The Dirge's Guide to...Success I suppose - Page 8

blavek · 03-05-2009, 06:03 PM

I would like to make an off the cuff correction to luck of the dirge. The wording as I remember it says it adds a 20% of the base proc percentage to an item. So for example if an item has 20% chance to go off it ill add an addition 4% to that. for a total of 24%. This is dependant on the given items and is never a Permanant buff.

Also I would like to point out that unless your MT and OT are Both Mit and Parry capped the parry song needs both strengthened links and the ability in the bard TSO line. Even if the tank is on diminishing returns every little bit helps and parry son needs to be running. Hyrans is an absolute must in MT as well since Most MT's are guards and Guards need to run offense just to keep hate up with their DPS so he gets 34% from your hyrans and better taunts plus his DPS plus 1 or 2 transfers depending on make up.
I used the Str line through ROK until T4 In general I found it completely Useless a properly timed joust has a minimal effect on overall DPS and Both the swash's and the Furies AE block is much better. The drawbacks are minimul compared to the 10 minute recast on BD.

Also I suggest for any raiding dirge that raids with more than one dirge in a raid its easier to set up a channel for you to communicate and Spam a COB macro into than setting up ACT. In addition you can work out Who gravs who and who has what responsibilities. Since our debuffs Do not stack there is no reason to have all the dirges running Debuffs just the dirge group with a brigand for theives guild. Ad3's with theives guild out perform M1's without them. I call the AE's and Special effects of the fights with my guild so I allready have a lot going off on my parser between beeps for spells and TTS for certain spells. Also better than gravitas timers is making a good macro.
the recast on Grav is ~30 seconds the immunity is 120 seconds which means in your rotation you can keep grav going one 4 healers every 2 minutes since the immunity stats from when the grav lands not after it expires to my recolecction. Your macro should consist of 4 gravitas spells with your the healers you are covering listed as targets. you work this out with the other dirges prior to raids and adjust as nessecary. What happens when you cast gravitas is this. It tries to cast on the first target if it can it does if not it goes to the next and so on. Occasionaly you have to hit it twice to get the effect I'm not sure why I blame SOE's macro implementation.

Other possible and effective castings based on group
MT group on trash
Rianas STR/AGI stone skin hyran's and parry With VP 2 peice the final slot can really be anything I like weapon boon there. During boss fights you may need the extra mana because generally people are paying a lot more attention and more recklessly using there mana. You options for swap are Riana's and weapon boon. Again unless your entire MT group is AGI capped and they aren't the agi goes a long way. The str is just nice. I currently feel that it is not worth it to Readjust your AA"s to get the increase to that song.

OT Group On trash and single target boss fights
Rianas Athletic Strain Weapon Boon dead calm And one other and of course POS if it is free. In reality there is no reason for the OT group to be taking hits in these fights. Also if you find you get an add from somwhere you can always switch out your buffs on the fly as needed. This is the same as the melee DPS group

On mutli boss fights or fights with many Adds MT buff your OT.

DPS group See above for OT group.

Remember in All the dirge spots take hits to their DPS somewhere. We always have 3 dirges and 2 end up graving and 1 debuffs Graving is less of a hit than debuffing so in general the debuffing dirge comes in third the MT dirge second and the OT dirge first. But regardless of what anyone may say your DPS is also Very important You make up approximately 5% of raidwide DPS give or take. So if your guild is parsing 100k you should be parseing 5k. Now a lot fo my DPS is reliant on Proc's. Troopers scale and a few other items so your DPS can swing wildly from fight to fight. The longer the fight the less swing there is.

Finaly I think you should aslo Explore the shield specced possibilities. Most people considerit a solo only spec and in most cases I would agree. However, the Shield from xygoz makes it quite viable. Our shield specced dirge rocks 96% DA with illy 86% alone. This makes up for the loss of the second weapon in his DPS He then couples that with Melee crit and DPS mod to additionaly make up for and improve upon the dual wield spec. So it turns out with a slightly different gearing potential the spec is very viable. Also from a non raid perspective in today's nortah soloing is very likely and for new dirges leveling will be a solo affair which is somewhat discouraging as we are not the easiest solo class by any means. So some discussion in that area would be beneficial.

Edited to fix luck of the dirge percentages.

Vuetee · 03-06-2009, 02:09 PM

big ty, not got time to read through it ALL(read about half) as I am busy tonight, and packing tomorrow to go skiing for a week the day after, but will look when i get back

more constructive feedback welcome :D ty all!

Orani · 03-08-2009, 08:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blavek

our debuffs Do not stack there is no reason to have all the dirges running Debuffs just the dirge group with a brigand for theives guild.

Wow, kool, I was told that our Spell Rebuff does not stack raidwide on the on mob. Is this really true for the other 3 green encounter?

Quote:

Originally Posted by blavek

Finaly I think you should aslo Explore the shield specced possibilities. Most people considerit a solo only spec and in most cases I would agree. However, the Shield from xygoz makes it quite viable. Our shield specced dirge rocks 96% DA with illy 86% alone.

Would someone post the item link to this shield the above player is referencing from Xygoz?

Lavir · 03-09-2009, 01:21 AM

\aITEM -1418893135 1093271270:Wheel of Nightmares\/a

I'm assuming this is the one...

Stormsinger · 03-09-2009, 04:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blavek

Also I would like to point out that unless your MT and OT are Both Mit and Parry capped the parry song needs both strengthened links and the ability in the bard TSO line.
This is too much of a sacrifice of personal DPS in my opinion. Part of the reason people are speccing strengthened links is because we have to have 10 points in scout line and Master Strike is kind of a piece of shit.

Also better than gravitas timers is making a good macro.
I also do this it works well for making sure Grav is always up, but much like DPS macros it takes away the decision making element. On some fights the MT healers dont need the help but DPS group healers do and vice versa, you can always change the macro before every fight, but things can change mid fight, and most of you will probably forget.

Other possible and effective castings based on group
MT group on trash
Rianas STR/AGI stone skin hyran's and parry With VP 2 peice the final slot can really be anything I like weapon boon there.
You specifically say on trash, and yet you are over stressing survivability, I don't know about you, but I'm not usually very nervous about MT grp members dying on trash, and even if they were, that little bit of agi probably won't help them. Diminishing returns makes this buff pretty gimp in fact, and you are better off playing Tomb's so the tank coercer hate transfer and yourself can get the DPS benefit instead of wasting a concentration slot. Weapon Boon should also be up because tanks have pretty poor hit rates, your MT will appreciate it, but if its a truly intense NAMED fight then STR AGI isnt a bad idea to throw up for that little bit of survivability on the tank, but only if its necessary, otherwise you're wasting DPS, and the STR boost is hardly noticable since almost every melee class is pushing the cap in that stat anyways.

Finaly I think you should aslo Explore the shield specced possibilities. Most people considerit a solo only spec and in most cases I would agree. However, the Shield from xygoz makes it quite viable.

I disagree completely, if you ask the dirge community about shield speccing they will tell you that its just dumb. A second weapon provides a second chance to strike the mob which is part of the reason DA is better than MC especially on high level mobs. It also will cause you to proc off melee more with certain procs. Also it fucks up the AA setup you should be using, by shield speccing you lose out on a single ae avoid or the int line CA. There are many offhand weapons that are better than that or any other roundshield we can use, so it is also a sacrifice of raw stats.

Unless you are thinking of soloing, you are leveling, or you want to be tanking instances, (in which case you probably wouldn't have a shield worth a shit anyways) Using this spec is a really good way to make yourself look dumb and have lower DPS than you should.

One of the biggest things the average Dirge needs to work on is his DPS, telling them to do unnecessary shit for the sake of survivability will only make that worse.

Orani · 03-09-2009, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormsinger

...otherwise you're wasting DPS, and the STR boost is hardly noticable since almost every melee class is pushing the cap in that stat anyways.

Yeah, if ya did the combat art dmg and autoattack dmg calculations on yourself, with your STR boosted up to 900 to 1000 with the song, the dmg increase is approximately 2% to 3% from the STR/AGI song. I would assume this be roughly close to the same benefit to the MT.

I've heard there is some type of "natural" critical mitigation from high AGI past the soft cap. Would anyone elaborate on this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormsinger

One of the biggest things the average Dirge needs to work on is his DPS, telling them to do unnecessary shit for the sake of survivability will only make that worse.

Yeah, perfect example of this is taking 5 AA points out of the pretty much negligible poison proc to get Turnstrike.j

I agree 90% of the time that Dirges should focus on DPS. There are Dirges that go as far as sacrificing their rezing responsibilities, designated according to guild management, to get a better parse. Thus, the healers are busy preventing deaths while a couple players are dead for up to 30 seconds for the only reason that the Dirge is trying to put out more DPS. With AAs assigned for DPS or survivability, I think all of this really depends on the quality build of the guild raid; I figure a guild raid that is better equipped will have Dirges more focused on DPS.

Quote:

Originally Posted by blavek

our debuffs Do not stack there is no reason to have all the dirges running Debuffs just the dirge group with a brigand for theives guild.

Wow, kool, I was told that our Spell Rebuff does not stack raidwide on the mob. Is this really true for the other 3 green encounter? (i hate restating this question but i'd really like to know what ya'll think)

Firza · 03-09-2009, 01:11 PM

I am very sure the greens do not stack.
IF they would stack any raid could pick up like 10 dirges and do 100% dammage, and receive 0% dammage. (if there are no caps on debuffing which has not been proven)

btw, this was rehashed somewhere during t5 also...i bet those posts are lost on the sctoutssanctuary

edit to say: Res responsibility should depend on quality of raid force and difficulty of mob instead of being a solid core duty.

Sneaks · 03-09-2009, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firza

I am very sure the greens do not stack.
IF they would stack any raid could pick up like 10 dirges and do 100% dammage, and receive 0% dammage. (if there are no caps on debuffing which has not been proven)

btw, this was rehashed somewhere during t5 also...i bet those posts are lost on the sctoutssanctuary

edit to say: Res responsibility should depend on quality of raid force and difficulty of mob instead of being a solid core duty.

Greens don't stack but since the duration is less than recast, you need at least two dirges to keep them up constantly.

Also Spell Rebuff is a dirge/troub spell. Troubs can enhance it with AA, Dirges cannot. Dirges shouldn't cast this spell, unless of course, your raid is lacking Troubs.

Firza · 03-10-2009, 10:01 AM

I was replying to the post above me Sneaks....

blavek · 03-11-2009, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormsinger

Quote:
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=alt2 style="BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset">Originally Posted by blavek

Also I would like to point out that unless your MT and OT are Both Mit and Parry capped the parry song needs both strengthened links and the ability in the bard TSO line.
This is too much of a sacrifice of personal DPS in my opinion. Part of the reason people are speccing strengthened links is because we have to have 10 points in scout line and Master Strike is kind of a piece of shit.

The class is designed to help other classes first Specificaly Melee. So taking AA's that boost others in your raid force that aren't capped is completely reasonable and what you should do. I bitch and complain over every point I put into those AA's and everytime I cast the buff but I do it anyway because worst case its unnecessary and best case it increases the raid survivabilty to make the encounter possible. It doesn't matter how good your personal DPS is if the raid doesn't beat the encounter. We aren't assassins.

Also better than gravitas timers is making a good macro.
I also do this it works well for making sure Grav is always up, but much like DPS macros it takes away the decision making element. On some fights the MT healers dont need the help but DPS group healers do and vice versa, you can always change the macro before every fight, but things can change mid fight, and most of you will probably forget.

We run with the dirges and usually 6 to 8 healers so every healer in raid either has gravitas on them or they have the immunity.

Other possible and effective castings based on group
MT group on trash
Rianas STR/AGI stone skin hyran's and parry With VP 2 peice the final slot can really be anything I like weapon boon there.
You specifically say on trash, and yet you are over stressing survivability, I don't know about you, but I'm not usually very nervous about MT grp members dying on trash, and even if they were, that little bit of agi probably won't help them. Diminishing returns makes this buff pretty gimp in fact, and you are better off playing Tomb's so the tank coercer hate transfer and yourself can get the DPS benefit instead of wasting a concentration slot. Weapon Boon should also be up because tanks have pretty poor hit rates, your MT will appreciate it, but if its a truly intense NAMED fight then STR AGI isnt a bad idea to throw up for that little bit of survivability on the tank, but only if its necessary, otherwise you're wasting DPS, and the STR boost is hardly noticable since almost every melee class is pushing the cap in that stat anyways.

Except individuals are not neccessarily pushing cap. There are a lot of reasons why they may not be. They are in their resist set... they are new to the guild and poorly geared they don't raid often and are poorly geared. Or they are just poorly gearred. Or they were focussing on some other stats Like scaraficing STR for MC knowing the dirge in their group will run STR/AGI. The list goes on and your milage will vary but I tried to come up with some general guidlines especially for those that raid infrequently or have never raided at all. And me personally I am not STR capped because in my guild set up its fairly difficult to make the case that I should have that high str peice with no DA on it or 3 DA and 4 MC. That gear is going to the non bards first and thats how it is.

Finaly I think you should aslo Explore the shield specced possibilities. Most people considerit a solo only spec and in most cases I would agree. However, the Shield from xygoz makes it quite viable.

I disagree completely, if you ask the dirge community about shield speccing they will tell you that its just dumb. A second weapon provides a second chance to strike the mob which is part of the reason DA is better than MC especially on high level mobs. It also will cause you to proc off melee more with certain procs. Also it fucks up the AA setup you should be using, by shield speccing you lose out on a single ae avoid or the int line CA. There are many offhand weapons that are better than that or any other roundshield we can use, so it is also a sacrifice of raw stats.

Unless you are thinking of soloing, you are leveling, or you want to be tanking instances, (in which case you probably wouldn't have a shield worth a shit anyways) Using this spec is a really good way to make yourself look dumb and have lower DPS than you should.

This is purely a matter of personal preference in my opinion. And choosing to use a round shield doesn't make you look dumb it merely states that you are going outside of the norm. The dirge in my guild that has it and uses it for shield spec usually matches us dual weilders on parse so if he is sacraficing he isn't sacraficing much. In addition to really make it ffective you only need about 4 more AA's spent in the line since you should allready have 20 points in there anyway for fortissimo. I personally use marrows in my offhand though.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
One of the biggest things the average Dirge needs to work on is his DPS, telling them to do unnecessary shit for the sake of survivability will only make that worse.

I completely Disagree with this statement the biggest thing a dirge needs to do is make everyon else in their vicinity better then worry about personaly DPS. If the people in your group are allready capped in the areas in question and cannot benefit from your buffs and such then worry about yourself. We aren't assassins and if we are on the top of the parse your other DPS are failing. Only time I land top 5 in parse is if either I am extremely luck with my procs going off or I am raiding with the B squad.

I havn't checked the Durations recently but I have the AA that modifies them and makes them longer. They stay up for something like 60 seconds if I recall correctly and and I know when I am watching the mob during the fight I rarely see the debuffs drop off and not get readded right away. So I am confident one dirge can cover them effectively.

I Chose magnetic note over rez AA's where as the other dirges chose rez abilities.

A note on Magnetic note some people have claimed that it doesn't work which is uyntrue it works just fine however you and your raid force need to be aware of things that take precident. Rescue will always overide magnetic note... Try and get a ranger killed with it and watch the MT rescue it. Also should the mob be rooted magnetic note will do nothing and the root mechanic ovewrites it so the mob is just going to hit the closest unlucky person until the root wears off.