Ruon

Ok, before I just ask the question, let me explain why I am asking before I get laughed off the board. I am the only full time troub in our guild right now, we run 3 dirges and myself. My gear is not great, nor am I claiming to be the best player.

I find that in order to parse with the other bards, I have to get on top of the mob for my auto attacks to work well, and focus on melee gear. From what I have seen, most troubadores currently do this, at least from what I can see by the linked parses on this board.

Before you ask, no I don't want to play a ranger...however, I am wondering, what can troubs do from ranged? whats the dps parse look like with bow auto attack and spells if you are decked out in full spell crit,casting speed, ect gear?

The reason I want to know is because if someone pulls a mob for even a split second, the area affect auto attack(frontal) of the mob is ussually enough to kill me(perhaps because at the moment because my gear is bad). currently, my DPS is half when I am casting from ranged(I dont have alot of spell or ranged gear) but i stay alive through the whole fight and the casters parse far more than the few thousand dps i would parse if i was up meleeing and getting killed(and spending the next half of the fight getting my buffs back up).

maybe in time with gear I will be able to stay alive, but I am wondering if gearing up to spell cast would allow one to hit decent parses.

anyone with good spell gear have a guestimate as to what you can parse when a safe distance from most mobs?



NOTE: I dont want to be the highest parser, I help do raid calls and stuff like that, so between that and my support role of jcapping I know I am contributing...and I know that my dieing ruins our mages parse...but i still wish i could contribute more than a few thousand dps while still staying alive...also, we have not progressed far enough to have the oppertunity to have more than 3 fabled TSO pieces(i have one currently), so my survivability may not go up for some time to come.

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Chiropteran

I feel your pain.

All I can tell you is what I typically do when I know that I am going to have to stay at ranged. I switch out my off hand move my drum into secondary, put on a bow, ranged belt, maybe 2 other ranged type items that I normally do not wear. I have 2 ranged attacks which I will use in these cases. But all and all it still isn't pretty. I'd say my average on pure ranged fights is only about 2K. (20% from auto attack; 5% from range CA; 50% from procs like POTM, POM, void bane, etc..) If I can joust, I still will use the 12 tone earring from SOH to extend my combat art range and might skip the bow all together. This easily doubles my ranged parse. However, compared to just being able to stay on the mob I would parse about 7K. These are just generalizations, to give you an idea how one troub is doing.

I often wonder how others are doing and what tricks they have found. I'd love some more input on this every topic.

Serrith

I could be wrong in saying this but I would say I'm about 80% effective when/if I decide to stay ranged. Although, you say you are the one doing timers so jousting shouldn't be that difficult. If the majority of your problem is on incoming, when the mob AoE frontals, then just stay back a few seconds until the tank gets it flipped.

Kulanae

I can put up about 2.5 to 3k DPS from ranged in my "normal" group of which I rarely get an Enchanter. My Ranged DA is about 40% and I use Voldrath for my bow.

Ruon

A little more back story, I don't ussually get popped by AOE's, its normally from frontals...every now and then, a scout will peel the mob for a split second, and before i can get out of the way, i die. my gear is not the best right now, especially armour...because I have very little time, I rarely instance, mostly raiding, so i am in 3 pieces of t1 and no t2 shard armour. i have some ROK fabled pieces, and one TSO set, but its not enough to make me live through the frontals half the time.

since my AA is so low, and gear is so bad, if i want to parse over 3k, I have to get in and melee. if i switch gear and jewelry out, i can normally pull a little over 3k from ranged, but, i normally want to melee because i can consistently parse 4k even in my shitty gear.

so, is it possible to pull 5k+ if in full nice set of caster/ranged gear? cause if so, i will continue my hunt for spell and ranged gear, because trying to focus on raid calls and keeping people in the right place at the right time is keeping me busy as is, i dont need to be on the floor or trying to rebuff while calling AOE's and detrimentals.

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Serrith

I would say even with a full set of t2 shard armor and definitely with some of the t3 pieces out of WoE, with a good bow you could easily parse over 5k at range. The biggest thing I saw when looking at your gear is that your bow isn't the greatest out there.

Get yourself a Vexthorne, or Dragonhawk or something and you should see your ranged auto attack hitting for a lot more than what you probably are hitting right now. I don't know where you guys are at progression wise but Vexthorne drops off the easiest SoH named, and Dragonhawk comes from the first named in VP.

But definately hit up WoE a few times and do some group stuff to get more shards to get yourself full t2 with some t3 pieces just waiting on shards.

Ruon

We have reformed this guild multiple times, finally I am taking over some of the raid leader responsibilities on this last reform. my goal will be to get most content but avatars down, and after a few more people we will be back to where we were (fist couple nameds in most tso stuff, as in naga, ect, and then up to byzola and trak)...so, gear wont be a issue at some point soon, just will take time.

my concern was, if I can still do decent DPS from ranged, I will start getting spell and ranged gear on my rolls, rather than melee stuff...im fine with a lower parse, but staying alive for the casters in my group. if it hurts each mages parse by 2k when i die, my extra 2k dps for going in and meleeing really isnt worth the 6k+ raid dps loss.

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Serrith

Well regardless I would probably never focus on just doing entirely ranged dps. I've called timers/given strats before as well and it's tough but not impossible. If everytime a scout peels you die either a) if its the same scout tell him to chill out, b) get a better tank that holds aggro or c) keep getting the gear you would normally get and without focusing on ranged.

The gear available to you will still allow you to range dps competently and once your gear gets better as a whole you wont have to worry about getting one shotted by frontals. Every encounter is made easier by doing as much dps as possible, going ranged is more of a defensive approach when you are learning the encounter. Once you guys get more comfortable with the mob then you can start jousting more.

All in all though, dont just go for only ranged damage shit it wont make that much difference in the end.

Davngr

ask random healers to make macros to ward you when they get the chance. keeping the bard alive is important they should be willing to help with that.

Oyce

That was good for a laugh this morning Davngr, now if I could only get that point across to our healers....

O