Confused about using Prismatic Discord

Nyxxian · 01-21-2009, 01:10 PM

This is a noob question, I'm sure, but I'm pretty new to the game and the class.

I've had Prismatic Discord for awhile and I don't think I'm using it right. Reading the forums, people talk about it as a huge part of their damage. It makes sense that in a group an illusionist would use this spell constantly to up DPS by casting it on a melee fighter, but I'm not sure about how it's being used solo.

My question is this: how are you using prismatic discord (or its upgrades) without getting squished? My understanding is the spell only triggers on melee attacks. Are illusionists meleeing? Are you sending in the pet to melee for you? Doesn't that result in a dead pet pretty often as you get higher level?

I'm used to rooting and fighting from range, but that sems to eliminate the DPS capabilities of the spell unless I'm totally missing something.

Thanks for any help.

Drus · 01-21-2009, 01:49 PM

Your not missing anything. It is a melee buff pure and simple and if you or your pet can stand toe to toe with the mobs then winner!

When grouped, macro it to one of the melee members and spam it.

It doesn't have much use when soloing though

Sprin · 01-21-2009, 01:52 PM

Nyxxian wrote:

This is a noob question, I'm sure, but I'm pretty new to the game and the class.
I've had Prismatic Discord for awhile and I don't think I'm using it right. Reading the forums, people talk about it as a huge part of their damage. It makes sense that in a group an illusionist would use this spell constantly to up DPS by casting it on a melee fighter, but I'm not sure about how it's being used solo.
My question is this: how are you using prismatic discord (or its upgrades) without getting squished? My understanding is the spell only triggers on melee attacks. Are illusionists meleeing? Are you sending in the pet to melee for you? Doesn't that result in a dead pet pretty often as you get higher level?
I'm used to rooting and fighting from range, but that sems to eliminate the DPS capabilities of the spell unless I'm totally missing something.
Thanks for any help.

When using it solo, you have to be much more carefull... use it when the mob is aggroing your pet, cast it on yourself, and go up and use your 2 melee attacks (STR line and INT line) if you have them... then back out... if its a really tough mob...

If its an easy mob, just go in there and start meleeing... with your pet pulling aggro, and your stuns / stifles etc... the extra boost from the Prismatic spell will cause that mob to burn down much faster....

I have 2 Prismatic Macros on my hotbar... one is set with the target as me... the other I change depending on who im grouped with, but whoever the person is that does the most melee attacks, usually a swashy or tank...then i put their name into the macro "target"...

INT line you should go down early on in your AA's so you have a melee attack from that... also if your just solo quest grinding, 5 points into the STR tree to get your 2nd melee attack helps out, as that cannot be parried blocked or rip'd, so 2 melee attacks will trigger 2 of the 3 prismatic procs and you usually get an auto attack in there between your spells if your up close with it on after your INT and STR attacks...

The T8 raid gear puts the procs up to 5 and can even be put to 7 procs if your so inclined SMILEY ... but yes Prismatic makes up a HUGE percentage of overall Raid DPS as well as group DPS...

If you group alot, put the points into making it faster cast and reuse time

To give you a perspective... Prismatic Adornment (T8 version) makes up 20-30 percent usually of my overall Raidwide DPS....

Sprin · 01-21-2009, 01:57 PM

Drus wrote:

It doesn't have much use when soloing though

Have to disagree 100 percent... at T8, especially if you ahve it mastered with crit damage high from your gear...

if you have the 2 melee attacks from STR and INT line... your adding 3k-4.5k damage with 2 melee attacks that take about 1 second to cast them both, on top of what the melee attacks are doing damage wise...... killing plain jain mobs to grind quests it helps out tons... tougher tripple heroic mobs, it still helps out if you can use it when your pet has aggro...

and remember, the INT line attack is also a debuff, so you should be hitting the mobs with that anyways to debuff them so your spell attacks hit harder... so if your attacking them with that anyways, you might as well pop in another melee attack and hit him for 4k extra damage every 10 seconds while your at it...

kxizm · 01-21-2009, 03:16 PM

prismatic can get tricky to use when soloing, but when you get the hang of it, it can really help ur dps. throw it up at the beginning of a fight and beam the mob to get his attention. cast a dot while hes running over. when he gets to you, you can either stun him before you use the int/str CAs or after. i do it before, that still gives me enough time on the stun to back away and root him. you dont have to worry about taking too much damage that way and by the time youd have to worry about prismatic again, the mobs probably dead lol. i wouldnt reccomend moving within melee range of ^^^s tho. those can murder you and the risk isnt worth it imo. much safer to root/nuke.

Nyxxian · 01-21-2009, 07:37 PM

That all makes way more sense now. Thank you everyone for your helpful advice.

Faenril · 01-22-2009, 06:39 AM

No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up. When soloing, our 2 stuns 1 daze and 1 stiffle should buy you enough time to consume all your triggers when you cast it on you. If it's a solo mob it should be dead before you run out of stuns/daze, at worst you can take 1 hit or 2. If it's heroic mob it's more tricky you have to get out of melee range before your stun/daze expire, but it can still be done, and is pretty funny. str AA line obviously helps with meleeing mobs.

Hammersmasher · 01-26-2009, 03:02 PM

Faenril@Nagafen wrote:

No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up.

I usually use the tank - saves me having to modify my macro each time. Regardless of tank class, all charges from the spell are used up in plenty of time before recast (and I have mythical, so all 5 are used).

I've found a monk/bruiser is the best to get all the charges fast due to their quick handstrikes. But when in groups that the tank isn't using it up fast enough (quick, MORE BUTTON MASHING!!), I'll swap it to the highest melee dps in the group.

Sprin · 01-26-2009, 07:21 PM

Hammersmasher wrote:

Faenril@Nagafen wrote:
No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up.
I usually use the tank - saves me having to modify my macro each time. Regardless of tank class, all charges from the spell are used up in plenty of time before recast (and I have mythical, so all 5 are used).
I've found a monk/bruiser is the best to get all the charges fast due to their quick handstrikes. But when in groups that the tank isn't using it up fast enough (quick, MORE BUTTON MASHING!!), I'll swap it to the highest melee dps in the group.

/nods... swashys are good at this too, as they have 18 or so combat arts they are mashing the whole time...

Mythical doesnt give the extra procs, the VP (2 pieces) and TSO (4 pieces) bonus procs from raid gear does you show off you

Which im very interested to find out if the 4 piece TSO raid set extra procs stack with the VP 2 piece extra procs.. 7 total procs from 4 TSO and 2 VP pieces would be pretty nice... in Raids, with lots of crit'ing going on, 2-3k is average for each proc, so adding an extra 6K every 12 seconds or so wouldnt be a bad thing SMILEY

By the time i used up all my DKP on my full set of VP gear TSO came out, so im letting everyone blow all their DKP on the new stuff and I'll wait till it all goes for cheap SMILEY

Hammersmasher · 01-26-2009, 07:52 PM

Ironfyst@Nagafen wrote:

Mythical doesnt give the extra procs, the VP (2 pieces) and TSO (4 pieces) bonus procs from raid gear does you show off you

So much for being a show off lol.... anyone who doesn't know about the VP set pieces would think that just getting their mythical gives them the extra procs (at least by the way I said it above).

From what I've heard, the 2 piece VP and 4 piece TSO proc is the same proc (but don't quote me on that). But the dps being put out if I was wrong would be insane!

Faenril · 01-27-2009, 06:21 AM

Hammersmasher wrote:

Faenril@Nagafen wrote:
No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up.
I usually use the tank - saves me having to modify my macro each time. Regardless of tank class, all charges from the spell are used up in plenty of time before recast (and I have mythical, so all 5 are used).
I've found a monk/bruiser is the best to get all the charges fast due to their quick handstrikes. But when in groups that the tank isn't using it up fast enough (quick, MORE BUTTON MASHING!!), I'll swap it to the highest melee dps in the group.

In group situation, if there is no brawler usually I macro it to a scout (dirge do fine too), until I realise he is afk half of the fights and then I put it back on tank SMILEY

kxizm · 01-27-2009, 04:33 PM

the procs from the set bonuses stack.

and i have two macros set up for using prismatic. one throws it on a scout or monk. the other puts it on the tank in case the first guys takin a dirt nap.

i might end up just macroing two different scouts instead of a scout/tank. im worried that with the new changes to stances the tank wont be able to hit the mob enough times before prismatic refreshes. itll be interesting to see how the changes affect hit%. it should affect their haste, so they should be swinging the same amount, so maybe im worried about nothing lol.

Hammersmasher · 01-27-2009, 10:24 PM

Faenril@Nagafen wrote:

In group situation, if there is no brawler usually I macro it to a scout (dirge do fine too), until I realise he is afk half of the fights and then I put it back on tank

LOL

rsliv · 01-28-2009, 02:59 PM

Something else to realize about using Prismatic Discord while soloing is that at higher levels you can chain quite a few stuns effects together to get quite a bit of safe melee time in on a mob:

Encounter Stun = 4 sec

Single Target Stun = 8.5 sec

Single Target Stiffle + Single Target Daze = 12 sec

That's theoretically 24.5 seconds of stuns if you manage perfect casting with no lag and no resists. More realistically it's at least 20 seconds of stun where you can safely melee the mob.

Note1: Those times are at level 80. At lower level it's not as good, but you can still stack some nice stuns at earlier levels.

Note2: Stiffle means mob is unable to cast. Daze means mob can't auto-attack. Stiffle+Daze = Stun but mob can still move around.

Note3: Invest in Subjugation gear to help with resists.

kxizm · 01-28-2009, 06:04 PM

some of the shard armor has some stun procs too which will help a lot if you want to get up close and personal with melee and prismatic

Hammersmasher · 01-28-2009, 09:30 PM

It'll lower your overall dps, but dispersion is nice in some cases (when soloing triple ups, absorbing a 5k hit might mean the difference between winning and losing a fight).

Once you hit level 70+, there's a few easy pieces to get:

Forest Giant Trinket: aITEM 112355444 1065117516:Forest Giant Trinket/a - Quested Reward from Kylong Plains

Runed Bracers of Diffusion: aITEM -1531609317 173257584:Runed Bracers of Diffusion/a - Drops in Kylong Castle (It's tradeable, so check the broker)

Sash of the Nathsar Tribe: aITEM 969616858 1816624503:Sash of the Nathsar Tribe/a - Drops from mobs in Fens (It's tradeable, so check the broker)

Embroidered Sebilite Mantle: aITEM 1506225763 606552788:Embroidered Sebilite Mantle/a - Purchased from merchant in Outer Sebilis. This one is a PITA since you need 30k or 40k faction with Outer Sebilis.

There's others of course, but these should be fairly easy to acquire (aside from the last one).

Faenril · 01-29-2009, 06:17 AM

About keeping target locked down while meleeing ... don't forget the pet throws some CCs too.

01-21-2009, 01:49 PM	#2
Drus Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 28	Your not missing anything. It is a melee buff pure and simple and if you or your pet can stand toe to toe with the mobs then winner! When grouped, macro it to one of the melee members and spam it. It doesn't have much use when soloing though __________________

01-21-2009, 01:52 PM	#3
Sprin Server: Nagafen Guild: L U S H Rank: LUSH (Supreme Drinker!) General Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 2,364	Nyxxian wrote: This is a noob question, I'm sure, but I'm pretty new to the game and the class. I've had Prismatic Discord for awhile and I don't think I'm using it right. Reading the forums, people talk about it as a huge part of their damage. It makes sense that in a group an illusionist would use this spell constantly to up DPS by casting it on a melee fighter, but I'm not sure about how it's being used solo. My question is this: how are you using prismatic discord (or its upgrades) without getting squished? My understanding is the spell only triggers on melee attacks. Are illusionists meleeing? Are you sending in the pet to melee for you? Doesn't that result in a dead pet pretty often as you get higher level? I'm used to rooting and fighting from range, but that sems to eliminate the DPS capabilities of the spell unless I'm totally missing something. Thanks for any help. When using it solo, you have to be much more carefull... use it when the mob is aggroing your pet, cast it on yourself, and go up and use your 2 melee attacks (STR line and INT line) if you have them... then back out... if its a really tough mob... If its an easy mob, just go in there and start meleeing... with your pet pulling aggro, and your stuns / stifles etc... the extra boost from the Prismatic spell will cause that mob to burn down much faster.... I have 2 Prismatic Macros on my hotbar... one is set with the target as me... the other I change depending on who im grouped with, but whoever the person is that does the most melee attacks, usually a swashy or tank...then i put their name into the macro "target"... INT line you should go down early on in your AA's so you have a melee attack from that... also if your just solo quest grinding, 5 points into the STR tree to get your 2nd melee attack helps out, as that cannot be parried blocked or rip'd, so 2 melee attacks will trigger 2 of the 3 prismatic procs and you usually get an auto attack in there between your spells if your up close with it on after your INT and STR attacks... The T8 raid gear puts the procs up to 5 and can even be put to 7 procs if your so inclined ... but yes Prismatic makes up a HUGE percentage of overall Raid DPS as well as group DPS... If you group alot, put the points into making it faster cast and reuse time To give you a perspective... Prismatic Adornment (T8 version) makes up 20-30 percent usually of my overall Raidwide DPS....

01-21-2009, 01:57 PM	#4
Sprin Server: Nagafen Guild: L U S H Rank: LUSH (Supreme Drinker!) General Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 2,364	Drus wrote: It doesn't have much use when soloing though Have to disagree 100 percent... at T8, especially if you ahve it mastered with crit damage high from your gear... if you have the 2 melee attacks from STR and INT line... your adding 3k-4.5k damage with 2 melee attacks that take about 1 second to cast them both, on top of what the melee attacks are doing damage wise...... killing plain jain mobs to grind quests it helps out tons... tougher tripple heroic mobs, it still helps out if you can use it when your pet has aggro... and remember, the INT line attack is also a debuff, so you should be hitting the mobs with that anyways to debuff them so your spell attacks hit harder... so if your attacking them with that anyways, you might as well pop in another melee attack and hit him for 4k extra damage every 10 seconds while your at it...

01-21-2009, 03:16 PM	#5
kxizm Hero Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 110	prismatic can get tricky to use when soloing, but when you get the hang of it, it can really help ur dps. throw it up at the beginning of a fight and beam the mob to get his attention. cast a dot while hes running over. when he gets to you, you can either stun him before you use the int/str CAs or after. i do it before, that still gives me enough time on the stun to back away and root him. you dont have to worry about taking too much damage that way and by the time youd have to worry about prismatic again, the mobs probably dead lol. i wouldnt reccomend moving within melee range of ^^^s tho. those can murder you and the risk isnt worth it imo. much safer to root/nuke. __________________

01-26-2009, 03:02 PM	#8
Hammersmasher Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 95	Faenril@Nagafen wrote: No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up. I usually use the tank - saves me having to modify my macro each time. Regardless of tank class, all charges from the spell are used up in plenty of time before recast (and I have mythical, so all 5 are used). I've found a monk/bruiser is the best to get all the charges fast due to their quick handstrikes. But when in groups that the tank isn't using it up fast enough (quick, MORE BUTTON MASHING!!), I'll swap it to the highest melee dps in the group.

01-21-2009, 01:10 PM	#1
Nyxxian Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 4	This is a noob question, I'm sure, but I'm pretty new to the game and the class. I've had Prismatic Discord for awhile and I don't think I'm using it right. Reading the forums, people talk about it as a huge part of their damage. It makes sense that in a group an illusionist would use this spell constantly to up DPS by casting it on a melee fighter, but I'm not sure about how it's being used solo. My question is this: how are you using prismatic discord (or its upgrades) without getting squished? My understanding is the spell only triggers on melee attacks. Are illusionists meleeing? Are you sending in the pet to melee for you? Doesn't that result in a dead pet pretty often as you get higher level? I'm used to rooting and fighting from range, but that sems to eliminate the DPS capabilities of the spell unless I'm totally missing something. Thanks for any help.

01-21-2009, 07:37 PM	#6
Nyxxian Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 4	That all makes way more sense now. Thank you everyone for your helpful advice.

01-22-2009, 06:39 AM	#7
Faenril Server: Nagafen Guild: Purity Rank: Sushi Maker - Alt Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 2,136	No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up. When soloing, our 2 stuns 1 daze and 1 stiffle should buy you enough time to consume all your triggers when you cast it on you. If it's a solo mob it should be dead before you run out of stuns/daze, at worst you can take 1 hit or 2. If it's heroic mob it's more tricky you have to get out of melee range before your stun/daze expire, but it can still be done, and is pretty funny. str AA line obviously helps with meleeing mobs.

01-26-2009, 07:21 PM	#9
Sprin Server: Nagafen Guild: L U S H Rank: LUSH (Supreme Drinker!) General Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 2,364	Hammersmasher wrote: Faenril@Nagafen wrote: No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up. I usually use the tank - saves me having to modify my macro each time. Regardless of tank class, all charges from the spell are used up in plenty of time before recast (and I have mythical, so all 5 are used). I've found a monk/bruiser is the best to get all the charges fast due to their quick handstrikes. But when in groups that the tank isn't using it up fast enough (quick, MORE BUTTON MASHING!!), I'll swap it to the highest melee dps in the group. /nods... swashys are good at this too, as they have 18 or so combat arts they are mashing the whole time... Mythical doesnt give the extra procs, the VP (2 pieces) and TSO (4 pieces) bonus procs from raid gear does you show off you Which im very interested to find out if the 4 piece TSO raid set extra procs stack with the VP 2 piece extra procs.. 7 total procs from 4 TSO and 2 VP pieces would be pretty nice... in Raids, with lots of crit'ing going on, 2-3k is average for each proc, so adding an extra 6K every 12 seconds or so wouldnt be a bad thing By the time i used up all my DKP on my full set of VP gear TSO came out, so im letting everyone blow all their DKP on the new stuff and I'll wait till it all goes for cheap

01-26-2009, 07:52 PM	#10
Hammersmasher Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 95	Ironfyst@Nagafen wrote: Mythical doesnt give the extra procs, the VP (2 pieces) and TSO (4 pieces) bonus procs from raid gear does you show off you So much for being a show off lol.... anyone who doesn't know about the VP set pieces would think that just getting their mythical gives them the extra procs (at least by the way I said it above). From what I've heard, the 2 piece VP and 4 piece TSO proc is the same proc (but don't quote me on that). But the dps being put out if I was wrong would be insane!

01-27-2009, 06:21 AM	#11
Faenril Server: Nagafen Guild: Purity Rank: Sushi Maker - Alt Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 2,136	Hammersmasher wrote: Faenril@Nagafen wrote: No question when grouping/raiding macro it to a high haste scout or warrior and refresh everytime it's up. I usually use the tank - saves me having to modify my macro each time. Regardless of tank class, all charges from the spell are used up in plenty of time before recast (and I have mythical, so all 5 are used). I've found a monk/bruiser is the best to get all the charges fast due to their quick handstrikes. But when in groups that the tank isn't using it up fast enough (quick, MORE BUTTON MASHING!!), I'll swap it to the highest melee dps in the group. In group situation, if there is no brawler usually I macro it to a scout (dirge do fine too), until I realise he is afk half of the fights and then I put it back on tank

01-27-2009, 04:33 PM	#12
kxizm Hero Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 110	the procs from the set bonuses stack. and i have two macros set up for using prismatic. one throws it on a scout or monk. the other puts it on the tank in case the first guys takin a dirt nap. i might end up just macroing two different scouts instead of a scout/tank. im worried that with the new changes to stances the tank wont be able to hit the mob enough times before prismatic refreshes. itll be interesting to see how the changes affect hit%. it should affect their haste, so they should be swinging the same amount, so maybe im worried about nothing lol. __________________

01-27-2009, 10:24 PM	#13
Hammersmasher Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 95	Faenril@Nagafen wrote: In group situation, if there is no brawler usually I macro it to a scout (dirge do fine too), until I realise he is afk half of the fights and then I put it back on tank LOL

01-28-2009, 02:59 PM	#14
rsliv Tester Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 21	Something else to realize about using Prismatic Discord while soloing is that at higher levels you can chain quite a few stuns effects together to get quite a bit of safe melee time in on a mob: Encounter Stun = 4 sec Single Target Stun = 8.5 sec Single Target Stiffle + Single Target Daze = 12 sec That's theoretically 24.5 seconds of stuns if you manage perfect casting with no lag and no resists. More realistically it's at least 20 seconds of stun where you can safely melee the mob. Note1: Those times are at level 80. At lower level it's not as good, but you can still stack some nice stuns at earlier levels. Note2: Stiffle means mob is unable to cast. Daze means mob can't auto-attack. Stiffle+Daze = Stun but mob can still move around. Note3: Invest in Subjugation gear to help with resists.

01-28-2009, 06:04 PM	#15
kxizm Hero Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 110	some of the shard armor has some stun procs too which will help a lot if you want to get up close and personal with melee and prismatic __________________

01-28-2009, 09:30 PM	#16
Hammersmasher Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 95	It'll lower your overall dps, but dispersion is nice in some cases (when soloing triple ups, absorbing a 5k hit might mean the difference between winning and losing a fight). Once you hit level 70+, there's a few easy pieces to get: Forest Giant Trinket: aITEM 112355444 1065117516:Forest Giant Trinket/a - Quested Reward from Kylong Plains Runed Bracers of Diffusion: aITEM -1531609317 173257584:Runed Bracers of Diffusion/a - Drops in Kylong Castle (It's tradeable, so check the broker) Sash of the Nathsar Tribe: aITEM 969616858 1816624503:Sash of the Nathsar Tribe/a - Drops from mobs in Fens (It's tradeable, so check the broker) Embroidered Sebilite Mantle: aITEM 1506225763 606552788:Embroidered Sebilite Mantle/a - Purchased from merchant in Outer Sebilis. This one is a PITA since you need 30k or 40k faction with Outer Sebilis. There's others of course, but these should be fairly easy to acquire (aside from the last one).

01-29-2009, 06:17 AM	#17
Faenril Server: Nagafen Guild: Purity Rank: Sushi Maker - Alt Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 2,136	About keeping target locked down while meleeing ... don't forget the pet throws some CCs too.