IRL - Dru vs Bst for caster group (1 Viewer)

[Zero]

Hey RG.

So I'm currently running war/clr/enc/mag/nec/dru. It's been good for clearing all the group content and I've made my way to level 120, but now I'm more acutely feeling the pain of sustained dps, or lack there of, for AA farming.

I'm swapping the enchanter for a bard, reading on this forum it looks like the bard will help a lot with mage + necro pets and swarms.

For those who'll point out that a shm will help with my dps too, I'll get around to switching clr for shm. But currently being under geared while progressing I've found the clr to be really solid and enjoy the combat rez.

Getting to my actual question, is it also "worth" switching the dru to be a bst? I enjoy the ports but I think that'll be less pronounced when I have bard run speed. Anyone have ideas on whether the change will positively affect dps either because the bst outputs more dps than the druid or via alliance procs and aDPS w/ mage & nec pets?

Anything I'm not thinking of?

 

[Tim2051]

Do you just kill slow or run oom?

Bst provides better mana regen and better dps. So it should help sustain everyone’s mana pool and kill faster.

 

[jh86]

I recently made a swap at 115 from SK/Clr/Shm/Enc/Wiz/Nec to a Sk/Shm/Brd/Bst/Mag/Nec. I lost my ability to port which is kind of annoying however with bard travel macro found in sic's hotkey post and magellan Lua it's not too bad combined with gate on 3 toons and throne on the other 3. The beastlord really brings some spice to the team with Paragon and focused paragon as well as another layer of mana regen buffs and a sweet burn. The biggest thing I've felt is the loss of combat rez with the cleric being left behind. If you can find a way to get Essence emeralds on your necro that should negate that problem or you can bite the bullet and get your rez staff on the Shaman when it's time.

 

[519helvis]

i run a second gruop of casters behind my main tank gruop on raids .. its driven by the druid.

dru/brd/bst/ nec x3

between paragon mana taps and mana song my druid is never oom and is a huge help along with the bst and brd for my necro dps.

i would suggest making room for the druid and the bst if you can

 

[Zero]

Do you just kill slow or run oom?

Bst provides better mana regen and better dps. So it should help sustain everyone’s mana pool and kill faster.

Feels slow but that's subjective, my group as a whole does ~900-1.1mm sustained and 2-2.3 on burns. But the druid or mage will tend to OOM out after about 20m of killing and then need to med.

So mostly trying to improve on sustained mana and if possible more dps would be great.

 

[secret_wombat]

My level 120 group consists of Pal / Clr / Mag / Mag / Enc / Wiz and the Mags sustain 500k-700k damage each, so your damage looks a little lowish.

Which plugins/macros do you use to drive your team ? It could be that tweaking some of the settings could improve DPS / mana regen. For example my druid on my main team uses Enriched Mana Elixir which reduces mana cost and is setup to click modrod every 5 mins.

update: Just found an account that has a 120 Druid + 120 Bst so will try and test the impact each has on a team over the next couple of days

 

[Zero]

My level 120 group consists of Pal / Clr / Mag / Mag / Enc / Wiz and the Mags sustain 500k-700k damage each, so your damage looks a little lowish.

Which plugins/macros do you use to drive your team ? It could be that tweaking some of the settings could improve DPS / mana regen. For example my druid on my main team uses Enriched Mana Elixir which reduces mana cost and is setup to click modrod every 5 mins.

update: Just found an account that has a 120 Druid + 120 Bst so will try and test the impact each has on a team over the next couple of days

Using KA for the mage and have been tinkering with it. Mag is ~400-450 sustained with the necro around 300-350 on a normal fight (necro becomes the dps queen on missions or namers) and the druid usually lands around 150-250, enchanter is ~100-150 and the warrior around is 100, cleric is usually a 0 or some inconsequential amount with retort. Warrior, druid, enc are all ToL T1 geared, war & druid are not quite 120 yet. MAG/NEC are mostly LS T1 gear, but are usually f2p so no augs or anything (krono burned for AAing currently). Mag & Dru both use Dazzling Modulating Shard almost on CD, along with mage using gather potency, theft of essence & umbral mod rod. The Mag is almost never the problem usually it's the Dru. Dru effectively uses bear for mana and mask as well. When I rolled the Dru I as hoping to see some solid aDPS for the mag and I don't see any significant swings in mag or nec dps with the dru vs without, which is why I'm thinking of swapping it up.

That all said, if you could give me an idea on the impact of dru vs bst that'd be awesome!

Update: giving me some self doubt haha. Maybe my efforts are better focused on getting the odds & ends for each toon, Jann's veil, augs, aa's etc and then re-assessing? I was hoping to leave everyone but war & clr on f2p long term.

Thanks,
Zero

 

[zarroth]

Bard can help a great deal with mana issues. If you stack Aura,Pulse,Chorus and crescendo you can pump it over 1k average per tic with rank1 at 125. I think a lot of people are under the misconception that Enc are the king of mana regen..they are not. Beast with paragon may very well outstrip an enchanter in that role as well.

Note, there are a few other mana regen tools in there as well that aren't mentioned, but you'll be firing those either under burn or spamming it whenever it's up, like reflexive. It's just that most people don't consider stacking the songs or understand how powerful that can be.

 

[Grpsmashin]

i run a second gruop of casters behind my main tank gruop on raids .. its driven by the druid.

dru/brd/bst/ nec x3

between paragon mana taps and mana song my druid is never oom and is a huge help along with the bst and brd for my necro dps.

i would suggest making room for the druid and the bst if you can

I have a similar setup. However, i only use 2x nec's in that group.

DRU, BRD, BST, ENC, NEC, NEC I have found to still have good DPS and doesn't run out of mana either.

 

[secret_wombat]

My alt 120 BST/DRU are on my tank / healer accounts so I cannot test.

I did find a level 115 group consisting of War / Clr / Mag / Enc / Nec group that I can pair up with a Dru or Bst. The main issue is that they are on Test so have some Ice Encrusted Gear.

I did a test run with Dru for 20 mins and got the following damage but then I noticed that Group Spirit of the Wolf did not get fired which messed the DPS figures up. I'm using the lovely CWTN plugins for this test so I will have to redo when I get another chance.



Mana wise all were above 75% mana but it was actually the ENC that was using the most.

If you were to switch from CLR to SHM you would see a nice bump in DPS as the SHM can put out some nice numbers while still healing the group.

 

[menlaten]

those are all leaches on group content unfortunately.

 

[secret_wombat]

I had another little test and there was not a big difference between my team using a Dru or Bst. With a Dru it was 1.11m vs 1.07m dps with the Bst. Don'f forget this is a level 115 team. The team with Bst had more mana left

The Dru provided more benefit to the casters especially the Mag:-


The Bst was better for the War (and Clr, lol):-


As expected the pets saw less benefit from a Dru:-


All the pets got more benefit from the Bst (approx 20k dps each)

 

[Zero]

I had another little test and there was not a big difference between my team using a Dru or Bst. With a Dru it was 1.11m vs 1.07m dps with the Bst. Don'f forget this is a level 115 team. The team with Bst had more mana left

The Dru provided more benefit to the casters especially the Mag:-
View attachment 58362

The Bst was better for the War (and Clr, lol):-
View attachment 58363

As expected the pets saw less benefit from a Dru:-
View attachment 58364

All the pets got more benefit from the Bst (approx 20k dps each)
View attachment 58365

Awesome really appreciate it, Ill leave my focus on the bard and then eventually the shm then.