechless every time we hit a group. I singlehandedly dropped half of the opposing force in 15 secs. No joke. I am a full believer, no question. If you PvP and have the AA, get Focused Casting before it goes the way of Amazing Reflexes*. *Unless your a Q or Exile on Venakor. Then go with Propogations line. Works much better for your factions...
A few parsers from emerald halls last night, that's a single target mob, think it was actually 2 merged fights when another added. "Allies: (02:07) 3084210 | 24285 [Arwenia-Ice Nova-18978]" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Veli | 1802" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Arwe | 1709" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Chee | 1616" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Gold | 1514" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Faul | 1508" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Peti | 1498" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Burn | 1480" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Rill | 1477" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Bare | 1459" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Xlae | 1284" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Flae | 1145" (1167862574)[Wed Jan 03 23:16:14 2007] "Brav | 1121" Another single target trash (4),"Allies: (00:56) 1558615 | 27832 [Arwenia-Ice Nova-18801]" (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Arwe | 2692" - wiz (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Veli | 2359" - me (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Bare | 2266" - necro (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Chee | 1947" - swash (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Rill | 1897" - brig (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Xlae | 1800" - brig (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Gold | 1759" - ranger (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Peti | 1596" - conj (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Burn | 1506" - guard (1167863056)[Wed Jan 03 23:24:16 2007] Faul | 1448" - swash That's a named, 75x4 with adds. "Allies: (05:45) 6452195 | 18702 [Arwenia-Ice Nova-20169]" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Arwe | 1794" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Rill | 1556" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Peti | 1461" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Veli | 1460" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Bare | 1415" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Flae | 1399" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Faul | 1283" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Gold | 1093" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007]Chee | 1087" (1167865100)[Wed Jan 03 23:58:20 2007] Xlae | 987" The order is wiz, brig, conj, me - warlock, necro, illusionist, swash, ranger, swash, brig Those dps are consistent, no miracles have been used at all, I have 95 AAs and that was the first raid with both Focused casting and aftershock. I'm on Full Agi and Str without catalist on the sorcerer tree. Those selected parsers are not rly selected but i'm talking about consistent dps every single fight. For all the non-believers. Velizar, Fable Splitpaw
Ok, I finally broke down and respeced.. I can tell you I will never go back without even a second though. I was currently speced Strength/wisdom with 19AAs in explosive. I reseced to Agility/wisdom and put the 16AAs in Haste line and 3 into Chaostorm for the increase in damage and area. I have seen a considerable increase in my DPS. On single mob fights with the old spec, I was parsing between 1k and 1300. With the new respec I consistantly parse from 1400 to 2k on single targets. That is a major difference IMO and will not go back.
yea i just went from STR/WIS to AGI/WIS I never had catalyst. I've definately noticed an increase in dps also. Have 98 AA now, gonna try to get 100 today. Straight down hastenings and explosives btw. Broodling AA is still bugged. BTW, since ive switched from STR to AGI- I havent been critting that much less...
I'm a new Warlock at level 18. I solo and group but obviously don't raid at my level. Some cracking advice in this thread but I get the feeling its all raid-based. What would you suggest for I take in terms of AAs? Presumably the STR line would help my soloing greatly due to the bigger DPS - is AGI really worth it in my case or should I be looking at Str/Wis? Any input would be great.
imo, for soloing and grping, str/wis is doing it for me and has served me well. As you say, a lot of advice is with raiding in mind but fast casts & recasts wont aid me as much a guaranteed FHS critted void or apoalypse when soloing or in grps. plus, im a sucker for big numbers. a focused casted. FHS, catalysted Apocalypse is awesome on single or grp mobs, I dont notice long cast times as much with hastenings and focused casting so i dont miss the agil line. plus, i still parse well on raids, if i was getting embarrassingly low parses, i might be tempted to respec to str/agil or wis/agil based on advice here but based on past experience, wouldnt not like it as much in grps or solo. just my personal pref tho. . Message Edited by Pilgrim Divine on 01-10-2007 08:30 AM
IMO besides taking the 1 point for your familiar, I'd go down hastenings in the warlock tree first. Or at least take the first ability to maximum, as you'll use that nuke more than anything else for quite a while. After getting full hastenings with the end ability (that's an extreme "BOOM" ability, casting twice as fast), then perhaps take the other advice here, or not, at your preference.
