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Best set for dps cw
elsumonner
Member Posts: 31 Arc User
My cw is spec'ed for pure pve and his main job would be to top the paingiver chart. I see many people that use High VIzier as their set but i dont think it is he best for damage output because it have a lot of deflect(which i consider useless) and too much recovery. If you would chose another t2 set which would be?Or High Vizier is the best choice?
Post edited by elsumonner on
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Forgive my grumpiness today, but what a very silly job to have. No one's job should be to 'top the chart' in anything. Smooth and efficient runs are the goal of the whole team not just who can make the biggest numbers appear on screen. Paingiver doesn't even measure DPS just damage output.
Party composition will always play a factor into what is the best CW set to wear. The debuff from HV is excellent and boosts everyones damage, if you wont be bringing it to the party will someone else be? Have 1 or 2 HV CWs in party already - then Shadow Weaver can contribute to your parties damage output. Otherwise, split 2/2 with the sets you like the 2 part stat bonus which benefit your build the most.
DC overhealing is wasted, yes.
Anyway, the second paragraph of my response addressed your question. The first was surprisingly helpful considering my grumpiness today.
The two highest damaging Sets of Armor I have found are the High Vizier and the Champion Mage
High Vizier has a huge defense reduction on your opponents. Making each spell do a lot more damage. Champion reduces the recast time of your Spell Mastery Slot and adds 5% damage to it, so with something like Sudden Storm it comes up so fast it feels like you're just repeatedly casting over and over with no down time.
One set removes opponent defense, the other allows you to cast a lot faster. I've used both and they achieve the same goals. That's been my personal experience.
I would love to use some other set, since the debuff HV provides is only activated by using control spells, which you almost don't use it on bosses, and the adds that get the debuff die fast regardless of having the debuff or not. I also get worthless stats by using HV, such as deflection (?) and recovery, which I already passed the biggest DRs.
With Champion Mage I could have a better uptime of RoE in bosses where putting it on tab is a good improvement. As Thauma I can have the CoI mitigation debuff with a better uptime too with Champion Mage, in certain fights.
SW would be a good set if it wasn't buggy... at least I think it is. Sometimes it doesn't proc the buffs it should. Magelord 4p bonus is meh, 900 recovery while you already reached the best cap is ridiculous.
In CN where you use Icy Terrain HV may be, indeed, kinda good, but generally... it's good on theory, not on practice. Also for PvP you can be an insane glass cannon with it.
And if you think 450 bonus stats would help you... you can always get 2 2p bonus.
Well Admittedly if you only use CoI in spell mastery it probably won't help you as much, Champion armor was designed for shorter timer offensive powers like Sudden Storm or Chill Strike.
I play a hybrid which utilizes Renegade and Thaum feats. Hence I do not have to put CoI on the spell mastery slot, I can put anything there I want to.
So I can put either Sudden Storm or Chill Strike there, and the timer becomes so short, they come up nearly as fast as you can use your other powers in the other slots like Steal Time and Shards of Endless Avalanche. In fact I've used Champion with Shield in the 3rd slot and its like having 4 offensive slots worth of powers rather than 3 it comes up so fast.
So its surprisingly versatile armor and my damage output in very large crowds takes enormous spikes when doing this, because you just don't stop casting or damaging. I rarely get to use Magic Missiles at all when in this armor.
I would agree if you're attempting to utilize CoI or a long recast power on the Spell Mastery slot you won't get that effect. But with a short timer encounter power in Champion you're just repeatedly using offensive attacks over and over without any delay in them.
Yes it really does do that. But only stacks 3 times. So only one wizard in the party is going to get the full benefits as only 3 stacks can be applied to any given mob. Shards will stack 2 of them, and Steal Time will outright stack 3. So generally only one mage in the party will get the benefits.
But yes... It removes that much defense from the target and adds it to your own. Removing it from the target increases the damage each spell does, while giving you added defense.
If you're going to use HV I do suggest using the entire set. Because that's the real benefit of wearing HV is the actual set bonus not necessarily the stats on it.
I also am of the opinion this armor would be better in PvP, due to the environment where everyone stacks defense until its coming out of their ears. Hence a set bonus of this caliber would shine In a place where outright defense reduction would be the key to success.
That said in PvE I actually end up using Champion armor more than I use my HV set. But then again I do not run a Thaum build.
CoI on tab is used by some Thauma CWs (such as me) to get the last feat of Thauma (important to others in the party) and get Chill on all enemies around (to increase damage) in AoE fights.
Which is precisely how and why I use it, and I'm wearing the Champion set.
Hmm normal mobs have only 14% mitigation and since most of people have arP above 1600, the last feat is useless... and if you play with very maxed players for pve like I do you will see that most of them reach at least 22% arP since bosses have 24% mitigation. In the end the last feat is not so good, but since it costs only 1 point, it's worth getting, =P can help sometimes.
Yes, this is worth noting.
The benefit of HV is defense gain. The benefit of Champion Mage is Health and Armor Penetration.
The actual damage I do putting on one suit vs the other is actually higher in Champion due to the shorter recast time and bonus 5% damage. This is the one I can use if I really wanted Paingiver.
But the HV will apply that defense for the entire party's damage so usually its tougher decision as to which one I want to use. If there's another mage in the party its always going to be Champion Mage, but I do swap for HV on occasion if the party is in need of armor reduction assistance. I am using a Bronzewood Enchant so I usually have that covered, but HV is nice for that use too.
At the end (no wipe \o/) I checked again and the guy at the top had actually been the 2+2 CW. He was just stacking a monumental amount of power (>6000 iirc, with 2400 ArP and < 1000 Crit). His GS was about 15.5, so there you go. The SW guy was a distant third.
This isn't really making a point about which set is best, but your playstyle and how you balance your enchants and the rest of your gear is just as important. Personally I like group debuffs, hence HV, Thaum spec and a plague fire.
a) one CW with HV cannot instantly apply all 3 debuffs to all targets, b) neither HV nor Bronzewood or Plaguefire reduce "Armor"--only Armor Penetration (=ArP) does that--they all reduce "Defence", which is something totally different from Armor and--simplified--can be directly translated to "more damage".
Also you need to consider that the one, who initiates a fight/pull will always be up to 10-20% ahead of the 2nd guy. Because by the time the 2nd guy deals out damage, some of the mobs are already dead.
Yep! Don't worry, I told him that half his damage was actually mine
Oh I'd certainly believe that about Archmage after witnessing it in Champion, unfortunately the Archmage set is T1 armor, If it were T2 I'd be all over it. Because the Champion is so good at damage in high crowds of mobs when you don't have time to wait on timers, that having all 4 powers cut by 1 second would be huge.
In fact I'd even consider wearing Archmage over Champion if it weren't T1 armor and gave better damage mitigation or health... one of the two.
Considering how high my total damage jumps in large crowds over wearing HV in the same circumstances, I could easily see Archmage doing even more... if the stats weren't so low all around comparatively. But I get beat on too much as is, so its either Champion or HV.
When I look at the actual damage difference when running dungeons in HV vs Champion, I start to realize HV ends up looking good only on paper. Because while I certainly want to be able to give HV a good shake, I end up with a ton more damage in Champion, because reality on the ground in mass swarms of mobs changed everything. I've outdamaged the combined total of entire parties in Champion. I can't say I've done the same with HV.
That said there's also a reason I moved away from HV, and it has to do with both multiple mage parties where everyone was using HV... and... as I found out last weekend many parties can't even take advantage of it.
But I'd tell you the story if you wanted to know.
Direct from Grimah's guide...
Procs Debuff with:
Chill Strike x2 (x3 on mastery on main target.... x1 on others)
Icy Terrain x1 per target.
Ice Knife: x3
Ice Storm: x2 per target
Icy rays: x1
Shard of Endless Avalanche x1 per target on roll.... x1 on explode.
Oppressive force x3 over the duration per target
Buff and Debuff (buff stacks up to 3 times)
Entangling force x1 (x1 per hit on mastery)
Steal time x3 per target (x1 buff total, x2 on mastery)
Repel x1 (x1 per target on mastery)
Shield x1 per target.
ie... It puts multiple stacks on mobs per spell depending on the spell. Steal Time (x3 per mob), Shards of Endless Avalanche (2 per mob) obviously if you're pushing it from a ways away, and not laying it right on top of the crowd like I do, it may be only 1 per mob for shards. Either way the Steal Time and Shards combination lays 3 stacks on each mob, and its limited to 3 stacks per mob. But shockingly it doesn't apparently work with CoI or Sudden Storm, so you get no debuff or buff out of using either one.
Ergo.... only one mage per party generally will end up debuffing any mobs unless you're just plinking away with Icy Rays in large crowds of mobs which we know does not happen....So multiple mage parties don't benefit much with everyone in HV.
So keep an extra set of something else when you end up in these shoes.
Thank you again, for proofing that you have no clue. Or do you actually engage only trash groups with 5 MOBs in it? If later is true: you're right. But sorry, we tend to engage trash group with more than 20 MOBs in it if possible, and because of the target limit of Steal Time and Shard of the Endless Avalanche, one CW is not able to debuff all MOBs.
You're right,
I totally have no clue obviously despite the fact I have both sets, use both sets, and have for some time and still do. I obviously bow to your obviously superior knowledge on the subject.
And guess what.
Not much difference in overall clear time. Thats why I said that, HV looks good on paper, but does not overshoot it due to the reality of the mass mob situations on the ground and how much time you have to actually cast.
What I did notice though... was that higher gear score parties (ie the 15k crowd) benefited from it much more than lower gear score parties shockingly. They can actually take advantage of it in a noticable way.
The lower gear score parties cannot. Nor do multiple mage parties.