Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Anything relating to the magical arts (pets, spells, AAs).
User avatar
Tweelis
Arch Magus
Posts: 772
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 12:30 am

Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by Tweelis »

I've been trying to piece together what not having theft of essence means for us as far as a solo xp grind is concerned. Since ToE doesn't work I've been pretty lax on keeping my pet buffed since I pretty much have to use a merc in current zones. What I'm going to try and figure out is would xp gains be better in older zones (say The Well) completely solo if ToE did work properly or is it a wash (or even better) to use a merc in newer zones and not worry about keeping a pet buffed.

In Shards Landing my fire pet with merc cleric buffs took between 2500dps and 3000dps in tanking. A couple nights ago it took closer to 3.5k-4k dps in Xorbb, also with only merc cleric buffs.

Sometime in the next week or so I'll try and do some rough parsing in the well or house of thule upper and see what kind of tanking damage the various pets take with only cleric buffs but also with full mage buffs.

Eventually I'll see if I can put together some kind of chart so the dev's can see how not having theft of essence working properly is either hurting or helping our ability to solo effectively. I do know I could solo in Zeka if I kept my pet buffed and my AA gain was a bit higher than it is now.

If anybody else has some input please add your data or thoughts on this subject. If nothing else maybe we can get the entire line scrapped. It's just a pipe dream but who knows, there may even be an AA refund if the dev's refuse to fix what they know is broken.
User avatar
tatanka7th
Newbie
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:14 pm

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by tatanka7th »

Doesn't work? When did that start? I did a bunch of no-merc soloing around the beginning of the year, in FM and Katta, and it was working fine. When did it break? Or is it just higher levels? I was ~80 at the time.

Tat
User avatar
Voragath
Grand Summoner
Posts: 1165
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 9:32 pm

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by Voragath »

tatanka7th wrote:Doesn't work? When did that start? I did a bunch of no-merc soloing around the beginning of the year, in FM and Katta, and it was working fine. When did it break? Or is it just higher levels? I was ~80 at the time.

Tat
It didn't stop working. It just doesn't work on spells from HoT or above.

http://www.eqmagetower.com/forums/viewt ... 651#p22651
Image
User avatar
Voragath
Grand Summoner
Posts: 1165
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 9:32 pm

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by Voragath »

Tweelis wrote: If anybody else has some input please add your data or thoughts on this subject. If nothing else maybe we can get the entire line scrapped. It's just a pipe dream but who knows, there may even be an AA refund if the dev's refuse to fix what they know is broken.
It is not "broken" and thus will not be refunded. What you mean to say is that it has "not been updated."

Two things can be at play because they know it is not working on spells from HoT and above: it is way down on the list to fix or they do not want to upgrade it (could be a little of both).

The line has pretty much been scrapped because they haven't updated it. I have a plan for getting this fixed if they are willing to fix it.

Also, where is Chaotic Assistance in your post? Chaotic Assistance is one that didn't get upgraded along with many other spells and I'm hoping is released with all those other spells that didn't get upgraded and are waiting on the TBD "soon to come announcement from SoE" lol
Image
User avatar
Tweelis
Arch Magus
Posts: 772
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 12:30 am

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by Tweelis »

Sorry, I was in a hurry to get out the door and didn't include CA in my origional post.

Part of what I'm looking for is a viable way to solo aaxp at a reasonable rate without having to deal with a merc. Currently at level 100 I see The Well as the best route to go regarding that. However it's fairly inefficient due to theft of essence not firing with the newer anti-summoned nukes. Chaotic assistance helps with the healing but a substantial amount of time and mana is being used for pet maintanence. I'm trying to figure out how much less pet maintanence would be needed if TOE fired as it's supposed to.

Myself and others have spent the AA's to get theft of essence maxed out. We have also spent considerable AA's getting our healing topped off. Although chaotic restitution only heals for 4k-5k that plus TOE in addition to the heal AA's would go a long way to how well we solo. I'm not asking for SK level swarming but getting 6 AA's per lesson burn in RoF is getting really old.
User avatar
tatanka7th
Newbie
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:14 pm

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by tatanka7th »

Is 6 AA/Lesson unreasonable if you don't get the low AA bonus any more? When I was getting 20 AA/Lesson in FM, I had about 1700 AA, so was getting about a 500% AAXP bonus. Which means, if I had had a lot of AAs, and no bonus, that would have been about 3-4 AAs.

So how many AAs/Lesson do people who have > 4000 AAs get?

Tat
User avatar
dorfillya
Conjurer
Posts: 214
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2009 1:17 pm

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by dorfillya »

I can go almost anywhere in T1 RoF and get at least 15 AAs with a merc cleric during a lesson burn. I currently have over 8K AAs. Never really tried without a healer. The loot you get more than pays for the merc. Merc costs 200 plat for 30 minutes, I think. I nearly always get 4-5 various types of diamonds, plus other assorted drops, generally giving well over 1K plat.

Mages are DPS, not healers. If we have to spend 50% of our time healing the pet ourselves, it really cuts into our DPS and, therefore, our total AA production. While it is interesting to speculate what the loss of ToE may have cost magicians, in actual practice, I find it rather foolish to try to burn lessons purely solo. Using a merc for lessons will increase your total AA gain as well as plat gain. If that is not the case for you, then you need to find somewhere else to grind AAs, or rethink your playstyle.
User avatar
Voragath
Grand Summoner
Posts: 1165
Joined: Thu May 14, 2009 9:32 pm

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by Voragath »

Tweelis wrote: Chaotic assistance helps with the healing but a substantial amount of time and mana is being used for pet maintanence. I'm trying to figure out how much less pet maintanence would be needed if TOE fired as it's supposed to.

Although chaotic restitution only heals for 4k-5k that plus TOE in addition to the heal AA's would go a long way to how well we solo. I'm not asking for SK level swarming but getting 6 AA's per lesson burn in RoF is getting really old.
Chaotic Assistance only casts on spells 95 or lower. It's a waste to try and use at level 100 really.

As others have said, best to use a healer merc. They are 400pp an hour, and you can make that up in 30m of play if you loot everything. Should be able to get far more than 6aa's per lesson burn if using a merc and they aren't healing that often. In SL I can crank out 15aa's just casually killing mobs (i.e. not pushing hard to max my kills).
Image
User avatar
Tweelis
Arch Magus
Posts: 772
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 12:30 am

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by Tweelis »

Ok, sounds like I'm doing something wrong then. Care to share a few pointers so I can increase my AA per lesson burn?

A couple nights ago I was doing wormtooth's in SL with my merc. My merc would be on balanced if I pulled one, switch it to reactive if two came along. I pull with malo AA, send my pet (EM12 fire pet with cleric/ranger/shaman buffs) and cast gargoyle. Once my pet engaged I'd cast rain => bolt => fickle => bolt => rain.

All of my activatable AA's would be clicked as soon as they'd be ready so FBO and VT for my pet, companions blessing if I pulled 3. For myself first spire, fire core, improved twincast, enlightened focus and elemental union were down more than they were up.

A wormtooth has around 1.2 million HP (less for grendlaen more for matrons) and would take me around a minute from malo to kill shot. Granted this varied if clickable aa's were going or not but this was my average for the night. I always burn hard and be OOM around the 13-14 minute mark and would need to OOC regen back to full. Each kill with a merc would net me about 20% of an AA so five kills per AA.

I am missing some AA's but had all the dps aa's (both pet and personal) maxed through VoA, can the RoF AA's really make that much of a difference? Am I doing something wrong? If more information is needed to tell me what to change please let me know. I haven't seen 15 aa's per lesson burn in Splitpaw.....I'd be very happy getting 10 AA's per lesson burn.

When I'm grouped with my fellowship my AA's do come a lot faster (15 per lesson burn is average) but then again our fellowship is a group of one merc healer and five very high dps toons. However we're on opposite coasts so unfortunately I do tend to solo a fair amount.

Thanks for any constructive input.
User avatar
Thanasis
Newbie
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2013 10:51 am

Re: Theft of Essence and Chaotic Assistance

Post by Thanasis »

I usually run lesson in CoB: Make sure to only kill dark blue animals without a merc to get best exp (plants/blue braxi/rats mostly dark blue). Easy because outdoors and they hardly assist (they can though so watch for that).

To max my lesson I make sure to click full burn (FC/imp twin/spire) and buffed pet in GH before logging off the night before. So when I want to do lesson i can actually use three burn cycles. In CoB air pet is a good choice because with fort/stun/Aegis/promised/RS pet it's really easy to keep it alive. Make sure to use rains and keep clicking modrods/harvest (and merc to heal modrods).

This usually yields 20+ AA and is quick because it requires no running with the port staff to CoB.

Good luck, hope this helps a bit.

Also if you got a lower pet focus it might be better to grab a merc, though i would advise to kill white/yellow more then, better for exp. (like the beast of domain mobs during VoA).

Have fun!
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests