Question - How to Increase Burst DPS for Casters in KA

[wymranar]

Hey fellows,

So, I’ve been working on the Griklor and Velks missions while trying to farm type 5s. As you know, having solid burst dps is crucial to getting these missions done quickly and efficiently. I’ve noticed with my team (war, SHM, MNK, mag, enc, CLR) that my only melee (my monk) is sometimes doing 50% of my burst dps while my casters take their time to spool up. The casters and KA seem to take their time going through burns, or at least getting started.

Recently I’ve been trying to improve this and I’ve noticed that a few things have helped.
-I think that switching everyone to ka12 has increased their “reaction time”
-I followed @Sic ’s advice to increase background FPS, which I think helped also.

Does anyone have any other tips or tricks to improving burst dps amongst casters? Specifically, ENC, MAG, and SHM.

Thanks for the input!

 

[ABDon]

Some of what you're seeing may well just be the way they are? Mage and Sham take a little while to ramp up even when played manually tbh.

Sham are of course dot based, so until you've got a full set of dots down and a few ticks on all of them, you won't see decent numbers.

And a large portion of a Mages damage comes from their pets (both directly and indirectly), so until they've pumped out their swarms and managed to get 3 x RS pets up (takes about 30 seconds) their numbers aren't big either

 

[eqtrader74]

If you know you're about to enter a short term, high DPS phase, you can have some pre-buff hotkeys that start all the casters DPS boosts right before. Saves some global cooldowns at the start.

Depending on the length of the fight, you might also edit out or "comment" out some of the lower DPS boosting or aggro reduc stuff, so Burn runs through 3-4 things instead of 10+. Just the biggest boosts only for short fights. For caster heavy groups, you can also move their group synergy trigger nukes higher in the DPS order.

Maybe have a special fast-fight ini for these instances.

 

[Evelyn]

For Griklor and other scenarios, I use separate quickburn KA templates where i put the top things to cast/burn first in the burn section. I don't use any conditionals (except for pulmonary grip and twincast checks) and just keep the rest of the rotations in the DPS lines. I don't use my normal KA files for Griklor. I keep /mqp on when i start the event, follow toons on main toon all the way until Griklor comes down. The moment he's down /mqp off for whole grp and they start burning. I've gotten pretty good at annihilating him on the first down considering I have a mage, druid and enc all running burns. If I run my normal KA templates then it would take me two rounds instead.

For example...
On my enchanter - ill ignore things like dissident. Heck, I won't even slow or mez. Spell-casting will look something like:
Tash, ITC, IoG, Haze, Robe Click, Mindrift, Mindslash, Pulmonary Grip. Then it will repeat nuke-nuke-PG over and over.

My druid goes full DPS (no heals - except for an instant AA heal in case anything). Spell-casting will look something like:
Group Wolf, ITC, BP Click, Nature's Fervid Wrath, Dissident, Remote Sunshock, Typhonic Roar, Cyclonic Roar, Horde of Hyperboreads and then cycles through whatever is up.

My SK will pop epic and a defensive.

For my cleric, I'll use interventions first (for extra dps) and then remedies.

A note about the enchanter, don't use twincast aura. Use mana rep aura and fortifying aura since all the toons will be using ITC anyway. Extra boom boom. When you cast fortifying aura, you need to wait about 30 seconds until it shows up in the song window. So you can cast fortifying and then start event. It will be up in the song window by the time Griklor is down.

 

[Sum1]

Also, go 2-hander on the tank until you have to switch because of adds piling up. I’ll burn with the 2-hander and hit my sword/board bandolier when I have more then 2 adds + Grik up. By then Griklor is low enough on hps that he’s not gonna fly away.

 

[wymranar]

@Evelyn That's great advice! Do you have any methods for loading separate KA inis quickly?

 

[Evelyn]

@Evelyn That's great advice! Do you have any methods for loading separate KA inis quickly?

Yep! It's in the guides too under "Alternating inis" : https://www.redguides.com/community/threads/kissassist-instructions-settings-info.26002/

/mac kissassist ini kissassist_Name_IceNukes.ini

So basically your normal ini is named something like kissassist_Name.ini
Duplicate that ini and rename it to add a subscore and something else like kissassist_Name_Quickburn.ini
Then edit that ini to make it how you see fit to quickburn.

Maybe make a hotkey. One to run your normal ini, ie: /mac kissassist
And then another hotkey for the situational/quickburn one you want to use, ie: /mac kissassist ini kissassist_Name_Quickburn.ini (or something to that effect, however you wish to name the ini file).