Arcane Distillect

[Voragath]

Someone pointed out to me that AD doesn't stack with Burnout. Apparently, the pet will get the benefit of the damage increase from the highest buff. At rank 3, Burnout increases damage:

Burnout VIII Rk. III
2: Increase All Skills Damage Modifier by 14%
3: Increase STR by 159
4: Increase Attack Speed by 85%
5: Increase ATK by 103
6: Increase AC by 47

Where AD increases damage by 15%. In case you are wondering, rk. 1 is 12% and rk. 2 is 13%. This means that you see a total improvement of 1-2% in pet damage. I ran a quick 5 min parse and the numbers lined up smurf near perfect. Anyone else have a parse or can grab one to prove one way or the other? That means if it fades, it's kinda lame to even bother with recasting until you are ooc. Even still, you can kinda get away without having it at all as 1% won't really be noticed.

As lucy has it now, BO IX has the same dmg mod but if it it gets bumped up then AD won't really be worth casting. It's marginally worth it now especially with having to be close to the pet. A whopping 10 dps for a 1000 dps pet isn't anything. Not even a drop in the bucket for a mob. In 10 mins, it'll add something like 6000 damage. On mobs with hp's in the billions, that's not even a tickle.

Edit: I should point out that I'm not talking about the raid burn situation where you'd have a dozen pets out or chaining RS pets since that's the only buff they get.

[Voragath]

I guess I should also ask here, are the groupers able to reliably chain the RS pets while chain pulling? I'm talking strictly group geared groupers here. Not those of us who are Tower geared+ that group a lot also.

[Mintalee]

I guess I should also ask here, are the groupers able to reliably chain the RS pets while chain pulling? I'm talking strictly group geared groupers here. Not those of us who are Tower geared+ that group a lot also.

I don't believe anyone can reliably chain RS pets in any scenario, even on a mount, even with 45k+ mana and maxed AAs. It's just too mana intensive.

[svenalo]

I guess I should also ask here, are the groupers able to reliably chain the RS pets while chain pulling? I'm talking strictly group geared groupers here. Not those of us who are Tower geared+ that group a lot also.

I don't believe anyone can reliably chain RS pets in any scenario, even on a mount, even with 45k+ mana and maxed AAs. It's just too mana intensive.

Sure you can. It just depends on how long the fighting goes, what else you are casting if anything, what buffs you got going to help the mana, and what the group make up is and DPS is. Eventually you are going to run out of mana, but that is true no matter what spells you are casting. It's a question of how long you can continue doing it...and whether you run out of mana before others in a group call a break for endurance, mana, or because they got to bio.

Put another way, if the group DPS is high enough that you are tossing a garg and a bolt or fickle for maybe 5k mana used per mob, and there is a bard playing mana music, and a chanter popping off spires as they refresh, and so on, you can probably go for quite a while. Perfect conditions maybe, but it is possible.

The real question is how often do most folks find themselves in those conditions. I would guess not very often.

[Mintalee]

Again, I reiterate. No one can chain RS pets in any scenario... the operative word here being "chain." Can I cast them a lot in a perfect set-up? Sure, but I can't chain them and I defy you to find me someone who claims that they can.

[Zatpus]

Grouper here. I sent 2 RS-pet to any mob and some nukes. Try to med any tic possible. On nameds I will even throw the third RS if it looks like the mob will still last a while. When mana is low I skip 1-2 mobs and go ahead. Allover I think I contribute more that way.

Grouping nowadays is not often really chaining (if not something like the fungual forest progression mission, where you need to clear a whole area). Most tend to pick the ph's only, in which case it may happen that you get some ooc-tics as well between 2 mobs.

[svenalo]

Again, I reiterate. No one can chain RS pets in any scenario... the operative word here being "chain." Can I cast them a lot in a perfect set-up? Sure, but I can't chain them and I defy you to find me someone who claims that they can.

No, the operative word is not chain. All that means is cast the spell immediately as it refreshes. The question is how long can you continue to do so. Let's assume you are a mage with next to no AA's spent - no mana ones gotten, no extended/hastensed swarm, etc. And let's assume all you do is cast gargs. The best garg you probably have is the RK2 level 85 one, so thats 3k mana. If you have 30k mana, are alone, standing, you can chain gargs on something for 3 minutes straight. Short, yes, but it is a chain.

But most people have mana regen of some kind on gear, some aa's spent, specializations going off, probably are going to be sitting on a horse if they can while in the group or sitting between casts, got mana buffs, maybe have a bard in the group or a chanter refreshing mana, that will go longer. I am not going to play Wired and whip out a spreadsheet or calculator to nail down how long exactly, but I can see where it will be 50% longer. So now we are up to 4.5 minutes to 5 minutes. Still short, but it's a longer duration chain.

But then the 2nd part and the other facts of his question kick in - non-tower gear raiding group, chain pulling. So the entire group is on those constraints of gear, etc, etc. With chain pulling mobs. On tanks that can't probably mitigate well and so on, so are taking damage higher than normal. And the healer could conceivably be a merc, and again because of the constraints not a top end one. So the limiting factor now is not just when you might run out of mana, but whether the healer will, or the endurance will go on the tanks, and so on.

So is or theoretical 5 minutes long enough before disaster fells this group and they wipe or stop cause the puller died or something? Or someone else needs to med? Who knows...but if the constraints are the group level folks as originally specified, I can say they take a beating on most UF content, and some of em I know take a beating in OBF, Dranik, and Korafax if they even have been able to get in there. I can see where its conceivable that it might be long enough to be able to do it for 5 minutes. I can also say it would be quite boring to just hit a key once every 18 seconds.

Now, if you want to phrase your statement to be "chain gargs indefinitely" or even to "chain gargs for the length of Lesson", then I will agree that that isn't going to happen unless the randomizer is so bad that you get GORM's 25 to 3-0 percent of the time. Of course that assumes you spent on those aa's...

[Voragath]

Well the question of chain pulling is a question of how much a difference this makes. I'm guessing a group geared toon in a low to mid-dps group can burn a mob in about 30s in convorteum. That's about 2-3 RS pets for them, right? Chain pulling is important because that's the situation a grouper would be maximizing dps outside of named. Of course a named is gonna typically see max dps burns but it's only for about 1 to 1.5 mins for these groupers. But no one chain pulls nameds or only pulls nameds. I'm thinking of a group killing for xp or trying to maximize their chance at spawning a named.

Chaining an RS pet means every time that spell gem frees up. Most raid mages do this on burns and some can pull this off for about 10 minutes under certain conditions and it's easy to do at 5-6 mins (I do this and I'm evo spec'd so I'm wasting mana). A grouper may not have as many mana proc augs as me due to the type 8 slot restriction.

The concern here is can the increased dps from the RS stack up enough per mob to make AD really worth maintaining. I guess, what is needed is a parse of what the RS pet can do dps-wise with the top group focus. Then see what it does with AD. It would be best to do without the BP duration but using the aa duration should be fine.

Assume that RS pet does 1k dps (totally made up) then that pet would do 30k dmg in 30s but with AD it does 34.5k dmg in 30s. At 4.5k extra damage, that's a free nuke. Does this stack up to increase their killing spree? Does it kill the mob significantly faster?

My concern is that this spell may disproportionately favor the raider because the sole intent of this spell seems to be for the swarm pets, primarily the RS. Is it even worth having up in a group? My tower geared mid dps group can burn a mob in 20-30s easy when not pushing hard. AD in that situation really isn't going to help much because I parsed my RS with AD at 2k dps. That means he does 1.7 dps without it. I can almost make full use of two RS pets in that time. At 2k dps two full RS pets yield 9k more dmg to the mob. Not really worth worrying about if AD fails because, for me, that's ONE more nuke and a mob dying 3-5s faster isn't gonna do much. Extrapolate that to a 5-7 min burn and that stacks up but then I'll also be using Host during then for an even greater gain. A grouper can't make use of the full duration of host except, maybe on a named. So I was looking for what groupers think about AD, hence the restriction on pure group gear (epics are allowed).

[Zatpus]

AD itself does not cost much and is always worth it. I presume any grouper has it up anytime. It helps all swarms and all non-mages grouppets. Actually I am adventuring in T8. With only groupgeared toons a basepop (about 500k HP) last's about 40 to 50 seconds.

Having a full group of groupgeared toons dealing over 10k dps back to back on basepopp pulls is not always the case.

When I want to strech my mana, I will rather nuke less. I will almost never cast RS whenever up. When mobs last 40 seconds, they get 2 RS. Casting another RS 10 seconds befor mob is dead is mana thrown away. The only time I don't care about mana and chain RS until mob is dead, is when a Named showes up. There, if tank drops one RS more can make the difference if I survive or not.

The only problem of the Aura is the range. For a grouper the AEs some nameds throwing around can be serious. So In those cases I try to hide behind geometries. This leads sometimes to the fact, that when you need it the most to burn a named, the Aura is not available at the fightspot. The Rathes-Strenght-Aura around the pet was much better in that.

[Merlaina]

AD is always worth having up. As Zatpus noted it helps any group pets, not just the mages, plus many classes have swarm pets that are increased by it. Then there's the case where if you have a bard with Aura of the Poet up then all pets are getting 25% haste. 1.25 * 1.15 = 1.4375, or a 43.75% increase in damage from swarm pets. Using your 30K estimate that becomes over 43K damage.

As far as chaining RS pets in a group scenario, I think there are too many variables to take into account to make a blanket statement about this. How fast is the group pulling? How fast are mobs dying? You asked for input mainly from grouping mages, but I'm putting in my 2 cp because I would think the basic group strategies would be the same. The only differences would be mana pools and focii.

Typically I send in an RS right off the top and that's it. After recast time any subsequent RS pets would only last about half the life of the mob, and since you can't redirect RS pets without getting hit (always a dangerous prospect with our paper tank and how hard mobs hit) it's not worth it to have a second one up. Plus it's just too mana intensive to send in two every fight. In a group you're trying to balance damage with efficiency, and for me (mix of group and raid geared) that's usually limited to 1 pet per fight.