The Spirit Realm

Anyone have experience with this spell that can share their experiences?

Sure!

I cast it -- it ate a bunch of mana. I never cast it again.

The spell has uses, but they will likely be few and highly dependent on your play-style. I only ever keep one nuke up, so having a chance to spawn the the swarm every 12 seconds is of limited value to me especially at such a high mana cost. If the mana cost wasn't so severe, I might use it more but as it is now I would really only use this spell when I knew my mana wasn't going to be needed for something more important than a small DPS burst (ie: healing).

It consumes 300 mana/tic and has a theoretic max dps of around 80 DPS if you can chaincast nukes.

Writing it, there came up an idea. Did anyone a test, if a panther-proc may cause the pack to come up? If thats the case, the spell could get interesting.
My usual spellset has no room for 2 nukes. So if it can only proc on casted nukes, I may never find a situation where I will use it.

Edit: fast test 5 min parse; does not proc on panther-type or other weapon-proc, so maybe as intended just on cast nukes.

Haven't tested it also, but here's another question... it Twincast is used will it also trigger it on the second cast theoretically?

I also only leave one nuke up, so have been debating it...

Shm only have twincast as an AA, not as a spell, so "used" is an odd way to phrase it. The spell is cast again, though, so I'm sure it's able to trigger Aina.

Forgot I had this spell and decided to try it last night. It sucked all my mana and didn't do anything. I'm not prone to whining but this is one big SPOS (steaming pile o' shit). I doubt there's any chance anyone at SOE will read this and/or care, but they should either remove the mana drain or make it proc on EVERY nuke. As it is... SPOS.

Hard to say since it never procs. I was casting two DoTs and a nuke for a few mobs and never saw it proc.

Seriously, though, I've read that it is only triggered by DD but I have no confirmation of that.

I used it once or twice when Soloing and it proc`d steady but I also run 8 Dots at a time. IT IS WAY TOO MANA HEAVY FOR THE DPS IT DOES.

So our version of the swarm pet spell 1) takes a buff slot 2) does lousy dps 3) costs too much mana 4) only has a chance of actually making pets when we nuke. Wow, sounds amazing.

What are you comparing it to? It's entirely new

I tried it out when we had 2 or so guild groups farming the Junk guy in FM for the decoder. There wasn't much else to do since the trash was dying so fast so I loaded a few nukes.

The mana drain was discouraging and once the "ooh cool, look at that" factor wore off I didn't cast it again and don't foresee doing so anytime soon.

I'm comparing it to a spell that might be useful. From the descriptions here, can't see a reason to use this, unless maybe i was grouped with 3 or 4 mages using Jolt of Many. It burns a buff slot, has the mana efficiency of a level 40 nuke and relies on a chance to proc off a casted nuke to actually do anything. Seems like plain bad spell design.

Other classes have swarm pet spells, without the same restrictions. Even without comparing to those, pack of aina seems very lackluster at best.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?i ... ource=Live
Bard spell summons 5 pets
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?i ... ource=Live
Beast spell summons up to 4 pets

Ahhh, bards. They so do not count. Also note the recast on that one.

I sortof forgot about the beastlord spell, but it doesn't -reliably- summon more than one pet. 5% chance of getting more.

Yeah the functionality is different on all 3 spells, and I like the idea behind Pack, since it is a buff (with the good and bad points that entails) you can put on yourself and not have to designate yet another spell gem for it. The combination of its mana cost while active, restriction to only firing off nukes and only being a 20% chance to proc, all for a max 80dps effect doesn't seem worth the bother, outside of some very narrow situations. I don't really have an issue with situational spells, but they should be really good in those certain situations. This doesn't look like it passes that test.

Yeah; The mana drain seems kinda steep. Cutting it in half or something would make the spell a lot more palatable, I think. That or making the pack happen more often, or do more damage or...

What is it with Sony and wanting to give spells the good ol' one-two-three-four punch to make sure they're balanced?

The Idea of the spell is great. I would like to use it atleast on some occasions.
At the rate it triggers for my feeling its by far to huge of a manadrain.
I am not aware of any group-event where a single mob has to die within a certain amount of seconds.
As long as I dont face this mob I will rather save the mana to heal my groupmates.

I am curious. Hands up: Who is using this Spell atleast once a week?

definitely needs a proc message.

It is likely not intended but it will proc off low level nukes. Did not seem to work on spells lower than level 15-20ish though but not enough testing done to say for sure.

That is the ONLY use I have found for this, and that was jsut for the fun of the eye candy really not actual dps produced.
I will bet that will be fixed and then I will have no use for it at all.

The proc rate is too low, the dps is too low, and the mana drain is just silly.

It is a poorly designed, poorly balanced, crappy spell let us not kid ourselves that its anything but that.
Chain casting a mid level nuke will outdage this per mana no matter how you slice it.
That is sad considering we are mainly a dot class and nukes are not our forte.

This spell is more along the line of Cleric hammers or Wizard swords while draining all your mana....

All but worthless imho.

It could be fixed to be a neat spell by increasing the mana cost to cast and removing the drain and adjusting the duration.
Alot of other things that could be fun with it too like making it a group spell etc.
Has lots of potential not to suck it just doesnt deliver on it the way it is now.

I suppose it a moot point though as Prathun is not overly famous for caring about if its a worthwhile spell to fix it.

I believe they could make this spell MUCH better than what it currently is. I was grouping with a BST guild member last night and he was casting his pet swarm spell on just about every single pull. It seemed to do a good bit of damage on the mobs from what I could tell. I asked him how often he could cast it and he said about every 30 seconds or so as long as mana permited.

I understand that we aren't a BST, but I think they could adjust the duration, mana cost, ect to make this a more useful spell for us. Just my 2 cents worth.

I used it once, decided the mana drain was way too high for the very minor benefit, never memmed it again.

Yesterday we went to powater for some falbled weapons .. no luck. But waiting for the spawn there was plenty of time to play around.

One thing I found out: Languid Bite and Pack of Aina don't stack

Languid Bite
Slot 1: Add Spell Proc Languid Bite Effect (75% proc chance)
Duration: 00:03:00 (30 ticks)

Languid Bite Effect
Slot 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 540 @L1 to 582 @L85 per tick
Duration: 00:00:30 (5 ticks)


Pack of Aina Rk. II
Slot 1: Add Spell Proc Call the Pack (20% proc chance)
Slot 2: Limit: Only applied to spells with Spelltype: Detrimental Slot 3: Limit: Only applied to spells with Slot 3: Limit: Only applied to spells with Effect Type: Hitpoints (Damage Spells / Heals)
Slot 10: Decrease Mana by 300 per tick
Duration: 00:20:30 (205 ticks)

Call the Pack
Slot 1: Summon Pets: shaman_wolf_77_Rk2 x3 for 10 sec


Languid Bite is almost 100 dps, 75% procc chance 5 Tics dot. So during its curse of 30 sec, you may want to reslow 2 max 3 times with your AA-slow to retrigger the dot. This can be easy done during cooldown time of the spellbar using the AA-slow. 0 Spellslot needed, you maintain the freedom do cast whatever you want for most of the time.

Pack of Aina is theroetic max. 80 dps if you can chain nukes/dots during that time. (20% proccchance so any 5 nukes/dots it should proc and run for 10 sec). That, for the same runtime of 3 minutes of the languid bite makes a manadrain of 9k mana.
If I will prepare for "that" event where I need to squeeze out the max. dps possible its not hard to guess, which option I am going to choose.

My personal rating of "Pack of Aina" went from "very situational" to "there's no scenario left, where I can imagine I might will pull out this spell" aka completly useless.

If you want to support your fellow mage for his "jolt of many": there's a new quest you can find on pok result: Cloth Cap, a swarmpet-inventory-clicky
Cloth Cap
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE
Charges: Unlimited
Effect: Veeshan's Swarm (Any Slot, Casting Time: 1.0) :: 1: Summon Pets: veeshanSwarm4 x 5 for 30 sec
Recast Delay: 600 seconds, Recast Type: -1
WT: 0.5 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL

I have seen Sting crits of over 16k, still I dont declare sting is 16k dps.

"It's better than Languid Bite in that far greater DPS spikes are possible, on the other hand Languid Bite doesn't take mana and is a constant known amount of DPS."

If a bites fight last about or less than 3 minutes for you and you will parse 5 sucessful bite fights with pack of aina and 5 with Languid bite you will come out, that with languid bite you dealt more damage to the mob. For me that makes Langud Bite for the better option for this kind of events.

All out for me is languid > pack.


Where does the 80 dps come from?

Lets start form theory:
Lets presume that its 150 dps when it procs for a duration of 10 sec. It has a chance to procc of 20%. Chaincasting Spear unfocused you can cast once per 6 seconds focused probably once every 4 seconds. Unfocused 5x6=30 seconds between proccs averange makes it 50 dps. 5x4 seconds = 20 seconds focused would be around 75 dps.

From the practical side: I parsed it on beta chaincasting nukes and doing nothing else. The parse ended around 79 dps.

That makes me state that this spell delivers a max. theoretic dps of 80. Because in reality you might want to do other stuff than just chainnuking/dotting, the manadrain remains but the dps goes down.


Now to be constructive some more, the best procc of Aina I had is here:
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:03 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 110 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:03 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 101 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:03 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 87 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:03 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 91 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:04 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 63 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:04 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 40 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:04 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 129 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:04 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 129 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:05 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 82 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:06 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 73 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:06 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 129 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:06 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 124 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:07 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 73 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:07 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 129 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:08 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 115 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:09 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 73 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:10 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 129 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:11 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 129 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:11 2008] Kumudil`s pet bashes Test Eighty Five for 36 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:13 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 59 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:13 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 82 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:13 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 129 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:13 2008] Kumudil`s pet bashes Test Eighty Five for 36 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:14 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 82 points of damage.
[Tue Oct 14 23:08:14 2008] Kumudil`s pet bites Test Eighty Five for 91 points of damage.

2321 dmg total = 232 dps for that proc, all pet AAs where taken, I had 3 flurrys in that proc.

now if we compare:

Severilous' Spear of Venom Rk. II
1: Decrease Hitpoints by 2431
Mana: 715
Casting Time: 4.2 Recast Time: 1.5 .. ca. 6 sec chaincasting
Unfocused: 405 dps for 3.2 DPM
Focused gestimate: 800 dps for 7.7 DPM ca. 40% critchance, ca 25% increase from poisonfocus, ca. 20% mana preserved between AAs and pres. focus


If Pack of Aina would have 50% proccchance it should procc every second nuke, chaincasting Spear we will be able to fire it every approx. second tic (atleast over long therms it will be 1 procc every 2 casts).
2321 total for 300 mana/tic = 600 mana per 2 tic
193 dps for 3.8 dpm

So if the Pack of Aina proccrate would get the proccrate changed to 50% we will have an "overdrive" dps half of the efficiency of the nukes (which for efficiency are worse than our dots) for an additional 193 dps. Changed that way, it will offer 100 dps more than languid bite for an 300 mana/tic manadrain, or around 200 dps when languid bite isn't up.

A proccchance of 100% would bring the efficiency about on par with the nukes, which likely wasn't the intension creating this spell.

Thats all based on groupfoci, for Raiders the efficiency will be worse, as they get better foci.


So if someone would like a constructive suggestion on this: set the proccchance of Pack of Aina to 50%.
The hight manadrain still would warrant, that it remains situational but for special situations i.e. the breakin to "holding the Fort" or similar, where you know beforhand, that soon you would like max burn dps for a relative short time, I will pull it out and use it.

Nothing near the burst of twincast, which ontop is manafree (the new spell of this expansion for the nuke dps).
But this I would felt like a shamanistic way of "overdrive" which would also find its uses. We are not the masters of burst dps.

Lets see, if I understood.

We do agree in the following facts:
Pack of Aina and Languid Bite are about same DPS.
Pack of Aina and Languid Bite do not stack, so its either or. If you want max. dps you have to choose one of both.

Languid bite is easy to maintain in any situation. 1-2 AA slow every 30 seconds is easy to deliver during cooldown of the spellbar. It cost 0 mana. Its very flat out always same dps.

Pack of Aina requires to burn 2 of our other special abilities to maintain. Its of streaky nature by design (caused by the 20% proc-chance). You need the possibillity to chain damage (dots or nukes) for its time running to get the dps out of it.


Here ends the agreement.

In a Situation where I am 100% sure there wont be any adds or surprises for a loong time (which may only happen when soloing and I know i will have a break soon) I still would take the "warranted" dps of languid bite over the "streaky" dps of the pack even if the streaky one would be as well manafree. In non critic situations I might would pull out Pack of Aina for the fun of it.
But as the Pack drains your mana at hight rate and you need to burn other abilities to maintain it in any meaningful situation, I will never use it if it remains as it is. The fact that the streaky nature of its dps can lead to fights where its total damage dealt might be higher than that of langud bite for me has no value.


My view of this spell is: Its meant to be "overcap" dps. It drains mana at hight rate. It should be of notable dps ontop of anything else we can pull out.

What happens if cast Aina via HP cast? Will it end when it tries to subtract mana and finds none?

If not this might be an alternative way to use it?

Have a nice day. ^_^