Originally Posted by Kewangeder
Well, to be fair... if the first half of the thread is outdated, then you only have 50 pages to go through.  (More accurately, every 15th post or so contains something durable; the rest are short-term discussions of side tactics or temporary gear combinations, particularly trinkets.)
If the spirit shard hood is yielding such good results for you in BT, then I'm very tempted to try that. The other options still seem grim. I'd hate to pour an entire MSD into an Incanter's, for example, just to test it against my 3-ruby SS. I'd also hate to spend my arena points on the hat, instead of the weapons I -really- want, unless I knew for sure it was an improvement. (Not to mention the thought of doing that and then seeing the hat drop on our next pick-up Kara.) |
People still refer back to things in those pages though, and some of it still applies. If you only started on page 58, or whatever, you'd be pretty lost anyway. I didn't know what 'double dipping' was forever because I had tried to do that. I've since read the whole thing, or at least skimmed it.
As for my helm, let me make a few notes before you run out to get an incanter's or something and gem it. I was/am undergeared compared to the other guild mages. I had been on an extended absence and just came back to the game a little under 2 months ago. I was regularly at the bottom of meters with fire because of my gear. You really can't effect your dps as fire too much with player skill, it plateaus quickly. I was looking forward to grabbing 2pc T5 since it's largely a skill based spec with that, and I thought I could jump up a bit. Then the MSD change and I saw that AM spam was doing 100+ dps more then fire spec in comparable gear. I didn't want to wait until I got a T5 helm (since we don't run ssc/tk every week now and other people who want them are higher dkp) to try it out. I also had quite a bit of gold to spend to try it out. I had the spirit shards, and I finally just decided to run out and get it instead of trying to grind out enough points for merc glad helm or trying to get into karaz runs (which happen even less then SSC/TK) for a T4 helm.
I saw a significant increase in dps, especially on shorter fights and trash, with switching out the spellstrike and re-gemming all +9dmg gems or a purple here and there to offset the handful of +8hit I still have. I've also been bored with fire for a long time, so I'm happy with this spec.
Originally Posted by Rudi-CO
I don't have a Lightning Capacitor. On our first-ever Void Reaver try (our guild and realm is not very advanced, sorry) I got:
Try 1: 629DPS, 73% DPST, 100% Arc Missiles 0% miss.
Try 2: 681DPS, 66% DPST, 100% AM 4.3% miss.
Try 3: 569DPS, 75% DPST, 100% AM 3.9% miss.
Try 4: 671DPS, 81% DPST, 99% AM 1.1% miss.
I re-specced to 10/48/3 for Gruul on Wednesday (which I would say is a fairly similar fight with a fair amount of running around and all) and put back on my Spellstrike, T4 shoulders and maiden boots (+1016, 163 spell hit) and got:
Try 1: 691DPS, 93% DPST
Try 2 (Kill): 823DPS, 85% DPST
I think with a Lightning Cap AM spec and spam is a viable alternative to 10/48/3 Fire in T4-level and crafted gear, but the short range and lack of mobility is annoying.
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These two encounters, and your gear choices for each, really make this a highly flawed example. You switched out far inferior gear (pre-kara blues?!) for arcane to compare with T4/5 equivalent gear? Also, the two fights are very different. You can have much higher dpst on void reaver if done properly, but it requires using fireblast and other spells to maximize dps. You have enough time after you get targetted to finish your cast and then move far enough away to start another cast. However, you have to be very aware of all other players, cause if you get targetted, finish cast, move, start cast and some other player had been in that spot before then you are either going to get hit and silenced (not good) or have to stop your AM cast (lesser of two evils, but still shitt), resulting in a huge loss of mana for almost no damage.