Sorceress Spell Rotations

This is my first article on Spelldamage.com. Hello to you all. My toon’s name is Muradi, I am a Sorc that plays on Praag open RvR server who is part of a successful guild and alliance. During my free time at work, I obsess on my Sorc and try to find out how to play better and become more competitive.

While working on the math for the Sorc, I try different spell rotations with the goal to utilize time and Action Points in the most efficient way to give maximum damage and possible maximum burst damage.

First, here is the data about my Sorc. The graph is based on: 885 int + 71magic power, 22% chance to crit. The total crit was calculated at full Dark Magic and the opponents chance to be crit was calculated at 10%. The average damage was calculated by a weighted average, all data was based on damage calculator on spelldamage.com. This chart does not consider damage mitigation.

The mastery configuration is 13/9/0;abilities are spent for Shades of Death, Swell of Gloom, Impending Doom and Hand of Ruin, (Swell of Gloom, Echo of power, Tapping the dark): Single target max burst dmg Sorc.

In the rotations, Swell of Gloom tactic is being used, Impending doom can be switched with Swell of Gloom. Hand of Ruin is stopped at 4 seconds. Using ImpD first gives more mobility before Hand of Ruin. Using Swell of Gloom times the cooldown perfectly (5secs) , so if somehow you get +AP by the end of Hand of Ruin (tactics, friendly spells, banner or  Renown Rank 65&75) you can use another Gloomburst at the end of the rotation. Except for rotation 4 where the Gloomburst is already used twice; once before HoR and once after.

The spell rotations being compared in the chart are:

1.  Word of pain + Chillwind + Shades of Death + Vision of Torment + Impending Doom + Swell-of-Gloomburst + Hand of Ruin (255 AP) in dark blue

2. WoP + Obsessive Focus + SoD + VoT + ImpD + SoG +HoR (245 AP) in pink

3. Wop + SoD + VoT + SoG + ImpD + HoR + SoG (260 AP) in yellow

4. WoP + SoD + SoG + ImpD + HoR + SoG (225 AP) in light blue

Let’s consider different Scenarios:

Heals and resists. We hate them. We have no way to debuff them. What we have to do is time our damage so nothing is healed through, or healed through in minimum amount possible. This is also called Spike damage. We have 2 DoTs that damage after time, and there is the beauty of it. Rotations 1 and 2 try to have WoP and VoT hit together at the same time. How to fill the 2 casts between the 2 dots depends on the situation. Shades of death is perfect right before VoT. That leaves us with the Filler spell that we can change based on the situation. Let’s compare a pure damage scenario. As you can see the dark blue line (rotation 1) is very close to the pink (rotation 2). The sad thing is that throughout this time the Chillwind will probably get healed through and be a waste of AP. Rotation 2 has also an advantage with extra 10 AP. Unfortunately OF has a 1 minute cooldown. These 2 are my main rotations for burst damage.

When you compare rotation 1&2 with rotation 3&4, you clearly see how 3&4 can be healed through and the damage done can be a waste of AP. How can heals be a problem on a 1:1 situation? 3 out of 11 enemy classes are healers, 3 are tanks while I am not sure which, some of them can heal themselves, bw’s can use their gloomburst counterpart as a healing ability that heals 67% of the dmg it deals, any class might pop a potion in 1:1.

For situations that there are no healers, potions, tanks or bright wizards, it is fair to say rotation 3 deals the most damage after 13 seconds have passed, while it uses the most AP (260) this is only possible with a tactic or at RR 65. Rotation 3 skips the Filler for another Swell-of-Gloomburst at the end. In my opinion the extra 1k dmg at the end is not worth the extra AP spent and the 2 seconds.

Compared to 260AP in Rotation 3, Rotation 4 uses 225 AP, it skips VoT and achives the most damage at 11 seconds. If the target is being focused on and going to go down quick, Rotation 4 is the most suitable one. you can also drop WoP, maybe even SoG and break HoR at 2 seconds to plug in SoG at the end – which is not beneficial AP/dmg wise but it will deal the most direct dmg in the shortest time and take the killing blow >> SoD, ImpD, HoR(2sec), SoG.

Let’s consider different situations in the heat of battle.

Against any caster, specifically bw’s (also engi’s), you can plug in a Silence in place of the filler. Engi’s will still be able to use their gun but not most of their hurting dots. This would look like Rotation 1 with Silence as the Filler : Word of pain + Silence + Shades of Death + Vision of Torment + Swell-of-Gloomburst + Impending Doom + Hand of Ruin (245 AP). The bw will be silenced from second 1.5 to second 6.5- right when you finish casting your SoG and hit with your ImP. Here note that SoG is cast before ImpD in case the first thing the bw does might be silence, but most of them dot you instead. That way your SoG will be already cast and wont be interrupted. Depending on the situation, it is beneficial to cast a +Resist before you get in range of the wizard, since it lasts for 20 seconds this will be fine. If the morale 1 is up, a smart bw will use their Rank 1 morale knockback when silenced, to knock you out of range. You can also cast the resist if you get knocked back out of range, while flying in the air- you will be making best use of your time.

For ranged Healers the above rotation is effective. You can also use Rotation 2 (or 1 ) if there are cooldown problems with Silence.

Against Shadow warrior:

use the above rotation and substitute Silence with disarm. Since you won’t be kiting him standing there to cast the Disarm won’t be a problem. Most of them don’t try to kite you since the max range difference is 10feet.

Against Witch Hunter:

Hopefully your initiative is high enough so you can see them at least 1 second before they get to you to cast a Disarm. This will give you 4.5 seconds to keep hitting them. Here, I am not sure if they can silence you once the Disarm expires; this I have to research. But the good WH and also the usual one (they will get freaked out of your nukes) will put up Shroud of Magnus (which lasts 7 seconds), at second 4.5. You have to do max dmg in 4.5 seconds, waste 1 spell to be distrupted and spam 3 or 4 Echo of Power’s. My choice would be Impending doom, SoG, HoR (first HoR tick hits at 3, the second gets distrupted at 5 ) (this will cost 105 AP until here) Immediately you can start spamming Echo of Power, if you’re lucky you might hit 4 times but probably you will hit 3, at which time you’ll be at second 10.5. You will have wasted 200 AP, there is room enough for your SoG, so slam that and that will hit at 11.5, right when his Shroud will have expired. Things might not always work this way but remember the basics, always Disarm first, do most direct dmg in 4.5 seconds, be ready for Echo of Power, remember to wait 7 seconds for Shroud o Magnus, your Echo of Power availability is 5 seconds. So wait for 1 more second and cast SoG.

Tank, Warpriest:

If you can have >250AP try Rotation 2 with a Twist: WoP, OF, SoD, VoT, ImpD, Disarm, SoG, HoR. This will cost 270AP. If you have 250 AP skip OF and pass on that GCD. It is more important that you do all your damage at once so it cannot be healed. Casting instants until Disarm will make sure you are kiting

White Lion

I left this one for the last because this is my most used rotation, dude to being melee-trained most the time J . Most probably the WL has fetched you 5kmiles or jumped at you 60feet J amazing huh? If you’re fetched you have to target the WL and start casting your instants before you land , preferably as soon as you can at 100ft range. If you see him at 100 ft try to kite. Use this variation of Rotation 1 or 2, using a Detaunt for the filler. This would look like Wop, Detaunt, SoD, VoT, SoG, ImpD, HoR. You will have him do half dmg to you for 5.5 seconds until SoG hits. The burst will come after that. If he did not fetch you and is going to jump at you try this: WoP, Disarm, SoD, VoT, SoG, ImpD, HoR. I have to do research to see if he can silence you while disarm, I belive he can, but at least he won’t be hitting you, and none of the most the spells you cast are instant which will have less thatn GCD timers. If the worse is the case skip SoG.

What I find myself doing in 1 on 2 situations when the melee is on me, or I am trying to kill a caster with a healer next to him or kill a healer with a SW next to him etc. I cast the WoP on my first target, switch target to the next one: if against 2 melee I cast Detaunt on the 2^nd target and switch back and forget about him. From there I continue the rotation as I skipped 1 GCD after Wop. Since I cant’ run away I do a disarm and go on as such: SoD, VoT, SoG, ImpD, HoR. If there are 3 melees on me and I have a rank3 up I do a Detaunt on target 2, disable 3 and hit the initial with the same rotation. Similar to that, you can get very creative with detaunt to kill a healer with a dps next to him pounding you. Or to kill the dps silencing the healer and switching back to continue the rotation.

Finally, I am at rank 66 and I am not using GoN because the ticks from it cancel out my detaunts. I might get it at 70 but it will be even more situational, casting on target that I am not or not be related with in the next 15 seconds, which is very very situational. In keeps it’s always good. I might go on to add a point to my Agony line for 2.5% more dmg to those spells. But again, that part is my preference.

Muradi

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