Part II in the
Frequently Asked Coercer Questions series.
Same disclaimer applies as in my
last post - I can't paint a perfect picture, but I'll explain in as much detail as I can. I'll begin the discussion with what I'm most familiar with, raiding. I'll then move onto a short section that addresses concerns about AA growth while soloing/leveling up. All of the numbers/math assume level 80 and master I abilities.
I) Raid AA Lines
There's no one set AA line for every coercer that is "the best." So, I can't provide a short, easy answer. But, there's some obvious choices to start with, and I'll add in information that should help you decide where to spend your extra points.
If you want to know how I spent my points, I am currently specced:
Agility: 4-7-8-8-1
Intelligence: 4-6-4-8-1
Stamina: 4-4-8
Coercion: 5 Tyrannous Mind, 3 Peaceful Link, 2 Hostage, 2 Spell Curse, Coercive Healing
Resistances: 3 Dictate, 5 Obliterated Psyche, 5 Asylum, 1 Dispel Magic, Tashiana
Efficiency: 5 Intrepid Focus, 5 Dysphoria, 5 Shock Wave, 5 Ego Melt, Thought Snap
Mana: 5 Mana Flow, 3 Mana Shroud, 4 Channeling
1. Enchanter Tree
In order of recommendation, the best enchanter achievements for raids are:
a) Agility
b) Intelligence
c) Stamina
d) Strength
e) Wisdom
a) Agility
Casting faster gets you more spells per minute, additional chances to proc, and simply better reaction time. Although the stat of Agility and increased Defense do nothing significant against raid mobs, Casting and Recovery haste do a substantial amount in a raid setting.
The average unhasted coercer casts 25 spells per minute, with an average cast time (without any prior cast haste) of 1.8 seconds and a 0.5 second recovery between spells. With that info, we can begin manipulating the math a little bit and compare the relative increase from these achievements.
First, let's examine
Chronomotion. With maximum AA in Chronomotion (48% Recovery Speed), you save about 4 seconds out of a minute of casting. With 4 points in the AA, you save over 3 seconds. In 3 to 4 seconds, you can cast 2 or 3 additional spells. Let's say you have 4 seconds - in that amount of time, you can cast 2 Hemorrhages and 1 Shock Wave, which adds up to 7,500 to 12,000 damage. Or, you would have enough time to cast a Stun and reapply Psyche and Gorging Thoughts. In theoretical percentage terms, full Chronomotion equals a 6% increase in effectiveness, while 4 points equals a 4% increase.
Now, onto Casting Speed with
Chronosiphoning,
Chronology, and the powerful
Perpetuality. By common sense, you can see that per point, Casting Speed has a larger effect than Recovery, as Recovery only affects a percentage of the 0.5 seconds between spells, while Casting affects a percentage of 1.7 seconds. However, Casting speed is also easier to attain. Also, due to the way haste is calculated, the more haste you have, the lesser returns it provides.
Eight points in Chronology (14.4% Casting haste) will save you at least 5 seconds over non-hasted casting, or a gain of between 7% and 9% effectiveness. Adding in
Chronosiphoning at 4 points will save another about 2 seconds (after subtracting the Cast time and Recovery time required to cast it twice, assuming no resists and that you cast it early enough to affect enough of your spells). This amount of time saved equals 1.5% to 3%. So, you're gaining at least 10% effectiveness just from these initial Casting achievements.
Once you throw
Perpetuality in the Mix, the numbers become a bit harder to calculate as you will rarely have Perpetuality V up an entire fight, especially due to stuns, stifles, and the like. Still, you can count on an average of 28 Casting haste from this over a zone - or a savings of 9 seconds per minute of encounter, or 11% to 15% effectiveness.
Although I recommend putting extra points in Recovery speed over Casting speed, it's basically raid-dependent. There are more sources of Casting speed available (Bard AA at 8.0, Monk Raidwide Buff at 14.4, Cleric AA at 50.0 temporarily, Shaman AA Ritual of Alacrity at 33.0 and Illusionist Time Compression at 20.0), compared with few sources of Recovery Speed available (Shaman AA and Time Compression). It's rare that you'll get buffs with Recovery Speed, as they are single target spells that will generally go to other classes that benefit more from them - while all of the other listed Casting Speed buffs are group-wide.
On a basic 4-4-8-6-1 setup, you can reach 65 Casting Speed based purely through AA's, or 87 in a group with a Bard and a Monk. Further Casting speed bumps can be obtained via gear (while there's no equivalent for Recovery speed), with the cap at 100.
On a side note, if you're Strength spec, you may want to focus more on Casting speed and spend less points in Recovery. Since auto-attacks occur during recovery time, shortening it may lead to further delays in auto-attacks. In practice, however, I did not notice that the extra tenths of a second of recovery time affected my auto attacks.
Basically, you're looking at an average 27% increase in effectiveness from the Agility line - both in DPS and in casting in general, including debuffs, buffs, and mana flow. There's even more potential to be tapped, as of you managed to maintain Perpetuality full-time, it'd be a 43% overall improvement. I recommend at least 4-4-8-6-1 for agility, and also that you spend extra points in this line.
b) Intelligence
Base Damage and Spell Crit are the main draws of this line, but the other skills are useful as well.
Since I discuss
Intelligence in the
In-Depth Gear Analysis thread, I won't go into detail. Intelligence basically offers a small percentage increase in dps, and the amount you gain can gain here at best is 0.02% damage per intelligence, or 0.08% damage per achievement spent.
For
Nullifying Staff, your mileage will vary. My hit percentage for this skill is about 90%. You have to be within melee range to use this skill, and moving into range can take time away from casting. The damage portion is minor, at best 5-10 dps. The major benefit is from the Mental mitigation debuff, which lasts 10 seconds. The skill must connect for the debuff to land. At level 80, the debuff is about 1000 mental mitigation at 4 points, and 1189 at 6 points. Magical mitigation is on a diminishing returns scale, and at least from my testing, works differently than mitigation does on a player. Basically, magicial mitigation offers a great decrease until 0 is reached - offering up to 40% damage increase if debuffing to 0. Magical mitigation can be debuffed into the negative, but any amount into the negative offers very small increases - at best, another 10% additional damage. But, with the increase in magical mitigation buff on raid mobs from GU43, additional debuffs can't hurt.
Savant's Insight is limited in its usefulness - it prevents interruptions if you get hit, but it doesn't prevent you from movement interruptions (by moving yourself too far or from knock back). At such a 4% percentage per point to proc and with a duration of only 3 seconds, the amount of fights that it's useful is fairly low. Only a few spells or AE's have interrupts only, and the many additional control effects (stun/stifle/knock back) will frustrate your spell casting much worse than interrupts. Basically, the chance of this helping you is highest when you are tanking something, and that should be rare on raids.
Next is
Savant's Channeling, a much better ability. Spell Crit follows a flat increase per point - for coercers, 1 percent Spell Crit is about 0.33% increase in damage. I discuss Spell Crit a bit more in the 4th FACQ,
In-Depth Gear Analysis. If you are curious how to exactly calculate Crit and damage increase, I recommend
this thread for an excellent explanation of how to calculate the boost from spell crit (generally all our spells are 4:5, except Sonic Boom). With 8 points in Savant's Channeling, you gain 11.7% spell crit - or about a 4% increase in damage. (As an odd number, it rounds up to 12% and should always display as 12%).
Volatile Magic adds base damage. Base damage is great as it is fairly difficult to obtain through gear or buffs. A 15% boost to your damage spells translates to a 15% boost in all spell-based DPS, and thus at minimum 12% of overall dps. As of GU45, there are no negative effects attached to Volatile Magic.
You're looking at about 18% increase in DPS from the Intelligence line from Savant's Channeling and Volatile Magic.
c) Stamina
The best skills in the Stamina are Empathic Aura and Sever Hate. But, the other abilities aren't horrible, although they're a bit redundant.
Stamina as a statistic offers about 3 to 2 points of health until you hit the downward part of the diminishing returns scale at 700. From there, you're looking at less than 2 health per stamina. Thus, there isn't much use to put extra points in the stat.
As far as the usefulness of the abilities in this line,
Touch of Empathy is on the lower end as it is group-only, and you cannot cast it on yourself. If you cast it on someone continuously, it only averages out to 45 negative threat per second, which would be about 2% of the total threat output for an average raider. Generally, this amount won't affect your group mate's hate position. Thus, at best, it's something to spam to keep up Perpetuality with the small chance that it will actually help people stay at the right hate positions, but it's not reliable due to the low amount and 30 second recast time. If you want to set it up for general use, the most hassle-free method to use this ability is to use a custom UI's group button to /useability. Another option is to simply fill out a target macro for someone who's in your group, so you don't have to target your group mate every time.
Next,
Empathic Aura and
Empathic Soothing were discussed in the
Buffing Your Raid thread.
Empathic Aura is highly recommended as it increases the healing strength of multiple healers. Even if you only have one healer in your group, it's helping him or her. You're increasing their healing potential by about 5%, or by about 400 per heal cast. Even the best geared healers are not capped on Heal Crit, and at 2% per point, it offers better gains than even a healer's personal achievement lines.
Empathic Soothing, on the other hand, is not vital. As with Touch of Empathy, its usefulness varies with your group setup, but even in a heavy dps group, it's not useful. It decreases your group's threat accumulation, but the low amount (1% per point) makes this ability weak. At 5% hate decrease, you give a leeway of 100-200 average threat per second. However, you are better off (and usually able) to spare Peaceful Link for those allies who are regular threat-stealers, and you also can use Touch of Empathy (the equivalent of about 2% dehate) as an alternative should you lack the concentration slots, since you have to pay 4 points for Touch anyway if you're down this line.
With both of these group buffs, it's good to remember that they only apply when you're in 20 meters - so you have to be wary of your distance.
Sever Hate can be very useful - it lowers a friend's hate position by 2, and can be used cross-raid. Hate position is much more powerful than hate amount, and using this ability can save an ally and allow him/her to do more dps. When you use it, you want to cast it on an ally, and not through the mob, because there's always the chance that you can sever the wrong person.
The only downside to this ability is that the dps potential is greater with Agility and/or Intelligence final skills, and even the highest dpser should not steal aggro except on the rarest of occasions if you have a good tank and have a properly set-up raid.
d) Strength
So, if you're able to get in melee range for autoattacking, then Strength is for you. Keep in mind that this line is difficult to keep at its full potential, and difficult to get any use out of the many higher end ranged encounters.
Spellblade's Counter and
Counterblade are both combat abilities that won't offer much.
Spellblade's Counter will at best offer 2-4 zonewide dps, and is basically a waste to cast unless absolutely everything else is down.
Counterblade is not much better - maybe a 5 dps skill - even with its special ability to counter racial/profession skills. Basically, you're countering something like a Wild Swing if it hits within 12 seconds. It's not reliable, and not that significant even when it activates.
On the other hand,
Quickening and
Spellblade's Reflexes are abilities you want to sink points in. For
Spellblade's Reflexes, the primary aid is the additional Crush/Pierce mod. This will increase your hit rates - unfortunately I don't have an exact number, but 4 points equates to about a 7-10% increase in hit rates. This is not as close to as large an increase as Quickening offers per-point, but it's still an additional helpful source to maximize your melee output.
Melee weapon range increase is a bit deceptive, on the other hand. Normal melee autoattack range is only 2 meters, and thus 50% increases this to 3 meters, and 80% to 3.6 meters. But, our combat arts (racial and AA ones) max range are increased as well - so a 5 meter combat art is increased to 7.5 meters at 50%, or 9 meters at 80%. As for the riposte/parry portion, it's not helpful in a raid setting, but it's noticeable in a solo setting.
If you're going to do the strength line, you need to max
Quickening. Even with the worst weapon, you quadruple its base damage output at 8 points. With the mythical epic, you're looking at 148% increase from double attack, 158% increase from melee crit, and about 150% each from haste and dps - or about quintuple the normal base damage. In theoretical terms, this is a potential of 550 dps (if you landed every hit). At best, though, on raid mobs, hit rates are 60-70% - thus, 330-400 dps is a more realistic increase with just quickening. Further improvements can be made through buffs and gear, although it's not recommended to lose spell-based dps increasers.
As a negative to Strength line, you have to remember that each second it takes to position yourself is potential dps lost. While you can move during the recovery period without penalty, it's not easy to position yourself in this limited amount of time. Each full second of spellcasting interruption is a loss of about 65 dps for that fight - either if you're moving or if you're dead.
e) Wisdom
Wisdom is the least useful line for raiding. Wisdom as a stat does nothing, Daydream does nothing useful, Dream Barrier does nothing, and Hypnosis does nothing that you can't already do. You will rarely to never mez in raids, so Dreamweaver's Trance will increase focus and Subjugation. If you're having trouble landing spells, you would be better off trying to reduce your target's magical mitigation rather than trying to raise your subjugation.
2. Coercer Tree
In order of recommendation, the best coercer aa for raids are:
a)
Coercion
b)
Resistances
c)
Efficiency
d)
Mana
Since the names change each time you obtain the upgraded spell, I'll offer the lowest version of the spell in parenthesis.
a) Coercion
The Coercion line offers the greatest increase in DPS potential.
Tyrannous Mind (Destructive Mind), Hostage (Sibyllant) and
Spell Curse (Spell Lash) are all necessary for good dps, increasing the damage output of all 3 spells significantly.
The
Peaceful Link upgrade is also useful, increasing the hate decrease amount by 1% per point.
The final ability,
Coercive Healing, is also very useful. As mentioned in the Buffing Your Raid thread, it increases your healer's specialty heals by about 400-500, and stacks with other beneficial healing effects.
Recommended Configuration: 5 Tyrannous Mind, 2(6 points) Hostage, 2(6 points) Spell Curse, 3 Peaceful Link, 1 Coercive Healing
b) Resistances
Resistances is the second best line for coercers due to the usefulness of the end line ability, Tashiana. Decreasing magical mitigation has become more important since Game Update 43, as it decreases resistances to spells as well as offers greater damage output.
Asylum (Gloom) increases the divine/mental/magic debuff amount by about 525 from the base, while
Obliterated Pysche (Damaged Psyche) increases all magical mitigation debuff amount by about 250 from the base. Brigands' Thieves Guild stacks with these.
Unfortunately, I do not have enough data to conclusively state how much this amount of debuff affects dps exactly, and may never come to a final conclusion because of the difficult of created a controlled environment. From what I do understand, resistance debuffs offer a great amount of damage increase until a mob reaches theoretical level of "0" mitigation, thereby increasing damage up to 40% of its non-debuffed amount. After it reaches this limit point, the increase of damage is calculated along a negative limit curve where only about 10% more damage can be obtained at maximum (to a final total of 150% of your normal damage).
The end line ability,
Tashiana, while having a very short duration, is very useful to help land additional debuffs and spells to ease the start of the fight, or increase damage mid-fight. Since GU45, it rarely resists, and can be easily cast on pull due to its 35 meter range. While spell resists are still fairly common on a Tash-only-debuffed mob, preliminary data shows that resists are about 13% less likely to occur with Tash on pull than without on an orange mob.
As far as the damage increase, pre-GU43 data indicates that Tashiana increased my damage by an average of 20% during the time it was up, but since it's only up at most 1/6th of the time, this rounds out to about 3% damage increase zone wide. For an imperfect comparison, additional resistance debuff from the Asylum and Obliterated Psyche achievements added together (800 points) are about 20% of the mitigation amount but up all the time, and by ratios would offer about 1% zone wide towards arcane damage, or 0.3% towards other magical raid damage.
Dispel Magic is almost worthless, as the druids in your raid likely are specced to dispel. Your dispel's are limited to bard and enchanter-type buffs. Basically, you can dispel "Troubadour Songs," "Dirge Songs," "Empathic Link," and "Intensity" from mobs should you see them, and that's it.
Charm has no utility in raids except for a few easy mobs in overland zones. Even then, your charming ability is determined primarily by your spell quality and not whether you have points in Charm or not.
Even with the low-raid-utility points in Dispel Magic and Charm, since the Resistances line only requires 15 points for the end line ability, the overall line is recommended for raids.
Recommended Configuration: 5 Obliterated Psyche, 5 Asylum, 3 Charm, 1(2 points) Dispel Magic, 1 Tashiana
c) Efficiency
Efficiency is a useful line, as it increases both utility and DPS potential. All skills are recommended except for
Cortical Hesitation (Hesitate), which offers little raid or solo utility.
As for the other skills, a 0.5 increase in casting speed (which stacks with normal Casting speed) increases the damage per second of
Ego Melt (Ego Shock) by 33% and
Shock Wave (Psychic Wail) by 20%. What's more significant is the 7.5 reuse reduction, allowing you control groups of mobs much better and also increase your dps with Shock Wave and Ego Melt even further - assuming you cast it as often as you can, the reuse amount of Ego Melt increases your dps by about 1% (or roughly 11 dps), and Shock Wave by about 5% (roughly 80 dps).
Intrepid Focus also sees a dps benefit, more than Ego Melt, but less than Shock Wave. Overall dps increase from the aa should be about 3% if you are able to apply Focus in time for its damage to land.
The benefits to your single target and group stuns are most noticeable when in a multiple-add encounter, and lowering the time on your group stun makes it a one second cast or less.
The final ability,
Thought Snap, is useful depending on your group, but buggy as of Game Update 43. If the target you snap it to dies or is dead at the time of casting, it will break the encounter. Still, it can help redirect a mob when your tank is stunned or out of range to increase his threat.
Recommended Configuration: 5 Shock Wave, 5 Ego Melt, 5 Intrepid Focus, 5 Dysphoria, 1 Thought Snap
d) Mana
Mana is the least useful line, but still has valuable skills - Mana Flow and Channeling - to spend extra points in. As of GU45, Mana Ward is a very useful end line ability, but the other skills in the line have not changed.
Channeling (Channel) is your best choice in this line, although you have to spend points in other abilities to get it. Your reuse for Channeling is reduced 1 minute per point, which stacks with other ability-reuse reducers. Although you may not use it every time it's up, you will definitely feel more comfortable using it if you know it will be back up sooner. On very long fights, the recast is lowered enough so that you can use Channeling twice. Channeling returns approximately 120% power, which is enough to make one caster or two melee full power from empty.
Mana Flow is a good option. Mana Flow's duration and recast are both reduced by 2 seconds per point, thus allowing your power heals to apply faster and be ready faster. This equates to about a 5% boost in power healing per point. The mythical epic reduces the duration by 15 seconds alone, but does not affect the recast - thus still making this aa worthwhile. With the removal of any power percentage requirements, constant flows across the raid is highly recommended to help others' power and your own power.
Shift Mana (Consume Ego) offers a good gain, but self power regen shouldn't be necessary in the current mechanics. At 5 points, you get 180 additional power per cast, or potentially 540 more power per minute if you cast it consistently (1530 versus 2070 power). Shift Mana takes 2 seconds to cast, though, and generally you shouldn't need to cast it more than twice a minute. If you're geared properly, you don't need to cast it at all except in emergencies or a long chain pull without your mythical epic.
Mana Shroud (Mana Cloak),
Soothing (Breeze),
Third Eye (Mind's Eye) and
Cannibalize Thoughts (Consuming Thoughts) are all not recommended. For each point, you gain about 2-2.5 power/tick. So, for 5 points, you're looking at an additional 10-12 power/tick, or 60-72 power/minute for your group, or 105 power/minute for Mana Shroud if you use all the triggers. This amount is barely enough for someone in your group to cast one additional spell. While Cannibalize Thoughts' and Mana Shroud's power regeneration doesn't count towards the cap, it still is paltry. In any case, you and your group members probably aren't at the cap (120 in-combat power regen) unless you're grouped with a bard, and if you are grouped with a bard, why do you need more power anyway? If you want to get to channel, Mana Shroud is the better option.
Mana Ward is offers a hitpoint ward of at least 6,000 points. It's calculated by a 1.5 power to 1 health ratio, using 95% of your power in the conversion. The big negative is the long recast, 5 minutes.
Recommended Configuration: 5 Channel, 5 Mana Flow, 5 Mana Shroud, 5 anywhere else, 1 Mana Ward
II) Soloing and Leveling Up
When you're soloing and leveling up, you're not going to see the same impact through AA as you do through longer fights at higher levels with non-stop casting. Honestly, you may not notice any significant difference with any of your AA. Still, you have to spend the points somewhere, so you might as well start with something that you likely do alot of while soloing: Charm.
To this end, you want to spend your first 5 points in Charm in the Coercer AA tree, and then choose between the Agility line or building the Efficiency tree so you have your control skills available more often. For the Efficiency tree, you'll want to work on the skills you use most often and obtain first, so your single target stun, root, and group stun. Getting the final ability, Thought Snap, isn't necessary, though. For the Agility line, you want to spend at least 24 points, all the way through Perpetuality (4-4-6-8-1).
After those skills, you can choose to build the Wisdom or Intelligence line of the Enchanter tree. For Wisdom, you'll want to get enough the 4th skill for increased Subjugation (4-4-4-8, a total 20 points). This should decrease your resist rates on landing subjugation spells (control spells and charm). For Intelligence, you'll want to go to the end skill, 4-6-4-8-1.
Once you've finished with those lines, you probably want to build the Coercion tree. This will offer you greatly increased dps, but most of the skills are only available at later adventure levels, or this would be recommended earlier. If you're just soloing mostly, you can build with Mind, Sibyllant and Spell Lash, but if you group often, Coercive Healing is recommended.
Once you hit adventure level 70, you are able to spend 70 points per tree instead of 50, and at that point you can go back and build whatever lines you've missed, or perhaps you may wish to totally change your aa's. At this point, most of the information in the raid guide is applicable to soloing.
Remember, you can change your achievement spec for pretty cheap, and there's always a Mirror of Reflected Achievements should you want to save something while trying out another spec.
FACQ: Achievement Points
Only from what I've heard(not tested), Crits don't increase it either.
