Part III in the
Frequently Asked Coercer Questions series.
Your spell casting order, like your
achievements discussed in the previous article, shouldn't be exactly the same from coercer to coercer. Your casting order should change greatly based on gear - more specifically your spell haste and your spell reuse may greatly change how you do things. Even your spell damage and your spell crit affects your spell order, although to a lesser extent.
Thus, since I can't give you your optimal spell casting order without making my brain explode for every variance of gear, I'll do the next best thing and offer data and tips that should guide you should you want to maximize your dps with your own spell order.
And since I know most people don't want to deal with the math, so I'll offer a basic template as well.
I. Basic Spell Priority
The first step is to figure out a spell priority - what spells do the most potential damage? Do the most practical damage? How do debuffs fit in?
I'll start off by listing the maximum damage each spell can do in order from highest to lowest. (Assumes master versions of all spells).
Theoretical DPS Chart
1. Hostage
2. Tyrannous Mind
3. Spell Curse***
4. Asylum
5. Brainshock
6. Puppetmaster*
7. Master's Strike
8. Absolute Silence
9. Shock Wave
10. Intrepid Focus**
11. Hemorrhage
12. Ego Melt
13. Dissecting Gaze
*Puppetmaster assumes full duration (20 seconds). Obviously, this is not usually the case and in practice, the damage amount falls below Hemorrhage, because encounters rarely allow for the full 20 seconds to elapse, and even when they do, most mobs have area effect spells which kill the puppets prematurely.
** Intrepid Focus assumes 5 aa. If you have 0 aa, the damage per second falls below Ego Melt. Further, the delay on the damage may cause it to miss entirely on any fights with heroic groups/adds.
*** Spell Curse is the highest damaging spell in any group encounter of 2 or more mobs, unless you have the Robe of Spectral Coercion, in which case it's the highest only when there are 3 or more mobs.
Other notes:
Intrepid Focus hits after 2.8 seconds on epic mobs.
Absolute Silence ticks in 5.3 seconds on epic mobs, but most of its damage is front-loaded anyway.
Asylum and Brainshock both take 24 seconds to reach their full damage. But, even only 3 ticks (12 seconds) is enough to make either spell higher damage per second than Shock Wave and equal to Absolute Silence overall if cast often enough.
Thus, even taking all of that into consideration, a practical DPS chart would look very similar or the same as this theoretical chart, aside from lowering Intrepid Focus if heroics mobs are involved and Puppetmaster when either fights are short or ae's are involved.
-> Is it better dps to reapply dots after GU45?
It's better to reapply dots because in most cases the dots still will do more damage than Ego Melt, Dissecting Gaze or Intrepid Focus when taking into account the damage delay. Most fights you will still have to cast these other spells, but reapply your dots first and it will net you slightly better results, because they offer the damage equivalent of a Hemorrhage, they will cycle very fast leaving you more spells to cast, and it will make it much easier on your brain to not worry about not casting a certain spell. The termination damage loss is very minimal, considering that it's usually only 2000 damage. A simple cast of any of our other spells can replace that lost damage, and the gain from recasting 2 Brainshocks over 1 Dissecting Gaze is already at least 1200 damage.
When possible, use Brainshock first, and override Asylum only when necessary. As you see from Appendix II, overriding Brainshock is better dps than overriding Asylum.
Debuff->DPS Chart
1. Obliterated Psyche
2. Tashiana
3. Chronosiphoning
Obliterated Psyche will do anywhere from 14% to 1% increase in total raid spell-based dps, not including reducing outright resists, which boosts its usefulness. As an estimate, it probably falls closer to an average of 6%.
Tashiana is approximately a 15% damage increase for the period that it's up, not including reducing outright resists.
Chronosiphoning is approximately a 1.5% personal damage increase over 30 seconds, assuming you are on full agility line with a bard and monk in raid. It is slightly more if you are missing either of these.
Because debuffs are still in the realm of theoretical DPS, it's difficult to place them accurately a practical DPS chart, especially because the mechanics aren't completely uncovered/understood, at least in numerical terms. They also completely depend on people hitting the debuffed mob with spells. With that disclaimer noted, there's no use to ignoring that they do something, so I'll work with what deductive data I have, assuming an average raid situation.
If you tried to do a numerical version based on dps averages, the two magical mitigation spells would fall somewhere between Tyrannous Mind and Asylum (sometimes more than Spell Curse, sometimes less). An average calculation would be Obliterated Psyche is equal to a 250-500 point DoT with 1 second ticks that lasts as long as the encounter's duration, for example, or 5000-10,000 damage over 20 seconds. With it's long duration, Obliterated Psyche can add up to a very large amount of damage. Tashiana is double this amount but limited to a 13 second duration, or about 6500 damage. If you look at the appendix, you'll note that these damage amounts are at least as good as Spell Curse.
Chronosiphoning's damage increase would be equivalent to Intrepid Focus in that it's delayed - because of its casting time, it only grants additional damage after 20 seconds (and actually has a negative dps impact before then), it increases damage by about 60 points per 1 second until its termination, or conceptually a 1200ish nuke delayed by 30 seconds.
As a side note, using this same method of calculation for the t8 hex doll debuff, for a fight that is 2 minutes long, it's equivalent to a 8000 damage nuke. However, because of its long cast time, any encounter less than a minute is a significant loss of overall dps.
II. Casting Order
Alright, now that we know the best spells, it'll be a lot easier to build a casting order. I'll provide an example based around 15% Reuse and 30% Reuse for the first 30 seconds of a fight. You probably will notice there are not many differences in that first 30 seconds between the two.
Casting speed adjustments assume a bard, monk, and agility line, and are applied at the time of casting next to the spell. Total spell times are included to help track reuse timers. In some cases you have multiple options; the recommended one is the first one listed.
With GU45, we have to adjust the Hemorrhage-spam cycle mentality by adding the set of Tyrannous Mind/Hostage/Spell Curse spam cycle. It's more difficult to break these larger periods of time, and thus I have reverted to my old spell order listing method of just a straight line.
At the start, for maximum dps, precast Tyrannous Mind on yourself. It takes an average of 6 seconds to proc all 3 charges, so you want to leave yourself at least that much time, if not about 10 seconds on the spell's duration just to be sure. You may also want to try to start with higher perpetuality by casting a group buff. The start assumes you don't carry on the Perpetuality boost (especially hard nowadays with those spell resists), and instead start at 36.8% Casting Speed.
Starting on the left is the overall encounter time, then the spell name, followed by the amount of time taken to cast that spell. Finally, notes if there are any important things to remember.
At 15% Reuse:
Key spells to remember:
Tyrannous Mind, 13.0 s recast
Hostage/Spell Curse, 17.4 s recast
At approximately 10-15 seconds pre-pull:
Tyrannous Mind
*next available: on pull
On inc:
Perpetuality Boost
0.00 s Tashiana +0.90 (or skip if unavailable)
0.90 s Hostage +1.37
*next available: at 19.7 s
2.27 s Obliterated Psyche +0.99
3.26 s Spell Curse +1.56
*next available: at 22.3 s
4.82 s Asylum +0.92
*applies full damage by 29.8 s
5.74 s Tyrannous Mind +0.90 (max perp: 79%)
*next available: at 19.7 s
6.64 s Hemorrhage +0.90
7.54 s Brainshock +0.90
*applies full damage by 32.5 s
8.44 s Absolute Silence +1.46
9.90 s Hemorrhage +0.90
10.80 s Master's Strike +1.46 (or Puppetmaster +1.46)
12.26 s Intrepid Focus +1.18
13.44 s Hemorrhage +0.90
14.34 s Shock Wave +1.74
16.08 s Ego Melt +1.18
17.26 s Hemorrhage +0.90
18.16 s Dissecting Gaze +1.46
19.62 s Hostage +1.18
*next available: at 38.3 s
20.80 s Tyrannous Mind +0.90
*next available: at 34.8 s
21.70 s Hemorrhage +0.90
22.60 s Spell Curse +1.46
*next available: at 41.5 s
24.06 s Brainshock +0.90
24.96 s Hemorrhage +0.90
25.86 s Chronosiphoning +0.62 (93% Cast)
26.48 s Mana Flow +1.38
27.86 s Hemorrhage +0.86
28.72 s Nullifying Staff +0.60
29.32 s Aslyum +0.86
At 30% Reuse:
Key spells to remember:
Tyrannous Mind, 11.6 s
Hostage/Spell Curse, 15.4 s
At approximately 10-15 seconds pre-pull:
Tyrannous Mind
*next available: on pull
On inc:
Perpetuality Boost
0.00 s Tashiana +0.90 (or skip if unavailable)
0.90 s Hostage +1.37
*next available: at 17.7 s
2.27 s Obliterated Psyche +0.99
3.26 s Spell Curse +1.56
*next available: at 20.3 s
4.82 s Asylum +0.92
*applies full damage by 29.8 s
5.74 s Tyrannous Mind +0.90 (max perp: 79%)
*next available: at 18.3 s
6.64 s Hemorrhage +0.90
7.54 s Brainshock +0.90
*applies full damage by 32.5 s
8.44 s Absolute Silence +1.46
9.90 s Hemorrhage +0.90
10.80 s Master's Strike +1.46 (or Puppetmaster +1.46)
12.26 s Intrepid Focus +1.18
13.44 s Hemorrhage +0.90
14.34 s Shock Wave +1.74
16.08 s Ego Melt +1.18
17.26 s Hemorrhage +0.90
18.16 s Hostage +1.18
*next available: at 34.8 s
19.34 s Tyrannous Mind +0.90
*next available: at 31.9 s
20.24 s Spell Curse +1.46
*next available: at 35.7 s
21.70 s Hemorrhage +0.90
22.60 s Dissecting Gaze +1.46
24.06 s Brainshock +0.90
24.96 s Hemorrhage +0.90
25.86 s Chronosiphoning +0.62 (93% Cast)
26.48 s Mana Flow +1.38 (or Brock's Thermal Shocker +0.86)
27.86 s Hemorrhage +0.86
28.72 s Nullifying Staff +0.60
29.32 s Aslyum +0.86
-> No chronosiphoning at the start?
Yes, Chronosiphoning is not in the normal rotation on short fights, for two reasons. One, to even see a benefit from Chronosiphoning, at least 20 seconds of casting has to be "made up" to just equal out from the time lost casting the spell. Thus, on shorter fights, there's little to no gain at all. Two, even despite the timing issue, we now have many more damage spells to load in up (at least 3 more than what my old rotation stated), all of which would net more overall dps than from the dps boost (which is about 1.5% overall, factoring in the lost dps but not any possible gained dps from casting a different spell). So, since the boost 1) takes too long to recoup and 2) can be made up and surpassed by casting other damage spells, I don't recommend Chronosiphoning in a regular rotation any longer for trash fights. Even in longer fights, it's only useful when you have run out of other direct damage spells to cast.
FACQ: Improving DPS - Spell Priority and Casting Order
