Enchanter: aDPS Guide

As a side-read, visit the Caster aDPS Guide written by Sancus, on the Xegony server. I also suggest downloading my GINA Trigger Package to keep track of certain aDPS abilities.

aDPS AAs

• Beguiler’s Synergy (Focus)
• Illusions of Grandeur (Class)
• Chromatic Haze (Class)
• Gift of Hazy Thoughts (Class)
• Tashan’s Lingering Cry (Class)

Other Class Abilities That Impact Caster aDPS

• Druid – Group Spirit of the Great Wolf (Group Ability)
• Ranger – Auspice of the Hunter (MGB’ed on Raids)
• Bard – Spirit of the Vesagran (Epic Click for Group)
• Bard – Fierce Eye (Group Ability)
• ** Bard – Quick Time (Group Ability – won’t be discussed)

In a raid setting, an enchanter will typically be grouped up with a druid, several INT casters, and (hopefully) a bard in order to maximize caster group aDPS. If you happen to have more enchanters than caster groups, consider placing a second enchanter in a caster group. It is a huge waste of aDPS to place Enchanters in non-caster groups if there is room in caster groups!

What does Enchanter aDPS do for Casters?

1. Raises the crit chance rate of spells.
2. Increases the base damage of spells.
3. Adds crit damage modifiers (making crit damage stronger) for spells.
4. Adds damage procs (aka mana-strikes via Mana Radix Aura) to spells.
5. Increases chance to Twincast (from Twincast Aura only) for spells.

Most aDPS stems from a combination of auras, activated abilities, and sustained spell rotations.

How do You aDPS?

Auras – you are expected at all times to keep up Mana Radix Aura, which is a mana-strike aura. The second aura recommended is Twincast Aura.

Sustained aDPS via a Spell-Rotation – An optimized rotation encompassing four spells that refresh in the same order. Example: Double-Grip Rotation below:

1. Ecliptic Reinforcement
2. Mindreap
3. Throttling Grip
4. Throttling Grip

aDPS Burn – This is where you activate special abilities coordinated with other players during a “FULL BURN” call. Many top-tier raid guilds full burn as often as they can, but there may be certain situations where you need save them (briefly) for specific points during an event.

1. Forceful Rejuvenation
2. Ecliptic Reinforcement
3. Illusions of Grandeur
4. Improved Twincast
5. Calculated Insanity (AA)
6. Social Key: IoG + ITC + CI + FA (and group announcement)
7. Mindreap
8. Chromatic Haze
9. Social Key: Chromatic Haze (and group announcement)
10. Robe Clicky Item
11. Throttling Grip
12. Mind Vortex

It is important to not skip a beat on burns and general sustained aDPS. Every time you stop to pet your cat or glance at the television, your group may be losing aDPS from you. Your Illusions of Grandeur AA is single-handedly the most desired, activated ability for all casters in your group when unleashed during a full burn.

Combate Innates

Mana Rebirth – This is a single-target mana-strike buff. It works with Mana Radix Aura. Unfortunately, due to it’s recast time, it’s not worth upkeeping mid-combat. You may end up casting less damage spells. However, you can toss it on casters and hybrids (along with NPT) while waiting around buffing before an event is triggered. Note that it lasts 4 minutes and has 20 procs of use. Any twincast spells will consume two procs.

Night’s Perpetual Terror – Any caster that melees should have priority in receiving this buff. Casters are capable at achieving higher crit damage procs with this short-term buff than all other classes. Hybrids would be the next category of classes that benefit after casters. Pure melee classes receive low benefits, damage-wise. Note that pets cannot crit damage proc the lifetap – they only do base damage with it.

A majority of the time you will be keeping up these Main aDPS Auras:

Main aDPS Auras

Mana Radix Aura – your current mana-strike aura, which adds damage procs to spells that you and your casters in group cast. This aura needs to periodically be re-cast as it does expire. I usually have a GINA trigger telling me when it wears off.

Twincast Aura – gives a chance for you and your casters to twincast damage spells. This a level 84 aura that only comes from the Seeds of Destruction expansion. It’s also a permanent aura that does not need to be re-cast often except if you die and get rezzed. Get a group of friends and travel back in “time” to get rank 3 if you can. Rk. III gives 11% chance to Twincast

Situational aDPS Aura

Enhancing Aura – slightly increases the base damage of spells for a short period of time. You can only use this aura in lieu of Twincast Aura if burning at the start/trigger of an event.

• Twincast Aura doesn’t offer any benefit while all casters are using Improved Twincast.
• Enhancing Aura’s biggest downside is that it takes about 25 seconds to actually kick in.
• Another downside is that some casters will use up their ITCs sooner than others.
• If you cannot time this Aura properly, then you are better off just not using it.

Issuance of Mana Radix – is a stationary aura version of Mana Radix Aura that does NOT move with you. The only time you want to use this over Mana Radix Aura is if you are dealing with a lot of personal runaway-emotes on an event where the bulk of the group is standing in a stationary spot. One such place I can think of is the Doomshade raid event in ToL.

Before you burn, make sure mobs are tashed FIRST. Tashan’s Lingering Cry is a secondary debuff that is automatically triggered on any tashed mob. It increases spell damage the mob takes by 7 to 17%. For casters, their spells simply register as doing higher damage.

What’s a Full Burn?

A burn doesn’t just involve you – it’s a coordinated effort. You’re only a piece of the equation being an aDPS caster. When a raid leader calls for Full Burns, there are three main abilities that you usually see get tossed around on players/raids in a coordinated manner:

• Your Druid instantly hits Group Wolf
• You’re instantly hitting Illusions of Grandeur
• Your raid’s Ranger instantly hits the raid with Auspice of the Hunter

These abilities should occur in sync at the same time. You typically should know when to burn so you can click your burn Hot Bar accordingly.

Burn Hot Bar

Did you miss the Hot Bar in the General Guide? Here it is again for your pleasure:

• Hot Button 1: Forceful Rejuvenation
• Hot Button 2: Ecliptic Reinforcement (Spell Gem)
• Hot Button 3: Illusions of Grandeur
• Hot Button 4: Improved Twincast
• Hot Button 5: Calculated Insanity
• Hot Button 6: Social Key (discussed below)
• Hot Button 7: Mindreap (Spell Gem)
• Hot Button 8: Chromatic Haze
• Hot Button 9: Social Key (discussed below)
• Hot Button 10: Robe Clicky
• Hot Button 11: Throttling Grip
• Hot Button 12: Mind Vortex

Burn Social Keys

To activate 4 instant abilities (IoG, ITC, CI, and FA) at the same time, and notify the group:

To activate Chromatic Haze and notify the group:

Burn Order to Click on the Hot Bar

1. Click: Forceful Rejuvenation
2. Click: Ecliptic Reinforcement (casts spell gem)
3. Click: Social Key – instantly activates IoG + ITC + CI + FA together
4. Click: Mindreap (casts spell gem)
5. Click: Social Key – instantly activates CH (and gives acknowledgement in group)
6. Click: Robe Clicky Item (fast-casting)
7. Click:Throttling Grip (casts spell gem)
8. Click: Mind Vortex (cast spell gem)

… and then immediately go straight into your sustained aDPS spell rotation.

Forceful Rejuvenation

The purpose of this ability is to instantly refresh spells off cooldowns. You generally use it to get your Ecliptic Reinforcement off cooldown. If burning at the start, you can skip it altogether.

Mindreap’s Placement in the Burn Order

There are several things Mindreap accomplishes with it’s placement in the burn order.

• Buffs Synergy on group to take advantage of a large damage bonus combined with CH.
• Gives people time to click or cast their own things in preparation for your CH.
• Gives Druids time to land their NSW spell before you activate CH.

Chromatic Haze and Your Druid

I usually make my druids create a social key so they can immediately hit it and let me know if they landed their Nature’s Sweltering Wrath spell – somewhere along the lines of “NSW landed – CH PLZ!” Ideally, they are supposed to cast it as soon as they get your IoG. While this isn’t a druid guide, you need to know that Druids can achieve a max hit of around 48 million damage with Chromatic Haze administered properly to them. Sometimes, I may hold off a second or two after casting Mindreap to wait for their announcement, aka begging, in group.

Druids are the peculiar case to CH. While their NSW spell has both a nuke and DoT component, similar to your Throttling Grip spell in that respect, they consume CH with the DoT tick portion of their spell, yielding them the highest max hit damage in game, currently.

Discussing Crit Rate chances will help you better understand and coordinate aDPS burns.

Passive Crit Rate Chance

Completing certain passive damage AAs and DoN progression grants you and other damage casters with the following innate chances to crit with direct damage spells (DDs) and damage over time spells (DoTs). You can refer to the AA Ability Guide (Personal DPS section) to see how your passive numbers at least were derived.

For starters, at least try understand caster’s passive DD crit chance. While your IoG affects crit chance for both DDs and DoTs, your Spire of Enchantment only affects DD crit chance. Spire of Enchantment is the only activated aDPS ability you need to manage beyond IoG.

Activated Crit Chance Rates (from AAs)

When illusions of Grandeur wears off (or is on cooldown), all you can really do beyond that is fill any gaps in DD crit chance rates with your Spire of Enchantment ability. Enchanters have no other activated abilities that affect DoTs outside of IoG.

Spire of Enchantment – lasts 1:30 min. Has a 7:30 min refresh time.

• Increases the DD Crit Chance rate by 9%
• Increases maximum mana by 8000 points
• Increases mana regeneration by 400 points

Unfortunately, the mana benefits that Spire offers have become somewhat outdated, given the fact that the last rank was granted in the TBM expansion.

Basic Management

To keep it simple, use your Spire after IoG fades, and then each time off cooldown (as long as IoG is not up). It doesn’t offer any of the other perks like IoG does. There is no point in micro-managing it beyond that as it will only delay how often you use it.

Don’t Hold Back on Spire

During non-burn/IoG times, you shouldn’t really go longer than a minute without re-using your Spire, if available. It is better to maintain some form of constant DD crit rate chance than none.

Being that you are the main provider of aDPS for casters, it is your job to speak up about burns and coordinate them with your group.

Burns Get Discussed BEFORE Combat

… and even during, in the case of when a second round of burns are about to come up. While everyone sits around, gets buffed and waits for an event to get triggered, this is the time to discuss your burn plan. Do you burn right off the bat? Do you wait 2 minutes into the event when there are a wave of adds that can optimally be burned down with AEs? Things like that.

Burns are Based Around the Availability of ITC

Most burns for casters are centered around the availability of Improved Twincast – not IoG. Study your reuse timers below:

• Chromatic Haze – has a 10 min reuse time.
• Illusions of Grandeur – has a 12 min reuse time.
• Improved Twincast – has a 15 min reuse time.

Your caster group’s burns are most impactful when all abilities are used together with ITC. ITC guarantees a spell lands twice for double the damage. Just because your CH and IoG are back up sooner, that does NOT mean you should just go ahead and use it without ITC.

Wait 3 More Minutes for ITC or Not?

The exception to the ITC rule is when an event can potentially be over before it’s off cooldown. Sometimes, squeezing in that last IoG and CH might make or break the needed DPS to finish off a difficult encounter regardless if ITC is down. This is a judgment call you have to make.

Druid Group Wolf

Group Spirit of the Great Wolf is a druid ability that lasts 4:00 min and has a 7:30 min reuse time. If your raid team takes on average 17 minutes to complete an event, then your druid should be using this ability from the start and immediately off-cooldown each time.

How does this tie in with enchanter burns?

If you are burning at the start of an event, then your next burn with ITC will be ready again at the 15:00 mark of the event. Your druid’s third wolf will be ready at the exact same time. It’s something worth thinking about if you are unsure how a second round of burns will align with it.

Unlike true burn abilities with 10 or more minute timers, druid’s group wolf is recommended to be used more often than not due to it’s constant aDPS rather than skipping out on it for the sake of perfect burn alignment. At best, you can hold off a minute on burning if you know their next group wolf will be back up off cooldown (for this reason, I keep a group wolf GINA trigger).

aDPS can be a confusing subject for new enchanters. Here are some quick guidelines to help you along the way.

1. All caster burns rely on Illusions of Grandeur, Chromatic Haze and Improved Twincast.

2. All caster burns are centered around the availability of your group’s Improved Twincast.

3. When burning, after IoG wears off, follow up with Spire of Enchantment.

4. Use Spire of Enchantment off cooldown, each time, during non-IoG periods.

5. Druids are predictable, as they should be using Group Wolf each time off cooldown.

6. Use a GINA trigger to keep track of druid Group Wolf timers/refresh.

7. Know your refresh timers. Periodically, check them on your Hot Bars:

• Spire – 7:30 minute refresh
• IoG – 12 minute refresh
  
• CH – 10 minute refresh
• ITC – 15 minute refresh

7. Imprison a bard. Chain that sucker to your ankles.

8. Lastly, always discuss a burn plan with your group.

Help! My Raid Group Sucks!

This may have little to do with your aDPS burns and more to do with other’s lack of timing. You are not expected to know how other classes play and burn. However, I have gotten quite a few messages about what I “think” should be going on right before and after I hit Chromatic Haze.

1. Druids – They use a spell called Nature’s Sweltering Wrath that needs to land before you instantly activate Chromatic Haze.

2. Magicians – They need to finish unleashing their pets (ie: Host of Elements) before you activate CH. Then they will cast an “…of Many” spell immediately when CH is activated.

3. Necromancers – They are a DoT class and only care about IoG. Keep in mind that CH affects only DDs, so it doesn’t concern them much.

4. Wizards – They can keep casting DD nukes and time to their whim how to land whatever nuke they need to make benefit of CH, once it’s activated.

With all this said, understand why IoG > Mindreap > CH is important here. But also understand why you can’t delay any part of this. The longer CH is delayed, the more it hurts your group.