Wiz

Alrighty, so I've been a raid Wizard, Swashbuckler, Brigand and now Mystic over the last 4+ years. I've been a raid leader and guild leader for 4 years. I've lead my guild to avatar kills (not server dominant guilds but that next tier who gets a few avatars in the last few months of an xpac - right now we've got Zarrakon down, etc.)

As of 6 weeks ago, this is my full time 100% committed main. I've dabbled with the toon for years, but now I'm up to 191 AA's and starting to get solid raid gear. With all of the gear comes the questions of which pieces to wear and WHY and how to change out in certain situations.

In the process of tearing apart and and trying to digest Mystic I've found this forum section to be pretty lax in real guides other than AA specs and DPS gear and some tidbits about how Oberon sucks, etc.

How about the meat of the class, the stats and gear to focus on? Caps to be aware of, etc. etc.

In this probably very longwinded post I'm going to try to cover the following that I've started to understand. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you have a factual understanding of one of these game mechanics please help correct my post here.

On the other hand, if you want to post that in 'your opinion' such and such is the best then please don't bother posting here. The Mystic class is a game mechanic like any other class and there is no room for opinions. I'm looking for calcuable FACTS.

For instance, I've asked a dozen shamans what's more important between reuse, recast, + heal, heal crit, etc. and I've gotten roughly one dozen different answers of the order and priority. I still don't know the answer, but I know for a fact the people who say "I try for a balance of all that" are dead wrong. There has to be a factual better statistic than the others (to some curve or cap), they can't all 4 be 'the same' in value. Obviously you want to get all of them + procs as well, but there must be a priority we can determine.

Sadly, I have no heal dummy to test on so it's been a challenge to learn.

So, if I can, let's try to tear into each stat specifically:

A. +Heal: We know this stat is capped at 50% of the base value of the heals it may apply towards, so this gives us a variety of numbers based on each heal separately, not one total number. We know that fury mythicals can give us monster boosts in this area. If you're not the MT shaman or in a raid with 2 furies, though it seems this isn't a buff Mystic's can count on. So, at what point do we get diminishing returns?

We have 5 basic heals (I've put in my heal ranges naked with no modifiers, will ask questions about that later.. [No Kfizzle, you can't have a screenshot])
All Mastered:
Single Small: 1193-1455
Single Large: 2061-2515
Group Heal: 1738-2123
Single Ward: 2535
Group Ward: 4254

To me, the smallest heal here (1455) would translate to +728 heal and would be an absolute for me to get to since it would affect every single heal I have. My cap is good up to +2127, but I notice that 2500 would basically cover 4 of my 5 heals so I'm going to target +728 as huge return on a curve and up to +1250 until the curve flattens out considerably.

I also believe that any modifier for base heal (such as the TSO forearms) which offer "+2 base heal" improve the ranges of each heal and that DOES get included in the +heal cap. So with all the + heal stuff from dark mail gaunts to forearms to shoulders, etc. you can adjust the numbers up - probably to the range where +850 is huge curve affecting everything and about +1400 to get pretty good value.

Questions:
1. Do +base heal mods affect like I'm stating here?
2. The Mystic Mythical takes 30% of wisdom (apparently uncapped as I've seen it increase up to 1500 wisdom already), does this 30% impact like a 'base' increase pushing our upper range of +heal benefit to monsterous numbers?
3. Does anything besides +base heal affect our cap for +heal mods?
4. Anything else on this topic?


B: Heal Crit: Heal crit is a modifier increase of 30% over the top end of your heal max. So take your heal, read the highest number and multiply by 1.3 to get your crit'd value. With Wards, the heal crit only increases them by 15% so adjust appropriately to 1.15 the high value on your ward for a crit'd ward.

With our AA spec and solid gear+ buffs it seems this is the easiest to cap. In fact, in my moderately good raid gear and in raids I'm usually running between 115-130% heal crit and try to shed heal crit gear for +heal or proc stuff as much as I can.

Keeping in mind I can add 7% heal crit from a potion and temp adorn, I'm going to try to target 93% for my heal crit and I'm not sure I can really get it that low with the gear I have....

Questions:

1. 100% heal crit is 100%, right? (for DPS classes, you max out closer to 117-119% melee crit vs. orange con mobs) but for us, 100% is the max value. (Sidebar: in MMB when we become lvl 83, does our 100% need to be higher?)
2. On the parse, heal crit doesn't show correctly for wards, so your heal crit numbers are just your heals, not wards - even though 100% of them should be crit'ing. Is this correct?

C. Cast Speed. Now I start to get pretty fuzzy. Someone explained to me that the max cast speed buffing you can get is 50%. So every heal you cast HAS to take half of it's original time no matter what and that's it's cap. With Alendine and recast timers on a variety of gear pieces I seem to be able to get to about 45% cast time reduction and the statistics inside each heal or spell upon examine do indicate the improvement.

Obviously a shaman has to anticipate incoming damage with wards since they need to be ON the player taking damage BEFORE the damage hits. So casting speed frees you up to get more spells cast into a given time frame. I would guess that if I can cast 45% faster (assuming unlimited power) then I could heal 45% more in a pressurized situation assuming my reuse timers allowed spells to be available as often as I could use them. I find with 45% cast speed that I can cast faster than my heals are available. This allows me plenty of time to work in debuffs so it's not all bad, but I think in my formula of priorities I'm going to aim for 30% cast speed as the biggest curve until it starts to have diminishing returns.

Questions:
1. Is there a point where cast speed is NOT helpful? For example if a spell is 1.5s cast vs. 1.3s cast - can I do anything with that .2 seconds or is that wasted time in game ticks?
2. Is there any negative at all to faster casting??

D. Reuse Timers: Again, a fuzzy area - but I'm given to understand that 50% is the cap in this area as well. The more often your spells are available the more you'll be able to use them, so I'm very clear on the concept, but how the hell do we VALUE this vs. anything else? I think of all the categories this is one I have such a horrible time placing data. I can put together a heal chain and sample timer of what order things should be cast based on power and heal efficiency but then I can't factor in how things like needing to cure in between casts or interrupting casts to cure or spam curing for a few seconds at a key moment or curing a curse that randomly hits my grp affects and changes that heal and debuff routine.

I'd love to hear any input on the valuation of this stat for now I just lump it to the 'I'd like to have as much as I can where possible'

Questions:

1. Anyone with math to apply to this effect? I need some help on how to value it compared to the other stats above.


Summary:

Alright, this is just speculative but I'm going to throw out a sample value priority and undoubtedly it's wrong. Hoping that I might share some knowledge from veteran mystics and make this better, but here goes:

1. +heal to 800 (quite simply it makes every heal you cast heal for more).
2. Heal crit 100% (first thing this does is makes your heals hit the max of their range, second thing it does is give you 15% or 30% more to everything - not quite as valuable as 50% bonus from +heal above, but also not subject to any further capping for your bigger stuff)
3. +heal to 1200 (again, pound for pound you are simply getting in MORE heals per cast, this # will vary per toon but +1200 should be a pretty solid number to cover most toons.
4. Casting Speed to 30% - cast faster, make sure you can use what you have more often.
5. Reuse speed to 30% - get your spells available more often to pair with your cast speed
6. Casting Speed to 50%
7. Reuse speed to 50%

And mixed into ALL of that - are healing procs... I think I'll make heal gear per slot a separate post - because some procs probably become #1 on this list and you'll simply wear the massive 2-3 pieces of gear and work all of the other stats AROUND that item.

Thoughts absolutely appreciated and requested. Again, please try to keep out the opinion. I'm 100% sure given the fact this game's underlying surface is a computer which calculates numbers that if we dig deep enough and figure out the right ways to test we can find the math priorities for our class. Don't start some reply with 'in my experience' - Please, we deserve facts here and while you may have instinctively been doing things right with your toon there IS a mathematical base reason for us to have certain gear priorities and this post is about trying to drill down to the hard evidence.

I also want to get into what gear is important for various situations - massive aoe fights vs. you have a tank in your grp who's actively tanking vs. trash fights, etc. Clearly a mystic should have at least 3-4 gear macros and be swapping out gear for different types of usage.

Gear and Gear Macros for future post(s), let's see if we can bite off this topic first

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

nyquist

100% heal crit is 100% heal crit, there is no exception to this (unless I'm missing some high end raid-mob-debuff that reduces this). So any % over 100 is a waste. If you've got higher than 100, change gear or get rid of your +healcrit AA (if you have it).

With regards to +heal, healCrit, Reuse and casting speed. I go for 50% casting speed over everything else. This allows you to not only cast more, but also allows you to react faster. The extra reacting time is unbeatable, and it effectively increases your healing abilities even further by saving someone's ass faster or group heal/warding and AoE faster or doing something like that. Yeah you burn power faster, but if you can react faster and save lives its worth a little down time before the next fight (or asking for some more hearts/shards/pwrFeeds).

After casting speed I still need to gather some dataz :P
I will look into some of the other questions when I get a chance, but some of them should be easy to answer, such as the +base heal effecting +heals cap etc, etc, etc.

__________________
-- nyquist --


(Downloadin' like a BOSS)

Wiz

The whole casting speed thing you posted was opinion, sir - you are saying you LIKE casting speed personally, but that doesn't prove it's the best mathematically. We can do better than a series of people's varied (and some no doubt crack induced) opinions on what they like or what gear they have available being the best possible, etc.

Now, Nyquist - I'm gonna challenge you to PROVE casting speed is the most important thing - go for it! You spoke with passion about what you like, now make me believe that casting fast is more important than casting slower but bigger by showing some facts.

I can get opinions from anyone, I want facts and data for this thread or I'll call you on the carpet

profe

Casting and Reuse cap is actually 100%. You can find the new casting time for a spell with the following formula: base_casting / (1+casting_speed) = new_casting where casting_speed is your casting%/100 (for example, 24% is 0.24.) Reuse is calculated the same way [base_reuse / (1+reuse_speed) = new_reuse]. The confusion of 50% in whichever stat probably comes from cutting your time in half because you will be dividing by 2 with 100% speed.

Heal Crit Chance cap is 100% regardless of your level. And your critical heals are larger with increases to Heal Crit Bonus which will make your critical multiplier higher. Wards do not use the exact critical multiplier displayed in the examine window for wards. See http://www.eq2flames.com/mystics/429...tml#post974188 to calculate your effective critical multiplier and its affect on your wards. ACT does not show critical wards because the game does not log "critically absorbed" damage, it just logs absorbed damage. Your other questions are addressed in that post.

See http://www.eq2flames.com/mystics/468...tml#post999122 for a ranking of statistics for the Mystic which was calculated directly from the raw data.

nyquist

I thought I did give you enough fact :P

If you can cast everything in 1/2 of the normal required time, you can cast twice as much right?
well, on top of casting twice as much in the same period of time, you can now react faster. This allows you to recover from AoEs or Pulled agro faster, so you save lives. This makes casting speed more effective than just the 100% more casting you can do.

So there are 'hidden' bonuses to casting speed; the only problem is you seem to be demanding numbers, and for casting and reuse speed, this is hard to achieve because so many people cast in different orders and some neglect certain spells all together

__________________
-- nyquist --


(Downloadin' like a BOSS)

Wiz

So, if I were to say this differently the cap is 100, but that's not 100%, it's just 100. 100 casting speed = 50% cast speed reduction. Got what you're saying here. This makes items like the Robe of Alendine, which literally says 10 PERCENT really a cast speed reduc of 20 on the 100 pt. cap scale, which is just outrageously amazing. Robe of Alendine has Benevolent Alacrity XX !!!!!!

Oh, son of a bitch - the tooltip isn't even right? Holy hell Sony... alright, excellent post Profe and I understand your math completely and the excel sheet is excellent. It can't possibly account for heal procs, though so I suspect that faster casting speed will actually cause slightly more procs and gain a bit more edge than you illustrate here, though I don't know how the heck you could account for that other than what you've done. Alright I'm going to tinker with your spreadsheet. Would you mind if I put your excel work on a website and provide the link for mystics to use so they can spot in their gear setup for math calcs? Credit for your work given np.


Profe you stated: " 1% base > 1% reuse > 1% casting > 1% crit bonus (if you have more than 30% crit chance) > 4 heal mod > 12 wisdom > 1% crit chance" for single wards and group wards. Would you hold that data to be true for ALL of your healing or just in the case of wards? You seem to value the reuse timer very highly here and I'm thinking it's because the wards need to be reapplied to have the value and if they aren't up when you're ready it's wasted time SOLELY IN REGARDS TO WARDING.

Still, on a 'heal' level vs. exclusively warding is it that high in priority?

I fully recognize what you're attempting to do here in providing a thought process and encouraging others to walk through their own math, but I think we can standardize the priority gear for at least 3 classes of mystics and lay out a gear set they can realistically get, too.

A. Non-Raider should have and here's the gear you can get in instances or quests
B. Non-avatar Raider should have and here's the gear you can get from instanced raids, instances and quests
C. Avatar Raider: If you can pick any gear, this is your huckleberry and priority.

Don't you think that with some work we can determine some set of gear and stats that will cover 90% efficiency? I want to put the time and effort into understanding this better, setting up my gear macros for different major angles, but I don't think I'll be pulling out my excel chart per group and per fight to make sure I'm running 93% efficient instead of 90% efficient.

Then again, maybe I will as I digest Mystic better....

Wiz

You're having your cake and eating it, too, my friend - yes it's true if all things were equal casting MORE should mean more productivity.

What I'm trying to nail down though is if I had to choose between 4 heal crit, reuse timer of 2, recast timer of 3 and +heal of 90 which is better. Not just better for ME, but truly better for everyone not already capped in one of those categories.

It can't be an opinion... profe's excel sheet calculates out the actual reuse HPS which can be attained from each category - I'm going to tinker with it and try to find some conclusions. What we really care about, all of us, is the heals per second after accounting for reuse and this stat seems spot on for our end goal, isn't it? (Granted mixing in cures, bolster, debuffs, etc. will detract from heal parse, but in raw terms we need to be able to find the set that gives us best HPS during the seconds we CAN devote to healing.)

nyquist

I didn't say it was opinion :P lol I said it was hard to attatch numbers to, this is because while making your single target ward come back twice as fast might allow you to cast that twice as much, this will also decrease the number of spells you can cast in between each ward...changing the order or priority of your other spells, effectively changing your HPS or debuffing. (I haven't looked at the spread sheet, but I can only imagine it didn't take into accounts EVERY lurking variable :P, but i'm also sure it has a good basis for comparison)

With that said, you CAN get a general idea of which stat is best, but after a certain point(s) (not only at the cap) you will get potentially significant 'lurking variable' changes that aren't apprently obvious but can change how you play/cast/heal.
This makes determining definite number very difficult :P though I'm sure we can figure something out...like prioritize spells by efficiency to determine which takes prescedence and rate each stat (heals, reuse, cast, crit) based proportionally on how they effect our best spells

__________________
-- nyquist --


(Downloadin' like a BOSS)

Kaizer_Sosay

you wont get a consensus on what is the best. I read half this shit and laugh.

Im sure my raid AA spec doesnt match Profe's, Nyquist, Mine, or anyone. But for me its perfect.

Same with stats some prefer to cast fast as hell. Some will take a slower cast but much larger wards. How do they get bigger wards? focus on heal crit? heal mod? heal crit bonus? Do you want to cast faster? Lesson your reuse?

Ask 10 mystics get 10 different answers. Best you can go is provide pros and cons of each stat and let them decide what they want to try.

__________________

Wiz

Sorry, I'm not willing to accept there are 10 correct answers to this puzzle. There are simply an awful lot of incorrect mystics out there guessing at shit and calling it good enough.

Thanks for chiming in your 'give up it's useless' message, but I'm not giving up