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Enchanter / Re: Enchanter DPS & ADPS
« on: September 02, 2018, 10:48:52 PM »
I don't raid here, but I like that the Freelance forums are a repository for EQ-related information. I'm not the guild leader for VH btw, just one of the raid leads 
As a side note, and to reinforce what Drogbaa's OP states, the order and speed of your burns are pretty crucial to your group's ADPS. We recently had an Enchanter applicant who was struggling to correctly order and fire their burns. In a side-by-side comparison, this error resulted in double-digit millions of damage lost per group member in his group. We're talking a timing difference of less than 20 seconds adding up to 50m+ damage lost in an encounter. It's that important.
This is a more current (as of Aug 2018, RoS) Enchanter guide. I would probably not use my old guide; it hasn't been updated for RoS and a lot has changed. Wrote it for the EQ forums and copy/pasta'd it here:
These are the things I look for when evaluating Enchanter raid performance. Note that this is purely from a utility perspective and is what I'd consider the "bare minimum" to look for. This is 100% caster focused. If your Enchanters are going into melee/hybrid/tank groups, recruit more casters or fire an Enchanter (pew pew).
This ended up being a lot longer than I'd intended, but it's pretty comprehensive so... enjoy. I also take back what I said in the above paragraph; if your Enchanters are nailing everything in this post, they're doing extremely well.
Auras - Twincast, Mana Reciprocation, and Bolstering Aura. In events where the group is burning "off the top," both Mana Reciprocation and Bolstering Aura should be up and running at least 3 ticks before the event starts. Activating them later than that will result in no benefit because they take time to actually pulse.
Once the Enchanter's own ITC (Improved Twincast) has faded, immediately drop Bolstering Aura and activate Twincast. I generally keep all three of these auras on my spell bar at the start of the event so I don't have to bother with hotswapping.
The other auras are largely useless. Arcane Disjunction can sometimes have some *very* niche uses, but 99.9% of the time is wrong.
Activated ADPS - This will vary from guild to guild and event to event. Generally speaking, Illusions of Grandeur + Chromatic Haze should fire immediately after the group's Druid has used GBW. If Auspice is also running, hold Third Spire until IoG fades (if getting multiple back-to-back Auspices). If you want to get really technical, if you also have a Bard, hold Third Spire until after either A) Fierce Eye has faded or B) Auspice fades. Some groups may want Third Spire along with IoG if there is no Auspice running. Communicate with your group. Take the lead if nobody knows wtf you are talking about.
Dicho should always be fired prior to starting burns. So if you're burning off the top, fire this a second or two before the event starts. If you're burning in the middle of an event, be on top of your timing.
Your actual activated burn order should look like this: Dicho -> ITC +IoG -> Robe Click (rotate casts if other Enchanters are using theirs) -> Chromatic Haze -> Mindslash
We do it like this so that we squeeze a little extra personal DPS out of our big primary "**** you!" burn, and so that the group's Druid can successfully set up two enormous DoT ticks for their Nature's Blistering Wrath DoT.
Calculated Insanity gives you 100% crit rate regardless of additional modifiers, so try to use it when nothing else is running.
I generally encourage Enchanters to take control of their group's ADPS coordination if no one else does. Understanding how your group burns and why they want things at certain times is a huge part of being a good Enchanter.
Passive ADPS - Always. Cast. Offensive. Spells. Your group members gain huge benefits from both Gracious Gift of Mana, Gift of Hazy Thoughts, and Beguiler's Synergy. If you aren't always channeling an offensive spell, you are actively losing your group DPS (and your own).
Caster order 1:
(Dicho on Cooldown) -> Mindslash -> Mindsunder -> Strangulate
Caster order 2:
(Dicho on Cooldown) -> Mindslash -> Strangulate -> Strangulate
CO1 is for fulminating Alliance, low mana pools, or during Calculated Insanity (strangulate does not gain CI benefit).
CO2 is for everything else. It is mana intensive, does not fulminate alliance, and will not use all 27 CI charges.
This is largely preference. I swap between the two on the fly.
Cast Dicho on cooldown. This spell should never have a fully refreshed gem.
Demand that people pay you in Krono to receive Night's Endless Terror casts. Only accept payment up front. No pay, no play.
Debuffs - Assign one Enchanter to keep Deluding Constriction on whatever the big bad boss you're fighting is. Work a Mental Contortion rotation if you have 3 Enchanters for 100% uptime. Assign one Enchanter (usually the newest one) to cast Demolished Consciousness (this is a level 97 spell) on the big bad boss in order to proc Somnolence. The spell itself doesn't matter, just the Somnolence proc.
Assign someone to cast spell Tash on bosses, or if your guild is very slow at killing adds. For most guilds, Bite of Tashani (AE AA Tash) will work on adds.
Only Tash is 100% necessary, but it's good practice to know how to execute on all of these debuffs. This is especially relevant for guilds who struggle with content, or during the initial expansion race when everyone is wearing last expansion's gear.
Buffs - Clarity + Haste on everyone. Might as well have one person hit Glyph Spray before an event. The rest is situational and varies by guild/event. Pick the most ambitious Enchanter to spell/dot shield the raid.
Hit Reactive Rune if your group is getting pummeled by AEs or DoTs. If things get really bad, keep up a spell/dot rune on the group, because only Necros can DPS when they are dead. Be aware that your entire group will lose DPS if you have to do this.
Also note that there is no current content raid encounter that requires you to maintain a spell/dot shield on your group if your group has a body temperature of 98 degrees. If you're consistently having to do this to survive, have a talk with you group about not dying so much.
Give your best Beastlord Horrifying Visage. Do not tell them you did this.
Rebuffs - I'm... not really a stickler about this. The responsible way to do this is to have one Enchanter assigned to haste recasts, and one Enchanter assigned to clarity recasts. Refresh Clarity on your group or clerics if they die, it's not much but w/e. Make a judgement call on re-hasting melees. They're 100% **** after a death, you putting haste on them will make them 95% ****. Weigh time to completion vs time lost casting haste.
Crowd Control - Know how a stun rotation works (not going into detail here, it's not hard to figure out). Practice crowd control in nasty situations. I like sending applicants into tough zones and tell them to work from point a to point b without invis. Howling Stones is great for this. Don't ever punt something unless you are 100% certain you know what you're doing.
Use your head, CC is the easiest thing we do.
Gina Triggers - Gina is really helpful for Enchanters. I think a lot of classes can get away with not using it, and in a lot of cases Enchanters can, too, but I use it on every raid.
I have a mostly updated GINA pack publicly available here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/file3.guildlaunch.net/518180/enchanter_trigs_4-3-2017.gtp
It's 34 Enchanter-specific triggers. This is not a "plug and play" package. It requires some setup because it makes heavy use of timers. This is the (old) example image I use to show where everything goes:
It's very rare that you'd ever have all of those running at once, but that's where everything goes. CC related breaks top-center. ADPS timers right-center. Debuff timers lower-right-center. DoT fades left-center. GoM/Haze Center. NET timer upper-right-center. Stun timers (for stun rotation coordination) bottom-center.
You can set yours up however you'd like, that's just how I do mine and what I feel is relevant to track during a raid.
As a side note, and to reinforce what Drogbaa's OP states, the order and speed of your burns are pretty crucial to your group's ADPS. We recently had an Enchanter applicant who was struggling to correctly order and fire their burns. In a side-by-side comparison, this error resulted in double-digit millions of damage lost per group member in his group. We're talking a timing difference of less than 20 seconds adding up to 50m+ damage lost in an encounter. It's that important.
This is a more current (as of Aug 2018, RoS) Enchanter guide. I would probably not use my old guide; it hasn't been updated for RoS and a lot has changed. Wrote it for the EQ forums and copy/pasta'd it here:
These are the things I look for when evaluating Enchanter raid performance. Note that this is purely from a utility perspective and is what I'd consider the "bare minimum" to look for. This is 100% caster focused. If your Enchanters are going into melee/hybrid/tank groups, recruit more casters or fire an Enchanter (pew pew).
This ended up being a lot longer than I'd intended, but it's pretty comprehensive so... enjoy. I also take back what I said in the above paragraph; if your Enchanters are nailing everything in this post, they're doing extremely well.
Auras - Twincast, Mana Reciprocation, and Bolstering Aura. In events where the group is burning "off the top," both Mana Reciprocation and Bolstering Aura should be up and running at least 3 ticks before the event starts. Activating them later than that will result in no benefit because they take time to actually pulse.
Once the Enchanter's own ITC (Improved Twincast) has faded, immediately drop Bolstering Aura and activate Twincast. I generally keep all three of these auras on my spell bar at the start of the event so I don't have to bother with hotswapping.
The other auras are largely useless. Arcane Disjunction can sometimes have some *very* niche uses, but 99.9% of the time is wrong.
Activated ADPS - This will vary from guild to guild and event to event. Generally speaking, Illusions of Grandeur + Chromatic Haze should fire immediately after the group's Druid has used GBW. If Auspice is also running, hold Third Spire until IoG fades (if getting multiple back-to-back Auspices). If you want to get really technical, if you also have a Bard, hold Third Spire until after either A) Fierce Eye has faded or B) Auspice fades. Some groups may want Third Spire along with IoG if there is no Auspice running. Communicate with your group. Take the lead if nobody knows wtf you are talking about.
Dicho should always be fired prior to starting burns. So if you're burning off the top, fire this a second or two before the event starts. If you're burning in the middle of an event, be on top of your timing.
Your actual activated burn order should look like this: Dicho -> ITC +IoG -> Robe Click (rotate casts if other Enchanters are using theirs) -> Chromatic Haze -> Mindslash
We do it like this so that we squeeze a little extra personal DPS out of our big primary "**** you!" burn, and so that the group's Druid can successfully set up two enormous DoT ticks for their Nature's Blistering Wrath DoT.
Calculated Insanity gives you 100% crit rate regardless of additional modifiers, so try to use it when nothing else is running.
I generally encourage Enchanters to take control of their group's ADPS coordination if no one else does. Understanding how your group burns and why they want things at certain times is a huge part of being a good Enchanter.
Passive ADPS - Always. Cast. Offensive. Spells. Your group members gain huge benefits from both Gracious Gift of Mana, Gift of Hazy Thoughts, and Beguiler's Synergy. If you aren't always channeling an offensive spell, you are actively losing your group DPS (and your own).
Caster order 1:
(Dicho on Cooldown) -> Mindslash -> Mindsunder -> Strangulate
Caster order 2:
(Dicho on Cooldown) -> Mindslash -> Strangulate -> Strangulate
CO1 is for fulminating Alliance, low mana pools, or during Calculated Insanity (strangulate does not gain CI benefit).
CO2 is for everything else. It is mana intensive, does not fulminate alliance, and will not use all 27 CI charges.
This is largely preference. I swap between the two on the fly.
Cast Dicho on cooldown. This spell should never have a fully refreshed gem.
Demand that people pay you in Krono to receive Night's Endless Terror casts. Only accept payment up front. No pay, no play.
Debuffs - Assign one Enchanter to keep Deluding Constriction on whatever the big bad boss you're fighting is. Work a Mental Contortion rotation if you have 3 Enchanters for 100% uptime. Assign one Enchanter (usually the newest one) to cast Demolished Consciousness (this is a level 97 spell) on the big bad boss in order to proc Somnolence. The spell itself doesn't matter, just the Somnolence proc.
Assign someone to cast spell Tash on bosses, or if your guild is very slow at killing adds. For most guilds, Bite of Tashani (AE AA Tash) will work on adds.
Only Tash is 100% necessary, but it's good practice to know how to execute on all of these debuffs. This is especially relevant for guilds who struggle with content, or during the initial expansion race when everyone is wearing last expansion's gear.
Buffs - Clarity + Haste on everyone. Might as well have one person hit Glyph Spray before an event. The rest is situational and varies by guild/event. Pick the most ambitious Enchanter to spell/dot shield the raid.
Hit Reactive Rune if your group is getting pummeled by AEs or DoTs. If things get really bad, keep up a spell/dot rune on the group, because only Necros can DPS when they are dead. Be aware that your entire group will lose DPS if you have to do this.
Also note that there is no current content raid encounter that requires you to maintain a spell/dot shield on your group if your group has a body temperature of 98 degrees. If you're consistently having to do this to survive, have a talk with you group about not dying so much.
Give your best Beastlord Horrifying Visage. Do not tell them you did this.
Rebuffs - I'm... not really a stickler about this. The responsible way to do this is to have one Enchanter assigned to haste recasts, and one Enchanter assigned to clarity recasts. Refresh Clarity on your group or clerics if they die, it's not much but w/e. Make a judgement call on re-hasting melees. They're 100% **** after a death, you putting haste on them will make them 95% ****. Weigh time to completion vs time lost casting haste.
Crowd Control - Know how a stun rotation works (not going into detail here, it's not hard to figure out). Practice crowd control in nasty situations. I like sending applicants into tough zones and tell them to work from point a to point b without invis. Howling Stones is great for this. Don't ever punt something unless you are 100% certain you know what you're doing.
Use your head, CC is the easiest thing we do.
Gina Triggers - Gina is really helpful for Enchanters. I think a lot of classes can get away with not using it, and in a lot of cases Enchanters can, too, but I use it on every raid.
I have a mostly updated GINA pack publicly available here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/file3.guildlaunch.net/518180/enchanter_trigs_4-3-2017.gtp
It's 34 Enchanter-specific triggers. This is not a "plug and play" package. It requires some setup because it makes heavy use of timers. This is the (old) example image I use to show where everything goes:
It's very rare that you'd ever have all of those running at once, but that's where everything goes. CC related breaks top-center. ADPS timers right-center. Debuff timers lower-right-center. DoT fades left-center. GoM/Haze Center. NET timer upper-right-center. Stun timers (for stun rotation coordination) bottom-center.
You can set yours up however you'd like, that's just how I do mine and what I feel is relevant to track during a raid.