dirge dps

[Sluggo]

<p>Should i really even bother that much with trying to squeeze every ounce of dps out? Or spend that time trying to spec my aa to do max buffing?</p><p>I am guessing its pointless tryint to compete for the dps parse huh?</p><p>My job is to make everybody else dps more</p>

[Eveningsong]

<p>Dirges are not usually at the top of the dps list, but they can definitely get fairly high up there <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  I'd suggest taking a look in the dirge forum for tips, but it really depends on the type of play you normally do.  If you are soloing a fair bit, you'll want to be able to (a) stay alive, and (b) kill stuff as fast as possible so that you can do (a) <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  So you may want to concentrate more on your personal dps/defense.  If you mostly group and perhaps raid, then speccing your AAs to increase buffs becomes more important (and whatever helps group/raid dps will generally help yours as well anyways). </p><p>AAs aside, the biggest things you can do to keep your dps at max while still concentrating on debuffing, etc. is to make sure that your weapon speeds match, and to learn to time your CAs/spells with your auto attacks.  I never really worried about auto attack timing for a long time, but when I finally installed ACT with the autoattack timer I found it made a huge difference to my dps.  Profit also has an auto attack bar that helps timing, but you don't really need an add-on.  Once you auto-attack you can just count to yourself as you use your CAs/spells (eg. count to 4 if you have a 4 weapon speed, etc.) and then pause just before you finish counting until you see your auto attack and then start again.  There's a recent thread in one of the forums that talks about timing auto attacks if you want more info (I'm no expert lol).</p><p>And don't forget to upgrade your spells and combat attacks!  The apprentice version you get automatically when you level are really not adequate for more than temporary use until you can upgrade them.  You can get spell upgrades from mob drops, crafters or the broker, or hire a research assistant npc to upgrade a spell for free.</p>