SF AA Spec

[Jemoo]

Hey all,

I've recently gotten back to playing my mystic since changing my main to a ranger at the start of the expac.  I'm looking for some suggestions for how to spec as I start leveling (currently at 83 with 192-ish AAs).  Any advice would be great, something towards grouping or that will help with the x2 raid (all my small guild can get together for) would be awesome.  Here is roughly what my current spec looks like:

http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/[email protected]@[email protected]

Thanks in advance!

[SonnyA]

Shaman tree:

Drop the extra 3 points in ritual. The diminishing returns in ritual makes every extra point a waste.

Get the doggie AE immunity. Since you put points in strength line, you really should get this for doggie survivability.

For grouping and x2 raiding, you will get a lot more bang for the buck by putting points in AE cure reuse reduction. You can recover points from ritual and the rest from the RoA enhancement.

Mystic tree:

There's no real need for the cure curse cast speed reduction. Otherwise looks fine. But you do spend a lot of points in the buff enhancers. They're really not that great.

Shadow tree:

You really want infusion of the spirit. It's the best ability in the mystic line.

I think you would have more fun with the dps abilities. Tribal Frenzy isn't really that great. And unless you really use your direct heals a lot, you don't need the points there. I've noticed that I use my quick direct heal a lot more than the large one. So you could recover a few points from that.

Conclusion:

I think you would have a lot more fun with the group and small raid if you get to do a bit more dps. SF is not terribly rough and there's no real need for any particular AA. But the spec I think would give you the most fun and usability with 192 points is this

http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/[email protected]@[email protected]

Enjoy..

[Jemoo]

Thank you very much for the quick reply and help

[Hene]

SonnyA wrote:

Shaman tree:

Drop the extra 3 points in ritual. The diminishing returns in ritual makes every extra point a waste.

Not really; and if you look at it from absolute heal gain, it is not diminishing at all:

assume you have a ward that hits with a base value of 2400, you have 1000 ability mod and 1.3 effective crit mult:

With 0% potency:

(2400 * 1.0 + 1000) * 1.3 = 4420

With 10% potency:

(2400 * 1.1 + 1000) * 1.3 = 4732

With 20% potency:

(2400 * 1.2 + 1000) * 1.3 = 5044

From 0 to 10 you get: 312 extra points on the ward

From 10 to 20 you get: 312 extra points on the ward

Since potency is additive and not multiplicative, you get a set heal amount added for each point(s) of potency

so the extra points are well worth it, subjugation and disruption will not really do much for you but the potency is great, and soon it will be uncapped on live (assuming nothing changes from test...)

For the mystic tree, I'd say move 2 points from lunar attendant to oberon; and yeah, get rid of the curse casting speed reduction..

SonnyA wrote:

Shadow tree:

You really want infusion of the spirit. It's the best ability in the mystic line.

I think you would have more fun with the dps abilities. Tribal Frenzy isn't really that great. And unless you really use your direct heals a lot, you don't need the points there. I've noticed that I use my quick direct heal a lot more than the large one. So you could recover a few points from that.

Definitely agree moving points ouf ot premonition (tribal frenzy) in favor of the group buff, it adds more hit points (~513 iirc), and its group wide

SonnyA wrote:

Conclusion:

I think you would have a lot more fun with the group and small raid if you get to do a bit more dps. SF is not terribly rough and there's no real need for any particular AA. But the spec I think would give you the most fun and usability with 192 points is this

Yeah, having a hybrid spec tends to be more fun and effective (unless you're solo healing a tank or something).

You can try this spec out if you want (but its 193 aas): http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/[email protected]@[email protected]

Keep in mind the litany of combat stance thing doesn't work when you're in heal stance, but as soon as you hop out of heal stance then you get hte benefits of it; that will help you do some DPS between healing and warding and curing and such

[Jemoo]

I do a lot of soloing healing and healing with one other healer (depending on what we got on). Back in TSO I used to only solo heal, or do most of the healing even with another healer in the group so I've never really gone the DPS route. I'll give both these a try and see what suites my needs best. Again, thanks for the replies and suggestions!

[SonnyA]

Hene wrote:

SonnyA wrote:

Shaman tree:

Drop the extra 3 points in ritual. The diminishing returns in ritual makes every extra point a waste.

Not really; and if you look at it from absolute heal gain, it is not diminishing at all:

assume you have a ward that hits with a base value of 2400, you have 1000 ability mod and 1.3 effective crit mult:

With 0% potency:

(2400 * 1.0 + 1000) * 1.3 = 4420

With 10% potency:

(2400 * 1.1 + 1000) * 1.3 = 4732

With 20% potency:

(2400 * 1.2 + 1000) * 1.3 = 5044

From 0 to 10 you get: 312 extra points on the ward

From 10 to 20 you get: 312 extra points on the ward

Since potency is additive and not multiplicative, you get a set heal amount added for each point(s) of potency

so the extra points are well worth it, subjugation and disruption will not really do much for you but the potency is great, and soon it will be uncapped on live (assuming nothing changes from test...)

Hm. What I mean is that if you put in 4 AA points you get 24% effect, which is 6% per AA point spent. The next AA points you put in will only give you 2%. So you get a lot less for the 5th point than you do for the previous 4 points.

[Hene]

Oh I see what you mean, but I maintain that the extra 8% is better than some subjugation and disruption, I never get resisted...

[Banditman]

With 192 AA, I would use this spec.

[Loke]

My recommendation for 192AA build

This includes all the good stuff from the Shaman tree like maxed Spiritual Leadership, Herbal Expertise and Ritual of Alacrity and also has Ancestral Channeling 2 which is tremendously useful. It has your heal stance and all your combat arts along with Litany of Combat and Ethereal Weaponry to boost your offense. From here I would work toward opening the bottom row in the Mystic tree so you can enhance Oberon, Torpor and Bolster and eventually get Stampede which is loads of fun.

[Banditman]

I think Herbal Expertise is the biggest waste of AA now.  It is only helping your single target cure, which you should be using rarely, and with the cast speed gear available, you don't need the haste.  Likewise, the upgrade to RoA, while nice, isn't nearly as beneficial as having your group cure on an 11 second re-use.  Ancestral Channeling is a powerful ability to be sure, but frankly, it's not really game breaking.

What is game altering though is the lack of Ancestry in the Mystic Tree.  You spend 5 AA in Spirit of the Wolf, but you don't take Ancestry?  Really?  Further, you spend 5 AA's to gain 150 Health / Power on two people, but you neglect to take a 2000+ Group Heal every time your Group Ward breaks?

I still have a sort of love / hate relationship with the dog.  He pisses me off royally at times, but I gotta tell ya, that little bugger can put out some DPS in the right group if he can manage to not get killed.  I started using him again after he "somehow" managed to survive most of Lair of the Dragon Queen without any AE avoid.  I couldn't figure out how my DPS went from ~10k to ~13k despite being in the same group I am always in.  Turns out, it was the (*@# dog.  So, for giggles, I spend the plat to respec back to AE avoid for him, and last night I was over 17k DPS ZW in Lair.

I was also pretty pleased with his performance against Waansu, he managed to survive the entire encounter.  Decent DPS, and a few AE avoids for my group didn't suck.  It seems that his main issue these days is AE Auto Attacks killing him.  He can't live 10 seconds against Perah'Celsis (literally, I timed it!), but survived a 12 minute fight against Waansu . . . go figure.

Me personally, I hate having to respec repeatedly.  I try to project where I want to end up, then take the things that get me there faster.

[Loke]

I was under the impression that Kindred Restoration only fires when the group ward expires with some points left in it after the 30 second duration is up. If this is still true then I won't bother with it, if your group ward ever expires with points still in it then you don't need the group heal in the first place.

Edit-I stand corrected. I did some looking around and apparently when this AA was on test it was somewhat bugged but was subsequently fixed in a later patch. It's been a long time since I've really looked at my shadows tree so I'll have to get this and see how it does although from what I've read most people are saying somewhere between 1-4% of zonewide healing so I'm not going to get too excited about it.

I picked up Herbal expertise back in TSO and won't go without it now, the mana reduction alone makes it worth it plus nearly instant casting cures really allow a lot more flexibility when you are having to chain cast wards to keep a tank alive but also have to remove detrimentals. Even with the AAs in group cure I found it not sufficient for all curing all the time and when you're solo healing tough instances with a lower geared tank there are times when you simply don't have time to wait for group cure to repop. From a raiders perspective this might not be as important because you're probably overhealing any heroic content you run and have plenty of people to help with cures on raids but for me Herbal Expertise is much more valuable than reduced reuse on group cure was. It will be a while before I cap reuse and cast speed.

Ancestry? Seriously? Maybe things have changed but I'd need to see some parse data proving at least a smidgen of value from this buff before I could be convinced to spend a point on it. I had it a long time ago and couldn't see any difference in parses with or without it on a number of different classes in groups and raids so I ditched it. Maybe the changes to game mechanics have made this buff valuable again but I don't really want to bother with it until someone can demonstrate through parses a clear benefit from it.

45% run speed saves me a ton on chokidai totems although now that my regular group has picked up a bard I may free up those points to use elsewhere but I really like run speed for indoor zones.

And while it might not be game breaking, Ancestral Channeling is a must have. It's by far the best "oh sh*t" button a mystic is going to get. Almost instant cast and will bring your entire group from red to nearly full in 2 seconds. Definitely worth 4 points. I'm really surprised you didn't include this in your suggestion but again I think it's probably down to you being raid geared and an active raider vs. me being casual. For me the Ancestral Channeling button gets pressed many times every night, for you it might not be that way.

[Banditman]

[email protected] wrote:

I was under the impression that Kindred Restoration only fires when the group ward expires with some points left in it after the 30 second duration is up. If this is still true then I won't bother with it, if your group ward ever expires with points still in it then you don't need the group heal in the first place.

This is not correct.  Kindred Restoration fires when the Ward is broken.  Exactly when you need it the most.

I picked up Herbal expertise back in TSO and won't go without it now, the mana reduction alone makes it worth it plus nearly instant casting cures really allow a lot more flexibility when you are having to chain cast wards to keep a tank alive but also have to remove detrimentals. Even with the AAs in group cure I found it not sufficient for all curing all the time and when you're solo healing tough instances with a lower geared tank there are times when you simply don't have time to wait for group cure to repop. From a raiders perspective this might not be as important because you're probably overhealing any heroic content you run and have plenty of people to help with cures on raids but for me Herbal Expertise is much more valuable than reduced reuse on group cure was. It will be a while before I cap reuse and cast speed.

You simply don't need Herbal Expertise.  It brings you very little benefit.  You really shouldn't be using it all that often.  In a group instance, there just aren't very many things that absolutely, positively must be cured *right now*.  It's usually not a priority.  Sure, I cure, but normally it can wait.  Yes, there are a couple things that you do have to get to quickly, but the difference between having HE and not aren't going to break the back of the group.

On the other hand, the things you lose by going down this line, very well might.

Ancestry? Seriously? Maybe things have changed but I'd need to see some parse data proving at least a smidgen of value from this buff before I could be convinced to spend a point on it. I had it a long time ago and couldn't see any difference in parses with or without it on a number of different classes in groups and raids so I ditched it. Maybe the changes to game mechanics have made this buff valuable again but I don't really want to bother with it until someone can demonstrate through parses a clear benefit from it.

So you're the one.  They always told me there was a Mystic who didn't have Ancestry and I never believed.  Now I do.  Here's quick and dirty math:  Something procs 2 times per minute.  Ancestry makes it 2.4.  Procs are based on the base cast time of a spell.  Thus, if you cast at full cast haste, you get twice the proc chance, 4.8.  You've added nearly a proc per minute by taking Ancestry.

You're welcome.

45% run speed saves me a ton on chokidai totems although now that my regular group has picked up a bard I may free up those points to use elsewhere but I really like run speed for indoor zones.

One totem lasts you all night, if you really think you need that much run speed.  It might cost 6 gold.  On the other hand, those 5 AA are forever.  Wasted.  So you can spend, what, 2 plat per YEAR on totems and have 5 AA to be used somewhere else or waste the 5 AA on something you can get elsewhere.

Spend AA on things you absolutely cannot get any other way, especially in a situation where you have limited AA to work with.

And while it might not be game breaking, Ancestral Channeling is a must have. It's by far the best "oh sh*t" button a mystic is going to get. Almost instant cast and will bring your entire group from red to nearly full in 2 seconds. Definitely worth 4 points. I'm really surprised you didn't include this in your suggestion but again I think it's probably down to you being raid geared and an active raider vs. me being casual. For me the Ancestral Channeling button gets pressed many times every night, for you it might not be that way.

I agree, it is worth the four points, but not until you have ~215 to spend.  In a group zone, you just don't get into many situations where the group is taking a lot of damage unless someone is sucking pretty bad or making mistakes.

[Loke]

Banditman wrote:

So you're the one.  They always told me there was a Mystic who didn't have Ancestry and I never believed.  Now I do.  Here's quick and dirty math:  Something procs 2 times per minute.  Ancestry makes it 2.4.  Procs are based on the base cast time of a spell.  Thus, if you cast at full cast haste, you get twice the proc chance, 4.8.  You've added nearly a proc per minute by taking Ancestry.

You're welcome.

I wasn't aware that spell casting haste had any effect on proc per minute rate. It seems odd that it would when melee haste has no effect on weapons that proc per minute. Also I don't understand how you're coming up with 2 increasing to 2.4 from a 3% increase? 3% of 2 is .06. Based on that in your example Ancestry would increase the proc rate on a spell that procs 2 times per minute to 2.06 times per minute and even if spell haste does increase proc rate per minute it would only increase to 2.12. What am I missing that makes it go from 2 to 2.4?

[SonnyA]

[email protected] wrote:

I wasn't aware that spell casting haste had any effect on proc per minute rate. It seems odd that it would when melee haste has no effect on weapons that proc per minute. Also I don't understand how you're coming up with 2 increasing to 2.4 from a 3% increase? 3% of 2 is .06. Based on that in your example Ancestry would increase the proc rate on a spell that procs 2 times per minute to 2.06 times per minute and even if spell haste does increase proc rate per minute it would only increase to 2.12. What am I missing that makes it go from 2 to 2.4?

It's +3% to existing trigger rate, not added 3%. If something had 1% chance to trigger on a spell cast, Ancestry would make it 4% chance. Effective this would be a 300% proc chance increase. However, this is now shown as procs per minute.

The reason that it's shown as procs per minute, is that the base casting cast time, and also melee weapon delay, will modify this. The higher base cast time, the greater is the chance to proc. It's the same for melee weapons delay.

So if a spell has 2.5 sec base cast time and the proc chance is 3%, then a 5 sec base cast time spell will have a proc chance of 6%. Ancestry would double the proc rate on this to a whooping 12% on the 5 sec base cast spell. But your casting haste could bring the cast time down to 2.5 sec, but the proc rate would stay at 12%.

Ancestry is a must.

[Loke]

SonnyA wrote:

It's +3% to existing trigger rate, not added 3%. If something had 1% chance to trigger on a spell cast, Ancestry would make it 4% chance. Effective this would be a 300% proc chance increase. However, this is now shown as procs per minute.

The reason that it's shown as procs per minute, is that the base casting cast time, and also melee weapon delay, will modify this. The higher base cast time, the greater is the chance to proc. It's the same for melee weapons delay.

So if a spell has 2.5 sec base cast time and the proc chance is 3%, then a 5 sec base cast time spell will have a proc chance of 6%. Ancestry would double the proc rate on this to a whooping 12% on the 5 sec base cast spell. But your casting haste could bring the cast time down to 2.5 sec, but the proc rate would stay at 12%.

Ancestry is a must.

Sorry if I'm being dense but I'm trying to understand how Ancestry works. So you are saying that it increases the percentage chance per attack(or whatever event has a chance to trigger) to proc for any given event? So if an effect would normally proc 2 times per minute, with a 3 second delay weapon that would be a 10% chance per swing to proc, Ancestry changes this value to 13%? If you haste that weapon 100% down to a 1.5 second delay the proc percentage per swing goes down to 5% because the effect still only procs 2 times per minute, so Ancestry would then increase this value to 8%?

[SonnyA]

[email protected] wrote:

Sorry if I'm being dense but I'm trying to understand how Ancestry works. So you are saying that it increases the percentage chance per attack(or whatever event has a chance to trigger) to proc for any given event? So if an effect would normally proc 2 times per minute, with a 3 second delay weapon that would be a 10% chance per swing to proc, Ancestry changes this value to 13%? If you haste that weapon 100% down to a 1.5 second delay the proc percentage per swing goes down to 5% because the effect still only procs 2 times per minute, so Ancestry would then increase this value to 8%?

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Except that the proc chance won't go down just because you haste your weapon/spell.

So it stays at 13% proc chance, even though you haste your casting/swing to double speed.

[Banditman]

The proc chance you see on an item, for example, 2.0 times per minute, it is computed using the base time.  Take something like a damage proc on a weapon.  The weapon has a delay of 8 seconds.  If you sit there and swing with absolutely no haste at all, it will proc 2 times per minute.  If you aquire enough Haste to lower the delay to 4 seconds, you would then get 4 procs per minute, though the inspect would still display as only 2.

So, if Ancestry were to increase you from 2.0 to 2.4, Haste then doubles that proc rate to 4.8 times.  Everything is still a flat percentage behind the scenes, you just can't see it.

Ancestry is not like the other proc increasers at all.  For instance, Templars have one that increases proc rate by 20% of it's existing amount.  That sucks.  Well, it doesn't suck, but it isn't Ancestry.  Take something with a proc rate of 10%.  Ancestry increases it to 13%, the Templar buff increases it to 12%.

TL;DR - Haste and cast speed affect proc rate to your advantage.  Swing faster, cast faster, proc more.  Ancestry rocks.

[Arcanemundi]

Banditman wrote:

...I still have a sort of love / hate relationship with the dog.  He pisses me off royally at times, but I gotta tell ya, that little bugger can put out some DPS in the right group if he can manage to not get killed.  I started using him again after he "somehow" managed to survive most of Lair of the Dragon Queen without any AE avoid.  I couldn't figure out how my DPS went from ~10k to ~13k despite being in the same group I am always in.  Turns out, it was the (*@# dog.  So, for giggles, I spend the plat to respec back to AE avoid for him, and last night I was over 17k DPS ZW in Lair.

I was also pretty pleased with his performance against Waansu, he managed to survive the entire encounter.  Decent DPS, and a few AE avoids for my group didn't suck.  It seems that his main issue these days is AE Auto Attacks killing him.  He can't live 10 seconds against Perah'Celsis (literally, I timed it!), but survived a 12 minute fight against Waansu . . . go figure.

Me personally, I hate having to respec repeatedly.  I try to project where I want to end up, then take the things that get me there faster.

Lilsaad's Control Rod makes your dog almost immortal.  The main reason I like my dog is for the cures.  If you spec Aura of Purity in Shaman tree and check the parse, you will see the dog cures a ton of dets, and that increases your heals/debuffs/dps/etc....

[Banditman]

The big problem I have with the dog cures is that you simply can't count on them.  I know of many people who say they see big cure numbers with it, but the problem with those numbers is that they are tainted.

Quite often, what I saw with the dog cures is that most of his "cures" came in between the time an AE hit my group and me hitting my group cure.  In other words, the dog isn't doing anything that I am not going to have to do anyway, he's not saving me any work.  It's not like I can sit there and "hope" that my dog cures the elemental Waansu just dropped on my group.  I've got to cure it.

[Arcanemundi]

I don't rely on the dog for cures either, and I agree that sometimes the dog, or even another healer, beats me to curing single target, and even group wide, detriments that I was already curing, but that's not a bad thing.  I just /cancel_spellcast and cure or heal someone else if that occurs.  So the dog does "save you work" if you look at it that way.

What's even better is that sometimes the dog cures the effect in less than a second after it hits, so healers don't even have the inclination to stop what their doing and cure since the dog cures faster than human reaction time could ever dream of.  For example, after some stun fights like the sisters in PoRT, or Rohen Theer, I have looked up in the parse who cured who during the fight so I would know who was on the ball with the super fast cures, and found over and over when my group members or I got stunned, stifled, dotted, etc.. the dog cured us right after the det landed on us.  Not to mention when the AoE prevent is up at the right time, I love it when that happens.  You can even set up a trigger in ACT to make a sound when the AoE prevent goes off so you know if you can stay in during AoEs.  Wearing gear that procs cures off of heals makes a big difference too in intense cure fights.  

I think the main hang up some people have is that the dog cure is a random effect, so it is unreliable and kind of hard to quantify and track on the parse, but if you look at the incoming damage parse and the dog's cures going out parse, at the end of the fight and really analyze the times things happens, you will find that these random proc cures can handle over half of all the cures during some fights, and does increase our HPS as a result.  Fraps replays will show it too.

I don't expect for every encounter to go like clock work, especially the ones we think we got down since sometimes we start to think the fight is easy and relax a little too much on the cures, but many times when I get stunned or stifled, and cannot cure the effect on me, the dog has got my back.

[Striikor]

So are 20 points spent in combat worth it if you have all your combat spells mastered...just to get weapons mastery or is there that much difference in dps?

[Gisallo]

Yes, the damage of a ca is more than a spell. If you are healing the longer ca reuse time fits in nicely with your aa and ca's. If u don't have to heal spells can do more damage because of casting speed and ability reuse ad spell reuse stacking. Both have their place and their use

[Gahnand]

you really should have your CAs. if you plan on using the dog you really should have weapon mastery. using spells is going to kill your dps regardless of w/e math you'd like to think will make it better. spells get resisted a lot more than your CAs will get parry'ed not to mention you can melee on the run and the longer cool down will give you time to heal. spamming spells is for mages anyway.

[Striikor]

Thanx for the advice, I got a really screwy AA setup in that case. With 192AA I thought the CA's a waste as I am primarily interested in keeping my group up so the only thing I use in the combat line is Ursine Avatar.

I would like to solo heal pugs in vig, palace and GS etc, it appears I have a long way to go. I have everything twinked to master (cept debuffs) and got all the moonfiled items I can think of but I cannot solo heal those zones with a pug I have to take guildies.

I failed at trying to solo an incursion run for instance :{

I thought getting everything related to heals and wards would be the way to go until I get ~230AA or so and get my mystic twinked with some more raid drops.

Taking into account that I could care less about dps ..... still do the combat line?

My Current AA

[Gahnand]

if all you want to do is heal, then switch to defiler.

[Edith]

Get more AAs! 192 is really subpar for someone who wants to solo heal instances, particularly if your gear is lower end.

As far as your AA choices, I would get rid of the enhancements to ursine avatar, which is pretty meh, and pick up spirit dance, which is far more useful.  Also, beefing up your premonition makes far more sense than all those points in lunar attendant. The healy bear dies to every aoe of note. I'd swap the points you have in seal of faith for prayer of healing. There is not a huge point in having extra block chance for a non-cleric and if you are struggling to keep your group alive why not enhance a heal instead? Oh, and since you are an avowed non-dpser, get those points out of ancestral authority and into ancestral spirits.  Why add to your base auto attack if you are not going to melee?

Personally, I would not forgo the combat arts even though I am not much of a dpser.  Normally, either I am solo healing or I let the other healer in my raid group dps when that is an option, but I do like to make a contribution when I can. Also, I like to just keep one AA set up and there is no way I would solo without CAs. You really might as well be a defiler if you can stomach that kind of pain!

[Striikor]

LOL ... thanx guys. No I don't want a defiler but it is much easier to get groups if you can solo heal ... getting groups gets aa faster  

I'll respec