Part IV in the
Frequently Asked Coercer Questions series.
Understanding Gear choices, like the
thread about understanding spell order, is vital to attaining the best dps. In this article, I'll discuss my recommendations for gearing up a raiding coercer. If you just want advice on specific pieces (where to find them or what to wear), look at the
recommended RoK gear thread. Still, I recommend reading this article, as it will supplement that thread by answering most questions as to how the ranking of those items was decided.
Every number used to calculate damage is dependent on another in some way - either making something more useful in conjunction, less useful in conjunction, or simply screwing around with the ratios. Thus, this "simple" formula is only used for a quick guide, but does not work for calculating actual damage ouputs. Still, it's good enough to help make quick decisions on whether a piece of loot is an upgrade for you or not for your average level 80 coercer:
For TSO, 1% DPS Boost is equal to:
95 Intelligence (until 1220 Int)
27 Spell Damage without the Robe of Spectral Coercion or 20 with, until Hostage is Max
81 Spell Damage after Hostage is Max
3% Spell Critical Chance (vs. orange mobs)
1.2 Spell Critical Bonus if at 100% Spell Critical Chance, 1.3 at 90%, or 1.6 at 75%
1.0 Base Damage
3% Reuse, or 4% Hostile Reuse
5% Casting Speed (until 100%)
46 dps from Spell Procs items without any base damage modifiers (see Appendix for more information)
Or, from a Spell Critical Chance perspective:
1% Spell Critical Chance = 32 Intelligence = 0.3% Base Damage = 0.4% Spell Critical Bonus if at 90% Crit Chance = 7-10 Spell Damage until Hostage Max = 27 Spell Damage after Hostage Max = 1.8% Casting Speed = 1% Reuse = 16 dps from Spell Procs = 0.33% DPS Boost
Some assumptions: the calculations assume 1000 Int. Low resist rate (no greater than 10%) was assumed. Spell Damage's calculation assumes 75% average Casting Speed. Base Damage at 20%. Procs (both worn and buff-based) were assumed to be about 20% of your overall damage.
How Damage Is Calculated
Damage is calculated the following way:
1. base damage calculation
2. weapon attacks add in dps and weapon multipliers
3. spell and weapon tier multipliers
4. attribute modifiers
5. base damage multipliers
6. normalized damage ( +spell/ca/heal amounts )
7. critical multiplier
What this means:
Base damage increases the cap for spell damage, be it overall base damage or individual spell base increases. Intelligence does the same.
Spell Damage
Spell Damage is affects each spell differently, but all of the gains can be totaled to get a good perspective of the overall gain that it does. Since I'm trying to write this for the perspective of an average coercer and gear comparison purposes, I'll focus more on the higher end of Spell Damage.
The first step to figuring out how to apportion additional damage from Spell Damage is to determine the percentage of overall damage each spell does on average. (This assumes an optimal or near-optimal spell order). Taking a ratio of the cap to each of those individual spells, we can multiply out the percentage of overall damage by the percentage of that spell's damage that is affected by Spell Damage. (That sentence is a logic nightmare, isn't it). After that, the additional damage is divided by that spell's casting time to normalize it to damage per second. Finally, adding up all of the individual damage bonuses, and divide that total damage increase by the amount of Spell Damage you have to get the number of Spell Damage per 1% DPS boost.
When you take the added damage over cast time, and then apply that by the portion of damage that spell usually does and then add it all together, you can determine how much benefit spell damage will do for you overall.
Convulsions and Lash, the damage from Hostage/Spell Curse, benefit the most from Spell Damage. This is because of the extra triggers available from achievement points and the further additional triggers from the RoK set robe. At 5 triggers, damage is increased by 83% instead of the normal 50% of most spells. At 8 triggers, Hostage gains a maximum of 133% damage from its base value. Considering these two spells do a majority of a coercer's damage, it's vital to try and cap these spells. Spell Curse caps at 600 Spell Damage, and Hostage caps at 750 Spell Damage. Since the values change drastically between whether you have the Robe of Spectral Coercion or not, I'll do math for both.
So, while some spells gain more than 50% damage, other outgoing damage is totally unaffected by Spell Damage. Procs and melee add up to about 15-20% of a coercer's parse and see zero benefit. Further, area effect spells are also reduced, so on single target mobs they only see 1/3 of the 50% increase, or about 17% damage increase. However, area effect spells usually only account for about 5% of a coercer's parse due to the lack of good ae encounters in RoK, so the negative impact is small. Overall, coercers see a potential DPS increase of 45 to 55%, but that's purely theoretical; gear selection has to be smart to actualize it.
To get the best comparison per point of Spell Damage for gear choices, I'll focus on the benefit above 600 Spell Damage, or the minimum recommended amount (and the cap of Spell Curse). Past 600, about 20% of total damage is capped at full potential, while the other 60% of a coercer's outgoing damage sees about 62% of the total potential gain. In other words, at 600 Spell Damage, coercers realize about a 34.8% total actual DPS Boost out of a maximum potential of 44.8% DPS Boost.
At 8 triggers of Hostage, the maximum potential gain rises to 55.4% - an additional 10.6% potential DPS gain from 3 triggers of capped Hostage. Since proportional damage doesn't change, coercers see 43.6% actual gain out of the 55.4% total gain at 600 Spell Damage.
Thus, the maximum remaining gain in either case after 600 Spell Damage is 10-11% more DPS.
How I calculated this: although the maximum gain per spell is 50% due to the caps, Convulsions and Lash see more than 50% gain as noted above, while area affect spells see only a 17% gain, and 15-20% of damage is unaffected, or a 0% gain. These amounts are averaged out together according to their contributing percentage amount to the overall parse, collected from data over several zones. Then, the damage boost calculated from the parses are converted into seconds (and thus damage per second) by dividing by individual spell's casting times.
With those numbers, we can figure out amount of Spell Damage it takes for 1% DPS Boost. Without the Robe of Spectral Coercion, until 600 Spell Damage, 18 Spell Damage is equal to 1% DPS Boost. With the Robe of Spectral Coercion, 14 Spell Damage is equal to 1% DPS Boost.
Now, we need to figure out how best to choose gear to attain the most of the remaining 10% potential bonus while sacrificing the least from other sources of damage. So, we'll begin by calculating out the gain per point above 600 Spell Damage.
The next milestone is 750 Spell Damage, which caps our best spell, Hostage. At 750 Damage, coercers gain an additional 7.25% without the Robe or 9.9% with and thus realize 42.3% of the total 44.8% without the Robe, or 53.5% of 55.4% ("capping" 95% of potential Spell Damage gain). Between to 600 and 750 Spell Damage, 27 Spell Damage is equal to 1% DPS Boost without the Robe, or 19 Spell Damage with the Robe. (How the math works: About 23-28% of our damage comes from Hostage, and that amount is increased by either 83% or 133%. 150 Spell Damage is 20% of the cap for Hostage, 25 * 83% or 133% * 20%.) That is hardly a drop off at all, especially in comparison to the drop off from pre-GU45 mechanics where it took at least twice as much.
95% of coercer damage is capped at 750, which means there's another 4-5% more damage coercers can attain. The next best place to look would be at the 950 Spell Damage mark, which is the cap for Tyrannous Mind. By increasing this extra 200 damage, coercers increase Tyrannous Mind DPS by 20% (which equals 2% increase to overall DPS), and approximately another 13% of your total parse damage by about 25% DPS (Brainshock, Shock Wave, Silence, and Master Strike, or another 2% DPS total potential increase if max). Because 950 only caps Tyrannous Mind and not the rest, only about 2.5% out of the total remaining 4% possible gain is realized. Plugging in the math again, about 81 Spell Damage is equal to 1% DPS boost between 750 and 950 Spell Damage. Thus even until 950, Spell Damage is a feasible method of attaining additional DPS, but only when balanced carefully with the other sources below.
Past 950, the amount necessary to increase overall damage is too large to be considered practical. At this point, Coercers have already capped about 99% of Spell Damage gain, leaving only 1% of potential gain unrealized, with, hundreds of Spell Damage necessary to reach it. Thus, 950 is the basically the Spell Damage "cap" since 99% of the gain from this area is reached.
To recap,
600 Spell Damage = 77% of Cap = 14-18 Spell Damage per 1% DPS boost
750 Spell Damage = 95% of Cap = 19-27 Spell Damage per 1% DPS boost
950 Spell Damage = 99% of Cap = 81 Spell Damage per 1% DPS boost
This must be modified by your effective base damage mod, however. Since the cap is already halved, your base damage increases the cap by the amount listed, i.e., if you had 30% base damage increase, then your ideal cap would be 130% of 750, or 975. If you had 50% base damage increase, then your ideal cap would be 1125. The amount of spell damage does not decrease your gain nor is it proportional, but instead the extra base damage simply increases the total damage potential even further.
Base Damage
Base Damage's gain is linear. The cap to Base Damage is 100%. Base damage affects all your spell-based damage output, including procs which all count as spells. In other words, it counts everything but auto-attack and pet damage, and thus affects at least 90% of a coercer's total damage, if not more.
Base damage is very easy to calculate - simply take your unmodified damage and multiply it by your base damage modifier. Unfortunately there is no easy UI command to count up your total base damage. You can obtain 20% base damage from achievements alone, leaving the other 80% to be obtained by worn items. Although it is difficult to reach the base damage cap, it is possible.
When measuring, treat 1% Base Damage as 1% overall DPS Boost.
Spell Critical Chance
Spell Critical's gain is linear. No matter what your current Spell Crit Chance, the damage increase is the same for each point until 100%. There is a discrepancy, however, in how often a spell actually crits compared to how much your worn Spell Critical Chance is, due to the mitigation effects of mob levels.
Spell Crit affects all spells, which includes nearly all forms of Proc damage. Thus the amount of procs you have on your gear and outside procs you get (PotM, Tandem, and etc) will affect the final dps boost value of Spell Crit; this is discussed a bit more under the Spell Proc section.
Spell Critical Chance is affected by the level of your encounter. The shown number is the average chance only against an encounter of the same level as you are. Fighting lesser mobs results in a higher Critical Chance than shown, and fighting tougher mobs results in a lower Critical Chance than shown. Since on raids we're only fighting yellow or orange mobs, these numbers are what I'll focus on.
On orange mobs, Spell Critical Chance decreased to 89%-90% effectiveness, or a ratio of 9% worn crit to 8% actual Critical Chance. On yellow mobs, Spell Critical Chance is 96%-97% effective, or a ratio of 24% to 25%. Thus, the Critical Chance "cap" against a yellow mob is 104% shown Critical Chance while on orange mobs, the cap is about 112% shown Critical chance.
When a spell successfully crits, the spell's damage is increased to maximum base damage + 1 to maximum base damage * 1.3. Due to this mechanic, spells with larger damage spreads gain larger damage increases. Averaging out from a good coercer's spell order, the actual damage increase is 33% at 100% actual Spell Critical Chance. This number is increased with the introduction of Spell Critical Bonus on gear as described below.
Spell Critical Bonus
With the Shadowed Odyssey, a new mechanic was added, Spell Critical Bonus. As the name implies, Spell Critical Bonus is tied closely to Spell Critical Chance and should be looked at in conjunction with it.
As described above, a successful Critical increases a spell's damage to a range between it's maximum base damage + 1 and maximum base damage * 1.3. With Spell Critical Bonus, both the lower and upper range of Critical Damage is increased. So, on a successful critical, the damage range would be maximum base damage * (100% + Spell Critical Bonus) + 1 to maximum base damage * (130% + Spell Critical Bonus).
Thus, Spell Critical Bonus is similar to Base Damage, with the exceptions that the spell must Crit for the Bonus to apply. Also, because of the order of damage, plus the fact that you already begin at a base of 30% increase for a crit, it does less per point initially when compared with base damage. Thus, for comparison purposes, 1.2 Spell Critical Bonus can be calculated as 1% overall DPS boost when at 100% Spell Crit Chance, 1.3 at 90% Spell Crit Chance or 1.6 Spell Critical Bonus when at 75% Spell Crit Chance.
Reuse
Reuse is definitely the most difficult stat to gauge correctly. Reuse's gain is on a diminishing returns scale. Thus, you get a lower gain per point of Reuse as you increase your total Reuse haste percentage. However, this slope is relatively mild, due to the post GU-45 coercer mechanics increasing the recast of our highest damage spells, Hostage, Spell Curse, and Tyrannous Mind. The reduction from Reuse is calculated in a similar fashion to Casting Speed, with half of a spell's normal recast timer being the maximum reduction. The reuse cap is 100% which makes recast half of the time.
There are two schools of thought on how to calculate your DPS boost from Reuse. One is to simply compare total damage outputs with ideal spell orders for the same period of time, and then dividing the difference in DPS by the reuse amount and then the total amount of DPS. The problem with this method is that the period of time you measure can greatly effect the amount attributed to reuse. Also, in this method, you are not correcting properly for any loss of stats, basically you are creating reuse out of nowhere, which is not usually the case, as you have to often take off some other piece of gear to wear reuse.
The other theoretical method is to only factor in spells which you recast immediately when they are up, subtracting the spell that you would have cast in its place, using an average number to fill in the gap. Also, you must factor in whether you actually recast the spell immediately or at least faster than if no benefit existed; if no recast is made before this time, then no gain has taken place. Further, reuse only increases damage if the spell you cast has higher damage amount per second than your average spell.
To complicate things, there is "hostile" reuse, "beneficial" reuse, "spell" reuse, and ability reuse. For purposes of dps comparison, spell reuse and ability reuse are equal in value. However, hostile reuse provides only 0.83% of the dps increase from reuse, while beneficial reuse is only 0.17% of that amount. This is because hostile spells makes up a larger amount of coercer dps; Tyrannous Mind is the only major spell affected by beneficial spell reuse and thus taking this into account, the increases must be split.
Taking a plot of points up to a minute, 3 reuse seems to be equal to 1% DPS increase. There are points, immediately after Mind/Hostage/Spell Curse, where 1 reuse nearly equals 1% increase. However, there are points just before these spells where 8.33 reuse equals 1% increase. Earlier, I averaged this out to 4.66 to 5 reuse being equal to 1% DPS increase. However, after plotting a graph of several simulations and trying different methods of calculation, it seems that the more likely amount is closer to the higher number than the lower number. In any case, the conclusion is that 3 reuse equals 1% DPS increase; or 4 hostile reuse, or 16 beneficial reuse.
Casting Speed
Casting Speed is on a diminishing returns scale. The cap for Casting Speed is 100%, or half of a spell's Cast time. The average gain per point from 0% to 100% is 0.3% damage increase. Thus, roughly 3.3% casting speed would increase your damage by 1% until you reach the cap, starting from 0%. However, since Casting Speed gives diminishing returns, and coercers should have a good base Casting Speed from agility line and raid buffs, we need to look a bit closer at the upper end Casting Speed increases.
Casting Speed from agility line, plus a bard and monk in raid, should bring you to at least 50% Casting Speed on average over a fight, or up to 75-80% for a normal fight without major interruptions. From 50% to 100% Casting Speed, the DPS gain is between 0.23% per point and slowly declines until 0.18% per point. Any points over the cap provide no increase of course, and most coercers should have less than 20% Casting Speed until the cap. So, although the window is small, and the gain fluctuates based on whether you are able to cast full time or not, the DPS gain past 50% Casting Speed is 5% Casting Speed to 1% DPS boost.
Spell Procs
Coercer dps boost from Spell Procs is hard to narrow down to a single number. Coercers have a natural advantage in proc damage over other mages because of Volatile Magic and Perpetuality, although these modifications can be matched by other mages with gear. The average dps increases from procs are collected in Appendix V in terms of raw DPS numbers for an average coercer.
The main draw of Spell Procs is that they offer additional damage with no additional time. Procs are not affected by Spell Damage or Reuse, but are affected by the other damage boosting sources such as Crit, Crit Bonus, and Base Damage. Additional Casting Speed increases the proc chances as well, since each chance to proc is calculated off its base time.
In the table I've provided below in Appendix V, 80% Spell Crit and 75% Casting Haste are calculated into the figures. The figures also factor in normal magical mitigation debuffs and resists.
Every 45 dps from Spell Procs is equal to 1% DPS Boost. This is calculated simply by taking the average dps and finding what portion of your dps comes from procs. With higher base damage, these numbers are altered proportionally, so at 100% base damage, a coercer would need 90 dps from procs to equal 1%.
Intelligence
Intelligence's damage increase is on a diminishing returns scale.
Intelligence is available in large amounts, so there is no need to seek items (or buffs, for that matter) for additional Intelligence. But just in case you were curious, I'll explain how Intelligence affects your damage.
The cap for Intelligence for a level 80 spell is 1220. The formula (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 Tyrannous Mind at 1220. Thus, 70% of a coercer's damage spells actually require lower than maximum Int, and thus the gain decreases even further at the upper end.
At 1220 Int, you will see approximately a 38% increase in damage compared to 0 Int, while at 900 int, you will see a 36.5% increase in damage. Raiding coercers should be at 900 Int self-buffed no matter what gear they've selected, so further gains will only lead to another maximum 1.5% DPS improvement.
Another way to look at Intelligence is to figure out what amount is necessary for a 1% DPS Boost.
From 0 to 400 Intelligence, approximately 20 intelligence = 1% DPS Boost.
From 400 to 800 Intelligence, approximately 33 intelligence = 1% DPS Boost.
From 800 to 1000 Intelligence, approximately 50 intelligence = 1% DPS Boost.
From 1000 to 1220 Intelligence, approximately 110 intelligence = 1% DPS Boost.
Robe of Spectral Coercion/Extra Triggers
This deserves its own section because it's a separate method of damage increase that doesn't fit in the other sections. Most of the math was already covered in the spell damage section. This robe is equivalent to a 10.6% DPS boost at 15% base damage. Further, it improves the value of Spell Damage as listed above in that section.
Base damage actually increases the potential of the extra triggers. At 100% base damage for Hostage, you can actually improve your damage by 18.4%, plus this extra damage reaches beyond any caps or limitations, thus stacking with everything.
The old increase in dps from the Vest of Force is equal to about half of the increase from the Spectral Coercion robe, or a 5.4% DPS boost (when using capped Auspex). Since Auspex caps at fairly low, it does not significantly alter the value of Spell Damage or other damage sources, unlike the Robe.
Extra triggers from the coercer Achievement line increase damage by 3.5% DPS per point of Hostage and 2.0% DPS per point of Spell Lash at 15% base damage. Tyrannous Mind at a 25% increase is about 1.9% DPS overall. These aa's are basically no-brainers.
-> How about Casting Skills/Resistability? Are they worth anything?
My answer is that Casting Skills are not useful in their current state, and Resistability is not far behind except when mezzing or memwiping.
Casting Skills will affect hostile spell resists. They are on a diminishing returns curve, with a maximum of 520. At 520 skill (+120 skill from base), spells using that skill will have their resist chance decreased by 20%.
I'm not sure of the actual curve, but some assumptions can be made: on pvp, 40 points is equal to 10% resist, thus it's likely similar against mobs, with the first +40-50 skill is equivalent to -10% resist chance. Because of the rate of the curve, next 70-80 skill points (440-520) should be equivalent to a second -10% resist chance. Most items have +4 or +5 skill on them, thus decreasing resist chance by 1-2% per item.
But, this still leaves a big unknown variable: what's a mob's base chance to resist? On yellow mobs, it appears to be somewhere between 5 and 10%, different depending on zone. But on orange mobs, it's difficult to calculate with the added variable of high spell mitigation debuffs that also affect spell hit rates. Even with Hemorrhage at +50 disruption (presumably 45% harder resist chance) or a skill with base 56% harder resist chance, non-debuffed orange mobs have about a 50% to resist. For a marginally debuffed orange mob (about -3000 magical mitigation), this drops to about 25% chance to resist, and at -7000, it drops to about 2% chance to resist. Since most mobs get debuffed quickly, the value of disruption helping land that first spell isn't apparent (because the resists are still extremely high), and the value of disruption on a debuffed mob is extremely low (since resists are so low at that point already). Thus, in neither case does casting skills provide a useful boost.
Skills do a few other things than resists as well. Ministration and ordination reduce power cost of spells, but by a minuscule amount. Focus prevents interrupts. At 520 skill, Focus has a maximum of 20% to prevent interrupts from taking damage. These benefits are much worse than spell resist chance as far as their potential to be useful.
Straight Resist chance increase is basically in the same boat, although it is better than Casting Skills. The gain is very minor for the reasons stated above, and other sources of damage are large enough to overshadow any gain. If the situation requires mezzing or memwiping or otherwise attacking an undebuffed mob (or dispelling debuff mob), however, Resist chance becomes useful in those situations.
Conclusion
So, now that we have all this information, we have to apply it to the gear selections we make.
The first priority should be Base Damage. This is because Base Damage has a very high reward per-point. There are several easy sources of base damage, such as Int line, Shadows aa lines, the Bloodthirsty Choker, and other instance-dropped items to start with.
The second priority is to increase your Spell Damage with items that have high values on them until you reach at least 750 Spell Damage. This is because these items are plentiful and items with Spell Damage generally have very high amounts. In fact, many of the highest Spell Damage items can be obtained through grouping or questing, and thus your DPS is increased the quickest/easiest by focusing on it here.
After that, you have to do some work in comparing your gear to see what the potential benefit is compared to your current gear setup. There is no longer a recommended peak Reuse amount, unlike pre-GU45, because gains continue through 50% (although it is difficult to obtain more than this, if you do continue going, the per-point increase keeps dwindling). As for Crit, the more you get until 100%, the better.
As you obtain more gear, you should be able to keep switching out Spell Damage for more Crit, Reuse, and procs. The easiest way to make practical use of this information is to calculate the DPS boost for one piece of your gear using the formula given above, and then calculate the DPS boost of the item you wish to replace it with, and see whether it's worth it to replace your item. Once you get over 50% crit, build your spell damage closer towards 750 to gain the max benefit from Hostage. That way, you will realize the best benefit from having high spell damage.
FACQ, part 4: In-depth Gear Analysis
