firamas

So, assume you usually never get an illusionist for the IA (either because that's not your normal group setup or *cough* you're in a Freeport guild on a PVP server), and your DA sits around 43% w/ potion/bard/proc on raids, what are your opinions on switching to a fencer spec? Also assume no access to avatar gear.

Benefits:
1) Your entire autoattack dmg pool is coming from a 121DR weapon instead of mixing in an inferior ~100DR offhand. Primary benefit.
2) Could finally drop trooper scale and use skittering boots for the +4 crit. The proc on trooper scale is up a lot, but not always. The +4 crit is always there, and is a static ~1.8% ZW dps increase.
3) Could switch back to the +4 crit potion instead of +4 DA. Would still be at 97% full time/static DA with my current gear setup. No loss of efficiency from wasted DA, and I would still have room to update one more slot with a +DA item from VP.

Might drop the points I crapped into +HP in the STA line and try this for the next few days... any thoughts from the community? Anyone else tried this? I saw Johnathan's post about him not being able to get a good secondary wep and it set off this train of thought again. I have a serrated segmentor to match the 4.0sec main hand, but I'm always conflicted when I look at the DR delta between the mythical and everything else. =|

Edit: Actually, I miscalculated... DA is 29% completely unbuffed, so w/ the above setup I'd be at 107% DA w/ fencer. I could drop Nexona BP when I get something better (maestro), but until then I can't really shed any more DA gear. Primary reason for this would be to utilize the 121DR for my sole source of autoattack damage though. I am already very solidly geared and have access to all loot except for Contested/Trak/Byzola stuff. Trakanon might be an option a bit further down the road (we had the strat down and were close to killing it, but the Retard Factor overcame us, heh... and then we betrayed the guild back to Freeport for other reasons... I still believe it can be done eventually though.) Contested gear will likely never be a serious option on Nagafen.

__________________
"Selling Mythicals on Nagafen is the EQ2 equivalent of selling Nuclear Weapons to North Korea. You just don't understand the differences." -LFG, eq2flames site administrator, newly discovered as an elite foreign policy expert

Tiermes

Well i usually get illu buffs, smth like 65% DA with IA raid buffed right now. As soon as i get my mythical and spec to fencer (got a mirror to test it out), i might switch out some DA items (like TTR ring) for some dps mode or crit (feel like lacking dps mod in mage grp with only fury buffing that and the raid is still not full mythical), so i'm going to be at like 110% DA. Taking the diminishing returns in account it's gonna be more like 90% agains orange con mobs so even illu buffed the fencer spec is quite viable IMO

But well the loss of DA's from secondary could possibly overveight it

firamas

Wait, DA is also on a dim/ret curve against the mob's con level? Like crits? Really? I thought DA was a straight up, linear, uncurved modifier?

If con affects DA, then hell yeah I'll try it. =)

__________________
"Selling Mythicals on Nagafen is the EQ2 equivalent of selling Nuclear Weapons to North Korea. You just don't understand the differences." -LFG, eq2flames site administrator, newly discovered as an elite foreign policy expert

Varuna

I really don't see any point in going back to the fencer spec with the way dual wielding works nowadays. I mean, if you use 2 weapons you're essentially getting 100% DA (which doesn't suffer from dim. returns against higher con mobs), and you can add to your DA, which effects both weapons (iirc).

Hell I even have really low double attack (20% or so with potions, no utility), and I wouldn't go for this. Think about the stats you can lose by ditching your offhand, too. I'd be hard pressed to just toss my Throatripper away, let alone if I had a Witchdoctor's Doomblade, etc.

Perhaps I'm missing something in your logic, but returning to fencer spec just doesn't jive with me. /shrug

(no, I don't have my mythical, but I'm taking it into account as I muse over this.)

__________________
My Photography: http://faceofbear.deviantart.com

firamas

The only reason I'm considering this is the fact that the DR on the mythical is so far ahead of anything else that most people can obtain, that even "good" fabled weapons from raid mobs lose much of their appeal... crit, procs, etc, thats all well and good, but at the end of the day it's still not a 121DR weapon you're swinging.

And dual wielding is not "essentially getting 100%" DA. You do realize that the delay on BOTH hands is automatically increased by 33% (i.e. a 4sec weapon becomes 5.33sec base) when you DW, right?

So it's a matter of being guaranteed to swing twice every autoattack round (with a 4.0sec weapon, NOT the 5.33sec that most of you have since you're DWing), versus dual wielding and utilzing the offhand weapon's stats. And remember the condition I initially proposed: I am in a Freeport only guild and cannot get the illy buff or the mystic mythical DA.

Also, after talking with a few people who actually seemed to know what the fuck they were talking about, I don't think DA scales to con.

Anyway, I'm specced WIS right now and will check it out for the next few days. /shrug

__________________
"Selling Mythicals on Nagafen is the EQ2 equivalent of selling Nuclear Weapons to North Korea. You just don't understand the differences." -LFG, eq2flames site administrator, newly discovered as an elite foreign policy expert

damus

Personally I would concentrate more on crit items as well as getting the best haste item your guild can obtain. With raidwide CoB + Haste item + Mythical you should be hitting the mob at least every 3 sec while duel weilding. This also gives you an extra second to throw in another combat art that will most likely crit if your crit% is decently high. And add on top of that you already have a 43% chance to double attack on both of your duel weilds. Fencer is a way of the past.

__________________

firamas

Well, I'm already geared out with essentially all non-contested loot that I could want. We've been raiding in exile throughout EOF/ROK and had basically all (non-contested) content on farm status... we just betrayed back to Freeport a few days ago.

Anyway, I tested the spec tonight, and it performed pretty damn solidly. We did the first half of SoH and then 3rd wing VP, so I got to see the spec on both aspects of ROK content. I was at 107% DA, 53% crit, and very close to capped on DPS/haste most of the time (had fury and dirge, thank god). Was consistently topping the parse or falling just behind our wizard (who has always been our top parser and regularly pulled 6-8k when in exile -- he can't pull that now though). Was regularly and significantly outparsing our other mythical brigs (we run with 3+ per raid now, lulz at having FP only classes), but I think that's a function partially of my longer experience w/ ROK raiding. I was also whoring jcap too, heh.

Biggest observation overall: really miss illusionists, mage DPS feels so gimped now too. That's probably why I was outstripping them, loss of illy buffs hurts them more than me. =|

Anyway, I liked what I saw so far. I don't know if this spec would ever be worth it if you had access to enough DA buffs otherwise, but it certainly seems to work fine so far for me in Freeport. With capped haste it takes the mythical down to a 1.8sec delay, which was perfect for chaining 2 CA's at once... gonna have at least 0.2 sec of random latency issues anyway. ;)

__________________
"Selling Mythicals on Nagafen is the EQ2 equivalent of selling Nuclear Weapons to North Korea. You just don't understand the differences." -LFG, eq2flames site administrator, newly discovered as an elite foreign policy expert

Tiermes

Well will you kindly post the numbers of the dps spread sheet (PM me if you don't feel like posting it in open boards pls), cause our illus goes slack mode more and more often and perhaps it's time for me to change the raid setup..and getting the mythical is a good reason to do that.

firamas

I'd do that, but it's not really fair to the people on that parse because all of us are recently betrayed and some are still missing AD3's, half of them didn't have mythicals, half of them are recruits (some brand new to endgame raiding), and none of them knew that the parse was going to be publicized or scrutinized later... although that should be a given and doesn't excuse slackasses. ;)

I'll give it another week or two and then post some parse data.

__________________
"Selling Mythicals on Nagafen is the EQ2 equivalent of selling Nuclear Weapons to North Korea. You just don't understand the differences." -LFG, eq2flames site administrator, newly discovered as an elite foreign policy expert

Varuna

I guess if you're FP-only that's different. I almost always have an illusionist in my group (no other support ) and monk raid-wide haste so keeping my delays under 3.0 sec is pretty easy.

Yeah, if I was playing PVP and in an FP-Only guild, I'd definitely consider the fencing line as well. At least then I would have to worry about dealing with crappy haste items if I happen to get stuck with haste buffs.

EDIT: I'm curious to see what kind of data you'll be posting in the future, I wanna see what this fencer spec is still capable of.

__________________
My Photography: http://faceofbear.deviantart.com