Revel

Ah, that's me copying the wrong link from the list of quest rewards. I meant to paste these: \aITEM -1642546053 635141870:Gwalnax Brigade Battlecaster's Shoes\/a . I fixed the link now, thanks for pointing it out.

As for the Slippers, I had them there once, but I wanted to limit the choices to 5. They're 6 or 7th. If you wanted damage, you'd pick any of the other shoes, and with the ease of the Gwalnax or Phantom boots, I'd suggest those first. If you were wary of low hitpoints, they are ok as a filler until you can find better shoes.

Calmwind

Is there a decent ranged/secondary that drops from an RoK raid zone?

I spend my EQ time raiding RoK (T1-2 now) and probably won't get any of the four secondary items listed. I've got a tablet from Chelsith that I like (immune to hostle spells), but I'm still using Staff of the Impaler since I don't have another off-hand item that seems worthwhile. (I have three: a +45 damage / +1% crit / power regen (fabled).) I do have the epic weapon. Any advice?

Thanks,
Calmwind

P.S. Revel, thanks for all your hard work and great info! I've learned a lot from reading this forum.

Revel

Well, the Praetor's Guard drops in a group instance, it's just a tiny bit rare. If you don't have time for instances, try asking in 70-79 offering plat for it.

The Necromantic Orb is one groupable as well, although that's a bit tricker to get, as it drops from a level 68 x2 epic mob. You have to have someone to mentor around level 77-78 at the max, but you could one group it even at level 70. Again, though, the drop isn't too common, maybe 1/5? I can see how it'd be difficult to bribe people to go, since this is the only nice drop. The epic respawns in 2 hours, or if no one enters the zone, the zone resets in less than one hour.

As for as your other options, there's only 1 ranged/secondary that drops at all for mages (from PR) and it's horrible. There's the Tablet of the Lifegiver ( \aITEM 2068287287 -492642229:Tablet of the Lifegiver\/a ) from one of the Dominus, those easy x4 overland raid zones, which is your next best option after the ones I listed.

Calmwind

I do Vault occationally, but I've never seen it drop. Thanks for the info on the Tablet of the Lifegiver. We do fight Dominus Atrebe occationally, so I can now hope for that drop also. Thanks!

Revel

Noticed that with the upcoming revamp, many numbers have changed since I started this post as to what you can achieve at the top end. Probably the best options (assuming the upcoming GU updates without major gear changes) dropping items would result in these stats:

825 Spell Damage
72% Spell Crit (79% with consumables)
29% (hostile) Reuse
up to 32% Base Damage (10% passive, 12% clicky, 10% proc)
122 dps from Damage Proc
~3500 power/min Power Procs

Roughly about a 70%-75% damage increase altogether.

*Edit: Also updated adornments, I always meant to but kept forgetting.

Just H

What are thoughts on the Wicked Wand of Malice charm item from SoH for Coercers?

I got it on a raid last night and am curious if anyone has had time to play with the hate increase/damage proc clicky part of it. Is it going to get me killed constantly? I can't post a screenie but the hate increase is 1440 when I inspect it but the damage proc is insane. It accounted for 17% of my overall DPS in the one fight after looting it. Raid ended after that and I did not get to test anymore .

Do you agree this item makes sense for a MT coercer? Curious to hear the number crunchers thoughts on the item. Thanks.

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Revel

It's pretty difficult to measure some of these SoH items without seeing them in raid action. Obviously even if you rarely click it, it still is a great item.

As a MT coercer, you do get the 17% hate transfer which gives you a tiny bit of leeway as far as pulling aggro from the MT is concerned. Other classes don't have this cushion, and the coercer also can get nice damage benefit out of it due to Agi line, but you still probably can't run around with it on 100% of the time.

The clicky itself will come out to about 960-1200 threat/second (including the damage part and casting haste, and factoring in crits on the damage portion but not on the threat portion). I don't know if threat uses spell crit, although taunts generally count as a spell...if it did crit, it may be much more.

Anyway, assuming no crit on the threat, theoretically this should be the same as simply adding 960 to your current dps. Of course it doesn't help that coercers have invisible threat in terms of stun and ignored threat in terms of power drain, so I can't tell you for sure if you'll pull aggro or not. What I can do is offer another theoretical example.

Keep in mind aggro doesn't work exactly like this, but this is the closest approximation I can make. Take a normal high dps fight, where the MT is doing about 3k in his own dps. Let's assume with hate increase and taunts he's capable of holding against 5k dps before transfers. Add in the theoretical transfer of yourself; lets say you're at 3k dps yourself. Add in another 500-600 of threat from non-dps sources, so you're at 3.5k pre-Wand, and therefore about 4.5-4.8k with the wand. You're transferring about 600-800 threat to the MT, so he can hold up to 5.6k-5.8k now. Basically even without an assassin or swashy, you're only doing 4.5-5k threat with the wand, and thus he's still able to maintain against you.

If he should do any less damage, or you any more, though, then it becomes a problem. If he's not doing more than 2.5k dps, or if you're doing more than 3.5k dps, then you're going to run into trouble.

Of course high dps fights are the least likely times you're going to pull aggro anyway. Most of the time, if the tank has to be in defensive or alter gear, then you're not going to see the same results. A common situation would have the MT around or under 1k dps (let's say about 800) and you around 1.3k dps. The MT is only hitting maybe 1700 threat/second by himself after increase, and with transfer, you push the maximum threat level up to only 2000 at most. If you added in the wand, at this point you would probably get aggro (even if you were only casting about 66% of the time, due to say, stuns or stifles or fears or having to cure/flow people) because you'd be hitting at nearly 2k or hitting above at that point, even with the transfer. Of course, you could put link on yourself, but it's still a risk.

Hope that example kind of helps you. Basically you should be fine with it, but there are times where you can yoink aggro (even on high dps fights if you have it on too early in the fight).

*Edit: Just wanted to point out the damage portion of this item's proc should be about 195-245 dps, easily topping other procs.

Just H

Here is a photo of the item:



Thanks Revel. I appreciate your input. I will play with it tonight and see what it does.

On my maintained spells list on the icon it shows the name of the player as the target on the icon. Does this mean his threat and the damage proc goes to me?

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Revel

I assume the maintained is due to the casting speed buff. As far as the proc, the damage and threat are attributed to you (or should be).

Just H

I meant to say does this mean he would get the threat portion while I get the damage proc? Or will he get the damage proc too if the tank is my target when cast? (which would not make sense because he doesn't cast spells.)

Sorry I am confused on who gets what on this item.

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