Jump to content

Generalized guide for optimizing, improving, and understanding your DPS rotations


My Wand

Recommended Posts

Learning proper usage of abilities in the game can be one of the more intimidating aspects of learning PvM for a lot of players, with this I'm hoping to give you a general idea of how to prioritize certain abilities, manage cooldowns, and understand ability "combo's" in the game!

The first thing that is extremely important to specify are your three ability types, these are basics, thresholds, and ultimates. 

Basics are your general use abilities, they are how you gain adrenaline. For each basic ability used you will gain 8% adrenaline (with modifiers such as the relic power "Fury of the small" which grants a 1% boost to adrenaline from basics) 

 

Threshold abilities are only useable after 50% adrenaline, this can be bypassed by the limitless sigil but seeing as this is more geared towards beginners I'll assume you don't have it for the entirety of this. Threshold abilities come at a 15% adrenaline cost but with a significant boost in power over basics.

 

Ultimate abilities are your 100% adrenaline abilities, I recommend getting a ring of vigour from the dungeoneering reward shop as a top priority item and swapping to it for each usage of an ultimate ability you do. They come with a 100% adrenaline cost which is reduced to 90% and have many niche uses as well as meta uses, your priority ultimate abilities will be your damage boosting ultimates.

 

 

Modifier abilities

 

Each combat style has a series of modifier abilities, these abilities are generally 157% ability damage moves which provide some kind of bonus effects. These abilities have a variety of effects that are generally your highest priority.

 

Magic

Magic has two modifier abilities, one of which is relatively low priority unless certain conditions are met, the other one is your every other ability ability, these two are "Sonic Wave" and "Concentrated blast" which gets later upgraded to "Greater concentrated blast" (this is one of your highest priority upgrades for the magic style) let's go over what each of them do

 

Sonic Wave 

Cooldown: 5 seconds

Sonic wave is your lower priority ability for magic, it is a 31-157% Ability damage move providing a 6% accuracy gain on your next ability. This is most useful at bosses with higher defence where you're more prone to splashing (Think Vorago, Araxxor, Nex, Telos, etc.) generally speaking if your accuracy at a boss is above around 95% this ability becomes extremely low priorty, below 95% accuracy this is one of your most effective moves, use it to apply a bleed, hit that important ability, etc.

 

Concentrated Blast & Greater Concentrated blast

Cooldown: 5 seconds

Concentrated Blast

Concentrated Blast is your magical bread and butter. For normal concentrated blast this ability is cancelled after 2 hits and combo'd into a high damage basic or threshold. After your two hits you are provided with a 10% added critical hit chance to your next move, and concentrated blast can make itself crit, we'll learn more about that in our next section

 

Greater Concentrated Blast (Will be referred to as "Gconc" from here on out)

This ability is your single strongest magic basic, if at any point you aren't using it, I hope you're using an ultimate ability or a threshold. This has a similar usage to regular concentrated blast in the sense that you're still combo'ing it into high damage basics, thresholds, or ultimates. Do NOT use concentrated blast into a bleed, you'll have 0 benefit from this combination. 

 

Note: The effect of concentrated blast and gconc are lost if you switch your mainhand weapons

General "Strongest" combinations

In terms of magic DPS you have a few combinations and these all change depending on what you have unlocked for the style. As a general starter Gconc -> Dragonbreath is one of your best combo's. Gconc has a cooldown of 5 seconds, while Dragon Breath has a cooldown of 10 seconds, this means every other usage of Gconc can be followed up with a Dragon Breath. 

 

Other strong combinations would be 

Gconc -> Wild Magic

Gconc -> Asphyxiate

Gconc -> Omnipower (with igneous mage cape)

Gconc -> Tsunami (adds a bonus chance to critical hit tsunami returning some of the adrenaline cost. Use Tsunami with the spell "Incite Fear")

Gconc -> Flanking (if you own a flanking switch the impact and deep impact abilities are phenomenal follow-ups to a gconc, this is low priority because it's only truly prevalent in group content and very certain scenarios and is less of a general usecase)

 

(more will be covered when I get to the generalized advice section, this is just intended to be an introduction to your modifier abilities and how to use them)

 

Ranged

Ranged, similarly to Magic, has two modifier abilities, one of which being higher priority and the other being a more niche usecase

 

Needle Strike

Cooldown: 5 seconds

Much like magics Gconc, this is your range based bread and butter ability. The effect of needle strike allows you to gain a 7% damage increase to your next ability, this again does not work with bleeds and should be used in the same way as a gconc, before your 188's/snipe, high damage thresholds, and to an extent ultimates. Unlike Gconc the effect of needle strike is retained when you switch mainhand weapons

 

General "Strongest" combinations

Very similarly to magic ranges best combinations will change depending on what you have unlocked, these are as follows

Needle strike -> Grico; This is your overall, best modifier ability combo'd in to your overall best basic ability. This is the absolute highest priority if you have it, if you lack it move on to the next combo

Needle strike -> Snipe

Needle strike -> Snap Shot

Needle strike -> Shadow Tendrils 

 

Needle strike into rapid fire can be used but only the first hit of it will be effected by the damage boost, it doesn't hurt but it's not max priority

 

Dazing Shot

Cooldown: 5 seconds

This one is your low priority move, upon hit the target suffers a 10% decrease to their next attack. If you have it upgraded to Greater Dazing Shot it will apply stacks of puncture to your target that applies a bleed type effect, this is still overall low priority but can be used as a filler ability

 

Melee

Melee is a very, very interesting style. There's a significant amount of upgraded ability codexes that modify the style to a severe degree. I'll be assuming you lack these for this. In terms of modifiers melee only has one true modifier in fury (though havoc + gloves of passage also acts as a modifier we will not be covering that right now.) which gets later upgraded to greater fury. What Melee has over magic/ranged is a surplus of 188% ability damage moves that allow you to maintain nearly 100% uptime of these abilities while not using thresholds, something magic and ranged lack. 

 

Fury & Greater Fury

Cooldown: 5 seconds

Similarly to Concentrated Blast and Greater Concentrated Blast, Fury is a channeled attack that is often canceled after 2 hits for maximum DPS uptime. As with Concentrated blast after 2 hits you are met with a 10% added critical hit chance. Where you combo this ability is what's different

 

General "Strongest" combinations

as I mentioned before, melee has a surplus of 188's and you should have no problem juggling these with your modifier ability

Fury -> Decimate

Fury -> Cleave

Fury -> Sever

Fury -> Hurricane

Fury -> Assault

Fury -> Destroy

Fury -> Quake

Fury -> Overpower (With igneous melee cape)

 

 

 

 

Understanding when you can safely use threshold abilities & Ultimates

 

To an extent, your highest priority ultimates will always be your damage boosting ultimates, these are Sunshine (and metamorphasis but this is very niche) for magic, Deaths swiftness for ranged, and berserk for melee. All three of these abilities have a 60 second cooldown and as a general rule unless you know a long animation is about to start you want to be using these every 60 seconds. For sunshine and deaths swiftness the perk "Planted feet" is your top priority, most people put it on a lower tier main-hand weapon or off-hand and you need to equip it each time you use the abilities. Planted feet does not effect berserk. The effect of planted feet makes your sunshine/Deaths Swiftness last 38 seconds.

 

Thresholds should be prioritized while inside of these ultimates, followed by your 188's. Bleeds are not boosted by the damage boosting effects of these ultimates and for this reason should not be used while inside of them (the only exceptions being berserk and metamorphasis which do work to boost the damage of them) in a proper rotation. With ring of vigour you will enter your ultimate with 10% adrenaline, using adrenaline potions such as adrenaline renewals are highly recommended. In a proper rotation you're able to use wild magic/snapshot and asphyxiate/rapid fire twice in a singular planted feet boosted ultimate, provided you execute your two thresholds within 17 seconds of using the ultimate (this is why we use the adrenaline potions) which will give you another usage of them right before your ultimate ends as they have 20 second cooldowns, understanding these cooldowns is extremely important for preventing a very common thing I see in newer pvmers

 

Thresholding outside of your ultimates

Having adrenaline is great! But sometimes you have a bunch of it and absolutely nothing to do with it, one common trap I see people fall for is the "no thresholds outside of ultimate" trap in which they're too worried about losing their best moves inside of ultimate that they never use them outside of it. This is why understanding your cooldowns is extremely important to improving your DPS.

 

in a typical scenario as described above, you're using two sets of thresholds inside of your damage boosting ultimate, this is usually timed with the ending of your ultimate leaving you with 20 seconds after your ultimate ends before a threshold comes back to you. By the time your threshold comes back you will have 30 seconds left on your sunshine or deaths swiftness cooldowns (or 23 seconds if you used planted feet), you can nearly always use your thresholds one time outside of your sun/ds before building back to 100% for that ultimate again, and you'll always have them back before you can use them in that deaths swiftness. Practice utilizing them as frequently as you can while still retaining the ability to use them when you get into your ultimates, I cannot stress how much added damage you will begin doing as soon as you start balancing your cooldowns properly. Remember that you have 17 seconds after your use of deaths swiftness or sunshine to fire off your two thresholds before you lose the ability to do both inside of it, use that lenience to your benefit.

 

 

Misc. Info 

 

This section will be where I wrap things up for now, I wanted to cover a couple of things I didn't cover up above to give you a general knowledge on everything I can

 

Bleeds

In solo encounters, one of your best basics that I did not cover are your bleeds, you have two different styles of bleed. One of which is your walked bleed, this will be your Combust, Fragmentation shot, and Slaughter (threshold) 

 

I specified solo encounters there because a little feature of group pvm is that others can actually override your bleeds with their own, this is on a per-style basis so if you're the only person on your team bleeding have at it, otherwise bleeds are one of your lowest priority moves in groups. A walked bleed is as it sounds, it deals 20-37% ability damage every 1.2 seconds and the damage doubles if the target moves, generally speaking your strategy for these moves is to either bleed and walk under the boss or run a few squares away forcing them to run towards you. 

 

your other bleeds are not walkable, these would be abilities such as Corruption Shot, Corruption blast, Dismember, and Blood Tendrils (threshold) these will be your strongest bleed against stationary targets and in those cases should be prioritized over your walked bleeds as they are stronger in those cases.

 

 

188% Abilities

These were mentioned several times but never truly elaborated on, your 188% basics are your strongest basics with minor exceptions in the 'greater' ability upgrades. Things like Dragon Breath, Sever, Destroy, and Cleave are 188% ability damage abilities and are your absolute highest priority while doing damage, followed by your bleeds (for solo encounters) and 157% abilities. Look through your ability tabs and you'll see these listed!

Example: 8pFR5cr.png 

You'll see in this image it says, "37%-188% ability damage." When looking for abilities to prioritize, you want to be looking for that 188% in your ability list (minus your modifier abilities)

 

 

Canceling channeled abilities

You may have noticed I mentioned only doing the first 2 hits of fury and concentrated blast up above, those two abilities as well as some others are what are known as a channeled attack. Channeled abilities are active for a certain amount of time and are ended if you do another action such as move, or fire off another ability. This can be used to your benefit by timing out another ability with these channeled attacks to increase your ability uptime. For Fury and Concentrated blast you simply fire another ability as soon as the global cooldown (the cooldown you see between abilities before you can fire a new one) ends which will give you a proper cancel.

 

Highly recommended

I highly recommend, to help you learn to juggle your cooldowns properly, to turn on ability cooldown timers in your settings. To do this press the ESC button and go to settings, click the gameplay tab at the top of this interface, go to the "Combat & Action Bar" drop-down menu and click "Action Bar" from there you'll see "Toggle ability cooldown timer" which you should enable. Optionally you can also turn on "Allow ability queueing" which you can abuse to tick perfectly cancel channeled abilities with another queued ability without actually timing it. 

 

Rd6Whfv.png

 

You'll notice I have "Manual spell casting" enabled for myself, this is for a more advanced technique called "Four tick auto attack" essentially, I use the weapon speeds from my dual wield magic weapons to fire off an auto attack every other ability used with my 2h staff. The manual spell casting allows me to use a keybound spell without switching my auto attack to that spell. We won't be covering 4taa today as this is more geared towards beginners.

 

 

And That's it!

I really hope you found this helpful in some way shape or form, as always if you have any questions feel free to ask me either on here or in game and I will go over rotations with you, or anything else you're trying to learn! 

- Wand

Edited by Not My Wand
Link to comment
Just now, X5-452 said:

Thanks for going through all this trouble :) I will have to read through with thought.

No problem! I had to cut it a little bit short because I was typing for a very, very long time! I would've liked to go more in-depth on some things but I have plenty of time to do so

Link to comment

you should throw all of this into the same post, just reserve a ton of posts for what you should do so that people can just read it as like 1 giant guide, but also same with x5 gonna read it at some other time cause i bet it would help me

Link to comment

 

 

11 minutes ago, Halu said:

you should throw all of this into the same post, just reserve a ton of posts for what you should do so that people can just read it as like 1 giant guide, but also same with x5 gonna read it at some other time cause i bet it would help me

I was just going to abuse the edit button and make all parts in spoiler tags to read through what you want to see as I continue adding on, everything from here are more advanced optimizations like 4taa, 5taa, 5 tick dbow, stalled abilities, etc that could nearly use their own section and will more than likely be the product of several hours of research and potentially creation of detailed tutorials that I currently lack the time for

Link to comment

This is one of the threads I was able to skim through today, though I wasn't able to respond then. My apologies. :P

 

This is an amazing guide which demonstrates your knowledge, effort, and attentiveness to how best to help learners. In particular, I appreciated the clear categorization and explanation of the most important abilities. Thank you so much for sharing! :aww:

 

I intend to carefully study this material, and your other tips, before pursuing PvM one day within the next few thousand~

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Sirsir said:

This is one of the threads I was able to skim through today, though I wasn't able to respond then. My apologies. :P

 

This is an amazing guide which demonstrates your knowledge, effort, and attentiveness to how best to help learners. In particular, I appreciated the clear categorization and explanation of the most important abilities. Thank you so much for sharing! :aww:

 

I intend to carefully study this material, and your other tips, before pursuing PvM one day within the next few thousand~

Thanks for your feedback, one thing I was really hoping I nailed was explaining things in such a way that people with no prior knowledge of abilities would be able to understand it, which can be difficult so if there was anything you think I could elaborate more on to help with understanding of it I'd love to know so I can revise it!

Link to comment
54 minutes ago, Not My Wand said:

Thanks for your feedback, one thing I was really hoping I nailed was explaining things in such a way that people with no prior knowledge of abilities would be able to understand it, which can be difficult so if there was anything you think I could elaborate more on to help with understanding of it I'd love to know so I can revise it!

I can only speak for myself, as someone who generally avoids bossing and is intimidated by Full Manual. (In fairness, I do usually play on a potato which has difficulty physically rendering the game quickly enough for me to pursue quick ability usage through an admittedly unresponsive tick system, so I will almost always have to rely on Revolution anyway; and this is why I try not to waste teachers' time with actual sessions.) :P

 

With that caveat, I believe an example manual rotation, assuming no upgrades or special modifiers/boots/etc., would be most helpful. And if it necessary to look at different ones depending on ultimate upkeep status (I noted your suggestion to prioritize thresholds during ultimates, but also not to "waste" them beyond), that would be much appreciated. I do recognize that every boss and situation is different, and that cooldowns might become desynchronized for a number of reasons; but having a basic example that could be followed would help illustrate your advice.

 

I had a long day, so please let me know if that doesn't make any sense! And I hope this request is possible to fulfill in the first place; please feel free to simply ignore me if it is not. :3

 

Thank you so much for soliciting feedback on an already amazing repository of information! <3

Link to comment
7 minutes ago, Sirsir said:

I can only speak for myself, as someone who generally avoids bossing and is intimidated by Full Manual. (In fairness, I do usually play on a potato which has difficulty physically rendering the game quickly enough for me to pursue quick ability usage through an admittedly unresponsive tick system, so I will almost always have to rely on Revolution anyway; and this is why I try not to waste teachers' time with actual sessions.) :P

 

With that caveat, I believe an example manual rotation, assuming no upgrades or special modifiers/boots/etc., would be most helpful. And if it necessary to look at different ones depending on ultimate upkeep status (I noted your suggestion to prioritize thresholds during ultimates, but also not to "waste" them beyond), that would be much appreciated. I do recognize that every boss and situation is different, and that cooldowns might become desynchronized for a number of reasons; but having a basic example that could be followed would help illustrate your advice.

 

I had a long day, so please let me know if that doesn't make any sense! And I hope this request is possible to fulfill in the first place; please feel free to simply ignore me if it is not. :3

 

Thank you so much for soliciting feedback on an already amazing repository of information! <3

That's a great point and I considered giving example rotations, the reason I didn't is because I was making an attempt to provide enough information for people to form their own rotations and become familiar with said rotations just from the information given. I find that method to be a very powerful means of learning over being simply told what they should do in the majority of cases but I suppose a baseline example people could build upon could be included into the post somewhere :)

Link to comment
2 hours ago, Hess said:

Whoa this is helpful!

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you found helpful information within :)

1 hour ago, thegreatwha said:

This is fun stuff.

 

I really enjoyed the talk about cooldowns, which beginners, like myself, often take for granted.

 

Thanks again for sharing! :)

I'm really glad to hear you liked the part about cooldowns, my goal with this was to explain things in such a way that after reading you could come to your own conclusions about what to do in your ability rotations to sort of forge your own rotations not reliant on spreadsheets or anything of the sort 

Link to comment
54 minutes ago, Jaybear said:

Pretty nifty topic. I'm glad you put this together :) 

Thank you! I'm planning on covering some more advanced stuff down the road to kind of give a comprehensive "stepping stones" type feel to people that see all of it

Link to comment
  • 8 months later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...