Faraw

Hello guys,

I've been experimenting a bit in the DPS department the last couple of weeks. The reason for doing so is that some of our main duties, healing and curing, has become less time consuming. Most raid encounters just don't need you to focus on heals, cures and debuffs fulltime unless you are in the MT group. A group which we as mystics doesn't belong in unless being short on defilers.

On most trash epic encounters and also some nameds (and that's what, 95% of the content?), especially if you like our guild still do the old Kingdom of Sky raid zones, I find myself choose between DPSing or doing nothing at all alot of the time. A decision which in my case is an easy one since I hate slacking and slackers in general.

Now before I go on I want to point out that I have been going the rough road until I finally ended up in the raiding guild I am a member of today. A guild that takes on all end game raiding content that Everquest 2 has to offer. My first raiding experience was that in a casual raiding guild, and from there advancing to a semi hardcore one before joining my current guild. So I know what it's like to raid with people where everyone is fully mastered and fabled, has all their AA's grinded out, have a good knowledge of the game and their class versus not having any of that or only part of it. I used to be in a guild where we had 8 or 9 healers on every raid, everyone spam healing the MT just to keep him alive basically. Now this was a long time ago, but still. I can understand if you belong in that type of guild and come here to read this post you might think what I write is a bit strange. I also I know of healers that refuse to do DPS, just because they are healers, whether they could be doing it or not.

But anyway to get back on track I'd like to know what you all think about DPSing as mystics. Is this something you refuse to do or do you find yourself being in DPS mode (while still debuffing, healing and curing if needed ofcourse) more often than not? To me it's like a milder form of the Illusionist "dilemma". Why not DPS if what you should be doing isn't needed. Then why not bring a DPS class instead of a healer when healing isn't needed you might ask. Well, I'm not saying healing isn't needed at all I'm just saying it's not always something you have to devote all your time on, especially on trash where an initial group ward might be all that is needed.

Being in the OT group with an Arcane Spear of Tunare fom Wuoshi equipped I've been able to parse ok while still being 3rd on the healer list after the two MT healers which is where I should be if not slacking on heals.

Some examples for referense:

Lyceum of Abhorrence (Zonewide): ~1250 DPS
Halls of Seeing (Zonewide): ~1100 DPS
Deathtoll (Zonewide): ~950 DPS
Emerald Halls (Zonewide): ~850 DPS

Mutagenic Outcast: ~1600 DPS
Cruor Alluvium (DT): ~2000 DPS

On a world wide mystic level I have no idea if these parses are any good or not, I just wanted to share my experience and hopefully also get some feedback of your guys view on DPSing as healers/mystics. I will always be a healer focusing on debuffing, warding, healing and curing primarily but since SOE keeps nerfing the epic encounters I can see myself keep doing DPS alot of the time.

ecoskii

It is a bit daft now - 90% of encounters I toss an occassional heal and keep up my encounter resist debuff - the rest of the time I just focus on dps to keep my interest up. I have a complete set of dps gear that is just for +STR, haste, +dps, a bit of INT and any melee procs i can find - 810 STR self-buffed.

Set up 2 macros to swap all your slots to dps gear and 2 macros to swap all to heal/resist - then you can start switching gear mid-encounter - keep hitting the macros and 1 slot is changed every 3 secs or so.

Grim Brimstone Hammer dropped for me last night - seems pretty good - 100% critting for about 1,040 every 1.8 secs in group and about 50% double attack if rage is up as well.

Given that we only have 4 CAs + master strike (+ a spell cold dot until the next game update) most of our dps is down to our weapon, timing auto-attacks and group make-up - i assume our dream group is zk, bruiser, dirge, inq/coercer + mage (for proc) ?? Happy to see monk/troub or a fury if he wants to give us Agitate - any others to look out for?

Any other ideas?

Dagorlad

I agree with both of you raiding as mystic turns out 90% of the time we are a dps class.

Don't get me wrong i like both the healer and the dps role. but we probably gonna be shafted in T8.

I bet theres some assassin named snacky that wishes to do our dps.

As for figures: Didnt have a dirge often this week but a few named fights i remembered:


(FTH) Z... The shredder 1400+ (curing no healing)

(HOS) Pain 1806 dps
(HoS) Suffering: 1415 (healed twice)
(HOS) Venekor: 1230 (healing + curing)


Self buffed i do around 900 - 1k dps
our dps seems to vary somewhere between 1400 - 2k depending on the group setup and the dirge putting up CoB in time.

With the PHH spear i did ~1200 zonewide in Lyceum before.

I think with the staff of Cultivation being hasted down by alot it should be outdamaging the Arcane spear of tunare. I am gonna experiment that on the trash in EH this week.

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Rayche

I still don't understand why you guys seem to be absolutely convinced that you have no place in the MT group.

I'm the MT Shaman even when we DO have Defilers along.

Half the battle is about how well you play your class.

Granted, my top DPS has been around 1265, while I usually live in 700-900 land, while staying in the top 3 on the heal parse.

Buffing raw hit points doesn't really justify a spot in a group by itself in my opinion. That and regenerating wards that prevent melee versus magical damage over time pays off considerably more in my experience. (Situationally of course, there are some encounters where magic wards would be of great benefit.)

I just don't get why I still see threads about Mystics not belonging in the MT group. With the Foretelling buff AA line we can get close enough to not really matter.

Lyxson

I'm sorry, Defilers are just better suited for the MT group than Mystics. Mystics do fine in the MT group, but if you have a defiler, he should be in there.

Juniette

to add to that...
iirc the defiler offers more HP to MT (w/in group only?)

and we Mystics can bolster anyone w/in raid

Pinski

You still don't have a reactive DPS/Haste debuff for the MT, or the fact that you buff the entire group far less HP. Mystics, while they can do the MT Shaman job, are just not as good as Defilers in the MT Shaman job. However, they are far superior to Defilers in the non-MT Shaman job.

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Calaglin, Former Illusionist/Guild Leader of Dissolution on Nektulos
Calaglin, Former Illusionist/Guild Leader of Confirmed on Unrest

Wonsokman

i love it when im in the mt group the only real diff between a mystic and defiler in mt group that i can see is defiler buffs about 300 to 400 more hp but i still say id take skill of the shamen over the class a mystic have oberon which is hot but can only be used in group where as a def had soul ward which u can use out of group but its a close call between both classed id still say skill over class

Sharpteath

bobz69

theres no question it should be a defiler over a mystic, spirtual circle > oberon, defilers also with eof aa lines dont have power issues, ever...at all. even on mobs that drain. only time our defiler dips under 80% power is if a coercer uses channel....wtb defiler aa's pst

+ theres bane....defilers are just better suited to mt groups, and if your defiler sucks, and the mystic is that much better he gets put in the mt group....kick his ass out and send him to the neighberhood roleplaying/casual guild and start recruiting