New to Defiler..blast away

Lyricalstorm · 12-12-2008, 12:16 PM

Hi...yet another AA help thread...sorry been looking at the AA threads all day and Im very confused.

I betrayed to Defiler today...I am 76 with 104 AA...

I was told there is a DPS spec and a Healing Spec...can someone help me out in understanding what to do with my AA's please.

Im used to Melee'in on my mystic...now I read spells are more effective for Defilers. Cursing is better..etc etc etc...to get a dog not to get a dog...IM sooo confused (yes use this ammo to blast me

)

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Lyricalstorm · 12-12-2008, 12:19 PM

Oh yes...IM sorry let me specify some other things.

I need to level up...normaly solo..but hopefully will get groups.

I eventually will be a back up defiler for a MT group in raids (have to hit 80 first etc etc etc)

this is PvE only.

What MII choice is best?

Do I sound like a complete noob?

If you have any questions please ask...I will try to answer to the best of my ability. In the meantime Im going back to reading the forums.

Mahsta · 12-12-2008, 01:38 PM

may I ask why you betrayed from mystic?

Lyricalstorm · 12-12-2008, 01:42 PM

Sure...Ive been on the boarder for awhile now on wether to betray or not. THe guild Im in said they would like to have a back up defiler for raids therefor that just spurred me over the edge.

The power regen on a defiler sparked my interest...several other things as well...however I was still on the fence until my guild needed something. So ive betrayed now...and have to learn how to play this class

Pinski · 12-12-2008, 01:51 PM

There's not much difference between a defiler and a mystic.

Rayche · 12-12-2008, 01:53 PM

I betrayed from Mystic to Defiler a while back and I'm still happy with my decision. (I have been an MT Shaman since KoS)

I almost quit my Shaman altogether, so don't take any of my praise for the Defiler class as actual happiness. It was the lesser of two suckages.

My Mystic was an awesome battle priest in EoF. I could make the DPS parse and top 2 of the heal parse at the same time. It all ended with RoK. My Combat arts didn't upgrade to T8 so that AA line was heavily marginalized. No gear was available to support my role and mobs hit much harder, forcing me to take more defensive AA's than offensive.

For Mystics there are no alternative AA trees. We had the ghey cure and rez lines.

Since I found myself dropping tribal rage (25% dbl atk proc) and cut out melee crits and dogdog in favor of alacrity and faster cures.

As I found myself moving farther and farther away from DPS and more towards healing and survivability I found some small advantages to the Defiler class in that role. The ability to strip group fear/stifle/stun while stunned was a massive bonus. (I believe that's what got us past Druushk)

AA trees to reduce the recast time on my emergency wards and death preventions, curseweaving and the ability to do DPS with my debuffs was huge as well.

Both classes are gimped, but the defensive ability still tips slightly in favor of the Defiler, so anyone betraying at this point isn't really going where the grass is truly greener, they are just seriously Min-Maxing.

I didn't take soul ward as I've found AOE's and rampaging mobs will end you very fast after using it. There are other abilities that can help you not NEED soul ward in a raid scenario. Take a look at my AA spec on EQ2 Players if you wanna see what I'm currently using for raids.

If you are still leveling I'd say pickup the AA in TSO that gives you hasted offensive spell casting and crit rate, in the INT tree you will find significant upgrades to your spell crit as well. Ignore the melee crits as your source of damage.

A decent tactic (God I kill slow now compared to my Mystic! I could never level this way.) is to pre-ward, pull with bane of warding or malis, then throw up some more dots and defile, then cast pandemonium while meleeing and healing.

Savne · 12-13-2008, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pinski

There's not much difference between a defiler and a mystic.

Actually, there is.

Pinski · 12-13-2008, 05:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Savne

Actually, there is.

Not really. Shamans are pretty much the same. There are minor differences but they are very easy to adjust to.

Rayche · 12-13-2008, 06:55 PM

There's a lot to get used to, but one weekend of instances and you should be acclimated.

The biggest things I noticed when betraying:

- Godaweful cast times. (Those .5 second casting combat arts really spoiled me)

- No Torpor. This will cause a paradigm shift in your healing mentality. As a Mystic it wasn't that big a deal if someone dropped to 50% health because I could throw up a group ward and torpor would regen them to full while I queued up my ST ward. As a Defiler it's much harder to play catch up.

- All your items that trigger off a melee swing (My poor lil' angels!) will proc about 20% as much as they used to.

- If you are like me you have zero spell crit. You thought you sucked at DPS before? Prepare to get a whole new set of hybrid gear. Not that there's a lot of gear anyway, but you will be switching from +Combat art and +Heal/Crit to +Spell/Heal and +Spell/Heal crit.

- Ancestral Sentry is a really nice pre-debuff HP buffer on a pull, but with a Mystic in the raid you'll be ok.

- Biggest advantages raid-wise to the defiler is The ability to strip fear/stun/stifle/mez while under those effects, Curseweaving, Cannibalize and the nice recast reduction on your death prevention and emergency wards.

- Lastly, I find myself using our little ward totem much more often than I used the little bear Mystics have. The fact that I can backup, place it near the OT or Mage group on pull means I'm helping in a way that I couldn't before. (Still wish it was immune to AOE's, but it will protect the off tank if he's tanking adds on inc)

Savne · 12-15-2008, 07:33 PM

Spiritual Shrine is still raidwide? Last time I checked ACT it only warded those in group