Possible support role

[Mono]

<p>I know many T7 raiding illusionists will focus primarily on dps and state that illusionists can do T1 dps, but say with my illusionist when i come to raid T7 i want to go more support with possibly the Sta and Wis aa line is this feasible or just pointless? By pointless i mean are the debuffs and management of hate gain negligble? </p><p> My illusionist is only lvl 58 and i've done a few T6 raids admitedly i didn't hit much with a mix of adept 1's and Adept III's but having played a ranger for years raiding it made a nice change to be able to do debuffs proc's and also manage power regen, ] this got me thinking i quite like the support role an illusionist could potentially play, but i'm not sure if its viable or needed.</p><p>Is this a feasible option? or should i stick to dps. </p>

[gchouin]

<p>Stick to dps.</p><p> Heal crits for your one healer (you will find your self mostly in a dps group with a fury) are nice but not worth the AA and that very small amount of agro reduction for your group is nice too but very weak compared to say a Troub's agro reduction and not worth the AA.</p><p>Why have all those deagros if you are not even going to be close to worrying about pullin the mob off the tank?  </p><p>The other abilities you gain from those lines are nearly worthless for a raid. </p><p>You are giving up a massive amount of DPS which is key in efficient raiding in order to gain several insignificant abilities.</p><p>Keep your group full of power, add tons of dps to your group members and do alot of dps yourself.</p><p>Beguile, 70 Illusionist of Unrest, Antonicas Nameless</p>

[Mono]

Thanks for the reply i had a feeling it would probably be better to go dps.. i know they give other aa's as options but there obviously hardly worth even the thought let alone taking support role aa's. will stick to dps then.

[Phineus]

<p> How much is this massive amount of dps you speak of?</p><p> Everyone probably has their own opinion on the matter. I didnt make an illus to be t1 dps. I made it to play a support role. I maxxed epiphany and savante. Have double attack and time compression. I use my pet concentration on raids for buffs usually. I still hit 300-500 dps without the pet and am happy with that. If I wanted to do t1 dps Id play a warlock <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Mono]

<cite>MarquisDesade wrote:</cite><blockquote><p> How much is this massive amount of dps you speak of?</p><p> Everyone probably has their own opinion on the matter. I didnt make an illus to be t1 dps. I made it to play a support role. I maxxed epiphany and savante. Have double attack and time compression. I use my pet concentration on raids for buffs usually. I still hit 300-500 dps without the pet and am happy with that. If I wanted to do t1 dps Id play a warlock <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote>Well its a intersting problem i guess. How beneficial is the support role of an illusionist to a raid. I know power regen illusionary arm and haste are handy but i'm talking about the de-aggro options for healers and support for grp and raids. I personally would like a greater perspective on these options and might even give them a go. However it seems with eq2 that the role you might want to play or do is normally surpassed by another class. But the book is open on this one, most raid illusionist have said dps purely because thats what kills mobs i guess however what about the death of healers? surely deaggro sta and wis line would be an added bonus for them.

[Recca[BK]]

you are only hitting 300-500 dps, do you go afk after you put savante and the int buff? you should be able to hit 500dps by just using prismatic and shimmering. you shouldnt be happy with 300 dps

[gchouin]

<cite>MarquisDesade wrote:</cite><blockquote><p> How much is this massive amount of dps you speak of?</p><p> Everyone probably has their own opinion on the matter. I didnt make an illus to be t1 dps. I made it to play a support role. I maxxed epiphany and savante. Have double attack and time compression. I use my pet concentration on raids for buffs usually. I still hit 300-500 dps without the pet and am happy with that. If I wanted to do t1 dps Id play a warlock <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote><p>Aye not T1 dps.  As always u should add dps to your group with TC and IA and concen for haste and syner.  Using a pet hurts raidwide dps.  Support? u mean put on epiphany and hit two other buttons? With Volatile your personal dps should be 1500 minimum.  You have a troub, a wizzy with ya and a coercer tashing you should not be under 2k.  The dps you add to your group is tough to say but it is a very large amount with correct group setup. </p><p>"however what about the death of healers? surely deaggro sta and wis line would be an added bonus for them."</p><p>Not sure what you mean with this Mono.  Healers should not be pulling agro ever during a fight. If your shammies are pre warding and MT proxy pulling it does not matter if you have them 99% hate reduc the mob will still go for them till the MT gets some hate. </p><p>Beguile, 70 Illusionist of Unrest, Antonicas Nameless</p>

[Phineus]

<p> I just did my first raid tonight with my illus at lvl 70. We didnt have a dirge so they used my time compression and double attack on the tank to help with aggro and regen for the mt group. I was hitting 600-800 in a group with a mystic templar warden guardian swashy. 300-500 is what I was doing at 68(coincidently the troub and I were tieing for dps most the night). I dont have wis line aa. Im still acruing acheivment, I focused on getting Chronomancer, time compression and double attack first so have 50 in eof and 30 somin in kos. My illus went from level 42 to 70 in about 3 weeks so aa is not maxxed. Im in mastercrafted more or less but have better than 90% the masters with int at 512 self buffed. I can blast to my hearts content and not break 1k without a pet. So to assume everyone should be 2k with my group setup might work fine for you. It apparently doesnt apply to me. </p><p> Something I noticed on my warlock too. DPS is highly affected by raid wide dps. A raid that is pushin or over 20k my warlock could bump 3k. A raid at 10k dps I had to work hard for just 1500 dps. I am grouped with only qeynos aligned archetypes and this seems to affect dps also. Brigands are the big debuffers. With double up isnt dispatch over 7k for debuff? </p><p> What all this means is personal dps is not cookie cutter. It depends on a lot of factors many of them out of your control. When he is in his raid he blows me out of the water. The difference is his guild has been raiding since june and we are still trying to get access to dt. Venekor isnt a year old yet. </p><p>  If have a toon that can top a parse. Its not why I play an illusionist.</p>

[Pins]

<cite>MarquisDesade wrote:</cite><blockquote><p> I just did my first raid tonight with my illus at lvl 70. We didnt have a dirge so they used my time compression and double attack on the tank to help with aggro and regen for the mt group.</p></blockquote> Time Compression helps Spells.  Last I checked, unless your tank was a Crusader, you are wasting Time Compression by casting it on them.

[gchouin]

<p>"If have a toon that can top a parse. Its not why I play an illusionist."</p><p>Not alot of us picked illusionist to be dpsers.  In raids it is what we are.  I would give up dps for more utility any day.  Sure you can forget about dps and go the support roll on a raid.  You can also have an Inqui pick there Tanking AA's and have them MT for your raid.  It is just both ideas are not very good ones.</p><p>Beguile, 70 Illusionist, Antonicas Nameless</p>

[auk]

Right, I don't think any of us chose the DPS role but just figured out from experience that dps, combined with some marginal utility and buffs that we can do /afk anyway, is what the class is best at. Think of it this way, and I'll try to use realistic numbers. An Illusionist in mostly mastercrafted without much/any proc gear and without a troub can probably do 800-1000+ dps with the DPS related AA choices. Another Illusionist in the same gear might do 200-400 dps while focusing on their utility, STA/WIS AAs and such. Are those few things worth 600 dps? The utility I do have is still there. A well timed daze last week saved our MT, it landed at the same moment he went unconscious. I also had over 1300 dps that fight, my group was well above half power at the end and the conj, assassin and wizard I was grouped with were top 3 DPS. The one healer I'm grouped with won't benefit from crit. I'm always with a troub so hate reduction is worthless. I have 8 EOF AAs in my mezzes so if called on I can still do that, with a troub's dove song and sentiment I'd be way over the subjugation cap anyway. I can do anything a WIS/STA specced Illusionist can do, and I can outdps the same any day. DPS and support aren't exclusive. The one thing that keeps me coming back to my Illusionist is the challenge. It is not easy. It took me a lot of work and practice to be competitive with my guild's top DPS classes, and it is still a great feeling that with the click of a button I can turn a certain wipe into a victory (as rare as that is). It would be too easy to not be dps. Its the challenge the class offers me that keeps it fun.

[Phineus]

<p> I watched an illus from our premier raiding guild on our server and he was only 1000-1200 and he had his pet out.</p><p> We dont have any freeport classes so we cant benifit from their buffs. </p><p> Thanks for tip on time compression, I guess I should read the description better. I thought it worked on taunts but did not look. I am brand spanking new to raiding with an illus. I did notice that while the warlocks and swashies dps went up and down a lot depending on timers. Mine was very consistent. Im neck and neck with the other raiding illus so I dont know what to say about raid dps. I have slightly more aa's than him but not much.</p><p> There was only one full raiding guild in qeynos up til december. So we are really just getting on our feet for gear. Qeynos was outnumbered badly which made getting set up for raiding tough. Since december we pretty much have free reign of the server. </p>