The Combat Arts

[-=Hoss=-]

Hey all.  My original char was a mystic, and I hung him up at lvl 40 to start playing assassin shortly after splitpaw came out.  Now, since my guild is often short of healers, I decided to level this guy up again.  So, the AA is all new to me.  On first inspection, I think our AA choices suck.  What we really need is something to shorten our cast times and/or keep us from being interrupted so much.  But thats for another thread.  Since I'll be mostly douing or in small groups until I hit T7 content I think the best bet is to spec for melee initially.  There's a lot of info in here that I'm going to look through, but there is one question that is nagging me right now and I don't see an answer to it.  What is supposed to be the advantage of turning your attack spells into melee attacks?  How does that even work?  I notice that at rank 1, the Combat equivalents do more damage than my current spells, but, all my current spells are at adept 1.  So, if i find a master for one of the damage spells, will it do me any good to transcribe it?  What if I'm offered one of the damage spells as a M2 option (I really dont know if it any of them ever are options, its been too long since I leveled this guy), will a m2 version do more damage?  Will they be 2 separate spells, or will, for instance, anger of the ancients just be replaced by the melee version.  If they are 2 spells, do they share a re-use timer?  And those of you who took this line, do you keep both versions of the spell on your hotbar?  The pox replacement, it looks like it has half the duration and hald the number of ticks, so even with the slightly increased damage, isn't it doing less damage than our regular spell?  Icy flames has shorter duration than the CA, but the tick time is shorter too, so they both wind up with 4 ticks.  I'm not sure what the question is here, I guess am I reading all that right? Thats it for now.  Thanks in advance -h

[Dragonreal]

The CA achievements are in addition to your spells, so you will have both the spell version and the CA version, but they will have linked reuse times. The advantage of the CAs is that they will cast much much faster than the spells and therefore be nearly impossible to interrupt; the other advantage to them is the crit percentages you have available.. for spells, you currently have NO AA crits available (this will be changed next LU where you'll gain a possible 28% crit chance on spells with the int line), but for meleeing, you have a possibly 100% crit chance in the agi line so it's a much better damage boost to melee attacks (including the CA AAs) than the boost that you will be able to get for your nukes. The main reason your CA AAs are showing as more damage than your spells, I'm guessing, is because mystics buff very large amounts of str (CA AA damage is based off of str) and your str is probably quite a bit higher than your int is, so if you max out the CAs (max rank will give you ad1 quality on them), your high str combined with the large crit percentages from the shaman tree will be the best dps build you can get as a mystic. I can't answer your question about the pox AA because I'm a warden and haven't touched my mystic since before even kos came out.

[Raji]

<cite>Dragonrealms wrote:</cite><blockquote>The CA achievements are in addition to your spells, so you will have both the spell version and the CA version, but they will have linked reuse times. The advantage of the CAs is that they will cast much much faster than the spells and therefore be nearly impossible to interrupt; the other advantage to them is the crit percentages you have available.. for spells, you currently have NO AA crits available (this will be changed next LU where you'll gain a possible 28% crit chance on spells with the int line), but for meleeing, you have a possibly 100% crit chance in the agi line so it's a much better damage boost to melee attacks (including the CA AAs) than the boost that you will be able to get for your nukes. The main reason your CA AAs are showing as more damage than your spells, I'm guessing, is because mystics buff very large amounts of str (CA AA damage is based off of str) and your str is probably quite a bit higher than your int is, so if you max out the CAs (max rank will give you ad1 quality on them), your high str combined with the large crit percentages from the shaman tree will be the best dps build you can get as a mystic. I can't answer your question about the pox AA because I'm a warden and haven't touched my mystic since before even kos came out. </blockquote> I believe CA AA's are roughly AdeptIII/MasterI quality, actually, at 5 points. Also, the CA's update each level, and the spells only every 14 levels.

[Dragonreal]

Damage-wise.. they may be maxing out at ad3/m1 as far as comparing goes.. but the skill itself says it's ad1 (though if it has a debuff component, it uses the ad3 spell version numbers throughout all ranks). I also logged on my mystic and had a quick look at my AAs on her.. I did some calculations on the damage for the pox rank 1 CA versus my ad1 pox spell (this was as a level 50 though so the CA has some scaling advantage), and I found that the rank 1 version of the CA would do a minimum total of 414 damage (without str affecting it at all since the achievement list for me doesn't seem to be factoring in my stats) while the ad1 spell would do 434 total (with like 30ish int since I tried to keep as close to the base value as possible); so your answer about which is doing more damage is the CA is still doing more damage once str gets factored in.

[Aela@Test]

Unless they changed it, the CAs were Adp3 at five points.  I'll check later.

[Dragonreal]

Aela@Test wrote: <blockquote>Unless they changed it, the CAs were Adp3 at five points.  I'll check later.</blockquote>Must be following a different pattern than the warden ones do... though that mns to me; I know the warden ones start at app1 so 5 ranks later with 1 quality level per rank will only get you to ad1, not ad3.

[Raji]

<cite>Dragonrealms wrote:</cite><blockquote>Aela@Test wrote: <blockquote>Unless they changed it, the CAs were Adp3 at five points.  I'll check later.</blockquote>Must be following a different pattern than the warden ones do... though that mns to me; I know the warden ones start at app1 so 5 ranks later with 1 quality level per rank will only get you to ad1, not ad3. </blockquote> Equal to Adept3 of the spell counterpart, not the CA quality level being adept 3.

[Dragonreal]

Of course the damage on them is going to be higher.. they're longer recast (for straight nukes)  or shorter duration (for dots) so they NEED to have higher damage at lower quality levels or there's no way the melee spec would even be viable over a casting spec. The CAs are still ad1, their damage is just equal to an ad3/master (depending on your str level) at max rank so that they're balanced. Not that all this discussion over a technicality matters.. the entire point is that yes, a maxed out CA will serve you better than a maxed out spell regardless of its having a lower max quality level because: you can get a much higher crit chance for melee you buff a TON more strength than int you're probably never going to see yourself getting interrupted you spend a lot less time casting CAs than you do spells due to longer recasts and shorter casts your CAs scale with you every level

[TheSpin]

<p>It's like this.....</p><p>with 5/5 points it is the equivalent of an adept 3 version of the nuke except there is an additional strength based direct damage bit, then an int based dot (for nukes that have dots normally).  However, because they scale up every level and you can get the 100% chance to crit via kos aa they are better dps.</p><p>You can verify the adept 3 info yourself by examining the adept 3 version of a nuke while you are the level you would normally obtain that nuke and compare it to the combat art.  The DoTs on both nukes are Int based and should be the same, also the debuff amount should also be the same.</p><p> Additional benefits to having combat arts is that they cast so much faster and can be used on the move.</p><p>Downsides to combat arts are that they still get the full cooldown if blocked/misses/parried etc, however there is a skill to give you +weapon skill within the combat line that provides enough skill increase that you won't miss often.</p>

[Prrasha]

Nope, a CA at 5 ranks is Adept1 damage.  I tested it out by getting to a level where a damage spell was "new" (since the CAs upgrade every level)... I think it was level 32 for the AE attack, swapping equipment around to get STR = INT, and inspecting the spell's damage on the broker versus my CA damage. CA damage looks much better for Mystics because (1) they upgrade every level, while their spell counterparts only upgrade every 14 levels, and (2) we buff STR to hideous levels, and STR gear is easy to come by, compared to our INT buffs/avaiable gear. My mystic won't be leaving the CA lines.  My warden's back to nuking, because (1) I'd been pregathering master1s for him, (2) no STR buff nor easily-gained STR gear, and (3) fast-casting healing spells and no debuffs, so the time savings of CAs means very little.

[TheSpin]

<cite>Prrasha wrote:</cite><blockquote>Nope, a CA at 5 ranks is Adept1 damage.  I tested it out by getting to a level where a damage spell was "new" (since the CAs upgrade every level)... I think it was level 32 for the AE attack, swapping equipment around to get STR = INT, and inspecting the spell's damage on the broker versus my CA damage. CA damage looks much better for Mystics because (1) they upgrade every level, while their spell counterparts only upgrade every 14 levels, and (2) we buff STR to hideous levels, and STR gear is easy to come by, compared to our INT buffs/avaiable gear. My mystic won't be leaving the CA lines.  My warden's back to nuking, because (1) I'd been pregathering master1s for him, (2) no STR buff nor easily-gained STR gear, and (3) fast-casting healing spells and no debuffs, so the time savings of CAs means very little. </blockquote><p> I kinda see what you're gettin at with your test, but I don't think that making your str= your int and then looking at direct damage is a really good way to test how the CA version compares to spell version.  I think that with the way mystics spells work it's a little harder to tell than on an inquisitor because there aren't mitigation debuffs on mystic nukes.</p><p>This is how I tested and got Adept 3 = 5/5 CA....Inquisitor has a DoT spell similar to shaman's contagion line in the way the DoT works, but it also has a debuff attached (mental I think).  One level I got a new nuke in that line I examined it and noticed the DoT and Debuff portions were the same amount aon the adept 3 as on the 5/5 CA.  Because both the DoT and the Debuff have 3 digits (both damage and debuff amounts were in the hundreds) it's a very accurate way to compare the two 'nukes'.</p><p>When your str=Int and you're using a green nuke vs a blue CA....plus the fact that my AoE CA is my most damaging even against a single target on my inquisitor I don't think your test is necessarily accurate.</p>

[Karlen]

>>>Hey all.  My original char was a mystic, and I hung him up at lvl 40 to start playing assassin shortly after splitpaw came out.  Now, since my guild is often short of healers, I decided to level this guy up again.  So, the AA is all new to me.  On first inspection, I think our AA choices suck.  What we really need is something to shorten our cast times and/or keep us from being interrupted so much.  But thats for another thread.  Since I'll be mostly douing or in small groups until I hit T7 content I think the best bet is to spec for melee initially.  <<< I just restarted a 60 Mystic after parking him for a year.  I ran him up from 11 AAs to 38 over the course of several days.  I did the AGI line in KoS to get the melee crits and the combat line in EoF to get all the combat arts. When you first start getting them, they aren't really that great because you have to use a combination of spells and CAs until you have them all.  This means that you have to gear and buff for both strength and int.  Once you have all the CAs, then you can ditch your int equipment and buff STR/AGI/STA.  Then they start to shine and you can mow through mobs quite quickly. As CAs, they are quick to cast so you can do several quickly in succession.  There is a bit of a recast time but you can use that for warding or debuffing as required.  With the melee crits up to a possible 100% through the AGI line, almost all of your CAs will crit every time.  The CAs work very well for mystics because we buff for STR/AGI which isn't really helpful when you are spellcasting.  By eliminating the need for spellcasting, you eliminate the need to get INT equipment and can therefore load up on STR/AGI/STA/WIS. >>>>>There's a lot of info in here that I'm going to look through, but there is one question that is nagging me right now and I don't see an answer to it.  What is supposed to be the advantage of turning your attack spells into melee attacks?  How does that even work?  I notice that at rank 1, the Combat equivalents do more damage than my current spells, but, all my current spells are at adept 1.  So, if i find a master for one of the damage spells, will it do me any good to transcribe it?  What if I'm offered one of the damage spells as a M2 option (I really dont know if it any of them ever are options, its been too long since I leveled this guy), will a m2 version do more damage?<<<< Since they crit almost all the time and you get the benefit of super-high strength, they do quite a bit of damage.  I don't know if they equate to adept 1, but even if they did, the bonuses you get more than make up for it.  they are much quicker too. >>>Will they be 2 separate spells, or will, for instance, anger of the ancients just be replaced by the melee version.  If they are 2 spells, do they share a re-use timer?  And those of you who took this line, do you keep both versions of the spell on your hotbar?  <<< I got rid of the spell versions.  I re-equipped for STR so now my INT is very low and they aren't worth casting. >>>The pox replacement, it looks like it has half the duration and hald the number of ticks, so even with the slightly increased damage, isn't it doing less damage than our regular spell?  Icy flames has shorter duration than the CA, but the tick time is shorter too, so they both wind up with 4 ticks.  I'm not sure what the question is here, I guess am I reading all that right?<<< It ticks for a lot and you can recast it when it runs out.

[Borlok]

<p>Is it still better, DPS-wise, to CAST your dots, then go back and start your CA chain, coming to the CA for the dots last?  Or does the dot from the CA override the spell, and vice versa?</p><p>---Borlok</p>

[Igu]

<p>The CAs and Spells do about the same at Adept 3 assuming other factors are the same. But they wont be. Furies are very good damage dealers because they have 2 ways to increase Intelligence (the stat that increases spell damage). Mystics are not very good in that department. 5 points into Enh Avatar will give you some Int, but thats about it.</p><p>Now CAs get damage increases from Strength, which Mystics are very good at raising. So Mystics will do better damage with CAs then spells (imho). My Combat Mystic is 55 with 64 AAs and he seriously rocks. Can kill things my monk could never dream of at the same level.</p>