Maxing out your Troubador. [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

View Full Version : Maxing out your Troubador.

Raahl

06-02-2008, 12:18 PM

First: This character is mainly built for Raiding/Grouping, but currently I am Solo'ing my way up to 80 (currently 74) I'm currently considering what stats I want to concentrate on. Currently I've been focusing mostly on INT and Spell Damage. But now I'm starting to think I need an overall strategy for maximizing my Troubador. Please offer any suggestions to make my Troubador the best he can be. Here's my character link: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://eq2players.station.sony.com/characters/character_profile.vm?characterId=635696102" target="_blank">http://eq2players.station.sony.com/...terId=635696102</a>I'm currently wearing a full set of Incarnadine Melodic Chain for the +CA and +Spell damage. Totals are around +350 CA and +420 Spell damage. I hope to start replacing this with better, but hate to lose the bonuses to damage.My self buffed STR is around 350 and INT is around 460. With the AA line I am around 52% Double Attack and my %crit are all around 8-9%.I'm replacing my CA's/Spells with Adept 3's until I can come up with Master versions.I know I need two things. 1 - Better weapons and 2 - Adornments.Here is my current AA setup:Bard Tree (69 points) Bard's Luck: 1 WIS: 4/4/8/8/1 (Speed plus Don't Kill the Messenger)STA: 4/4/8/7 (Double attack with Round shield equipped)AGI: 4/4/4/8 (Poison Proc)Troubador Tree (38 Points)Calming: Cheap Shot - 5/5Calming: Bria's Entrancing Sonnet - 5/5Calming: Lullaby - 5/5Inspiration: Enhance: Jester's Cap - 5/5Inspiration: Bria's Stirring Ballad - 5/5Inspiration: Aria of Excitement - 2/5Sonics: Shrill - 3/5Sonics: Alin's Keening Lamentation - 3/5Sonics: Precision of the Maestro - 5/5

Banditman

06-02-2008, 03:51 PM

Gear suggestions:You can see what I'm wearing <a href="http://eq2players.station.sony.com/characters/character_profile.vm?characterId=394144106" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. None of my gear is raid.Overall, on stats, I like to keep STR and INT roughly equal. At L80 now, I self buff to 700 STR and 800 INT. I was at 1000 STR, 900 INT in a group yesterday. I felt good about it. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I actually prefer a bit more in the way of Spell damage bonus as opposed to CA. The Spell bonus simply applies to more things than the CA bonus does.Looks like you're going the way you should in Troub tree. Harmonization, Sonic Interference and Resonance are super good abilities for a raiding Troub. You may want to look at getting 5 points into the Drumming AA to decrease the cast time and increase the damage. By increasing the base damage, and then laying on heavy bonuses to spell damage, that spell winds up hitting incredibly hard.Some people swear by the SnB method, god bless em. I just can't make the numbers come out for me. I lose about 20% of my DPS going that route. Maybe if I had an Illusionist buffing me with IA / Haste full time, I could do it.As you get closer to raiding, consider switching out Poison for maxing the INT line down to either Song of Magic or Haste. If you are going to be in a Melee group, get 8 points in the Haste AA, if Mage, 8 points in the Song AA. The Song AA becomes especially important if you are raiding without a Warlock in your Mage group. Even moreso if there is no Illusionist.

Raahl

06-03-2008, 12:18 PM

Thanks Bandit. Once I get near 80 I do plan on revisiting my Bard AA's. And I will probably look at dropping the SnB.I'm keeping a eye on this thread so keep any suggestions coming.

Enoa

06-04-2008, 04:56 AM

Sword and Board is nice for soloing depending on your playstyle. Dual wielding wins out in groups/ raid. I'd keep the poison line tbh. I ran a SOH PUR tonight and poisons did 5% of my dps... just slightly ahead of precise and dissonant note. I had an illy in my group and had approx 95% haste. I think i'm hasted enough. If you are always in a "scout" group then maybe I'd reconsider.Mastercrafted armor is really nice. Try to get the reet hat, trooper scale boots and the collection haste belt. With all the nice melee crit stuff troubs are becoming more like dirges. Get a couple nice weapons and some melee crit will proabably pay off. You can check my gear on eq2players (oloheo.kithicor) if you wish. Only upgrades I see me getting are the lyrist pants, cullinary apprentice wrist and a better offhander (carotidcutter or nathsar shortsword) and maybe the coa spell crit ring. EnoaMarrow's song dropped on the PUR and i rolled a 2 /cry

Banditman

06-04-2008, 10:52 AM

If you are needing a weapon to match with your Fabled Epic, seriously look at the Reet Crafted Scale Biter. It has a 93 DR compared to the 95 on the Ayonic Axe . . . and it has the same delay, which is very difficult to find at 3.5 seconds.Like I said, how you spec depends on your group. If you can get Illusionist Haste you probably don't need all that INT line, though Rhythm Blade is a very nice ability when the mobs start to get orange.

Raahl

06-04-2008, 11:03 AM

Currently I expect to spend 90%+ of my time in caster groups. With less than half that time having an illusionist in the group.

Enoa

06-04-2008, 11:43 AM

I should have clarified I do have 4-1 in INT for rhythm blade and use it early.. it's a must imo. It was my impression that there was no point in matching delays. it's a shame that the delay on the epic is 3.5 seconds. The anaphylaxis pwns the reet crafted scale biter imo. Longer delay and bigger damage spread. For the same reason the nathsar shortsword will out dps both...longer delay and larger damage spread (zomg and DR is only 88.6).

Banditman

06-04-2008, 01:47 PM

My training wall DPS went up switching to RCSB versus Anaphylaxis . . . and that was before I had an adornment on the RCSB. Marrow's Song would change things again I'm sure, and maybe even something like Segmented Serrator. I'd hate to take SS and then have it parse less though, but the only way to know for sure is to hit the wall.Somebody really needs to come up with a good way to wrap melee crits in with DR to better compare weapons based upon how much melee crit you have. Hmmmm.Edit:Here's a stab at it. I'm looking at just the weapons and crits. Haste, DPS, STR, etc are left out. Just trying to compare the weapons and how crits affect them.Ayonic Axe: 67-268 every 3.5 secondsReet Crafted Scale Biter: 98-229 every 3.5 secondsAnaphylaxis: 79-316 every 4.5 secondsWith zero melee crits:Ayonic Axe = 47.86 DPSRCSB = 46.71 DPSAna = 43.89 DPSWith 10% Melee Crits:Ayonic Axe = 51.89 DPSRCSB = 49.58 DPSAna = 47.59 DPSWith 20% Melee Crits:Ayonic Axe = 55.93 DPSRCSB = 52.45 DPSAna = 51.28 DPSWith 30% Melee Crits:Ayonic Axe = 59.96 DPSRCSB = 55.32 DPSAna = 54.98 DPSObviously, when STR, DPS increasers, Haste, etc are rolled in you start to really muddy the waters a lot. You also have to decide how "efficient" you can be if your delays aren't matched.If you are perfectly efficient, the DPS from Anaphylaxis "catches up" to RCSB at just over 30% Melee crits. This doesn't take into account the proc on Anaphylaxis which adds a bit of damage. My guess is that the inate proc on Anaphylaxis "approximately" makes up for the loss of DPS from missed swings due to unmatched delays on the two weapons.I'd say that if I haven't managed to aquire a raid weapon by the time I can get my Melee crits to 30%, it's probably time to look at Anaphylaxis again.

Enoa

06-04-2008, 05:01 PM

I only play this toon occasionally as an alt but from all i've read on eq2flames matching delay's and timing autoattacks is a sure way to lower your dps. I'm not sure how you calculated your numbers. You can't ignore haste and double attack and the fact that faster delay weapons will have a chance to be delayed because of CA and spells. DR's should be disregarded and you should look at damage spread and use longer delay weapons. Also items that proc off melee (STR ring/ Trooper boots) proc rates are normalized for delay... so longer delay weapons will proc them more.I just killed the training wall about 6 times using autoattacks only... some encounters slashing (aryonic axe) was on top... others piercing (anaphylaxis) was on top. Overall the anaphylaxis outparsed the Aronic Axe. This shows that the fact the DR for aronic axe is almost 10 higher than anaphylaxis is irrelevant. In a raid yesterday aronic axe came out a bit ahead but there was quite a difference in my hit rates as I just noticed I have higher Slashing skill then Piercing. I dont think there is any way that the reet crafted scale biter is better than the anaphylaxis even without the 25-30ext dps that comes from the scorpic hematoxin proc. NOTE: my melee crits is 25%, my haste is 57% my dps mod is 2-32 (depending on STR ring proc) and my DA is 10% (20% with boot proc). I could esily get my melee crit >30% with temp crit adorns wearing only heroic content gear while keeping my spell crit >25%. (wihtout any fabled crit adorns)Enoa PS: I'd take off the AGI ring... a friend dirge of mine is haste crazy but parsed on the training wall extensively with it and it didnt' proc enough to make it worthwhile for bards (it only procs off CA (NOT spells)).

Banditman

06-05-2008, 12:05 PM

Auto attack against the training wall is a TERRIBLE way to parse DPS. Your attacks are NEVER delayed that way!I am TOTALLY unsurprised that a weapon like Anaphylaxis "seemed" to close the DR gap in auto attack only. My own examples bear that out. As melee crit gets higher, weapons with a higher top end catch up, regardless of the DR.DR is a really simple formula. DR = DPS x 2. Long form is DR = {[(high + low)/2]/delay} x 2.As far as Haste goes, it affects all weapons equally. While it is true that lower delay weapons are "bad" in that it becomes increasingly difficult to slide attacks between swings, a 3.5 delay weapon is by no means an issue, especially when you consider the DW penalty to delay.Same deal for Double Attack. It affects all weapons equally.Incidentally, why is your DPS mod only 2? You can get 12 from neck adorn, and another 12 on the bow . . . and then stack the ring proc on top of it.My numbers were derived like this:For base no crit, you simply calculate the DPS of the weapon. Hi amount plus low amount divided by 2 then divide by delay. Yes, in practice the DPS you see in ACT will be TONS higher, because countless things act to increase it. We're just comparing weapons here, not the things that modify those weapons.Now, when you start adding in melee crits, you have to get a little tricky.You know what the weapon will hit for on average. hi + low / 2. What you have to do is extend the swing count to get the effects of melee crits.So, for instance, take the Ayonic Axe with 10% Melee crit:Over 100 swings, 90 of those swings will be for the "normal" amount, which is 167.5. Those 90 swings yield 15075 HP of damage dealt. Now, the remaining 10 swings will crit. The average hit for THOSE swings is 308.7, found applying the crit formula to it.A melee crit is this: roll normally, then multiply by 1.3. If the result is less than max damage+1, then the result becomes max damage +1. So, in effect, when a swing crits, the damage range is max damage+1 to max damage x 1.3.So, 90 swings yield 15075 HP, the remaining 10 swings yield 3087 HP. Total is 18162 damage. 100 swings require 350 seconds, so DPS is 51.89. So, 10% melee crit boils down to "approximately" an 8 percent increase in DPS for the Ayonic Axe.As I said previously, it's all a question of how efficient you are with your auto attack.Look at the Ayonic Axe and Anaphylaxis. Over the course of 100 swings of the Ayonic Axe, you actually get 78 swings of Anaphylaxis. Let's say that because of mismatched delays, you "lose" 8 swings of Anaphylaxis. That's 8 lost swings over six minutes, which I don't think is an unreasonable number.Ayonic Axe does 16750 points of damage, Anaphylaxis does 13825.When you start losing crit swings on Ana, you really end up kicking yourself.The difference of course is that poison proc. Since we aren't dealing with STR, Haste, DPS and level here, you can't properly take into account those things. Yes, those things apply equally regardless of the weapon in question, but the scale is all wrong until those bonuses are applied.SH is a great proc, almost always up and ticking.Interestingly on the AGI ring, the reason that people don't see many procs from it is that it procs off of . . . you guessed it, auto attack swings. If you delay them or don't get too many, you won't see many procs of it. Unlike most of the rings, the AGI ring is NOT normalized. It has a flat percentage chance to proc. So, if you don't swing much, you don't get much benefit from the ring.

Enoa

06-05-2008, 08:37 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote> As melee crit gets higher, weapons with a higher top end catch up, regardless of the DR.</blockquote>That's the point. It's easy to get 20% melee crits. DR is not a good way to evaluate weapons (alone at least)Autoattacking is a perfect way to see how crits affect the dps of each weapon unconfounding delays added by spamming spells.In addition, you will actually miss more swings on your RCSB than Anaphylaxis if you're spamming spells (it will get delayed till the spell/ca is done increasing it's effective delay).Read the proc on your AGI ring again... it procs on CA unless it's a misprint. I use my CA's only if my spells aren't up especialy if POTM is up. You are right the AGI ring isn't normalized for delay... i was referring to other gear procs that are (Trooper Scale and STR Ring for example).There is an application you can download to evaluate an "adjusted DR" based on your melee crits. (<a href="http://files.filefront.com/drexe/;8818484;/fileinfo.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://files.filefront.com/drexe/;8...;/fileinfo.html</a>) I have no idea if it's accurate but even with DKTM alone the anaphlyaxis will autoattack for more then RCSB.

Pogopuschel

06-06-2008, 03:17 AM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote> As melee crit gets higher, weapons with a higher top end catch up, regardless of the DR.</blockquote>That is not quite true, but the result is a correct approximation.What actually matters is the ratio of high to low end. It suffices to look at the high end if the DRs are similar (see your DR formula). That is usually the case <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Also note that the higher your melee crit% is, the more you'll benefit from a big spread (since, for those who don't know, the min crit of a weapon is upper end + 1)

Faelgalad

06-10-2008, 10:39 AM

My big increase of DPS came with dual wield. I had 30 Melee Crit, 20 Spell Crit, 22+31 DPS (Adorns + Ring) and 31 Haste. This was my "fundament". Then I've switched from Int. line to Stamina line with 4/4/4/8. Haste is no matter for our Ranger, as we have an Illu in our Group. Trooper Boots, Treasure Seeker Wrist, Manipulator Hood, Cartio Weapon + Fortissimo 24-34 DA. My DPS rocket up since then. As the 34% DA works on Main- and Offhand Weapon.

Banditman

06-11-2008, 10:44 AM

Actually, if you have a Ranger in your group, he probably doesn't NEED the Illusionist Haste. Our Ranger generally resides around 90 Haste SELF BUFFED. Rangers need DPS and (ranged) Double Attack. Your Illusionist can probably use that concentration slot to better effect elsewhere . . . unless of course he's Mythical equipped.

Ballads

07-02-2008, 02:40 AM

DO NOT for the love of god specialize in spell boosting gear. It is a waisted effort that will only lead in you shorting yourself from what a troub can be. Melee is much stronger then spells atm, i fyou rgonna one way of the 2 go melee, as it make sup almost 40-50% of our damage. Once you add in CA"S and procs it becomes almost 60%.

Pogopuschel

07-07-2008, 05:49 AM

<cite>Ballads wrote:</cite><blockquote>DO NOT for the love of god specialize in spell boosting gear. It is a waisted effort that will only lead in you shorting yourself from what a troub can be. Melee is much stronger then spells atm, i fyou rgonna one way of the 2 go melee, as it make sup almost 40-50% of our damage. Once you add in CA"S and procs it becomes almost 60%.</blockquote>Having lived the "spell crit way", I can't stress this enough. If you have access to VP gear and above, don't focus on your spell damage.

RanmaBoyType

07-08-2008, 01:31 PM

i have seen this, and argued for and against it many times, unfortunately only because i for myself cant find superb evidence that either is greater than the other.If i look at my parses i see the obvious. the number 1 and 2 damage contributers to my overall parse is autoattack damage. In the back of my mind i have always felt melee was the way to go, and i think on my troub my melee crits and DA are far greater than my spell crits are currently.But i was never convinced that if my spell crit matched my melee crit rate that the spell damage overall would cap out my melee damage. If i look at my parses now, spamming thunderous as often as possible, shrill etc, POTM jestered for refresh and then tally up my damage for the zone. i can order it by damage type i see melee damage at about 40% and "mental damage" at about 60% give or take a few. Off the top of my head 2 combat arts (noble blade, and that [Removed for Content] one shot + power drain one) are combat arts that flag as melee, so they NEED to be taken into consideration, however from my parses combined they will contribute to about 8-10% of my damage.If i look at that alone that puts me at almost 50/50 for spell damage vs melee damage. So how does this even out to high end raiding. I guess it really does depend alot on your gear and your spells.All my damage spells are master, but all my damage CA's are only AD3. its the luck of what dropped for me. Also i am not yet equipped with my mythical weapon, which once that happens will be , in my mind a significant upgrade to melee DPS, but at the same point right now i easily have 20-25 MORE melee crit than i do spell crit. If i got my spell crits to 25% more than my melee crits, how far would the tides turn?Id love to see parses from both sides, those who feel spell damage is the way to go and those who feel melee damage is the way to go. But include in those parses where you currently stand at spell crit rate, melee crit rate, DA, Spell Mod and CA mod. For example, if you parse shows you did 60% melee damage and 40% spell damage, but your melee crits are 50% and DA 60, spell crits only 20% then how different would that exact parse looked if you focused on Spell crit gear?

RanmaBoyType

07-11-2008, 10:57 AM

ok, Here is some info from our last run into VP (wednesday 9th). these parses include trash up to elder ekron and Kluzen the protector fight. I did not remove the times we wiped either, so its a bit low, but im mainly interested in the damage spread on the second picture.My group was Fury, Troub(me), Warlock, Wizard, Necro, Illusionist. I think i had a pretty good group this night.We had no assassins OR swashy's on our raid though, so our overall raidwide was kind of low.My raid buffed stats were:int 1060ishstr 1010ishHaste: 90ishdpsmod: 48ishmelee crit: 30ishDA: 60ishspell crit: 15ishSongs were:DeaggroAriasStr/StaSong of MagicPower BalladDKTMAllegroFortissimoResonanceSelf BuffRaid Wide DPS/position:<img src="http://users.rcn.com/chrisshelly/images/20080709.JPG" alt="" width="1261" height="962" border="0" />naruchan DPS Detail Breakdown<img src="http://users.rcn.com/chrisshelly/images/20080709detail.JPG" alt="" width="1265" height="962" border="0" />From this my Melee DPS fell from the following abilities:AutoAttack: 43%Bright Blade: 6%Ceremonial Blade: 5%Draining Incursion: 2%Night Strike: 2% (i do not have bump)Rhythm Blade: 1%Peircing Stab: 1% (racial ability for half elf)These show a direct 60% melee damage vs 40% spell damage in this group set up. I think i did well to spam thunderous as often as possible, but i realize i could have gotten in more Painful Lamentations which would have increased a few more triggers of dissonant note as well.As you can see from this however i have much more stat wise going for melee than i do spell right now. Id love to see a breakdown from a troub that has focused on spell damage over melee damage. Also note i do not yet have my mythical, and i can see once i get that, melee will increase even more. Primary - Fabled Epic, Secondary - Betrayals Song

Bewts

07-11-2008, 03:21 PM

I looked at your parse, and to use your own results as an example:Discounting procs from others and HO's only what YOU bring to the table:60% of all your successfull hits came from melee hits, obviously the other 40% came from spell hits.You were averaging 1700 dmg per melee hit, 1400 per spell hit.The most interesting thing is that 45% of all of your hits (spell and melee combined) came from your auto attacks.That right there signifies that the more you modify your auto attacks, the more DPS you are going to do compared to modifying ANY OTHER damage skill you bring to the table.Unless you run 200 Haste, 200 DPS, 125 DA 24/7 and twice on Sunday just for kicks you will definitely see the greatest yield of DPS by getting more Crits, DA, DPS, Haste.As an example from your parse, 2 extra double attacks off attacks that were single attacks would have yielded you 3600 more dmg based off your average if Ayonic Axe was the DA culprit. An extra 2 crits on Shrills you cast would have yielded you maybe an extra 2k tops and Shrill is you're strongest spell according to your averages.And from what I said before, considering 45% of all your dmg hits came from auto attacks you can see the multiplicative increases to your DPS by adding more melee crit, DA, DPS, STR and to a lesser extent haste.The ONLY time Spell crits / mods would overcome melee would be in short fights in heroic content and even then well geared raid troubs focused in melee dmg would still win. PotM + Jcap + plus your big hitters and spamming every fast cast spell you have for procs on Aria's / PotM would you see your spell damage out parse your melee damage. Basically if you just stay in heroic content and NEVER plan to raid, running spell dmg + crit gear may yield you better overall DPS output and even then it's still close but I'll give the edge to spells due to the pitiful offhand weapons available in heroic content.

Wluil

07-12-2008, 04:12 AM

What I find most interesting is the 80% hit rate on the auto-attacks. DA/Crit is nice, but if we're whiffing 20% of the time, wouldn't it be more prudent to try an boost up pierce/slash skills over DA/Crits? I'm not sure how the math for that works out though. What I do know is that when I get off the skill HO and our skill boosting AA off the INT line (the name escapes me at 3am) I see a very big difference when you compare individual fights. I've even gone so far as to respec for Heroic Storytelling (gasp!) in order to crank up the skill boost, and I seem to be doing more damage now than before.

RanmaBoyType

07-13-2008, 01:14 AM

I have rhythm blade, and i have my ho started macrod so it pops all the time. I am almost never without swindlers. I thought 81% hit rate on auto attack was pretty good for Vp actually. Are other troubs much higher?

Wluil

07-13-2008, 03:46 AM

Not sure if it matters much, but my experience with this is outside VP. The server alliance I raid with is just now getting into T2/T3 zones with hopes that we'll be in VP by next month. <div></div><div>Also, not to get off topic, but how do you have your HO starter setup in your macros? I tried it a couple ways, but never quite got it to work right. Either the HO starter never fired, or it blocked the attack it was macroed to whining "A Heroic Opportunity cannot be started at this time."</div>

RanmaBoyType

07-13-2008, 10:25 AM

<cite>Wluil wrote:</cite><blockquote>Not sure if it matters much, but my experience with this is outside VP. The server alliance I raid with is just now getting into T2/T3 zones with hopes that we'll be in VP by next month. <div></div><div>Also, not to get off topic, but how do you have your HO starter setup in your macros? I tried it a couple ways, but never quite got it to work right. Either the HO starter never fired, or it blocked the attack it was macroed to whining "A Heroic Opportunity cannot be started at this time."</div></blockquote>I have it macro'd with vexing verses. Macro is ho starter, second ability is vexing. So long as you dong have anything queue'd then when you tap this it starts the ho, vexes right away and advances the ho. Then its up to you to finish it, but hey thats the easy part. Im up for other ideas though.

Pogopuschel

07-14-2008, 05:09 AM

<cite>Wluil wrote:</cite><blockquote>What I find most interesting is the 80% hit rate on the auto-attacks. DA/Crit is nice, but if we're whiffing 20% of the time, wouldn't it be more prudent to try an boost up pierce/slash skills over DA/Crits? I'm not sure how the math for that works out though. What I do know is that when I get off the skill HO and our skill boosting AA off the INT line (the name escapes me at 3am) I see a very big difference when you compare individual fights. I've even gone so far as to respec for Heroic Storytelling (gasp!) in order to crank up the skill boost, and I seem to be doing more damage now than before.</blockquote>That is what logic would dictate, but reality is that because attack skills aren't a flat bonus, getting them to the hard cap doesn't do much. 80% auto-attack hit rate is already quite high in Veeshan's Peak (mob levels 85+, so all orange!)So, at level 80 your max. skill is 400, then you're likely to have some gear (more or less by accident) that buffs your +attack skills, like mastercrafted when you start out, then you probably want to spam Heroic Opportunities and eventually get Swindler's Luck up and maintained, so let's say you're at maybe 450 without any group buffs - that is enough. You'd rather want one or two extra swings per hand per minute with the chance of hitting. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Raahl

07-21-2008, 11:21 AM

Wow a really good discussion going on here. Keep it up.So what I am gathering is that I need to start focusing on more Melee vs. spell?

Galim

07-24-2008, 07:02 AM

What Ballads said. I have noticed increased dps as I have swung away from Int/spell crits and more onto Str/Melee crits. Also, I have found that matching the speed of the weapons DOES make for a higher parse. Obviously Mythic weapon is a must, and IB from Nex or Marrows from SoH have the same delay. I have yet to work out what gives me better dps tho <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I dont have my parses in front of me (im at work), but im sure my hit rate was around 92% on trash in VP last time. If im able to I will post my parse here. Either that or I will delete this last line as a pile of poo and pretend that I dreamt of a 92% hit rate <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Edit: ok the above line is a lie, i must've dreamt it <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />On trash in the 2nd half of VP (after druushk and nex) my hit rate is a tad over 81%. In SoH up to Kpul (including nameds) is 88%.

peepshow

07-24-2008, 04:04 PM

Agree that this is prolly the most interestering conversation I've read here in a long time <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />I honestly like where this is going, not just because I play Dirge as my main, but because Imyself have found more dps when going more against melee than spells..However, this brings me to another question, since we are more and more about Melee than spells, would it be stupid to start thinking about the INT AA line to buff up our Haste even more ?I currently have a longer talk with some guildies about chosing Int > Agi, but I cant really figure out what is best myself..Any of you that have tested this more, and can tell me what would be best if going more for melee, Poison proc or extra haste ?

RanmaBoyType

07-24-2008, 05:42 PM

<cite>Scipius@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>Agree that this is prolly the most interestering conversation I've read here in a long time <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />I honestly like where this is going, not just because I play Dirge as my main, but because Imyself have found more dps when going more against melee than spells..However, this brings me to another question, since we are more and more about Melee than spells, would it be stupid to start thinking about the INT AA line to buff up our Haste even more ?I currently have a longer talk with some guildies about chosing Int > Agi, but I cant really figure out what is best myself..Any of you that have tested this more, and can tell me what would be best if going more for melee, Poison proc or extra haste ?</blockquote>Thats the route i went on Naruchan. Bard lines are Wis, INT, STa, and then turnstrike, but once i get the earing outta SoH i may switch to bump.If i recall the number Allegro M1 with the int line maxed is 43% haste. for me this is good because i am rarely grouped with a Illusionist, however i know most raiding troubs at high end are, so they will see less of a benefit than i do.I guess it depends alot on your average group make up.

Bewts

07-25-2008, 07:44 PM

I don't wear a worn haste item ATM, and I typically run 110% haste in a raid give or take. Granted we are mythical so I benefit from Illy Mythical group haste. I've been as high as 160 haste before and thats a little overboard. The most significant damage mod I lack is +DPS due to group setup not bringing DPS mods leaving me only to obtain worn +DPS and using oilstones and even then I'm not sure if 4 double attack > 15 DPS Mod.TBH, the benefit of spending all those points for a little extra haste from your buff is rather weak. Better to run Fortissimo, DKTM and Poison proc for pure dps numbers regardless of being mythical or pre-mythical. Again this is from a personal DPS perspective. If you blessed enough to run with a dirge in your group and the group DPS is focused on melee then running the extra haste may parse higher overall for the group than you running poison proc. In my situation at most I have a brigand or Assassin in my group for melee dps. Wizard Illy Mystic (for Mythical Tap) Brigand/Assassin Troub and some other casting class is the typical setup.Anyone know if the extra haste from the VP legs affects group wide or self only? I've noticed the Aria Proc from the BP parses the same proc rate as without for group members. Seems to be following a line that the 4 set bonus, BP effects are self only even though they affect group and raidwide buffs.

Terabithi

07-27-2008, 11:36 PM

Hrm. Let me play a bleak card here, to possibly stimulate further....(a bit of a hijack, but I'll bring it back around.)I guess I am deflated at the thought that my troubadour's damage output at max level will be, essentially, based on my melee damage.This says "dirge" to me. They are the melee-crowd, yes? Aren't troubadours quite caster-focused?this is why I find myself wishing troubadours had far more spell-attacks at their disposal.(see the "My Brilliant Idea" thread for an idea about this. LOL)okay. back to your great thread here. I'm hooked. lol