+R Gungler No problem, I'm glad you liked it. Let me know if you come up with any other questions, or have other guide requests. The other Primalist souls are on my plate for releases slated over the next week or two. So keep an eye out for those!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. A lot could still change but I haven't seen a video guide for much of primalist yet and I know a lot of folks who learn better by watching, so I figured I would fill that niche. glad you liked the video =)
Thank you for your response, i understand I know what moving is about and acclimating to the new location and job. My level is 65 at the moment, not great gear yet, but working on it. I do watch your videos and use them.Keep up it up when you can, great job.
+L Baker I will be definitely doing that. Matter of fact, I have Tempest already built and templated, I just have to get the time to record and get it uploaded. I'll try to get it out as soon as I can! =)
Well, I have set up the Macro's. I have studied this rotation, but I just cant figure out this soul at all. For now, when I run NTE's, I just press buttons lol. When I see the skill shot proc come available I use it. When I am at full fury, I cast molten wave. I really do not know. I need to find a spec that is very NTE friendly. Having some major AOE troubles and Typhoon also seems complicated. How is the Beserker soul for PVE?
+Nathaniel Wilson Vulacanist is pretty NTE friendly. You'll want to operate off a simple priority system if you're having issues. 1.) Refresh Precesion Bolt and Conflagurate at the same time, once every 15 seconds. If you use my Kalert this should be easy. The reason for this is Precision Bolt increases your damage by 10% and Conflagurate increases your damage by 5%. 2.) Use Fury Blast only when you are 40 Fury and higher, since if you have 40+ fury it will apply a Damage over Time ability to the target for 8 seconds, which deals large amounts of damage. This will likely become less of a big deal because on the PTS currently, it does 25% less damage. 3.) Use your cooldown block like follows (After you have (.1) done) Ethereal Beam > PA Drake/Skill Shot > Fury Blast > Then continue doing what you're doing. 4.) Beacon of the Drake is great for AoE/Cleave situations but is also a single target gain as well. So for NTE's what I recommend doing is abusing Molten Wave and Beacon of the Drake for trash packs, pretty much be using abilities with the intention using as many Molten Waves as possible, this means you can avoid casting conflagurate and precision bolt on trash too, because they'll die too fast for those 2 global cooldowns to make a difference. Typhoon is actually relatively easy, most of it is spamming your (1) key followed by your (2) key, then hitting the (Q) key like 5 times. Matter of fact, if you want an easier way to play, you can play it just like i said, and still pull probably 80% of the damage, which is still much better than Vulcanist. If you have more questions, I'd be more than happy to assist. I made this Vulcanist guide about a week after release just to get peoples feet wet and before some changes so I may decide to release a newer better guide later on. Hope this was helpful, and sorry for the book!
I macro Spiritualism to cast @self. That way I get the full five ticks, even if I have to switch targets, or if my target dies before I get off all five. I do this on my Rogue and Warrior too.
+Noseeum Nomore That is correct, I discuss this briefly and show the macro at 3:43. You can use this on Primalist, Rogue, Warrior, and Mage (using the specific names per calling) to ensure the 5 stacks are applied to you, rather than the creature you are fighting. If you choose to manage this skill separately for raid, to ensure it lines up with 60s block raid cooldowns, you can make a separate cast @self macro and put it on a separate key.
+switcheffect Make sure you have Precision Bolt in your macro before Skill Shot. Precision Bolt will be your cast time spam ability, and it should be the one that you cast in the event everything else is on cooldown. Skill Shot is just there so that you can utilize it during movement if needed. Are you max level on your Primalist?
+Vasyl Light I assume you mean RB or Riftblade, and not yet. I just got done spending a lot of time on the Primalist, so I figured while that was fresh I'd churn out a few guides for it. I'll be coming around to those eventually though.
My guide list is still pretty long, and the ones that usually get pushed aside are ones that take more research and effort for recording. In this scenario I play my Mage and Warrior the least so those guides take more time, especially because I want to ensure I'm providing quality content with as few errors as possible. Don't worry though, they will get released at some point =) I'll try and bump Tempest up since there is a lot of interest in it lately.
L Baker Yea, sorry. Primalist put a lot on my plate, trying to get some video guides out for it as well hehe. Tempest and Riftblade are pretty high up on my priorities though. I promise I'll get em out =)
+Crusita Maldonado Unfortunately, Primalist doesn't have some of the best utility for survivability, however your best bet is using 4 Preserver for a subsoul to pick up some healing abilities. For AoE, you should be trying to use as many Molten Waves as possible, which means using a lot of abilities that grant 40 Fury. You could also try using dervish, as "Whirling Dervish" does some spectacular aoe damage, but it depends on what level you are I suppose. Other than that, while leveling, if you want to take on multiple mobs, you could try using some berserker in there, but I'm not sure it would do as well as full Vulcanist would. I'll see if I can catch some time and research something for you. RIght now my time has been tapped setting up my new house and getting acclimated to my new job. =)
I use my left index finger. I have pretty good dexterity, so I can hit it and return to home (aswd) fairly quickly. if I find I'm going up against players who are particularly stun happy, I'll sometimes move it to the "z" keybind. hope that helps!
+LcEtrigan72 Planar Attunement is tricky. Essentially you'll want to choose what you like to do best. Raiding? Dungeons? Open World? PvP? and make your template based on that. 1.) For instance, if you primarily like to raid, you'd want to fill up the trees that give you the 15m temporary buffs like "Renewing Pod" for endurance. You'd also want to focus on fillig out the Red gems for Attack Power, and the blue gems that are Dexterity, since they give you increased stats. 2.) For Open World, you can do a mix of all the trees, since you'll want more survivability as well as damage. 3.) For PvP, venture to the War tree and pickup everything in there for some nice passive bonuses 4.) For dungeons and group content, its similar to raid, and you'll want to select them based on if you like to dps or tank. For tank, go for all the endurance gems. For DPS, go for all the Attack Power and Dexterity gems. I'll be doing an in depth Planar Attunement video eventually so keep watching for that, and hopefully it can help answer questions you may or mat not have. =)
aweseome guide but I do have one problem with it ... You are showing 2 - 65 Masteries in your tutorial. You have it bound as a target self buff then you have it the other mastery on you 7 key. Also person can make macro that stops cast targets themselves and cast Spiritualism.
+SuperSo Starstoyou That is correct and not an error. The "Self" macro is for PvP, hence why it isn't mentioned in the macro section of this PvE guide. It is simply a "cast @self Ancestral Force" to be used as a heal in warfronts. I change my 65 mastery on the fly based on the situation. The reason the Ancestral Force is on the "7" key, is for when you anticipate clearing a trash pack, say, in an expert dungeon or open world, and you don't want to swap specs, you can switch to Ancestral Force, and use it as a powerful AoE DPS cooldown from your "7" key, and then swap back to Spiritualism after the trash fight concludes. There is no need to use the "target@self" and "targetlasttarget" functions in this instance, because you can accomplish the same thing with spiritualism by using "cast @self Spiritualism". Just like in a programming language, you want to accomplish a task with as few lines of code as possible. While you can accomplish Spiritualism use with the two macro functions I list above in the beginning of this paragraph, it doesn't make sense to do so, since cast @self functions do not actually target the player, and keep the existing target which is the goal. Lastly, Spiritualism is off global cooldown, meaning there is no point in "stopcasting" because it can be cast during a global cooldown recovery (which is why it's at the end of the macro, always). You do not want to interrupt any abilities with an off global cooldown skill, since it can be cast when no other ON global cooldown abilities can. So it's easy and very efficient to fire it off inbetween your other skills. This is managed automatically in this particular setup with your spam macro, although you can alternatively manage it separately for phase bases like Sicaron in HK. I hope all that makes sense. If you have any other comments or questions, please feel free to ask, and I hope that helps clear up some of your concerns =).
The rotation is wrong, and vulcanist isnt played by priority. Vulcanist has a fixed rotation, the only thing you really can change is Molten Wave instead of Ethereal Beam. There should be 4 x precision bolt in a minute, 4 x channels (2 mw and 2 eb, or more MW depending on cleave) Two fury blast per / 15 sec block, 3 Stroke of Brilliance per / 15 sec block. Vulcanist doesnt play well with macros either, in fact you shouldnt really have any macro for vulcanist, as you wanna know where you are on the focus bar.
+Daniel Andersson Firstly, thank you for your input! I do understand Vulcanist can be played optimally maximizing each skill based on the windows of their individual cooldowns. I do also understand how to get very close to 6 Skill shots in a 60s window, how to use Stroke of Brilliance at 0 optimally, how to maintain your two buffs via Conflagurate and Precision bolt, etc. That being said, the main focus of my guides is to help beginner to intermediate players and maybe even a few of the better players refine their rotations or maybe learn something that they didn't know before. It's inevitable that I'll get people who say the rotation is wrong, and people who say the rotation is too difficult. Given that the main focus is beginners to intermediates, I'd prefer "The rotation is wrong" people, as they typically don't need any help anyway. But my focus here is to weigh differences in optimal and non-optimal with difficult and not-as-difficult to help players competitively play a spec. This guide was created in response to a few players who were having issues with the soul right after release. Some people don;t do well reading guides. They prefer videos so I released a video showing the base priority (and yes, every spec is based on priority, every GCD has a skill that has "priority" if we're speaking in technicalities. For instance, most people would say Shaman is priority based as well as Assassin, but I can list out my 60s set rotation same as Vulcanist for both) so that they could learn the spec and how all the skills interact with each-other. If you're here to looking to learn something, I hope the video was helpful, although I suspect you are already aware of the current top theory crafting regarding Vulcanist based on your post and the videos I create likely aren't aimed at a player like yourself. I hope you better understand the intent of this video, and I hope I was able to assure you that I personally keep up to date with current theory crafting regarding most souls in Rift so as to provide the best quality guides that I can and also to be a competitive player. The original idea actually, was to release this guide, then release an updated one in about a month after some some bug fixes and nerfs (i.e. Skill shot in PvP, Double Molten Wave nerf, Beacon fixes, etc) were more worked out, but I have other priorities to get recorded first. Thank you for the comment, and sorry if you felt the video wasn't up to your standard. Please let me know if you come up with other questions/comments. Happy Rifting! =)
+ChamberDown Well, lets say it like this then. If there where better guides, there might be better players so we dont have to nerf bosses to the ground so that the socials can kill them with their 1 button specs. Vulcanist isnt played as priority like harb for an example. You have 4 blocks in a 1 minute rotation, thats it. Nothing else, you cant suddenly cast conflagrate in there and hope you do fine. Everything is placed in a certain position to maximize uptime of everything. Getting 6 skill shots in a 1 minute rotation doesnt provide maximum dps, but its possible. But then you would do 40k less.
+Daniel Andersson My goal has always been to improve the gaming experience of the people who play Rift. Not everyone who watches my guides is in a World First race trying to down the latest content. Also, only previous tier bosses are nerfed typically and it is indeed to allow access to the less hardcore, since most of the hardcore move on to the next tier immediately. I don't really understand how this affects you. You're achievements still show dates pre-nerf, you still have the slot on leaderboards (If you're competitive) and the other players who maybe don't have the time to raid 4 nights a week can check out some of the deeper in content and maybe learn a thing or two and down a boss or two with some progression and coordination. I mean, there are pugs who still lock 1/5 MS, or can't down Finric and we're on T3 now. Rift is large, my guide is tagged as an "Intermediate guide". Make one that's labeled "Advanced guide" and throw it up on youtube if you'd like to help people min/max. Or, you could have left a constructive comment like, "You could also try xxxx rotation if you're looking to min/max" and then list the rotation you personally use. This way, players read the comments and see the rotation you've provided and see if it suits them. Also, from my testing, and the testing of others, getting Skill Shot in once every 10s is one of your highest priorities. So I don't know why you wouldn't. If you'd like to shed some light on that, I'd be more than happy to take a look, because you certainly don't see how you'd do 40k less DPS from it, unless that was a bit of an overstatement =)
+ChamberDown Yes but a guide, should be accurate, no matter what the goal is. Making a guide that shows a rotation (or well a macro) wouldnt make people better players as they wouldnt understand the spec anyway. For min-maxing, you can do 4 skill shots per minute, and still keep everything else lined up and used. All the rotations are written in the Vulcanist thread on the forums, i dont see why you wouldnt tell people to learn that rotation? Precision Bolt -> PA + BotD -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Molten Wave -> Rage Spike -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Ethereal Beam -> Vorpal Salvo -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Molten Wave -> Rage Spike -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Ethereal Beam -> Vorpal Salvo -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo If you suffer from lag, you can replace the last vorpal salvo and start with block one again. If you for whatever reason are delaying cooldowns (or they aint used 4.5 sec into the fight) you can do this as an opener Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast Then start with block 1, precision bolt and so on. The only thing you really can change is, doing Molten Wave instead of Ethereal Beam (if you want more cleave, or if its more targets) If you wanna go into advanced rotations, you also have a two target rotation with double dot. And for 3 targets, consistantly, you would go Typhoon anyway (if ranged).
+Daniel Andersson This is much better information. If I catch some time I'll do some testing and maybe I'll release another guide. The original intent of this guide was just to get people started because Vulcanist was still new and most of the theory crafting you are talking about did't exist yet. This guide was uploaded on October 15th, right after the Precision Bolt change. =) Thanks for your input, and thanks for taking the time to provide the rotations you are using and offer extra information. I'm sure this will benefit other players checking out the guide.
Well.... Skill shot has 50% less damage output in pvp... Hurray for nerfs. Cause, y'know, 50% isn't much, right? -.- Not to mention the Berserker's ability Spirits Wrath was ALSO nerfed to reduce pvp damage by 50% .... Starting to turn into a waste of money.
+Addi Well, the whole skill shot thing probably needed a bit of a nerf for a few reasons. The first is that it's instant, which means it isn't counterable in PvP. The 2nd, it's essentially a Fulminate that has a 10s ICD instead of 30s CD. Plus, you still get ethereal beam on a 30s CD that is extremely powerful and burns people down very quickly. It's just easily countered is all. Vulcanist is in a really good spot in PvP from the exposure I've had. I haven't gotten a chance to play since the skill shot nerf, but I know it was doing a LOT of damage very frequently before the nerf, and I was wondering if something like this would come down. Molten was also pretty strong with the back to back buff riding you used to be able to do. Vulcanist could definitely use a stun though, that is for certain. Other than that, it's not too bad. This typically happens with new souls. They overtune initially, and dial them back to put them where they should be. Since, if it were the other way around, and they underperformed and then were buffed, that makes the soul more unplayable initially, if that makes sense. I hope you have more fun with your Primalist in the future! =)
Meh. I dropped the Primalist. Sticking with my other tunes due to stability. Not to mention how many people will continue complaining until it becomes a useless class, making it virtually pointless to purchase. Also, if you still haven't had the time to try it after the patch, the Skill Shot doesn't do much more than a single hit from the beacon. So IMO it's nearly best to just use Ethereal Beam off the start to avoid the interrupt if possible, hit Primal Avatar to get the full fury, get the DoT effect from the Fury Blast, drop the beacon, and just throw out Molten Wave for the AE approach lol... If it were a 25% reduction, I would say "hmm... it may still be useful" but at 50% it's not really worth the time
+Addi ; I agree 50% is a pretty harsh initial adjustment. Skill Shot was an extremely powerful skill that just didn't scale appropriately with pvp unfortunately. Personally, I'd like to see it changed to the way Bolt of Depravity works for clerics. Perhaps all Primalist abilities generate a stack of something, and at 10 stacks, you can use a Skill Shot to consume them. (10gcds to stack up 10 stacks still has the same effect). Not having a way to track the ICD on it is annoying to me. The damage is probably ok with the nerf for essentially a 10s CD ability that mimics Fulminate, and we all now how much fun it is to get hit with a 30k fulminate crit in pvp. hehe. Now imagine that happening 3 times as often. 10s vs 30s As for Molten Wave, pre-nerf I used it a lot in warfronts, because you could chain them together to maintain the buff. Now I use it for a Fury dump like before, but I try to use it often to see if I can bait Interrupts before I use Ethereal Beam, since it makes up the bulk of your damage, and REALLY hurts your burst when it gets interrupted. Honestly, I wish rift would move away from stand still channels and abilities. I find it boring having to turret, which is why I don't main my Cleric anymore. I think it'd be cool if instead they penalized the caster with reduced damage for moving. Say, if you move during ethereal beam, it deals 50% less damage kind of thing. Or if you move during a cast time of a spell, it applies a -25% damage to that cast spell. This way players at least have the option of still dealing some damage during mandatory movement on ranged fights.
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Nicely done mate, very interesting and fun to play soul and solid guide from you, just in time.
I'm glad you liked it! let me know if you have any questions. =)
+B Wardle The macros for my guides will always be in the description of the video below as well as the Karuul Alerts. Hope that helps =)
Thank you for the video... you were one of very few that had such good explanations of each skill and how to use them!
+R Gungler No problem, I'm glad you liked it. Let me know if you come up with any other questions, or have other guide requests. The other Primalist souls are on my plate for releases slated over the next week or two. So keep an eye out for those!
good to see you back, was wondering when u would pop up for primalist. very useful guide.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. A lot could still change but I haven't seen a video guide for much of primalist yet and I know a lot of folks who learn better by watching, so I figured I would fill that niche. glad you liked the video =)
+ChamberDown your still the ONLY person doing updated content.. i thank you for your time and effort!
My pleasure. Hoping to help some folks who might be struggling to get a handle on Primalist as a whole. =)
+ChamberDown nice guide,same as my build except I use 6 dervish 2typon
Thank you sooooo much! I just got Primalist and was decently confused until I found your video. ^_^
+Lucas Pool I'm glad you like it. =)
Thank you for your response, i understand I know what moving is about and acclimating to the new location and job. My level is 65 at the moment, not great gear yet, but working on it. I do watch your videos and use them.Keep up it up when you can, great job.
+Crusita Maldonado Thank you much =) I'll create some more as soon as I can get my house in order hehe.
hey man good vid as always .
can you cover ritfblade and tempest for warriors?
+L Baker I will be definitely doing that. Matter of fact, I have Tempest already built and templated, I just have to get the time to record and get it uploaded. I'll try to get it out as soon as I can! =)
Well, I have set up the Macro's. I have studied this rotation, but I just cant figure out this soul at all. For now, when I run NTE's, I just press buttons lol. When I see the skill shot proc come available I use it. When I am at full fury, I cast molten wave. I really do not know. I need to find a spec that is very NTE friendly. Having some major AOE troubles and Typhoon also seems complicated. How is the Beserker soul for PVE?
+Nathaniel Wilson Vulacanist is pretty NTE friendly. You'll want to operate off a simple priority system if you're having issues.
1.) Refresh Precesion Bolt and Conflagurate at the same time, once every 15 seconds. If you use my Kalert this should be easy. The reason for this is Precision Bolt increases your damage by 10% and Conflagurate increases your damage by 5%.
2.) Use Fury Blast only when you are 40 Fury and higher, since if you have 40+ fury it will apply a Damage over Time ability to the target for 8 seconds, which deals large amounts of damage. This will likely become less of a big deal because on the PTS currently, it does 25% less damage.
3.) Use your cooldown block like follows (After you have (.1) done) Ethereal Beam > PA Drake/Skill Shot > Fury Blast > Then continue doing what you're doing.
4.) Beacon of the Drake is great for AoE/Cleave situations but is also a single target gain as well.
So for NTE's what I recommend doing is abusing Molten Wave and Beacon of the Drake for trash packs, pretty much be using abilities with the intention using as many Molten Waves as possible, this means you can avoid casting conflagurate and precision bolt on trash too, because they'll die too fast for those 2 global cooldowns to make a difference.
Typhoon is actually relatively easy, most of it is spamming your (1) key followed by your (2) key, then hitting the (Q) key like 5 times. Matter of fact, if you want an easier way to play, you can play it just like i said, and still pull probably 80% of the damage, which is still much better than Vulcanist.
If you have more questions, I'd be more than happy to assist. I made this Vulcanist guide about a week after release just to get peoples feet wet and before some changes so I may decide to release a newer better guide later on.
Hope this was helpful, and sorry for the book!
I will install the kalert asap and give what you suggest a try. I appreciate the response. Thanks :-)
+Nathaniel Wilson no problem. let me know if I can help with the kalerts setup.
was able to copy and paste your kalert text and get it working. so far so good. rotation is becoming easier.
Nathaniel Wilson glad to hear it!
I macro Spiritualism to cast @self. That way I get the full five ticks, even if I have to switch targets, or if my target dies before I get off all five. I do this on my Rogue and Warrior too.
+Noseeum Nomore That is correct, I discuss this briefly and show the macro at 3:43. You can use this on Primalist, Rogue, Warrior, and Mage (using the specific names per calling) to ensure the 5 stacks are applied to you, rather than the creature you are fighting. If you choose to manage this skill separately for raid, to ensure it lines up with 60s block raid cooldowns, you can make a separate cast @self macro and put it on a separate key.
+ChamberDown Missed that in the video. Yes, I manage it separately. TY.
dunno why but with the spam macro skill shot keeps trying to long cast
+switcheffect Make sure you have Precision Bolt in your macro before Skill Shot. Precision Bolt will be your cast time spam ability, and it should be the one that you cast in the event everything else is on cooldown. Skill Shot is just there so that you can utilize it during movement if needed. Are you max level on your Primalist?
hay did you done something good with BR or may be tempest?
+Vasyl Light I assume you mean RB or Riftblade, and not yet. I just got done spending a lot of time on the Primalist, so I figured while that was fresh I'd churn out a few guides for it. I'll be coming around to those eventually though.
+ChamberDown i mean RB=Riftblade and Tempest since Tempest also get boosted=)
My guide list is still pretty long, and the ones that usually get pushed aside are ones that take more research and effort for recording. In this scenario I play my Mage and Warrior the least so those guides take more time, especially because I want to ensure I'm providing quality content with as few errors as possible.
Don't worry though, they will get released at some point =) I'll try and bump Tempest up since there is a lot of interest in it lately.
+ChamberDown oh didnt see this sry :D ok hope to see it soon :D
L Baker Yea, sorry. Primalist put a lot on my plate, trying to get some video guides out for it as well hehe. Tempest and Riftblade are pretty high up on my priorities though. I promise I'll get em out =)
Do you have an aoe spec with good survival. This one is good but when multi mobs my survival is not as good.
+Crusita Maldonado Unfortunately, Primalist doesn't have some of the best utility for survivability, however your best bet is using 4 Preserver for a subsoul to pick up some healing abilities. For AoE, you should be trying to use as many Molten Waves as possible, which means using a lot of abilities that grant 40 Fury. You could also try using dervish, as "Whirling Dervish" does some spectacular aoe damage, but it depends on what level you are I suppose. Other than that, while leveling, if you want to take on multiple mobs, you could try using some berserker in there, but I'm not sure it would do as well as full Vulcanist would. I'll see if I can catch some time and research something for you. RIght now my time has been tapped setting up my new house and getting acclimated to my new job. =)
What finger do you use the equals key with?
I use my left index finger. I have pretty good dexterity, so I can hit it and return to home (aswd) fairly quickly. if I find I'm going up against players who are particularly stun happy, I'll sometimes move it to the "z" keybind. hope that helps!
Hey! Planar Attunement for this build?
+LcEtrigan72 Planar Attunement is tricky. Essentially you'll want to choose what you like to do best. Raiding? Dungeons? Open World? PvP? and make your template based on that.
1.) For instance, if you primarily like to raid, you'd want to fill up the trees that give you the 15m temporary buffs like "Renewing Pod" for endurance. You'd also want to focus on fillig out the Red gems for Attack Power, and the blue gems that are Dexterity, since they give you increased stats.
2.) For Open World, you can do a mix of all the trees, since you'll want more survivability as well as damage.
3.) For PvP, venture to the War tree and pickup everything in there for some nice passive bonuses
4.) For dungeons and group content, its similar to raid, and you'll want to select them based on if you like to dps or tank. For tank, go for all the endurance gems. For DPS, go for all the Attack Power and Dexterity gems.
I'll be doing an in depth Planar Attunement video eventually so keep watching for that, and hopefully it can help answer questions you may or mat not have. =)
aweseome guide but I do have one problem with it ... You are showing 2 - 65 Masteries in your tutorial. You have it bound as a target self buff then you have it the other mastery on you 7 key.
Also person can make macro that stops cast targets themselves and cast Spiritualism.
+SuperSo Starstoyou That is correct and not an error. The "Self" macro is for PvP, hence why it isn't mentioned in the macro section of this PvE guide. It is simply a "cast @self Ancestral Force" to be used as a heal in warfronts. I change my 65 mastery on the fly based on the situation. The reason the Ancestral Force is on the "7" key, is for when you anticipate clearing a trash pack, say, in an expert dungeon or open world, and you don't want to swap specs, you can switch to Ancestral Force, and use it as a powerful AoE DPS cooldown from your "7" key, and then swap back to Spiritualism after the trash fight concludes.
There is no need to use the "target@self" and "targetlasttarget" functions in this instance, because you can accomplish the same thing with spiritualism by using "cast @self Spiritualism". Just like in a programming language, you want to accomplish a task with as few lines of code as possible. While you can accomplish Spiritualism use with the two macro functions I list above in the beginning of this paragraph, it doesn't make sense to do so, since cast @self functions do not actually target the player, and keep the existing target which is the goal.
Lastly, Spiritualism is off global cooldown, meaning there is no point in "stopcasting" because it can be cast during a global cooldown recovery (which is why it's at the end of the macro, always). You do not want to interrupt any abilities with an off global cooldown skill, since it can be cast when no other ON global cooldown abilities can. So it's easy and very efficient to fire it off inbetween your other skills. This is managed automatically in this particular setup with your spam macro, although you can alternatively manage it separately for phase bases like Sicaron in HK.
I hope all that makes sense. If you have any other comments or questions, please feel free to ask, and I hope that helps clear up some of your concerns =).
The rotation is wrong, and vulcanist isnt played by priority.
Vulcanist has a fixed rotation, the only thing you really can change is Molten Wave instead of Ethereal Beam.
There should be 4 x precision bolt in a minute, 4 x channels (2 mw and 2 eb, or more MW depending on cleave)
Two fury blast per / 15 sec block, 3 Stroke of Brilliance per / 15 sec block.
Vulcanist doesnt play well with macros either, in fact you shouldnt really have any macro for vulcanist, as you wanna know where you are on the focus bar.
+Daniel Andersson Firstly, thank you for your input! I do understand Vulcanist can be played optimally maximizing each skill based on the windows of their individual cooldowns. I do also understand how to get very close to 6 Skill shots in a 60s window, how to use Stroke of Brilliance at 0 optimally, how to maintain your two buffs via Conflagurate and Precision bolt, etc.
That being said, the main focus of my guides is to help beginner to intermediate players and maybe even a few of the better players refine their rotations or maybe learn something that they didn't know before. It's inevitable that I'll get people who say the rotation is wrong, and people who say the rotation is too difficult. Given that the main focus is beginners to intermediates, I'd prefer "The rotation is wrong" people, as they typically don't need any help anyway. But my focus here is to weigh differences in optimal and non-optimal with difficult and not-as-difficult to help players competitively play a spec.
This guide was created in response to a few players who were having issues with the soul right after release. Some people don;t do well reading guides. They prefer videos so I released a video showing the base priority (and yes, every spec is based on priority, every GCD has a skill that has "priority" if we're speaking in technicalities. For instance, most people would say Shaman is priority based as well as Assassin, but I can list out my 60s set rotation same as Vulcanist for both) so that they could learn the spec and how all the skills interact with each-other.
If you're here to looking to learn something, I hope the video was helpful, although I suspect you are already aware of the current top theory crafting regarding Vulcanist based on your post and the videos I create likely aren't aimed at a player like yourself.
I hope you better understand the intent of this video, and I hope I was able to assure you that I personally keep up to date with current theory crafting regarding most souls in Rift so as to provide the best quality guides that I can and also to be a competitive player. The original idea actually, was to release this guide, then release an updated one in about a month after some some bug fixes and nerfs (i.e. Skill shot in PvP, Double Molten Wave nerf, Beacon fixes, etc) were more worked out, but I have other priorities to get recorded first.
Thank you for the comment, and sorry if you felt the video wasn't up to your standard. Please let me know if you come up with other questions/comments. Happy Rifting! =)
+ChamberDown
Well, lets say it like this then.
If there where better guides, there might be better players so we dont have to nerf bosses to the ground so that the socials can kill them with their 1 button specs.
Vulcanist isnt played as priority like harb for an example.
You have 4 blocks in a 1 minute rotation, thats it. Nothing else, you cant suddenly cast conflagrate in there and hope you do fine.
Everything is placed in a certain position to maximize uptime of everything.
Getting 6 skill shots in a 1 minute rotation doesnt provide maximum dps, but its possible. But then you would do 40k less.
+Daniel Andersson My goal has always been to improve the gaming experience of the people who play Rift. Not everyone who watches my guides is in a World First race trying to down the latest content. Also, only previous tier bosses are nerfed typically and it is indeed to allow access to the less hardcore, since most of the hardcore move on to the next tier immediately. I don't really understand how this affects you. You're achievements still show dates pre-nerf, you still have the slot on leaderboards (If you're competitive) and the other players who maybe don't have the time to raid 4 nights a week can check out some of the deeper in content and maybe learn a thing or two and down a boss or two with some progression and coordination. I mean, there are pugs who still lock 1/5 MS, or can't down Finric and we're on T3 now.
Rift is large, my guide is tagged as an "Intermediate guide". Make one that's labeled "Advanced guide" and throw it up on youtube if you'd like to help people min/max. Or, you could have left a constructive comment like, "You could also try xxxx rotation if you're looking to min/max" and then list the rotation you personally use. This way, players read the comments and see the rotation you've provided and see if it suits them.
Also, from my testing, and the testing of others, getting Skill Shot in once every 10s is one of your highest priorities. So I don't know why you wouldn't. If you'd like to shed some light on that, I'd be more than happy to take a look, because you certainly don't see how you'd do 40k less DPS from it, unless that was a bit of an overstatement =)
+ChamberDown
Yes but a guide, should be accurate, no matter what the goal is. Making a guide that shows a rotation (or well a macro) wouldnt make people better players as they wouldnt understand the spec anyway.
For min-maxing, you can do 4 skill shots per minute, and still keep everything else lined up and used.
All the rotations are written in the Vulcanist thread on the forums, i dont see why you wouldnt tell people to learn that rotation?
Precision Bolt -> PA + BotD -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Molten Wave -> Rage Spike -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo
Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Ethereal Beam -> Vorpal Salvo -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo
Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Molten Wave -> Rage Spike -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo
Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Skill Shot -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo -> Ethereal Beam -> Vorpal Salvo -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Vorpal Salvo
If you suffer from lag, you can replace the last vorpal salvo and start with block one again.
If you for whatever reason are delaying cooldowns (or they aint used 4.5 sec into the fight) you can do this as an opener
Precision Bolt -> Conflagrate -> Stroke of Brilliance -> Fury Blast
Then start with block 1, precision bolt and so on.
The only thing you really can change is, doing Molten Wave instead of Ethereal Beam (if you want more cleave, or if its more targets)
If you wanna go into advanced rotations, you also have a two target rotation with double dot.
And for 3 targets, consistantly, you would go Typhoon anyway (if ranged).
+Daniel Andersson This is much better information. If I catch some time I'll do some testing and maybe I'll release another guide. The original intent of this guide was just to get people started because Vulcanist was still new and most of the theory crafting you are talking about did't exist yet. This guide was uploaded on October 15th, right after the Precision Bolt change. =)
Thanks for your input, and thanks for taking the time to provide the rotations you are using and offer extra information. I'm sure this will benefit other players checking out the guide.
Well.... Skill shot has 50% less damage output in pvp... Hurray for nerfs. Cause, y'know, 50% isn't much, right? -.- Not to mention the Berserker's ability Spirits Wrath was ALSO nerfed to reduce pvp damage by 50% .... Starting to turn into a waste of money.
+Addi Well, the whole skill shot thing probably needed a bit of a nerf for a few reasons. The first is that it's instant, which means it isn't counterable in PvP. The 2nd, it's essentially a Fulminate that has a 10s ICD instead of 30s CD. Plus, you still get ethereal beam on a 30s CD that is extremely powerful and burns people down very quickly. It's just easily countered is all. Vulcanist is in a really good spot in PvP from the exposure I've had. I haven't gotten a chance to play since the skill shot nerf, but I know it was doing a LOT of damage very frequently before the nerf, and I was wondering if something like this would come down. Molten was also pretty strong with the back to back buff riding you used to be able to do.
Vulcanist could definitely use a stun though, that is for certain. Other than that, it's not too bad. This typically happens with new souls. They overtune initially, and dial them back to put them where they should be. Since, if it were the other way around, and they underperformed and then were buffed, that makes the soul more unplayable initially, if that makes sense.
I hope you have more fun with your Primalist in the future! =)
Meh. I dropped the Primalist. Sticking with my other tunes due to stability. Not to mention how many people will continue complaining until it becomes a useless class, making it virtually pointless to purchase. Also, if you still haven't had the time to try it after the patch, the Skill Shot doesn't do much more than a single hit from the beacon. So IMO it's nearly best to just use Ethereal Beam off the start to avoid the interrupt if possible, hit Primal Avatar to get the full fury, get the DoT effect from the Fury Blast, drop the beacon, and just throw out Molten Wave for the AE approach lol... If it were a 25% reduction, I would say "hmm... it may still be useful" but at 50% it's not really worth the time
+Addi ; I agree 50% is a pretty harsh initial adjustment. Skill Shot was an extremely powerful skill that just didn't scale appropriately with pvp unfortunately. Personally, I'd like to see it changed to the way Bolt of Depravity works for clerics. Perhaps all Primalist abilities generate a stack of something, and at 10 stacks, you can use a Skill Shot to consume them. (10gcds to stack up 10 stacks still has the same effect). Not having a way to track the ICD on it is annoying to me. The damage is probably ok with the nerf for essentially a 10s CD ability that mimics Fulminate, and we all now how much fun it is to get hit with a 30k fulminate crit in pvp. hehe. Now imagine that happening 3 times as often. 10s vs 30s
As for Molten Wave, pre-nerf I used it a lot in warfronts, because you could chain them together to maintain the buff. Now I use it for a Fury dump like before, but I try to use it often to see if I can bait Interrupts before I use Ethereal Beam, since it makes up the bulk of your damage, and REALLY hurts your burst when it gets interrupted.
Honestly, I wish rift would move away from stand still channels and abilities. I find it boring having to turret, which is why I don't main my Cleric anymore. I think it'd be cool if instead they penalized the caster with reduced damage for moving. Say, if you move during ethereal beam, it deals 50% less damage kind of thing. Or if you move during a cast time of a spell, it applies a -25% damage to that cast spell. This way players at least have the option of still dealing some damage during mandatory movement on ranged fights.