STR/AGI COMBO

[Bradclk]

Just wanted to see what you guys though of using the STR/AGI Lines as a combo... Been using it for about a week now and still topping parse - and more consistent on parse that STR?WIS or AGI/WIS THANKS! btw This is BRADCLK from GUK...

[Mareth]

Uhm. 2/3 of the threads on this board is about AA choices. And you open a new one.

[Bradclk]

Haven't seen any threads on this combo specifically. Most are on STR/WIS or AGI/WIS.

[tass]

agi is always the best as it gives you faster times in casting.

[valkyrja]

I recently respeced to this build the other night.  Mostly out of curiosity, but it seems that it could be killer, espcially with the right gear supporting the build.  IMO, having the spell haste of the AGI line mixed with the high crit percentage could in theory beat out the AGI/WIS combo I've been using for a long time.  With gear, I'm sitting at 20% to crit, plus all the wicked spell haste.  By the end of the week, I'll have enough raids in to make a decision if this is a good build or not.  But so far, I can tell you it's fun to see all the big numbers <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Morhi]

I been using agi/wis though ive been thinking trying str line , with agi or wis not sure, not sure if i want to loose the reduce power cost or the faster cast , reuse...arg

[Bradclk]

Guess I should've clarified a few things. My guild puts out about 18-24k dps on raids. I normally have a fury and troub in my group. My power pool is usually around 9200-9500 and around 975 int(with int potion). Got around 20-25 FT + the troub's power regen. Doing the str/agi combo sucks power, but i usually have about 40% left after most KOS raid mobs and am around 10-20% on EoF raid mobs. The other nice thing i noticed is that I proc a little more often(power procs/dmg procs) - check out my gear and make any suggestions if u guys want - it would be much appreciated.

[Force Weaver]

<p>This thread peaked my curiosity and I went ahead and left Sta/Agi to try out Str/Agi.  </p><p>I gotta say wow, there's some serious firepower in group settings.  I can completely understand the drawbacks of getting aggro from an Epic encounter (raids) but you can burn down those heroics faster than they can tear you up when you rip them from the tank.</p><p>It was nice to be able to stay up with Sta while the tank takes aggro back, but ripping those HP's from the mobs faster than they can take yours works just as well in a group setting.  Catalyst was made for group encounters.  Multi-target: Catalyst-Fusion; Single Target: Catalyst-Ice Nova... Very effective.  Watching big numbers pop up on AOE's is also very very entertaining.</p><p>I might have just been converted from Sta/Agi to Str/Agi.</p>

[Koehianna]

I'm really curious about this set-up as well.  As soon as I get a decent 2H or secondary item I'm gonna try my hand at Str/Agi.

[Dextera]

I believe there's been a post somewhere emphazing the need for WIS if you are a raiding Wizard. The maxed Brainstorm is effectively increasing your total DPS by 8%, outweighing the total increase in DPS by either STR or AGI alone.

[TsarRasput]

well I went and did a quick calculation of the 2: Brainstorm adds a straight 8% off the top maxed crits adds 12% crit First we need to figure out how much a crit adds to a spell I'm going to use a generic range of 5-10k for ice nova, I know it's not that but I don't have the game in front of me for exact numbers and 5-10k is easy to calculate for our purposes Spells have a range of 50%-100% of max damage or less which would make this range worse  for anything from 70% to 100% of the range, the crit adds 30% from 50%-70% it adds 50%-30% or on average 40% so if we say 30% for 60% of the rangs, and 40% for 40% of the range it means on average a crit adds 34% at 12% extra crit, that means 12% of the time you're adding 34% extra damage on average averaged over a long time, that adds 4.08% Of course there is the another consideration for brainstorm to work, you can't have a secondary item. does this extra secondary/ranged item make that much difference? it'd have to be pretty good to make up that 4%

[Bradclk]

I see your logic here. I'm full M1 on all spells(which may make a bit of a difference on calculations). You also have to figure in a guaranteed crit of Ice Nova or Fusion(15-20k)vs 6k-11k. Also all of your procs will go off quicker and generally from my raid experience I can now get in 2 Ice Novas whereas I was lucky if I got them in before. I was still putting out 1600-2400 last night in DT with this combo. I have the crystallized plasma wand(8% to base 12sec, 1.8/minute proc), claymore, and fitz in my slots atm. Thanks!

[kingdeke]

<p>What could possibly make up for that though is the combination of high crit rate and fast cast... not to mention you'd have more stats since you can use an offhand.</p><p> This is pretty interesting, i'll try it out. </p><p> Tsar: thats 12% self buffed, try factoring in common things people can have to boost that (DKTM, Mark, and use a 2 hander to sommon AA pet then swap back out), thats ~23% crit chance. By logic if 12% crit chance is a 4% dps increase, wouldn't 23% crit be close to 8% increase? I'm horrible with working out math on stuff like that, so please run the numbers if you feel like it. I'm using 23% because those are all common buffs/items, theres of course lots more ways to get even higher crit chance.</p><p>With a build like this I think spell rotation plays even more important. Before GU32 I was str/wis, and constantly dropping 6K+ BoL, and very rarely I saw it crit upwards of 8.5K. </p><p> I would also like to see Time compression stacked on the agi line, and dropping lots of crits at the same time....</p>

[valkyrja]

I've been messing with it, and what really makes this build solid is having a bunch of other crit grear.  If you can get your crit to 20% or more, it is very fun.  Getting the 8% to crit on the fabled set would really help make this build rock.

[TsarRasput]

Spakkle@Permafrost wrote: <blockquote><p>What could possibly make up for that though is the combination of high crit rate and fast cast... not to mention you'd have more stats since you can use an offhand.</p><p> This is pretty interesting, i'll try it out. </p><p> Tsar: thats 12% self buffed, try factoring in common things people can have to boost that (DKTM, Mark, and use a 2 hander to sommon AA pet then swap back out), thats ~23% crit chance. By logic if 12% crit chance is a 4% dps increase, wouldn't 23% crit be close to 8% increase? I'm horrible with working out math on stuff like that, so please run the numbers if you feel like it. I'm using 23% because those are all common buffs/items, theres of course lots more ways to get even higher crit chance.</p><p>With a build like this I think spell rotation plays even more important. Before GU32 I was str/wis, and constantly dropping 6K+ BoL, and very rarely I saw it crit upwards of 8.5K. </p><p> I would also like to see Time compression stacked on the agi line, and dropping lots of crits at the same time....</p></blockquote>Kingdeke, The thing you're forgetting is that the MoA, or time compression, or DKTM would work also if you have the 8% from brainstorm.  My calculations were if all other things are considered equal.  I mean with the the WIS/AGI line it's not like I don't have crits, in fact as it stands now, I believe I am somewhere on the order of 16% crit with DKTM.  I'd be 28% with STR/AGI, but that's still a difference of 12% not 23% over WIS/AGI vs STR/AGI.   When comparing two AA lines, you have to only consider the factors from those two lines, adding extra components to the mix does nothing as they could be in both situations unless they can only be used in one of the two situations, ie you can use a secondary in the STR which you cannot in the WIS line.

[kingdeke]

<p>I understand what you're saying, what i meant was trying to make up for the loss of brainstorm with higher crit percentages, even if the base dmg of those crits is 8% higher because of brainstorm, because you cant have all 3 lines.</p><p>I'm not trying to say any one build is superior, better dps is always going to depend on the player/group makeup. </p>

[Bradclk]

Forgive me my ignorance but DKTM stands for? I can also add the novum tectum(2%) and potentially the 5 piece fabled set bonus(8% - i got two pieces so far)

[kingdeke]

DTKM is Dont Kill the Messenger, the bard tree AA buff that increases crit chances by 7.5% for the group.

[TsarRasput]

Spakkle@Permafrost wrote: <blockquote><p>I understand what you're saying, what i meant was trying to make up for the loss of brainstorm with higher crit percentages, even if the base dmg of those crits is 8% higher because of brainstorm, because you cant have all 3 lines.</p><p>I'm not trying to say any one build is superior, better dps is always going to depend on the player/group makeup. </p></blockquote>the thing I am saying is that no matter which build you take, you have to factor out all other factors, because they work in both.  If I took two of the same wizard and specced one with WIS/AGI and one with STR/AGI, the one with WIS would get an 8% bonus from brainstorm.  The STR one would get 4.08% from the extra 12% crits.  the freehand sorcery vs catalyst argument is for one spell, and at 7 AAs in FH it's an average difference of  6% damage on that one spell, freehand sorcery losing.  I'm saying from the math in the long run, with all other things equal, you will do more damage with WIS than STR, unless you can find a secondary item that can make up the 3.92% dps difference, that means you need secondary item to add about 4800 damage/min at 2000 dps, 3600 damage/min at 1500 dps.  That's a lot of damage to make up, if I could find an item that did that, I would respec to STR/AGI.

[Koehianna]

<cite>TsarRasputin wrote:</cite><blockquote>well I went and did a quick calculation of the 2: Brainstorm adds a straight 8% off the top maxed crits adds 12% crit First we need to figure out how much a crit adds to a spell I'm going to use a generic range of 5-10k for ice nova, I know it's not that but I don't have the game in front of me for exact numbers and 5-10k is easy to calculate for our purposes Spells have a range of 50%-100% of max damage or less which would make this range worse  for anything from 70% to 100% of the range, the crit adds 30% from 50%-70% it adds 50%-30% or on average 40% so if we say 30% for 60% of the rangs, and 40% for 40% of the range it means on average a crit adds 34% at 12% extra crit, that means 12% of the time you're adding 34% extra damage on average averaged over a long time, that adds 4.08% Of course there is the another consideration for brainstorm to work, you can't have a secondary item. does this extra secondary/ranged item make that much difference? it'd have to be pretty good to make up that 4% </blockquote>At what point does the percentage to crit outweight the 8% from Wis?

[TsarRasput]

Well considering that 3% crit =  roughly 1.02% extra damage, you would need 24% crits to equal the same add as an 8% on top.  Also another calculation 3% crit adds 20 dps or 1800 extra damage per minute to someone who is doing 2000 dps.    Of course though, you have to factor in that that extra crit damage could be much lower or much much higher.    If you always crit on rending icicles  it's gonna be lower than 1% but if you crit Ball of Lava and Ice Nova, it's gonna be well over 1%.  My calculations are over the long run, considering you're going to get crits all the time, on all kinds of spells.  That being said, I'd much rather have a guaranteed 8%

[Koehianna]

If you are equipped for it, in a raid setting, 24% crit chance is no problem at all.  More reason for me to try Str/Agi.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Alku]

Lasie@Blackburrow wrote: <blockquote>If you are equipped for it, in a raid setting, 24% crit chance is no problem at all.  More reason for me to try Str/Agi.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote> You guys are missing a key point here. You cannot factor in the crit% you get from outside of the strength line. The reason, as already stated in this thread by Tsar, is that you will have those 'other' external crit increases no matter what AA Line you choose. To clarify... in this example, yes, 24% crit chance (12% str line, 12% otherwise) is better than brainstorm's flat 8%. The problem is, you aren't factoring in that you will still have that extra 12% crit chance from other sources on the wis line as well.

[Koehianna]

That's a good point.

[TsarRasput]

<cite>Alkure wrote:</cite><blockquote>Lasie@Blackburrow wrote: <blockquote>If you are equipped for it, in a raid setting, 24% crit chance is no problem at all.  More reason for me to try Str/Agi.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote> You guys are missing a key point here. You cannot factor in the crit% you get from outside of the strength line. The reason, as already stated in this thread by Tsar, is that you will have those 'other' external crit increases no matter what AA Line you choose. To clarify... in this example, yes, 24% crit chance (12% str line, 12% otherwise) is better than brainstorm's flat 8%. The problem is, you aren't factoring in that you will still have that extra 12% crit chance from other sources on the wis line as well. </blockquote>Thank you!