Part I in the
Frequently Asked Coercer Questions series.
Buffs, along with debuffs, are a basic part of the coercer class. The better you understand your buffs, the easier to is to figure out who to buff for maximum effectiveness.
The biggest point of this thread is to emphasize to younger coercers to focus on using concentration slots for Impetus and Peaceful Link, and ignoring on the whole Signet of Intellect and Coruscation. The second point is to help highlight what exact utility coercers can provide through buffs.
Part I. Class buffs
A.
Enraging Demeanor - +17.1 hate gain, 17% hate transfer
B.
Impetus - +78 DPS
C.
Peaceful Link - 22% hate decrease and chance at -1 hate position if stuck by a melee weapon
D.
Signet of Intellect - group 104 Agi, 104 Int
E.
Coruscation - group 622 max power and arcane mitigation
Part II. Achievement Buffs
F.
Coercive Healing - 15% base healing to wards/hots 1 additional reactive trigger, increased beneficial casting and reuse speeds
G.
Empathic Aura - up to 16% heal crit
I.
Empathic Soothing - up to 8% group hate decrease
Part I. Basic buffs
These are the buffs everyone gets. Numbers listed are for master I versions.
A. Enraging Demeanor
What it does: This spell increases hate. The hate gain cap is 50%. The hate transfer cap is also 50%. This spell should stack with all known hate increase spells and hate transfer spells up to that point.
How it works: The math should be straightforward: increase your target's threat output by the hate gain percent, then add the amount of your hate transfer. If the assumption is correct, and if you're not hitting any caps, then you should be able to increase your target's threat output by 900 - 1300 average threat per second.
If you get the Shard of Hate enchanter robe, Insidious Robe, then you gain an additional hate proc and 100 combat art damage as well.
Enraging demeanor can also be enhanced by the Shadows Coercer line ability, Arcane Hatred. This can boost the hate gain and increase by 5%, or 22% hate gain and 22% hate transfer.
Who should you put it on: Someone who's tanking, hopefully. If you are placed in a group where you don't have anyone to put it on, you might want to put it on a pet to dump hate. Shaman pets and summoner pets both are valid targets of this spell.
The TSO 6-Set Bonus adds 10% base spell and combat art damage to this buff. The Insidious Robe from Shard of Hate
B. Impetus
What it does: Damage per second (we'll call it DPS, in caps) increases auto-attack damage. This increase is on a diminishing returns scale at returns a 125% increase for 200 points of DPS.
How it works: You take the damage of the weapon and multiply it by the percent increase that you end up with. You get at least 1% increase per 1 dps until you reach around 72 DPS. To be more precise, from 0 to 78, the increase in auto-attack damage is 76%. But, you're rarely going to buff someone starting at 0 DPS. Most melee classes have at least 60 dps even before factoring in any self or group buffs. The increase from 60 to 138 DPS is about a 50% auto-attack damage increase, and the increase from 100 to 178 DPS is about 20%. An average self-buffed, unhasted, non-doubleattacking tank's auto-attack is at least 400 dps (not to be confused with DPS) zone wide, and the average self-buffed-only auto-attacks for at least 600 dps zone wide. An increase of 50% from these auto-attack numbers is 200-300 dps for their zone wide, while 20% offers 80-120 dps improvement. Well-geared tanks and scouts in the raid setting can put out much more dps from auto-attack, factoring in higher haste, double attack, crit, and weapon ratios, thus increasing the multiplier. Even priests and mages get benefits as long as they are equipped properly, but it varies greatly. Mages would see about a 50-70 dps increase if they maintained auto-attack for an entire fight, and priests would see anywhere from 100 to 500 dps zone wide should they auto-attack full time. A STR-achievement spec enchanter would see an average of 120 dps from this buff. So, as you can see from the example, the increase is significant even with the diminished returns scale factored in.
The old T7 EoF 5-set bonus increases impetus. There is no upgrade from the level 62 version of this spell.
Who should you put it on: Anyone who is going to do alot of auto-attack damage, as long as you have concentration slots.
The TSO Set Pants enhances this buff with 5 Melee Crit Bonus. This bonus is outstanding, although the pants themselves are below par. If you regularly have 3 or more scouts in your group, it would be better for the raid to wear the pants to enhance your raid's damage, and would offset your personal loss.
C. Peaceful Link
What it does: This spell decreases hate. Like hate gain and transfer, hate decrease also has a 50% cap and stacks with other hate decrease buffs. The amount of decrease can be raised from 22% to 27% through coercer achievements, and another 6% through the T8 RoK 2-set bonus and a proc of approximately 1700 at 1.8 times per minute for autoattacks.
How it works: For the hate portion, the math is again straightforward as with hate gain: your target's threat is decreased by percentage shown. Hate gain also factors in before hate transfer, so if your target is transferring hate to someone, the amount transferred will also be decreased. At the full effect of 27%, putting it on someone who's putting out around 4000 dps is going to decrease their average threat output by about 1000. For someone with a troubadour, the percent decrease is reduced to 16%. But even then, the extra amount decreased is still 640 average threat per second for someone at 4000 dps, and 960 for someone at 6000 dps.
Who should you put it on: Whoever puts out a high amount of threat. Your best targets are generally wizards, brigands, rangers, assassins, illusionists, and warlocks, but you have to figure out who's putting out the most threat for your raid. Scouts have more abilities to decrease threat (by transfer, hate decrease, or active threat management) than sorcerers or enchanters, and summoners hate position is only determined by their personal threat, and not any threat that their pet generates. Still, at times, even bards or other fighters are good targets for this spell, so just be aware of which fights require which strategies. As a side note, link does not affect a pet's hate gain, but is never really useful for a pet anyway.
The VP 2-set bonus adds additional hate decrease and a proc that does thes the same on a melee or combat art attack. This is somewhat useful, but not worth forcing your gear choices to enhance this buff. Achivements can also boost this buff, but currently it is bugged to only enhance the "when hit" chance, and not the hate amount like originally was intended, due to an error in the never-live "GU51 fighter change on test."
D. Signet of Intellect
What it does: Increases your group's intelligence and agility. Intelligence helps your damage. Agility helps increase base avoidance (and increases scouts max power, but not to a point that it's useful at all in that capacity). Diminishing returns kicks in noticeably at 700 int, and really starts to flatten out over 950.
How it works: Agility's avoidance increase is barely significant in raid situations, and is difficult to measure accurately. This is because base avoidance is greatly diminished due to mob levels (as some people say, base avoidance falls under "contested" or "mitigated"). So, I can't really say much about it.
Intelligence is a bit clearer to understand. The cap for intelligence for a level 80 spell is 1220. The formula for all stats (15 * Level) + 20. A spell's Int cap is affected by its level; for example, Hemorrhage, as a level 71 spell, will cap its damage at 1065 Int, Hostage at 1155, Spell Curse at 1170, and Shockwave at 1220.
At 1220 Int, you will see approximately a 40% increase in damage over 0 Int, while at 900 int, you will see a 36.5% increase in damage over 0 int. Raiding coercers should be at 900 int self-buffed no matter what gear they've selected, so further gains will only lead to another 3% improvement (factoring in that certain spells get lesser gains).
The intelligence portion does not stack with other mage's intelligence buffs. You can read more about intelligence in the
fourth FACQ, In-Depth Gear Analysis.
When should you cast it: If you can't find someone to put impetus and there's no good candidates for link, Signet is an ok option. Just don't expect a huge increase, and generally don't bother casting it if another mage has their group intelligence buff up.
Recently, with the Ward of the Elements zone, this buff was given an additional effect when wearing the full set of 2 base combat and spell damage. While helpful, the aggregate loss of other gear is not worth it for this one buff enhancement.
5. Coruscation
What it does: Increases your group's max power and arcane mitigation.
How it works: Max power is easy to understand. Arcane mitigation is also easy to understand, but in another manner: magical mitigation does not affect anything significantly in its current state.
When should you cast it: There's not any good reason to cast this buff, unless you have nothing else to cast.
Part II. Achievement buffs
These buffs you can obtain via the achievements system.
F. Coercive Healing
What it does: Increases wards, reactive or regeneration spells' heal amount by 15%, or also increases reactive triggers by 1. Further, it adds 15% speed to beneficial spells and 10% reuse to beneficial spells. It is the final skill on the "coercion" line in the Coercer Achievement tree.
How it works: As it states, it increases the amount of both single target and group class-specific heals. It does not affect direct heals. The increase is applied before plus healing mods. It stacks with all other known forms of increases, including gravitas and reactives that increase healing amount, and thus is a "base" increase for those heals.
Who should you put it on: Shaman should get it first in most cases. Templars benefit the 2nd most, while inquisitors and both druids are approximately equal as the 3rd most benefit. Although the added heal amount is generally similar for all the classes (potentially 400-500 additional healing amount per specialty spell), because shaman wards get used first, they realize the most benefit. Cleric reactives may expire before all triggers are used, but since they also recently increased the heal amount as well as the trigger amount, it situationally can be more than a druid's regeneration gain. Druids have a similar problem in that their heals often are not fully used, even in group situations, but at least each heal pulse is increased.
You may want to place it on templars in fights where Sanctuary is vital so the reuse allows the spell to be available more often. It also aids their repent spell in reuse and casting, although it does nothing for the ward/heal amount.
G. Empathic Aura
What it does: Increases heal crit by up to 16%. This includes power heals, and mana flow can crit. It is the third skill of the Stamina line in the Enchanter Achievement tree.
How it works: Heal crit works the same way as spell crit. A heal that has more than a 1:1 range is increased to 100 to 130% on a successful crit. Wards are only increased 15%, as they have a 1:1 ratio. This translates out similarly to spell crit in terms of plus healing: one percent heal is about 0.3% total increase in healing, roughly equivalent to +30 heal mod.
Since you can always keep it up, there's no reason not to cast it if you have it. One unfortunate fact, though, is that its range is only 20 meters. This means the buff only applies when you're in heal range of your healers.
H. Empathic Soothing
What it does: Decreases group hate by up to 8%.
How it works: It works the same as how hate decrease is explained under Peaceful Link, except it applies to every member of your group within 20 meters. Not too much to add.
Well, hopefully that helps you understand the benefits of your buffs, what buffs you usually want to have up, and on whom. If you have questions, corrections, or other related discussion, please post so I can address it. In the next article, I discuss the
Achievement Points for Coercers in more detail.
FACQ, part 1: Buffing Your Raid
