DPS question

[joebyrdw]

<p>I just have a couple questions hopefully somone can help out with. </p><p>I'm looking for some tips on maximizing my raid DPS without pullin aggro off my guilds MT. I am currently LVL 68 and topping the parse with around 1800 - 2000 DPS, I'm using the Adamantine dragon fang and the darktalon blade (I think is the name, has a katana graphic).  We raid casually on the weekends and are working our way through labs and lycem. </p><p>Currently my plan of action for all fights is: buff intoxification just before the pull, debuffs x 4, poision combo, Evade, DOT's X4 (if im allowed to AOE if not x3), non-stealthed damage attacks, Evade, Concelment, Stealthed attacks, then I reapply dots and debuffs that are back up. I hit my reuse timer reducer and pop things as they come back up. I generally hold assassinate for boss fights, and for long fights like alzid is for us I hit shard just before my evade and then hit mana stone just after. </p><p>Edit: Question one was answered in the patch notes today. Kithicor's hood IS now a hood although its ugly brown. </p>

[Vydar]

Don't forget to hop out and use Spitting Asp/Neck Shot. This is usually my course of action. Self buff with Intox, hit slip away.  When mob incomes, hit Jugular on the MT's target.  Surveil or Stealth, Blue AOE DoT.  Surveil or Stealth, Slaughtersault.  Backstab, Killing blade, spam the 4 Bleed Dot's, then the debuff's immediately after, hit other CA's, do more stealthed hits. The reason I take this route is that in longer raid fights, if you pop your aoe later on, a chanter likely has the mobs mezzed and your aoe's won't hit them.  Then, killing blade has a fairly short reuse timer, so use it almost right away so you can use it twice in the fight.  Once all my stealthed attacks are done, I pop my three temp buffs (Brutal Focus, Exacting, Honed Reflexes) to get my auto attack up, get the auto attack dps up, get my reuse timers going faster.  Hop back, use Neck Shot/Spitting asp really quick, then toss Contrived Weapon on the way back, then rinse and repeat. Decap gets used at about 25-30% (get it off before necro's and wizzy's start hitting lifeburn and manaburn, slips you up a threat position for the mob so that gives the necro/wizzy a little more time to burn), then Finishing Blow at 19%.  If you time Finishing Blow RIGHT at 19%, you'll often get the chance to drop another one.  A Master I finishing blow lands for 5k for me, so the extra 10k damage for dropping twice= as much or more than a Killing Blade.  I never take aggro, I have Murderous Design on someone at all times.  I often get put in MT group to give the tank more threat, since I'm one of the top parsers, and that gives him an aid in holding aggro.  If not in MT group, and I'm in main DPS group, then I put my threat transfer on a Bard since they will likely never warrant much aggro on their own and it helps keep my aggro low.  Use Surveillance as often as possible, it drops threat quite a bit and puts you in line to use stealthed hits.  Put Apply Poison on Tank, it procs quite often for a lot of damage, again, helps them get more threat.  Concealment mostly gets used in PvP or for mobs that must be burned as fast as possible (i.e. Prince Ruthless for 3 princes), since the fights are long enough that it doesn't make sense to me to drop all huge hits at once (steadier dps instead of burst dps = tank holds aggro better) Caustic poison, imo, is always the poison of choice for DPS.  Hemotoxin, even with the reduced time, just can't keep up for straight damage.  I also keep Vitality Breach for PvP, and Mental Breach for long fights.  Enfeebling or Gracelessness for purple poison.  I have Dirk of Nightfall and Oblivion's Edge as my weapon choice, with +12 piercing on DoN and a few other +piercing adorns and stats, it lands quite often and hits fairly hard.  I haven't acquired Grinning Dirk yet or played with the time of proc's/poison proc's or anything, and whenever I read the debates on here, I don't find a HUGE advantage to it.  Another big tip is macro's.  Your brigands should have macros announcing when they drop Devitalize, your Dirge should have a macro for CoB, your Inquis for haste buff, etc.  You should make a macro for both /raid and /gsay for when you drop Decap, so tank knows he may have to hit rescue in a bad situation, or an extra taunt or two in a controlled situation.  Just my 2c.

[Siclone]

<p>you guys ever play with the back ranged attacks? running out of range and fireing them off then running back in?</p><p>I think I read that auto attack was just as good as doing this??  anyone clear this up?</p>

[Malicorp]

For me, it depends sooooo much on the group set-up. If you have a dirge (particularly one with that ludacris 3 set bonus), you really need to figure out when he consistently will be using CoB. During most fights, I'll open with Malignant Mark (Master II) and try to recast that as often as it is up. After MM, I'll be using my DoTs and Constriction to bridge the gap between when I can hit the mob till when I have myself stably positioned behind the mob. Elude. Then its Concealment & Stealth combo. Re-apply DoTs with auto attacks spaced between. My general feeling is that the more I can avoid using Stealth or even Surveilance for that matter, the better DPS I'll be doing. In my opinion, the cast times on those spells are pretty prohibitive. Same applies to Contrived Weapon. Damage doesn't justify the cast time in a close up melee fight.

[Siclone]

Vydar@Vox wrote: <blockquote>Don't forget to hop out and use Spitting Asp/Neck Shot. This is usually my course of action. Self buff with Intox, hit slip away.  When mob incomes, hit Jugular on the MT's target.  Surveil or Stealth, Blue AOE DoT.  Surveil or Stealth, Slaughtersault.  Backstab, Killing blade, spam the 4 Bleed Dot's, then the debuff's immediately after, hit other CA's, do more stealthed hits. The reason I take this route is that in longer raid fights, if you pop your aoe later on, a chanter likely has the mobs mezzed and your aoe's won't hit them.  Then, killing blade has a fairly short reuse timer, so use it almost right away so you can use it twice in the fight.  Once all my stealthed attacks are done, I pop my three temp buffs (Brutal Focus, Exacting, Honed Reflexes) to get my auto attack up, get the auto attack dps up, get my reuse timers going faster.  Hop back, use Neck Shot/Spitting asp really quick, then toss Contrived Weapon on the way back, then rinse and repeat. Decap gets used at about 25-30% (get it off before necro's and wizzy's start hitting lifeburn and manaburn, slips you up a threat position for the mob so that gives the necro/wizzy a little more time to burn), then Finishing Blow at 19%.  If you time Finishing Blow RIGHT at 19%, you'll often get the chance to drop another one.  A Master I finishing blow lands for 5k for me, so the extra 10k damage for dropping twice= as much or more than a Killing Blade.  I never take aggro, I have Murderous Design on someone at all times.  I often get put in MT group to give the tank more threat, since I'm one of the top parsers, and that gives him an aid in holding aggro.  If not in MT group, and I'm in main DPS group, then I put my threat transfer on a Bard since they will likely never warrant much aggro on their own and it helps keep my aggro low.  Use Surveillance as often as possible, it drops threat quite a bit and puts you in line to use stealthed hits.  Put Apply Poison on Tank, it procs quite often for a lot of damage, again, helps them get more threat.  Concealment mostly gets used in PvP or for mobs that must be burned as fast as possible (i.e. Prince Ruthless for 3 princes), since the fights are long enough that it doesn't make sense to me to drop all huge hits at once (steadier dps instead of burst dps = tank holds aggro better) Caustic poison, imo, is always the poison of choice for DPS.  Hemotoxin, even with the reduced time, just can't keep up for straight damage.  I also keep Vitality Breach for PvP, and Mental Breach for long fights.  Enfeebling or Gracelessness for purple poison.  I have Dirk of Nightfall and Oblivion's Edge as my weapon choice, with +12 piercing on DoN and a few other +piercing adorns and stats, it lands quite often and hits fairly hard.  I haven't acquired Grinning Dirk yet or played with the time of proc's/poison proc's or anything, and whenever I read the debates on here, I don't find a HUGE advantage to it.  Another big tip is macro's.  Your brigands should have macros announcing when they drop Devitalize, your Dirge should have a macro for CoB, your Inquis for haste buff, etc.  You should make a macro for both /raid and /gsay for when you drop Decap, so tank knows he may have to hit rescue in a bad situation, or an extra taunt or two in a controlled situation.  Just my 2c. </blockquote><p> couple of things here, why start with juglar? start with cloack assult or slaughter then  debuff,  dot, then run your concelment chain, and in that chain you can hit juglar as well as the other blue aoe.  then you dont have to waste time at the start getting in stealth again.  I would say you should run the Concelment chain as much as possible, not just for pvp.  the more concelment chains you get in on an encounter the better. so the longer the encounter the better for running the chain.  oh yea and use de-cap if its up here too. why wait and waste your time getting into stealth again, when you can do it all at once.  </p><p>I know I asked above but I think the idea of running back and hitting the ranged attacks have been debunked, in favor of auto attack,,,but would like to hear from others to back that up.</p><p>Hemo with the AA points is better these days for us then Caustic. if you dont have the AA yeah, then use Caustic</p>

[khufure]

Vydar@Vox wrote: <blockquote>Caustic poison, imo, is always the poison of choice for DPS.  Hemotoxin, even with the reduced time, just can't keep up for straight damage.  I also keep Vitality Breach for PvP, and Mental Breach for long fights.  Enfeebling or Gracelessness for purple poison.  I have Dirk of Nightfall and Oblivion's Edge as my weapon choice, with +12 piercing on DoN and a few other +piercing adorns and stats, it lands quite often and hits fairly hard.  I haven't acquired Grinning Dirk yet or played with the time of proc's/poison proc's or anything, and whenever I read the debates on here, I don't find a HUGE advantage to it.  </blockquote>Two things : - Hemotoxin is worth it in a dirge or haste group.  It is 8-14% of my zone dps compared to 6-8% caustic.  Generally sits in the 10-11% range. - +12 piercing is a joke.  Get the fabled +5 piercing (skill) adornment instead.  I personally find the best adornment is power pithe.  With power pithe (phantom power pithe, leg T7) it's like tabbing a power item automatically.  Two is even better. My tips for dps: - always use masked attack & puncture blade whenever they are up. - open with cloaked assault and use it whenever you can. - spam your attacks.  don't bother timing them.  also don't queue them up, wait until the last one finishes.

[Computer MAn]

My spell rotation is slightly different from AE mobs to single target mobs. Keep in mind my tank has good aggro and I am in the tank group so this might not work for everyone. <u>Group Mobs </u>I generally open up with Assailing Blast as the mobs are incoming then Surveilance as I run in followed by Cloaked Assault. Then I use Masked Attack and Slaughtersault. I follow this up with MM and my 3 dots followed by Concealment and a backstab chain. After that its Spitting Asp and Neck shot then rinse and repeat if the mob is still alive. <u> Single Mobs </u>Same thing as above except I dont use slaughtersault I use puncture blade instead.

[joebyrdw]

<p>Thanks for the inputs guys and gals. The reason I use my debuffs first is to help the entire raid hit more/harder im not really parse obsessed but I do like to be on top =D. </p><p>I'm normaly running bliss, hemo, and graceless but I'm going to switch to the debuff poision that debuffs magic resistance since most of my guilds DD's are mages. I'm one of 3 scouts that are T7 actually and one is an alt of one of the mages. </p><p> What type of potion do you guys use normally? I run with STR up usally. And ill pop a Tactics for the longer boss fights as the crits usally parse me higher. They're just not cost effective to run all the time even with my own alchemist. </p>

[Jayad]

For poisons I normally have hemotoxin and ignorant bliss, depending on if I'm in MT group or not. (Then I don't use IB) I'll swap in some GM turger on tough fights. I normally use STR potions unless I'm at 850+. The crit potions are really nice but quite expensive to run all the time. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Maybe a richer assassin would use them always. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> As far as debuffs go, I think they're worthwhile if the mob is going to be up a bit. You can also get your swindler's luck on by using them after getting your HO chain started. The poison debuff combined with your INT AA debuff adds up to a pretty decent amount. you're doing 1800-2000 ext dps with your prior setup, or dps?

[whytakemine]

<cite>Jayad wrote:</cite><blockquote>you're doing 1800-2000 ext dps with your prior setup, or dps? </blockquote><p> And more importantly, is that the zonewide parse?  It doesn't sound like it from the first post.  If it is, that's really good.  It's still good for a 68 regardless.</p><p>If you're having aggro problems, that probably means you need more aggro buffers in the MT group or your MT needs to upgrade his taunts (you do have murderous design at least ad3 right?).</p><p>Since you said you're scout light and since coercer's are semi-rare, I'm going to guess the problem is not enough aggro buffers in the MT group.  We typically run with a dirge and a swashie, but for some fights (treyloth) go with dirge+coercer.  Some raids have high enough dps that they need 3 aggro buffers, but we haven't had that problem yet (on a good night we roll around 20k dps).</p><p>Your casting order sounds like what most people do.  I'm with you on getting the debuffs in almost first thing, but off the top of my head I'm only thinking of four (mit, defence, poison, poison combo is the order I typically cast them in).  What's the other one?  </p>

[joebyrdw]

<p>To answer a coupe of questions that was EXT DPS of 1800-2000 I dont remember zone wides for those. </p><p>Last night I hit 70 just before a Labs Trash run. At 70 I now find my self in the MT group and there is no more loosing aggro to me or anyone else. I parse between 1800 and 2300 EXT DPS on all fights and my zone wide was 1890 something. Heck zone wide I almost doubled the damage of my nearest competitior.  Were close to chain pulling so some of the fights weren't ideal with killing blade and intoxification down for the fight.</p><p>Right now I know that my gear and my AA (68.) are what are holding me back. Unitll I finish off the AA's and were able to clear through the KOS zones I'm pretty happy with where I'm at. </p><p>Thanks for all the inputs guys. </p>

[Vydar]

While I'm casting surveillance or stealth, my toon is auto attacking, so the casting time of it isn't a problem for me.  So you're saying your DPS has gone up when you ignore using stealth or surveillance and just wait for concealment to be up?  I'll have to test that... I still haven't figured out the mathematics behind proc's and poisons yet, I've tried to look em up and still don't understand the concept.  How does haste affect it?  I know dirge's double the percentage to proc... and that it's not really a 1.8x a minute, it's a percentage of hits.  So haste = more hits, so let's say I get in 50 hits a minute, and its 2% of hits, it'd be one hit a minute?  If its 10% a minute, it'd be 5 hits?  Then, lets say haste bumps it up to 100 hits a minute, it would double the proc'ing?  I'm not sure how all that works.  I don't understand why Hemotoxin would be better for dps, even with the decreased DoT time, it procs so much less than Caustic does.  Stepping out to use neck shot usually works for me, I don't always use spitting asp.  It takes two jumps backwards, which is very fast, and the cast time on neck shot isn't too bad, plus you don't have to be directly behind the mob.  Spitting asp requires proper placement and such, so I often skip it.  The +12 piercing I mentioned is that it naturally comes with +7 and I added a +5 to it.  Do dual wield's accept the phantom adorn?  It says 1h weapons only, does that work for dual wields? I always save decap for a couple reasons... a.) to make sure tank has full aggro before dropping it b.) if its a named, I want to ensure that the guild will have it down on this pull, rather than wasting decap and not having it for next pull.  c.) to keep myself up on the priority list ahead of casters that are going to be dropping manaburn and lifeburn so that they get a little extra time to do so.  I've browsed through the forums and still don't quite grasp the concept of the mathematics behind proc'ing and poison and such.  <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[grish]

dual wields can use phantom handles. ANd I believe base proc rate is weapon delay*3