Maximum Paladin/Enchantress DPS & Healing

*Modified to incorporate Weakness into rotation*

My goal is to greatly improve paladin/enchantress dps & healing by providing an effective strategy. In order to do this, I'll offer a spell rotation that significantly increases spell and melee damage, while freeing up time to heal as well.

The basis for this discussion is the fact that spells do significantly more damage when they crit. By using our Blessing of Might spell, we can cast most of our spells with a 50% crit buff. This gives us a tremendous boost to our dps.

You will need to have 3-4 pieces of lvl 40 or 45 Thoth gear in order to provide maximum mana regen. I recommend 5/5 points in all skills except, Ice Storm (2 points), Resurrect (1 point), Mana Shield (1 point), and Frostbite (0 points). The second point in Ice storm can be flexed to another spell if desired. (Levels 40-44 won't have all the skill points yet, which may affect rotation).

http://i929.photobucket.com/albums/a...IMG_0087-1.jpg

Starting from the initial pull, the spell rotation goes like this. Once mobs have been aggro'd, activate your auto attack and get close to the cluster of mobs. Cast your two debuffs Weakness and Nightmare (in that order), followed by the buffs Blessing of Vitality and Blessing of Might in that order (due to length of cooldown and crit benefit from Blessing of Might). Immediately follow this with your 4 main damage spells of Lightning, Drain Life, Ice Storm, and Fire Storm, in that order. You now have a couple seconds during which you can heal if needed before recasting Lightning. Be sure to cast Lightning within a second or two once it becomes available so it will be available for your second round of damage spells. Once Weakness comes off cooldown, cast your debuffs Weakness and Nightmare again, followed by the 4 main damage spells again in order (Lightning, Drain Life, Ice Storm, and Fire Storm). If done properly, you will cast 9 damage spells while the crit buff from Blessing of Might is still active, giving your dps a huge boost. Cast Lightning once more as it becomes available within a second or two in order to give it sufficient cooldown before repeating the entire cycle. This rotation can be repeated every 35 seconds.

The advantage of a rotation is it consolidates all the damage spells into an easily repeatable cycle, freeing up time for you to heal (one of the biggest advantages of our class). Out of every 35 second rotation, approximately 7-8 of them will be used casting the rotation, giving you 27-28 seconds to focus on healing as needed, or spamming heal continuously. You have plenty of mana regen, so either method can be utilized as required.

Your melee dps provides a nice supplement to single target damage, especially with the crit buff active. Keep an eye on it to make sure it is active. If you have too much aggro, you can either stop the rotation for awhile, or use your mana shield while running away. Be aware that taking too much damage with mana shield active will impair your ability to effectively continue the rotation for a few seconds. If you are having trouble getting the second set of damage spells cast before the crit buff goes away, you can omit the second weakness from the rotation.

I welcome any comments and hope this helps!

(Many thanks to Relis and Royce for their contributions to this post)

I love you.

You should cast nightmare then lightning because they both have armour debuffs then cast health drain ice storm and fire storm.

Good stuff. What Relis says is true, lead with nightmare and lightning, then the other damage skills. Also, with 44 points now, there is no reason to not have weakness which is very helpful in PvE, and has much better range than nightmare (unless you are built primarily for PvP).

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Originally Posted by Relis

You should cast nightmare then lightning because they both have armour debuffs then cast health drain ice storm and fire storm.

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I tried it both ways, and it does gives a higher return on the single target damage from drain life. However it slows down the rotation slightly due to the cooldown on drain life...thereby cutting it close with getting the second set of 5 spells done before crit buff expires. I opted to put them in this order for simplicity since getting those 9 spells in with the crit buff is the key, but if you can get it done in that order, then definitely do it that way. I'll make a note at the end of my post accordingly. Thanks for the input!

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Originally Posted by Royce

Good stuff. What Relis says is true, lead with nightmare and lightning, then the other damage skills. Also, with 44 points now, there is no reason to not have weakness which is very helpful in PvE, and has much better range than nightmare (unless you are built primarily for PvP).

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I love the idea of using Weakness in a rotation, but where would you put it, and what would you take skills out of? Perhaps 2 points out of ice storm and into weakness? The damage portion of ice storm is marginal, but it does give the combo. I just don't know where weakness would fit in...suggestions?

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Originally Posted by Pilates

I love the idea of using Weakness in a rotation, but where would you put it, and what would you take skills out of? Perhaps 2 points out of ice storm and into weakness? The damage portion of ice storm is marginal, but it does give the combo. I just don't know where weakness would fit in...suggestions?

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I took the points off of magic shield (it has 1), and 1 from Icestorm (it still gives the combo boost to firestorm which does the real damage anyway). I would love to have that extra armor buff, but if you think about it significantly decreasing enemy damage is even better and benefits the whole party, and the difference between 1 and 5 points in the shield is only like 8 points of armor buff or something. As for rotation, I use weakness somewhat organically, generally trying to use it as soon as the mobs are concentrated, so I would stick it before even your buffs (maybe nightmare too, since it can't crit afaik).

Well I find that 1 point is more then enough for magic shield.

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Originally Posted by Royce

I took the points off of magic shield (it has 1), and 1 from Icestorm (it still gives the combo boost to firestorm which does the real damage anyway). I would love to have that extra armor buff, but if you think about it significantly decreasing enemy damage is even better and benefits the whole party, and the difference between 1 and 5 points in the shield is only like 8 points of armor buff or something. As for rotation, I use weakness somewhat organically, generally trying to use it as soon as the mobs are concentrated, so I would stick it before even your buffs (maybe nightmare too, since it can't crit afaik).

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Excellent, I love the suggestion. I'll do some testing tomorrow and then modify my original post to incorporate the ideas. Thanks for the input!

verry intresting info, is this by any chance the pally nuke tactic in pvp?

in pve i tend to buff up and use mana sheild constantly, then i just run in and use nightmere, then use lightning, then froststorm, then quickly use life drain while the persons still frozen, then blast them away with fire storm while their still frozen and it does the damage combo, ive tried doing life drain after firestorm, but most of the time the target is blasted halfway accross the room and my life drain misses target.


this is just my rotation tho, sometimes if im tired and dont care, i just spam every spell the second its cooled down, even revive for the extra 1m/s XD

EDIT: 28M/s is a beautiful thing...

Have you tried opening with Drain Life first? That spell reminds me of Exorcism, or Judgement in WoW. In the time it would take a person to cast their two debuffs - Nightmare, then Weakness - then hopefully drop some ice, do lightning, and then pushback, lather, rinse, repeat, (hopefully keeping BOM crit buff up most of the time, as well).

I wonder how the two rotations compare. I'll try them, but I can't make a parse or anything like that I don't think. (I saw something a while back about a combat log. I wonder if the DEVs have given any more thought to it or how it turned out...) Man, that would be such a useful tool here...

Censored for explicit language and full frontal nudity.

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Originally Posted by Theremin

Have you tried opening with Drain Life first? That spell reminds me of Exorcism, or Judgement in WoW. In the time it would take a person to cast their two debuffs - Nightmare, then Weakness - then hopefully drop some ice, do lightning, and then pushback, lather, rinse, repeat, (hopefully keeping BOM crit buff up most of the time, as well).

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The reason for keeping Drain Life after Nightmare and Lightning is they do armor debuffs, which make Drain Life significantly more effective...somewhere on the order of 3 times more damage.