Mioawara

I have been reading for a long time and thought it might be fun to finally join the discussion. I have always wanted to be a raid Coercer, but for various reasons I was delayed in reaching 80.
Now that I am 80 I am feeling the same preasures most have been discussing. The desire from raid leaders that we do more damage being top. I have seen my numbers start hitting the bottom of the parse occassionally. The crap we have to go through to post numbers is just wacked though... I played a Bard in EQ1. Twisting 3-4 songs was a skill I was proud of. Being a damage dealing Coercer makes that seem trivial. Our spell chain is more like a freaking book. I guess I will expose my inequity...
I am posting numbers now in the 900-1700 range. My assumption is that the variance is due to resists, procs and crits all being variables.

So what I am wondering is, what you guys think made the most differance in your climb? What was your break through? Gear? Master spells? AA's? Spell chain? I know it will be a combo, but what or when did you start feeling you reached your potential?

My goal atm is to get to and maintain 2k. Course I know once I get there it will be 3k, but you gotta have goals and keep working to get better, right?

Though all the complaints people make are IMO at least mostly true, I love the class. I could never see myself betraying etc. If it came to that I would just roll a new toon and set my bruised but loved Coercer in retirement. Abit more damage (even if I have to scratch and claw for it would be sweet, but SOE does not seem to care what we think) Tier 2-3 may see my views change drastically and that is where we are headed. We shall see I guess.

As an asside, I do have my Non-Mythical epic. I am abit disappointed in it, but it did seem to help my DPS abit. I assume that was from crits, but it could be my revamp of spell chain. Or heck, maybe just luck...
Gees, the effect is a total waste far as I can tell. I can't say I have ever seen it go off at all, let alone at a point when it mattered. If they did nothing else, making it clickable, even with a long refresh might make me less bitter. But I digress. Don't want to water down the post.

Jhoram

My breakthrough was when I realised I wasn't going to parse as well as my mage peers. When I stopped worrying about the raid's dps, and instead just focused on my own in a little vacuum. I still love to see it when I come 2nd or 3rd on the parse, of course, there's no denying that. But I'm beginning to believe it's more that the rest of the dps slacks a bit, Im not sure.

Actually addressing your question though, I think it was mainly gear when I noticed that my dps was becoming rather steady. When almost all my slots contained something decent from Revel's Recommended Gear post (Im still in T2, so no access to VP gear yet) i could tell the difference. Another minor breakthrough was when I got my new PC. That actually made a ton of difference, since lag, combined with my aussie ping meant it was a lot harder to chain spells as effectively.

Senelin

My biggest breakthrough was staying true to the 2 spell + hemo shuffle. If I deviate from that, my DPS goes down, but if every 2nd or third spell I cast is hemorrhage, I'm golden.

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Mioawara

Thanks for the possative responces guys.

Nils

Non-raid rok gear is good enough to get some decent parses... As soon as your spell dmg is around 700 aim for crit... Make use of volatile magic and get your hands over wand of crystalline plasma (brokercamp, unrest loot).

For AA: summed up most important is agi, int in your kos tree and improvements to your two reactives hostage+spell course in your eof tree.

Spell chaining: as mentioned, hemo whenever it's up. Have both of your reactives hostage and spell course on mob as fast as possible and make them stay on mob for whole fight. Watch your spell window for this. As soon as your spell dmg is high enough and you get your hands over some dmg proc items, do not let your dots tick, recast them immediately whenever they are up. The first dmg tick has a fairly high spell dmg cap, thus you can use them as dmg spell instead of dot by just chaincasting them whenever they are up. Also adds another proc chance.

Coercer dmg is very group and mob dependant. So summed up your dmg depends on how often the mob aoes and the tank is getting hit. You'll see yourself do much less dps with a monk tanking with some others in grp stunning the mob for whole fight for instance.

So screw stuns and silence, just avoid using them. Situations where it's needed as exception of course.

Senelin

You can still do good dps without the reactive damage, if you just put your mind to it. In most group instances, pumping out 1-1.5k is above average, and you're going to be raping things down. You can do that while maintaining a stun rotation through dots/dd.

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Mioawara

I am debating pulling Puppet master out of my rotation. I keep seeing the puppets show up with 0 damage. Forgetting that I don't understand why they show up seperate from my damage on a parse, if they really do 0 I am wasting a cast right?

Senelin

They don't do 0 damage, ACT automatically lumps them into your DPS. If you're looking at your damage breakdown, the puppets should be in there somewhere.

EDIT: I just loaded up some logs where I used the puppets and they were a whopping 5 DPS for me. I don't tend to hit the button much, but to put it in comparison cataclysmic mind does about 17 DPS lol..

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Revel

Knowing what mobs were melee-based or caster-based, knowing ae timers, and getting the right gear (mostly power proc gear). After that, setting up the good old spell rotation...

I have an older spell rotation thread somewhere in here, but it's not my current rotation. Changes to my gear have resulted in the evolution of it, especially my reuse amount.

As a tip, if you get high enough reuse, you get even more hemorrhages, which should increase your hemo zonewide by about 300 with only a 50-100 decrease in your other spells (recasting dots and such).

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