Originally Posted by
kiitz
I finally realized how important it is to first target the mages when full 4x potted runs went SO MUCH faster and smoother with certain individuals. I've been in MANY full thrasher groups and there are some where you don't have to ever stop running, and there are some where there always seems to be a few stragglers left behind and everyone needs to double back to auto. Playing optimally with or without elixirs will always speed up the run. Its awesome when you can run with a group and literally never take your finger off the "forward" button.
Actually as a bird, one of the BEST things you can do to help your group besides focus firing the mages, is to run in and FIRST hit rootwall. Some mages have a tendency to burn lightning very early in their rotation becomes it comes up very quickly and can be used 2x. As a bird, if you focus on getting to the mobs and dropping rootwall before the mages use lightning, you will find everything dies so much more easily.
Mages on the other hand, if you see you are running with a bird that actively uses rootwall early in their rotation, can and should hold on to their lightning until after they here the tell tale root sound, or see the roots being cast. The thing to realize about rootwall also is that its cooldown is pretty long. Birds will not be able to cast them on every group. Generally a bird can only cast them on every other group. Therefore, as a mage, if you are really trying to go for optimal play, you should only save lightning for rootwall every other group of mobs.
Also, when playing my bird, I will alternate between using rootwall and avian scream on mob groups. Although avian scream does sort of suck due to its extremely small radius, it still adds a fair amount of damage when it lands. By running up to a mage and adding avian scream to your shattering scream/blast shot combo with breakarmor up, it will usually push you over the top on the amount of damage and help you to kill the mob mages in 1 set of barrages.
Nature strike is one of the hardest hitting (if not the hardest hitting) regular combos. Actually, I've done extensive testing with mega combos and I am start to believe that the extra damage from converting nature strike into hellstorm is negligible. For example, if nature strike doubles the combined damage of rootwall and lightning, converting that into hellstorm seems like it either barely adds anymore damage, or only a very small fraction, like maybe 5-10% more. I believe what the mega combos actually do is put a larger debuff on the mobs, lets say double. For regular mobs, this is not important because they will die shortly after you combo/mega combo them. For bosses, this can be a huge benefit (Pwned combo). You will notice that when your group pulls off a Pwned combo, the actual combo does not do much more damage. However, in the following 5 or so seconds, the bosses health seems to drop much more rapidly.
Elixir or no elixir, if you let one or two of the mages in Mt. Fang free cast on you, you will be asking for a rev in no-time. Kill the mage, and you can solo everything in there easily just by kiting in a circle.
Also, btw Gimboid, I'm sure I've run with you in Mt. Fang because I recognize your name. Maybe I learned it from you!
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