Hash

Complete useless against WHICH MOBS? Where are your lvl 86 epic names coming from? Are they softer and tender at your server?
This topic is still hot for me tho. Had this debate with a scout guildie of mine who asked haste over dove song and I played then but his approach was same as Pinski about dove song which I disagree. If he wasnt in the group I wouldnt play haste to 4 caster even we had 2 summoners. There is one more thing to be said :p I was a dirge 10 days ago but still please /discuss

Ballads

Ok so many have broken down so many ways ,but people still dont understand, so ill take a quick stab at it the way i think about it.

The reason why Trauma damage misses and + skill modifiers are effective is there are 2 numbers to avoid the damage. 1. mitigation, and 2 avoidance. Completely separate factors and debuffing one doesn't effect the other. Mitigation debuffs are very effective. No matter what lvl a mob is you can lower its mitigation to sub-zero.
Avoidance debuffs are very limited to how effective they are. Mobs of higher con just have a natural avoidance due to being a higher lvl you just can't debuff off of them. + to pierce,slash,crush can be used to counter this level difference.

There is only one number used to determine your damage on magical attacks. Both magic mitigation and magical avoidance are determined by a mobs resistance to that type of damage. As with physical mitigation, debuffs to magical damage types are very effective allowing them to be debuffs to a sub-zero number regardless of mob level. With no true magial avoidance number simply debuffing a mobs mitigation to these lower numbers allows for you to obtain near 100% to hit rates for magical attacks. Making + to casting skill unnecessary to every buff as long as you can debuff its mit through the normal methods. Mking buffs like dove song fucking useless.

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Uyaem

If you're running a parser, just look at the numbers there =)
I'm never running Dove Song, and the group I'm in, regardless of its exact makeup, never shows less than 95% hit rate for spells for myself, and my casting skills are way lower than those of any mage.
The first 5-10 seconds is pretty much the only time when a casting-based debuff or a spell will fail to land. Especially for named fights, Dove Song/Song of Magic is fairly useless, because those will a) be debuffed better than your average 45s trash encounter and b) the 5-10s in the beginning don't really mean much in relation to the entire fight's duration.

While + casting skills really look nice on paper, even on an orange mob. The why is explained by Ballads already.

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Dants

Your post is pretty much spot on. Although offensive skill modifiers help, they face an obvious diminishing curve on their effectiveness which really steepens as the mob passes level 85.

For example:

+100 to offensive skills is probably worth:

~30% hit rate on lvl 84 mobs
~27% hit rate on lvl 85 mobs
~15% hit rate on lvl 86 mobs
~10% hit rate on lvl 87 mobs

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Deadberry

Oh man. I about died seeing someone running Dove Song. But yeah, like they said. You should be running:

STR/STA (Fortifying Song)
Spell Proc (Aria's)
Power Regen (Power Ballad) - Name still cracks me up
De-aggro (Alin's)
Haste (Allegretto or whatever)

Depending upon the encounter you can drop STR/STA or Haste (depending upon your group setup) for resists or some other buff if necessary. IMO, Dove Song doesn't even warrant a spot on my hotbars...

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Hash

No worries mate. Roll an alt and come watch me at runny entering VP tomorrow if you want to see someone using dove that much.
Sincere thanks for the head ups. And thnx SOE for making conc slot buffs to be changable during fights.

Slamdar

Welcome to 2004....

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Deadberry

You may as well slam your dick in a door.

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