Fire Rune-Keeper DPS: Best Practices

[siipperi]

I would love to see your dps parses.

[Dragofer]

I would love to see your dps parses.

Alright then, to figure out whether the wall of text was worth it, here are my slightly above average parses (Update 16):

Lumithil parse:

7098 dps, 3m26.7s, guardian and minstrel, 200 dps above the average for this setup. This was a normal run where ghosts were burned down with Essay of Fire + Smouldering Wrath. Done with AoE traits - the Harrowing Spirit closes in at 300k boss morale or so when their power runs out. Mastery was 52.4k, mastery tooltip +131%, +2 pulses.

Dummy parse:

12999 dps, 2m22.4s. Made when testing my power usage, in whatever gear I happened to have on atm. Mastery would've been 66.3k, mastery tooltip +169.2%, +2 pulses (for what it's worth).

This one is for comparison with other classes. Rk dps against dummies seems to depend on how well-timed dots are compared to the resets, this one was relatively lucky. I've had one session that sustained 14k dps over 2 mins in this gear but then the last reset botched the result.

Turtle parse:

12378 dps, 1m18.5s. A slightly older max-dps attempt from when this thread had 15 posts. 74.7k mastery and +2 pulses. The guardian shield-walled and taunted for me. Mastery tooltip was +198.1% (+193.1% before attack tome).


To scale tactical dps up or down with mastery:
(100% + new mastery tooltip %) / (100% + own mastery tooltip %) = multiplier of own dps


As a rule of thumb:
If one run did 20% more dps, the other run took 20% longer.

[Dragofer]

Empowering Flames (-30% inductions buff)

Maybe one of the most promising ways to squeeze out some more dps after doing everything else is to work with the inductions buff. Free Writs and long-induction skills can be timed to increase the chances of getting the buff and then make the most of it. Advantages are:

- Every extra Writ gained by saving time (~0.7s each) is worth 3800 tooltip damage (post #47). Saving 2 seconds every minute is an extra tick of Smouldering Wrath.
- The fire mitigations buff does run out because it can’t be refreshed. Using more skills (especially Writs) is a few more seconds at 135% incoming rather than 100% incoming.
- Being faster increases chances of getting a better skill order, i.e. fitting in an Essence of Flame/Distracting Flame before Smouldering Wrath comes off cooldown. In that case Essence of Flame could be used again 5s earlier/Distracting Flame gains 2 ticks.
- In AoE the induction buff makes a difference of +20% in Fiery Ridicule spam’s dps.
- Fire runekeeper is more fun to play with fast inductions.


Ways to time are as follows:

- Free Writs should be used after Empowering Flames because the buff can’t be refreshed.
- Free Writs should be used after Smouldering Wrath because the buff would lose 5s of its 8s duration if it procs before.
- While Smouldering Wrath is running check if there’ll be a bit of Empowering Flames left to see if you should queue the free Writ or a long-induction skill like Essay of Fire/Essence of Flame.
- Essence of Storm can be used to skip using up a free Writ (i.e. Fiery Ridicule, Essence of Storm, Smouldering Wrath, free Writ). One reason to get lightning damage legacies.
- You’re mainly doing this to get more Writs and fire skill hits, so free Writs should sometimes be used even if Empowering Flames is active. For me this is only if Empowering Flames just started recently and if there's a while before Smouldering Wrath comes off cooldown.


That was for single-target. In AoE:

- The same except that there’s no need to use free Writs during Empowering Flames. Simply save them for after Empowering Flames/after Smouldering Wrath.
- Normal Writs on average don’t get back their casting time so no need to include them in AoE. They’re only worthwhile if you’re about to use Smouldering Wrath on a target that doesn’t have the fire mitigation debuff yet.
- Combustion and Runestones don't count towards free Writs.


This tactic requires the BuffBars plugin. In action:



Notes about this video as it’s been a while ago it’s been posted:
- Starting with Writ, DF, Writ to buff the next skills is obsolete because it tiers up Writ too fast, preventing a lot of Searing Words procs.
- Essay + Distracting Flame should've been used before Smouldering Wrath instead of Essay + Ridicule sometimes to avoid losing dot damage. (post #48, skill priorities)

[Hallatur]

Really great resource thread Dragofer, thank you very much for providing all this information and showing the tests you have performed.

It was interesting to see your LI set–ups, out of my main characters I play it is to this day most complex to get to optimized LIs for my RK, having to max to complete set is such an annoying grind (initially even more with imbuing requirements, hopefully in the long run it will be less of a painful grind).

Since you are sharing images I would love to see your armour and jewellery set–up. Of course if you are up for sharing.

[siipperi]

That's OK Lumithir run, best I have done is in 3mins and 4 or 5 seconds I believe, that was with 60k mastery and healing RK. I still think your choice to leave distracting flame out is a bit odd, but I must experience some of this stuff around. I'm not personally using dot pulses, maybe I should test it just for fun. Also since RK is merely my alt my LI legacy tiers are ***.

[Dragofer]

Really great resource thread Dragofer, thank you very much for providing all this information and showing the tests you have performed.

It was interesting to see your LI set–ups, out of my main characters I play it is to this day most complex to get to optimized LIs for my RK, having to max to complete set is such an annoying grind (initially even more with imbuing requirements, hopefully in the long run it will be less of a painful grind).

Since you are sharing images I would love to see your armour and jewellery set–up. Of course if you are up for sharing.

Merged into main post

That's OK Lumithir run, best I have done is in 3mins and 4 or 5 seconds I believe, that was with 60k mastery and healing RK.

My fastest run was 2m51s when I ignored all ghosts and went 100% single-target on Lumithil. My tank and healer didn't like that because we almost wiped, so since then I'm using Essays and Smoulderings to burn down the blue and yellow ghosts. This was before I made this thread and started looking more closely at parses, so I don't have a screenshot unfortunately.

Anyway, no matter what you did in your run, please share your rotation/skill usages.

I still think your choice to leave distracting flame out is a bit odd, but I must experience some of this stuff around. I'm not personally using dot pulses, maybe I should test it just for fun. Also since RK is merely my alt my LI legacy tiers are ***.

Each to his own.

[Strobed]

Epic thread is epic.

Now do one for healing :P

[Dragofer]

Gearing - Updated for U17, see post #52 onwards for U18 gear


The biggest change with U17 in my case was the introduction of more essence jewelry. Not just much more stats than BB jewels, but also all swap items can be jewelry now so it’s possible to use one set of Faramir's permanently without swapping for Nadhins or getting a 2nd set. (It's mostly symbolic as each Faramir's adds just 277 mastery over Nadhins, see post #38)

Next major change was to LI's.
- The finesse legacy is now useful because of no more BB jewels. It frees up a finesse essence slot so it's comparable to a Will stat legacy.
- I've dropped power cost legacy to get the finesse legacy. Power is sustainable with Fate tomes + icpr gems + regular Self-Motivate + power pots/captain.


Armour

Simple enough now:

- Osgiliath robes and shoulders. Now that having 80k mastery + 2 pulses in a t2c instance is realistic it’s a straight minimum dps increase of 6.6%. The DoS shoulders were an upgrade on the gloves (1400 mastery equivalent). Having a 2nd DoS piece would only be a minor upgrade on the robe (90 vit vs. 90 fate) so I'd let others have it first.
- The rest Faramir's stacked with mastery essences.
- 360 will, 90 vit, 1300 crit cloak from epic as it has the highest mastery equivalent in stats.
- No swap items in armour. All essences here are mastery.


Jewelry

Note: the 806 morale on a crafted jewel counts as a morale essence when swapping with a 255 will Osgiliath jewel. Useful for a bit more control over morale.

- 255 will Osgiliath necklace and bracelets because I had them already. The rest is crafted jewelry. Technically crafted jewelry has ~100 more mastery equivalent per piece than the 255 wills.
- BB gold pocket which brings me to 7k finesse with the legacy. The 2-essence pocket only has more mastery+crit if both slots are mastery essences, which can be a problem if that makes finesse drop too low. If you need to slot finesse in the essence pocket to be able to use it then the end result is a good but useless trade of less mastery/crit/morale for more finesse.


LI’s

1293 critical relic -> -1 critical essence/ +1 mastery essence -> 1229 mastery, 63 critical
This is why 1.2k critical relics are better than 600 mastery relics. Same goes for morale

- True Setting of the North. 1293 crit makes it much better than a 640 mastery relic. Not 7.5% dev magnitude because:
A: fire dots/heal hots don't dev so overall dev chance is actually ~3%
B: 7.5% multiplier of noncritical damage x 3% chance = you only gain 0.23% of the dps you would do if you had no crits
C: lightning has very low noncritical damage, which makes the setting even less useful than it is for fire
330 morale and 1616 incoming heal is much more effective.
- True Gem of the Wizard's Vale: 1250 crit makes it better than 950 mastery. The fate and icpr helps when dropping the power cost legacy.
- 660 mastery & -2.5% attack duration. One of the highest mastery equivalents. The attack duration is marginally useful because fire rk's have some long attack durations and no fast skills.
- 40 will 740 crit 740 mastery crafted relic. 40 will is better than 40 fate/vit anytime. Icpr can be gained elsewhere.

Titles: 460 crit titles, +5% fire damage on pouch. These are worlds easier to get than mastery titles (Fangorn dailies).

Passives: My order of preference starting with the best is:
1. Morale – worth 1.5 essences, useful in all instances
2. Tactical mitigation – worth 1.5 essences, however only useful in tactical instances.
3. Critical/Will – both worth 0.75 essences.
4. Vit - worth 0.4 essences
5. Fate - worth 0.25 essences and more icpr than the icpr passive
6. Icpr - Icpr is quality of life for running without a power cost legacy

Note on relics:
- Some relics add crit defence/mits but these are always tiny fractions of what an essence would give, while some crit relics can replace complete essences. Overall stats will be lower if crit defence/mits are used.


Note on supreme essences

With a few exceptions I don't use supreme essences because of the generally marginal or even trivial differences for exorbitant costs and because I'd like to equip my alts as well.

Exceptions are:
- Mitigations because the alternate stat adds up to a decent amount and they aren't overpriced.
- Critical rating because the critical defence has a decent effect at the kind of low ratings which dps classes might have.

Supreme wills, while I don't use them myself, increase resistance at a rate of 2 per extra 1g spent without lowering other stats overall compared to mastery essences (see post #37). It's a luxury for mained runekeepers in my eyes, but at least one that has a meaningful impact. Unlike 250g for 16 morale and 91 power to name an example...


Note on will essences compared to mastery essences

Conclusions from post #37:
- Teal will essences are slightly or moderately better than resistance swap items depending on whether the instance does tactical damage, in that case allowing you to save tactical mitigation essences to get more will essences.
- If you trade 30 mastery -> will essences you'd get about 3% less dps for 9% higher resist chance (starting points are 70k mastery and 20k resist).
- If you trade 30 mastery -> supreme will essences you'd get 10% higher resist chance while keeping mastery almost the same, thanks to saving morale and possibly tact mit essences. But this 10% resist is very expensive, especially if you want to make swap items.

Personally I've decided not to bother with teal wills and to use the money for something else than supreme wills.


Essences & swap items

My targets for stats are:
- 6-8k finesse (legacy+BB pocket=7k)
- 16.3k critical rating, the rest gained by 144 stat food
- 21k morale buffed, more than adequate thanks to mit overcap. Morale swaps to reduce or increase depending on need.
- 17.5k of phys mit *and/or* tact mit. The remainder to 19250 is gained by warding lore and stat food. Often there's only one damage type so you don't need to use essences for the other type
- Crit defence: what I get from one essence + 2x supreme criticals which means 3.8k, -30% magnitude iirc

All remaining slots go to tactical mastery.

To get these stats I need 2 crit essences, 1 crit def, 3 phys mit/1 tact mit and 6-9 morale depending on captains.


My jewelry setup is that for every slot I have a triple mastery item and an item with useful stats. The 'useful' items are:
- Earrings: 3x physical mitigation //// 1x tactical mitigation, 2x mastery
- Bracelet: 3x morale //// 2x morale, 1x crit defence
- Rings: 3x morale //// 2x critical, 1x mastery
- Necklace: 3x morale


Swapping policy:
- Items which I swap often go into the left slot for ease.
- Which earrings I use depends on instance damage type and difficulty.
- I use the morale bracelets and the critical ring most of the time.
- The morale ring and necklace are saved for when I might need more morale (so self-buffed morale ranges from 18.3k to 24.7k). The high bound is useful for example when I'm too lazy to run away from the troll in RC.
- If I group with a captain I trade either a triple morale item or the critical ring for mastery depending on instance difficulty.
- I've also got a full set of Nadhins with purple morale essences in case for some reason I need a huge amount of morale (up to 45k self-buffed). Like soloing an instance -> better Self-Motivate.


Note:
- An opinion I see from time to time is that even for difficult instances you don't really need more than 18k morale if you have crit defence and overcapped mits (sometimes not even that). Fair enough, but you'd better not die because you were chasing those last few k's of mastery.
- I've sold my supreme critical rating essences now because of the next level cap.
- With the DoS class headpiece, a crit passive on the runestone and r14 agility + r12->r14 fate tomes there would no longer be any need for critical essences. Fun fact.


Things I don't bother with:
- Incoming healing. I'm already getting 3.2k or 7.5% from north relics - the yield from this stat isn’t that good, most likely to avoid that tanks get overpowered. In general as a DPS class there's usually more than enough time to get healed to full again so I wouldn't invest essences into this. For tanks and healers that's a different story, but for runekeeper healers the Osgiliath healer 2-set already makes self-preservation effortless.
- Evasion. On the rare occasion that a tank loses aggro and something like a boss/a group attacks a DPS rk for a few seconds then a 15% chance to evade is unlikely to avoid enough hits to prevent death. But as a healer constantly taking hits from new spawns I'd use it. Especially as mastery isn't worth much to healers and the first 7k evade already adds 15%.


Traits

This is my general-purpose tree. The planner only goes up to 75 but the maximum is 79 – my remaining 4 points would go into Volcanic Runestone and then maxing it so it can be used at range.


(in writing: maxed out red tree, yellow tree has Fulgurite Runestone and 5/5 in Shocking Touch and crit, blue tree has Mending Verse and 1/5 in Will bonus)

- Almost everything in the red tree is useful.
- Only 1 rank in Will bonus because there are strong diminishing returns after the first rank.
- In PvE the Shocking Touch 10s daze is very useful for getting situations under control, such as when there’s a bad pull or the healer is getting attacked. The 7% critical defence on the other hand is too low to have much of an impact: a critical hit of 20000 with 200% critical multiplier is brought down to 19300 by this trait, so hardly a lifesaver.
- Fulgurite Runestone because its chain-stunning can be used to help the tank survive.
- Evade chance is no good because it's too little. The full 5% evade chance only dodges 1 in 20 hits, assuming enemies have no finesse, so it's not useful for improving survival but costs 10 trait points.


For people that aren’t keen on questing for trait points, this is the order in which I’d save points in the tree, starting with the least useful trait:
- Will bonus because the dps increase is miniscule but costs 2 trait points.
- Volcanic Runestone upgrades all in one go, then the runestone itself. The dot is below average, never crits and can only be up 30% of the time assuming it doesn't get squashed, so even with very many targets it barely has an advantage over Fiery Ridicule. One reason to have it is fast +3 attunement, but I’ve rarely needed 2 runestones for attunement. It’s useful as a distraction for levelling RKs, but its 5k morale is too low for level 100 instances.
- Mending Verse. I only have this in case I have to heal a soldier in Big Battles or help someone regenerate. Without upgrades it’s too slow for anything else compared to Epic for the Ages + Nestad parchment.
- 5% tactical damage trait. What it actually does is that it increases the tactical mastery tooltip %, so already at 40k mastery its actual dps increase is 2.5% and at 80k mastery it’s down to 1.7% dps. 5 trait points can easily be saved here.
- Downgrade Fulgurite Runestone to Volcanic Runestone.
- 5% critical chance. Very expensive and each 1% crit is only about 1.2% of dps as determined through parses in post #6. Technically you get better value for trait points from the tactical damage trait.

This reduced trait tree costs 65 trait points (including 20 for crit chance) and is only 3% dps lower than a 79-point trait tree at an average amount of mastery. Basically, no more than 65 points are really needed.



If no AoE is allowed I use the below. The 4 remaining points to the 79 cap would go into +65 fate and +13 will.


(in writing: maxed out red tree except 0/2 Essence targets, 4/5 Fiery Ridicule, 0/3 Volcanic Runestone upgrades, yellow tree has Fulgurite Runestone, 5/5 in Shocking Touch and crit and 1/5 in Fate, Blue tree has Mending Verse and 3/5 in Will)


- 0/2 in Essence of Flame targets and 4/5 in Fiery Ridicule so it stays single-target. The 4 points for Fiery Ridicule can easily be saved because they make virtually no difference.
- Still has Scathing Mockery and Combustion. Sometimes you need to do AoE anyway so these are good to have for just 2 trait points, and Scathing Mockery is a slight single-target dps increase if you get a chance to use it.
- Fulgurite Runestone stays on because its damage is almost non-existent, so it’s often acceptable.
- Volcanic Runestone for a lack of anything else to put 1 point into. Mainly for +3 attunement when it hits nothing.
- This tree costs fewer trait points, so for people with a lot of trait points it would be possible to make a more interesting build that trades Fiery Ridicule, +5% tactical damage, Scathing Mockery and a Fulgurite->Volcanic downgrade for maxing out Mending Verse. Dps would be almost the same, but it would allow for healing.



Legacies

Stone:
1. Fire damage
2. Wrath of Flame damage over time
3. Finesse - useful now that BB jewelry is mostly obsolete. It saves an essence slot so it's like a good stat legacy.
4 & 5. Fury of Storm Damage, Fury of Storm Critical Damage – these are a bonus for the single-target burst skills Essence of Storm and Shocking Words while in fire traits. An advantage as well is that you don’t need to make a lightning stone then unless you also want to have the Sustaining Bolt damage + Vivid Imagery damage legacies and lightning auto-attacks, which would only be a miniscule increase in dps.
6. Will
7. Vitality - more morale means you can replace more morale essences with mastery essences

See post #24 for discussion of the other runestone legacies.


Bag:
1. Writ of Fire damage - at t1 its dot is only 15% less than Distracting Flame, easier to spread and keep up and it gets +31.2% instead of 23.4% damage bonus
2. Essence of Flame damage - it's great to have strong aoe burst
3. Smouldering wrath power cost + 9% Searing Words damage - Searing Words is a strong dot that has a chance to be applied with any fire skill
4. Do Not Fall this Day cooldown - allows you to res in combat twice as often and have it up on 2 people. This is one of the big advantages fire rk’s have over hunters.
5. Will
6. Vitality - see above
7. Self Motivation cooldown - reduces the cooldown by 30s, together with the red trait the skill can then be used every 15s.

See post #25 for discussion of the other satchel legacies.


Virtues

Virtues are mainly for resistance and some mitigations in my opinion, so:
- Confidence for 3k resistance and 114 will
- Wisdom for 1k resistance and 171 will
- Honour for 3k resistance, 1k tact miti and some vit
- Innocence for 1.5k resistance and 2k phys/tact miti
- Charity for 3k resistance and 1k phys miti
- Zeal as a swap virtue for physical instances for 500 morale and 1.2k phys miti, but a pain to deed for
- Fidelity as a swap virtue for tactical instances


Final stats



- In the screenshot I was using one triple mastery item: the Osgiliath necklace.
- This is with r12 will, vit and fate tomes, r19 virtues (Innocence, Confidence, Honour, Wisdom, Fidelity) and runestone passives of 4k tact mit, vit and icpr. So there's still 3850 mastery equivalent in stats left for r12->14 tomes and r14 agility and a runestone with perfect passives.

Update 18 gearing being worked out from post #54 onwards.

[Hzn]

Can someone post the trait builds shown on the first page ?
Because the website where they are seems broken.

Since i'm starting a RK, being able to compare my build is handy.

Thanks!

[Dragofer]

Can someone post the trait builds shown on the first page ?
Because the website where they are seems broken.

Since i'm starting a RK, being able to compare my build is handy.

Thanks!

Strange, I thought those build codes would be forever. I've updated the first post's traits section with screenshots and used the opportunity to expand it with the new options from the new 79 trait points cap.

[Dragofer]

Formerly my U17 gear post

[Dragofer]

Level 100 teal will essence vs mastery essence

Trade: 30 teal will for 30 mastery

30 slots is roughly how many someone would have left with 2x class armour, 4x5-slot armours and all essence jewels after getting crit, crit def, morale, finesse, one overcapped mit etc.

-4230 mastery, 8160 resist, 4080 tact mit

In physical-only instances the tact mit has no value. But in tactical instances you can save 1.6 tact mit essences on average and instead get more will. New total there (average):

-2489 mastery, 8595 resist
(Only in tactical instances)


Trade: teal resists for mastery

Is essence of will:mastery a better deal than resistance:mastery?

(Physical instance) For 4230 mastery resistance essences give 6443 resist. Will essences beat this by 1717 resist.

(Tactical instance) For 2489 mastery resistance essences give 3791 resist. Will essences beat this by 4804 resist.


Notes, teal will essences vs mastery essence

- Overall you'd get about 8.5k resist for 2.5-4.2k less mastery depending on instance damage type. Starting from 20k resist and 70k mastery this is +9% resist chance for 2.0-3.5% lower dps (see https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Rat...istance_Rating for resistance rating:chance graph)
- Teal will essences are barely better than just swapping mastery:resistance essences when needed in physical instances (majority of Osgiliath T2c) and moderately better in tactical instances.


Supreme will essence vs mastery essence

Trade: 30 supreme will for 30 mastery

Supreme Will has 139 will and 17 vit. The vit is more resistance, & more importantly allows to use fewer morale essences -> even more supreme wills.
The 51 morale can be 'converted' into an extra 51/(875-51)ths of the other stats on the essence. Result:

-1445 mastery, 9939 resist, 4428 tact mit

In instances dealing tactical damage, 1.7 tact mit essences can be converted to supreme will. New result in those instances:

+434 mastery, 10466 resist


Notes, supreme will essence vs mastery essence

- Supreme will essences cause a negligible decrease or even a slight increase in mastery for about 10k more resist, thanks to needing fewer morale & possibly tact mit essences. Starting from 20k resist, this is about +10% chance.
- On my server supreme wills cost 150g more than teal masteries. Total extra cost including saved essences: 5000g


Overall conclusion, 30 teal & supreme will vs 30 mastery

- Teal will essences increase resist by 8.5k (9x% chance starting from 20k) but decrease mastery by 2.5k-4.2k (2.0-3.5% less dps starting from 70k) depending on whether the instance does tactical damage, in that case allowing you to save tact mit essences and get more will.
- Compared to simple mastery:resistance essence swaps, 30 teal will essences are barely better in physical instances (1.7k more resist) and moderately better in tactical instances (4.8k more resist). You don't always need resistance so I'd suggest resistance swap items as an alternative to using teal will.
- Supreme will increases resistance by 10k (+10% chance starting from 20k) with all other stats almost equal. But a full set costs 5000g more than teal mastery.

So I wouldn't bother with teal will and I'd only get supreme will if I had no alts to gear.

[Dragofer]

Comparison of armour sets

This comparison converts each armour set's stats into a single stat, mastery (similar to essence equivalents).

For simplicity I've only used morale, critical and mastery. Taking resist and tactical mit into account slightly increases the distance between crafted armour and the rest. 'The rest' includes Faramir's because you'd be using will essences if those stats are important to you.


Conversion rates

875 morale = 1229 mastery
1 morale = 1.4 mastery

1229 crit = 1229 mastery
1 crit = 1 mastery


Comparison

Crafted:
90 fate, 1041 morale, 3 slots
(90 x 2.5) + (1041 x 1.4) + (3 x 1229) = 5369 mastery equivalent

Nadhin:
119 will, 4 slots
(119 x 8) + (4 x 1229) = 5868 mastery

Minas Tirith:
128 will, 824 morale, 3 slots
(128 x 8) + (824 x 1.4) + (3 x 1229) = 5865 mastery

Faramir's:
5 slots
(5 x 1229) = 6145 mastery


With a full set of 6, all other stats equal:
- Faramir's is 1662 more mastery than Nadhins
- Crafted is 2994 less mastery than Nadhins
- Minas Tirith is the same as Nadhins


Notes:

- For classes that aren't interested in high mastery Faramir's is clearly best because you trade 'useless' Will for an extra slot. That would be tanks and arguably healers (dimininishing returns & low cap on mastery for healing).
- Minas Tirith armour is virtually the same as Nadhins but with an inbuilt 824 morale essence. Technically that makes it cheaper to outfit new chars, but instead of dailies you could within one day do an extended Thorog session and then buy a full set of Nadhins + morale essences.
- Fate on crafted armour can be useful for people who don't have power cost legacies or fate tomes.


Conclusion

- Differences between armour sets are very small for dps classes, the biggest difference between full sets is 4660 mastery equivalent. Using 2 pieces of class gear reduces that to 3107. In other words, it hardly matters which essence armour you use.

[Vilda]

Dragofer:

just wanted to thank you for your job, really helpfull for me

[Dragofer]

Dragofer:

just wanted to thank you for your job, really helpfull for me

Thanks, it's great you're finding it useful.

[Dragofer]

Should Shocking Words be used in fire traits?

Shocking Words can crit almost like Smouldering Wrath. Its downsides are that it drains all attunement and takes 1.5s to use.

How does the damage done by Shocking Words compare to the damage lost by having less attunement and by being delayed 1.5s?


Damage done by Shocking Words

Shocking Words reads 10800 tooltip damage at full attunement with maxed lightning legacies. You can’t really compare this because it’s lightning damage (much higher crit multiplier, 10% dev chance, no mit debuff). But the result is that it hits 75% and crits 90% as as strong as a fully supported Smouldering Wrath against Dol Amroth training dummies, and therefore hits 67% and crits 80% as strong against Osgiliath mobs (where the fire mitigation debuff has a bigger effect).

This translates to about 9400 tooltip fire damage at full attunement in Osgiliath t2c’s.


Damage lost by having less attunement

If Shocking Words drains full attunement to 0, total tooltip damage for these skills changes as follows. Remember that skills use their own attunement increases. This is with 80k mastery, maxed legacies, +2 pulses and the +25% fire damage incombat bonus.

Essay of Fire: loses up to 2500 tooltip damage in total
Essence of Flame: loses 1000 tooltip damage
Distracting Flame: loses up to 1250 tooltip damage in total
Scathing Mockery: loses up to 2200 tooltip damage in total
Fiery Ridicule: loses between 800 (initial hit only) and 4500 (t3 dot runs to expiration) tooltip damage in total
Writ of Fire: initial hit loses 200 tooltip damage, no real effect on the dot because it should be spammed
Searing Words: no effect because it’s not affected by attunement


Damage lost by skills being delayed 1.5s

This is mostly by dots not ticking, or skills with direct hits not being used as often as they can be. The latter assumes that you’ll be able to use the skill later on as soon as it’s ready, which isn’t always possible.

Essay of Fire: 1200 initial hit damage, 5900 dot damage
Essence of Flame: 1300 initial hit damage per target
Distracting Flame: 1200 dot damage
Fiery Ridicule: 3500 initial hit damage per target, dot should be ticking anyway
Writ, t3: 6000 initial hit damage (2 Writs), dot should be ticking anyway
Scathing Mockery: 750 dot damage per target, 75 initial hit damage


Discussion

The key line is the amount of damage lost by spamming fewer Writs. The 1.5s delay caused by Shocking Words, worth 9400 tooltip damage, would always be enough to use 2 Writs worth 6000 initial damage together (t3, maxed attunement etc.).

That only leaves 3400 damage potential to Shocking Words, which is quickly absorbed by any other damage losses due to attunement and delays in dots or skills not being used. Judging by the 2 lists above it can get very negative.


Conclusion

Don’t use Shocking Words in fire unless you need a burst.

[Dragofer]

A post that came to my attention:

Ok that guy has a real bad rotation. 95% of the time you need to do Essay + Essence. Using Essay with Fiery Ridicule is the worst idea ive seen in a long time. The Rotation you want normally is Essay + Essence (or Scathing Mockery if there is like 5+ mobs) and then Writ of Fire and FR to max attune and then use Smoldering Wrath. After that use WoF to tier that up to t3 and replace FR on the target. By this point you can start over with Essay + Essence and go straight from there into SW. After that you can just keep repeating using WoF, FR and SM while waiting for Essay+ Essence to come up and follow that with SW. You can also use lightning skills from time to time but be aware that Shocking Words takes all your attunement so be ready to max attunement before using Smoldering Wrath again. You can also use Distracting Flame throughout the fight to try to lower aggro plus it does ok damage if you have the legacy for it (which this guy doesn't have). In an aoe fight the rotation is fairly similar but the one thing to do is get at least t2 WoF and then hit combustion as it will aoe everything and spread WoF. If this is t3 WoF then the damage output will be stronger obviously but sometimes I just do t2. The plus 2 pulses from the osgiliath set bonus does not seem worth it 90% of the time to me. I haven't tested this but you lose like 5k+ mastery doing that and talking with Lore he doesn't seem that thrilled by it either and he knows more about the class than me. Also the fact of having lightning legacies on the stone for essence of storm and shocking words is laughable as you only use them in between fire attacks and wasting legacies on them is stupid. Vit legacies rather will legacies is bad as you're gonna end up losing too much TM as a result. Also having defensive jewellery on RK is dumb. With a good healer there is no need to go crazy mits and you should never bother with crit defence as its like the worst stat in the game for non-tanks. The main thing with stats is max crit keep around 20k morale and then stack tactical mastery so you can get as close to 80k as possible. If you're worried about fights like black blade you can have some morale swap ins but i don't and i rarely die on that fight. Finesse should be 7k-10k and with the BB pocket which has finesse 1 finesse essence and the finesse legacy you should hit that easy. Relic wise i guess his ideas are fine if you don't have the old Adamant Gem of Dreams (which I do) which is better and the Crit Morale Relics are good too. So sorry If I went off on a rant on his bad ideas but yeah he's wasting dps in a lot of ways which could be increased. I could try out the 2 set osg and some point and see but I just don't see it as most of your dps the extra 2 pulses isn't gonna make that much of a difference (Essay of Fire you gain like 2s, Essence has no dot, and SW is a tick per attunement so no difference there either) and you are either gonna lose TM doing so or Morale making you even squisher. Also this is comparing it with the 5 piece essence set; the 4 piece set is probably not as big of a difference. But these are just the opinions of a RK alt so you should maybe ask someone else as well.

There are points in your post that I’d like to be able to agree with. That tiering up Writs especially before Combustion is worthwhile. That the Distracting Flame dmg legacy should have a spot on a DPS bag. The problem is, though, that Lotro is full of class mechanics that don't really work.

Examples: Wardens get bonus damage for using bleeds in a certain order, but the bonus is ridiculously small. Hunters with maxed trait points can get a bleed cashout deep in blue line (SttH), but it does less damage than the bleed would’ve done. Beornings get virtually no damage bonus for using 100 wrath in a standard Execute. Any dedicated DPSer needs to find these duds and look for better options.

For a runekeeper, the basic problems in my opinion are:
- Excessive % of dps done by Smouldering Wrath and Essay of Fire alone. The result is that what you do with all the other skills is much less meaningful than it should be. The gap between a thought out rotation and a new-to-100 rotation is small.
- Very high fire damage bonuses from runestone legacies, class traits and self-buffs. They make managing attunement pointless because it doesn’t move the overall damage total enough, especially as all the big skills have very short cooldowns. Single-skill damage legacies all hover around 0.5% overall dps increases because of this and the previous point. Writ and Ridicule tiers make a difference of 7% and 16% respectively, a tiny impact because of the previous point.
- Long durations on dots. In single-target, after you’ve applied all the dots and Smouldering is on cooldown, the only thing you still get out of standing & attacking is to spam Writs and Ridicules.

Until this gets changed there'll inevitably be counterintuitive tactics such as mostly ignoring attunement, Writ/Ridicule tiers and certain 'damage' legacies.


A more detailed reply:

95% of the time you need to do Essay + Essence. Using Essay with Fiery Ridicule is the worst idea ive seen in a long time.

I used to think the same up until 5 months ago when I did the maths – at the start of the fight, Essay + Ridicule beats Essay + Essence. My original reasoning might’ve been slightly vague, so here’s something more precise. Note: this is for Osgiliath instances where -15% mitigated fire damage debuff is a dps increase of 35%.


A) Essay + Fiery Ridicule, Writ, Distracting Flame, Smouldering Wrath, Writ (free), Essence of Flame

1. Fiery Ridicule runs 10s longer compared to if Essence of Flame came first. 10s also happens to be how long it takes for FR to overtake Essence of Flame under these conditions. So until now this is damage neutral in fights that last 12.5s+.
2. Fiery Ridicule is a dot so it can benefit from mitigation debuffs (and Oathbreakers, tar, etc.) that appear *after* it starts. Essence of Flame doesn’t, so Fiery Ridicule pulls ahead by 1.5 ticks worth of damage on average.
3. Essence of Flame, used later, now has full effective attunement (uses its own increase), 5 stacks of fire damage and an 88% chance to have the fire mit debuff. Compared to if it was used earlier, it does extra damage worth 3 ticks of Fiery Ridicule.
4. The same buffs would’ve boosted Fiery Ridicule if it had been #2, but it has to beat Fiery Ridicule #1 and it only lasts 6s before they both get replaced.
4. So you have an Essence that's much stronger and a Fiery Ridicule that’s weaker but much longer and capable of using early mitigation debuffs.
5. And finally, sometimes you get bad luck with induction buffs so that Essence of Flame gets pushed back by Essay + Scathing Mockery. This is even better because Fiery Ridicule #1 gains more ticks, Fiery Ridicule #2 would’ve gotten fewer ticks, and Essence of Flame becomes more powerful.

So I get at least 4 extra ticks of Fiery Ridicule damage for swapping Ridicule & Essence around at the start. Not such a bad idea after all.


B) Writ, Distracting Flame, Writ, Essay + Fiery Ridicule, Smouldering Wrath, Writ (free), Essence of Flame

1. The same points as before apply, although with less effect because the time between Fiery Ridicule and Essence of Flame is smaller.
2. The main reason I use Essay+Fiery Ridicule here is that there’s no advantage for using Essence of Flame any earlier. Essence of Flame #2 is held back by Essay + Scathing Mockery so Essence of Flame #1 should better wait to get a higher chance for the mit debuff.
3. This assumes a fight that lasts long enough to use 2 Essences of Flame (just under 30s). That’s what this kind of opener is meant for.


Afterwards, ofc use Essay + Essence whenever possible, or Essay + Scathing Mockery when that needs a refresh. Essay + Essence can still be used at the start if you know the fight will last less than 12.5s.

You can also use Distracting Flame throughout the fight to try to lower aggro plus it does ok damage if you have the legacy for it (which this guy doesn't have).

A maxed tier 44 legacy increases Distracting Flame’s damage by 12% in reality, see post #25 for the calculation method.

In my single-target parses, if Distracting Flame was active all of the time it would contribute 6% of total dps. Increasing a skill that does 6% of the total by 12% is a dps increase of 0.7% (ideal case).

In AoE you wouldn’t normally want to use Distracting Flame because Fiery Ridicule is better dps + better mits debuffing and for most skills attunement only has a minor effect that doesn't pay off.

So you get a single-target dps increase of at best 0.7% from the DF damage legacy. A vit legacy, if you convert morale to mastery at a ratio of 1229:875, is worth 780 mastery -> 2% mastery tooltip -> 0.7% dps when close to 80k mastery.

So Vit with 0.7% ST and AoE dps is better than DF dmg with <0.7% ST dps.

In an aoe fight the rotation is fairly similar but the one thing to do is get at least t2 WoF and then hit combustion as it will aoe everything and spread WoF

Each tier of Writ increases total damage of the Writ-Combustion combo over 16s by 3%. But the time you need to use a Writ is 5% of the cooldown, or 11% if you chain Writs and get a 1s cooldown inbetween. As this is at the start of the fight you’re also losing time where you could start Fiery Ridicule dots. So increasing Writ tiers for Combustion doesn’t pay off.

The only time I’d use an extra Writ when starting AoE is right at the beginning because that way you can get an early induction buff and higher damage for other skills as well. But the tank needs to have aggro or else you’ll pull your target out of the crowd.

The plus 2 pulses from the osgiliath set bonus does not seem worth it 90% of the time to me.

See post #33 for streamlined breakdown of the set bonus.

Also the fact of having lightning legacies on the stone for essence of storm and shocking words is laughable as you only use them in between fire attacks and wasting legacies on them is stupid.

It’s a matter of a lack of good DPS alternatives. You can give up lightning legacies… to get an obscure legacy that allows you to spam a minor dot that has no initial hit, gives 1 more attunement than Writ but at half the rate of fire, and increases your AoE dps by about 1.5%. And a fate legacy. Or power cost, which you don’t need because Self-motivate gives abundant power already.

Combining lightning and fire legacies is a fairly decent bonus to your burst ability. And it saves you a separate lightning stone including 9 star-lit crystals, unless Sustaining Bolt & Vivid Imagery damage and auto attack damage type are worth that much to you. But yes, for regular PvE fire dps you don’t really get an advantage out of lightning skills (see post #4 and #40 for Essence of Storm and Shocking Words respectively).

Also having defensive jewellery on RK is dumb. With a good healer there is no need to go crazy mits and you should never bother with crit defence as its like the worst stat in the game for non-tanks.

It’s your job to figure out how high defensive stats you need for what you’re doing depending on your experience, group etc. This is why I have 2 jewels for every slot.

As for crit defence: one of the main reasons you want high enough morale is so that you can absorb big crits. Some calculations:
- A crit with 200% critical multiplier that does 18k damage.
- This is lowered to 176% and 15.9k damage by 1 crit defence essence.
- You could make do with 2.1k less morale. The 1st crit defence essence is worth 2 morale essences, if you have hope, a captain and duty bound.
- What about the 2nd crit defence essence? Damage is lowered to 162% and 14580, so you can make do with 3.4k less morale. 1 more crit defence essence is worth another 1.25 morale essences.

You need morale for other things as well, like poisons, distributed damage, random hits etc. So I’d make sure to have 1 crit defence essence because it’s very effective at lowering max hits, but not a 2nd because now it’s not much better than a morale essence for big hits and worse for everything else.



Updates

- Streamlined my posts on +2 pulses and the DF cooldown legacy with texts from this post to get the point across more clearly (post #24 & #33)

[Fasin]

Searing Words tiers do not stack or refresh. There are four Searing Words tiers (T0,T1,T2,T3). Once you hit T3 on Writ of Fire, you can only have one stack of Searing Words up. So stacking up Writ as fast as possible is not good, as you are removing any possibility for additional Searing stacks.

The +7% Critical Defense is far better than the Shocking Touch buff for any group situation, no contest. Going from a 5s daze to a 10s daze is almost never going to have any positive effect, in part because it is a melee only daze, and 5s is long enough to get a situation under control if there is any possibility of doing so. 7% Critical Defense is a third of an essence slot, it just doesn't seem worth it. I'd never take the 5s extra daze over 300 Morale.

I definitely would not agree with using Healing legacies on your stone instead of Lightning. If you want to having Lightning legacies on your Fire stone to avoid having a Lightning stone, it's not a huge difference in dps so that's not a big deal. But if you want those healing legacies, just swap to your healing LIs. It doesn't save you anything putting them on a Fire stone since i'm assuming most Runekeepers will also have healing LIs, so just swap.

[Dragofer]

Searing Words tiers do not stack or refresh. There are four Searing Words tiers (T0,T1,T2,T3). Once you hit T3 on Writ of Fire, you can only have one stack of Searing Words up. So stacking up Writ as fast as possible is not good, as you are removing any possibility for additional Searing stacks.

Thanks for this information, there’s good potential for optimisations here. I’m seeing now that Searing Words also doesn’t crit (making its DPS equal to 2x Writs or half an Essay). So I’ll need to go back through my posts and correct the places which have to do with Searing Words – those aren’t so few.
Edit: Completed.

The +7% Critical Defense is far better than the Shocking Touch buff for any group situation, no contest. Going from a 5s daze to a 10s daze is almost never going to have any positive effect, in part because it is a melee only daze, and 5s is long enough to get a situation under control if there is any possibility of doing so. 7% Critical Defense is a third of an essence slot, it just doesn't seem worth it. I'd never take the 5s extra daze over 300 Morale.

I definitely would not agree with using Healing legacies on your stone instead of Lightning. If you want to having Lightning legacies on your Fire stone to avoid having a Lightning stone, it's not a huge difference in dps so that's not a big deal. But if you want those healing legacies, just swap to your healing LIs. It doesn't save you anything putting them on a Fire stone since i'm assuming most Runekeepers will also have healing LIs, so just swap.

We are at differences about Shocking Touch then. 300 morale isn't much at level 100 so I’d personally prefer having some form of cc.

My bad about the healing legacies, I forgot how easy it is to swap LIs in this game. I’ve cut that part out of my previous post.

[Fasin]

You don't have to compare +2 pulses to mastery, you can max mastery while having the pulse bonus.

Also, you do have some form of cc, the 5s daze. The duration is more worthwhile solo, probably. maybe even in 3 mans. But the reality is none of those present difficulty in completing. I can't be bothered to respec for such a small advantage, so I stay with the bonus that helps in difficult content. I'll leave it at that though, stop trying to convince you.

Opening rotation is really dependent on what procs you get. I usually open with distracting flame, everything else is dependent on what gets procced. Always use writ immediately after any searing words procs, without delaying it too long if there are no procs (the first writ stack is the one you can least afford to delay obviously, there is more leeway with the other two). If you get a 4 stack searing words, your opening dps is ridiculous. For 25-60s fights like Thorog, I take an additional +2 pulses using the level 85 armor (I stay capped on Mastery and crit).

[Kander]

Satchel

Distracting Flame damage legacy (+23.4%)

Calculated in the same way as the Combustion bonus in the previous post:
- This legacy adds +23.4% to a base of ~234%, which is a change of 10%.
- In my single-target parses Distracting Flame does 5% of total dps.
- Increasing a skill that does 5% by 10% is an ST dps increase of 0.5%.


Smouldering Wrath power cost/Searing Words damage legacy (+9%)

I already had this legacy in the list, but was wondering how useful it is. By the same process, this legacy increases a skill that does ~11% of my dps by 3.5%. This is an ST and AoE dps increase of 0.4%.

I don't think that's how it works with calculating the increase of the legacies. At least for healing legacies and other classes skill-specific legacies work like this: (base value)*(1+skill value increases)*(1+mastery increase) so with a mastery of +134% the + 23.4% increase is actually + 23.4 increase on the skill with the same mastery. So an increase of around 2-3% on your dps depending on the importance of the skill on your damage.

[Dragofer]

You don't have to compare +2 pulses to mastery, you can max mastery while having the pulse bonus.

That's right, though I still see well-geared RK's who use mastery essences possibly because they prefer to have 80k mastery + higher morale instead of 80k mastery + 2 pulses. The purpose of the comparison is to show that the class set outperforms mastery essences even if it's in a lower mastery build.
(so those people would want to go for 77k mastery + higher morale + 2 pulses if anything)

I don't think that's how it works with calculating the increase of the legacies. At least for healing legacies and other classes skill-specific legacies work like this: (base value)*(1+skill value increases)*(1+mastery increase) so with a mastery of +134% the + 23.4% increase is actually + 23.4 increase on the skill with the same mastery. So an increase of around 2-3% on your dps depending on the importance of the skill on your damage.

Yes, mastery and skill damage bonuses are separate things. That 23.4% (now 28.8%) is not the first skill damage bonus that RK's have though. As a DoT it already has +107.6% out of combat, going up to an as good as permanent +159.6% with full effective attunement (single-target) and incombat damage buffs.

So the base is 259.6% before you add the 28.8% legacy, which is a change of 11%. I've confirmed this mechanism ingame.


EDIT:
Searing Words revised

Searing Words tiers do not stack or refresh. There are four Searing Words tiers (T0, T1, T2, T3). Once you hit T3 on Writ of Fire, you can only have one stack of Searing Words up. So stacking up Writ as fast as possible is not good, as you are removing any possibility for additional Searing stacks.

What's the value of one t3 Searing Words

[This and the next few questions are important when working out a rotation]

Not so straightforward because it can't crit, so the enemy's crit defence determines how powerful this dot is compared to other skills. The higher the better.

In Osgiliath t3 Searing Words ticks for about the same as t3 Writ but every 2s. So it's as if its tooltip was 21000 damage in total.


What's the value of one t3 Writ

- Direct damage
3000 damage.


- Searing Words after Writ t3
You can use a fire skill every 2s. At a proc chance of 20% this means it takes on average 10s to proc Searing Words. With a dot duration of 14s Searing Words has an uptime of 58.3%

If you use an extra Writ inbetween Smouldering Wrath you'd use a fire skill every 1.76s. This would be a Searing Words uptime of 61.3%.

This is 3.0% more Searing Words uptime over 15s. This is worth 675 damage.


- Mitigation debuff
Same as above except that proc chance is 30% and duration is 20s. Using a fire skill every 2s results in an uptime of 75%.

With an extra Writ inbetween Smouldering Wrath the uptime becomes 77.3%.

This is 2.3% x 35% = 0.8% higher pre-mits dps over 15s. This is worth about 125 damage.

- Total: 3800 damage per Writ


How much is lost by replacing Writs with Fiery Ridicule?

Fiery Ridicule has half the initial hit dps and one third as many procs (rate of fire). That would mean every Writ that gets replaced by Fiery Ridicule loses 2000 tooltip damage.



What effect does the +2 set have on Searing Words?

Before t3: +40%, unless you use a conventional rotation with fixed Writ tiers where there are more than 10s between tier upgrades (longer dot duration blocks some procs).

After t3: When using a fire skill every 2s you proc Searing Words on average after 10s. With a 10s dot duration this is 50% uptime, with a 14s dot duration this is 58.3% uptime. The dps increase is +17%

Overall: somewhere between 17%-40% depending on how long the fight lasts.

[Dragofer]

Skill priorities

This post clears up some uncertainties about ideal skill order. See the end of the post for a summary. Contents:
- Essay or Smouldering first?
- Essence or Smouldering first? (or, how long can it delay Smouldering)
- Essay + Distracting Flame feasible?
- When to refresh Scathing Mockery?

Essay of Fire or Smouldering Wrath first?

This post uses the least favourable scenario for Essay of Fire (hint hint): 4s of dot remaining, attacking the same target again, mitigation debuff already present, no induction buffs, Essay is followed by Ridicule, Ridicule dot already present at t3.

The approach is to compare both options with a 3rd 'perfect' scenario where both skills instantly completed within 0s and lost no damage.

A) Essay + Ridicule, Smouldering Wrath

Essay, initial hit: at 2.5s. Loses 2000 damage potential.
Essay, dot: starts at 2.5s, had 4s left. Loses 0 damage.
Smouldering Wrath: starts at 3.5s. Loses 14400 damage potential.
Ridicule: virtually constant
Total loss: 16400 damage

B) Smouldering Wrath, Essay + Ridicule

Essay, initial hit: at 7.5s. Loses 6000 damage potential.
Essay, dot: starts at 7.5s, had 4s left. Loses 11700 damage.
Smouldering Wrath: starts at 0s. Loses 0 damage potential.
Ridicule: virtually constant
Total loss: 17700 damage

Even in the least favourable situation possible, Essay of Fire beats Smouldering Wrath by the time both skills finish their induction/channel.

The difference becomes even bigger if the dot already expired, Essay is sped up by an induction buff, Essay + Ridicule get a chance to proc mit debuff before Smouldering Wrath etc.

Essay should always come first except in fights that will end in less than 7.5s, arguably even less.


[Note about damage potential: getting skills like Smouldering Wrath and Essence of Flame on cooldown earlier means they can be used more often in the fight, increasing their damage potential.

But this only works if they're going to get used as soon as they're ready again: if that gets delayed you lose some or even all of the advantage. So damage potential isn't as good as real damage.

Note that Essay first loses just damage potential, while most of what Smouldering Wrath loses is real damage.]


Essence of Flame or Smouldering Wrath first?

Single-target:
Smouldering Wrath does 4x the dps of Essence of Flame (can dev) and delays it for 5s, so Essence of Flame can delay Smouldering by up to 1.25s before it starts losing damage.

Even with an induction buff Essence of Flame delays Smouldering Wrath by 2.5s, so when both skills are ready Smouldering Wrath should come first.

AoE:
Essence of Flame now does 3x the dps and has more fire skill hits. It can afford to delay Smouldering by ~4s but only needs at most 3s to use, so it should always come first.


Essay + Distracting Flame or Essay + Ridicule?

Fiery Ridicule does the same damage whether it's used earlier or later, but Distracting Flame does more damage when its dot can start earlier. Sometimes there's a long time before you can use the other skill, so then Distracting Flame gets an even bigger advantage.

The downside is that Ridicule has a 0.35s-0.50s longer induction depending on induction buffs. This is enough time for 0.5-0.7 of a Writ: based on post #47 this is worth 1900-2700 damage.

This assumes the Distracting Flame dot already expired and the Fiery Ridicule dot has enough time left.


A) Essay + Distracting Flame, Ridicule

Distracting Flame starts about 2s earlier, which is worth 1500 damage.
But the time loss is worth 1900-2700 damage in extra Writs. Doesn't pay off.


B) Essay + Distracting Flame, Smouldering Wrath, Essence of Flame, Ridicule

Distracting Flame starts about 10s earlier, which is worth 7500 damage. It also delays Smouldering Wrath by 0.5s less, which is worth 2000 damage potential.
Compare this to the overall time loss worth 1900-2700 damage in extra Writs.
(Fiery Ridicule's dot expiring could be an issue. But if all those skills were on cooldown before, you'll probably have refreshed the dot shortly before Essay.)

Bottom line: Essay + Distracting Flame should be used just before Smouldering Wrath for an advantage of up to 7000 damage, assuming DF's dot has run out and Ridicule's dot won't run out. This is equivalent to an extra tick of Essay of Fire.

But if Essay + Distracting Flame gets followed by Ridicule it's a minor loss.



When to refresh Scathing Mockery?

A) How late to set it up?

Scathing Mockery's initial hit + 1 tick already does more damage than an extra Fiery Ridicule, so setting up a new dot is useful even if the fight is over in 6s.


B) When to refresh: While blinking or after it runs out?

This is comparing
- Essay + Scathing, ..., Essay + Ridicule
- Essay + Ridicule, ..., Essay + Scathing

Ridicule's hit does the same damage whether it comes sooner or later.

- The advantage of refreshing later is that you spend slightly less time on refreshing Scathing Mockery. This is only a small fraction of a second, so it's negligible. (0.3s per minute)

- The disadvantage of refreshing later is that you might lose some dot damage, especially if the 2nd Essay gets delayed or turns out to be Essay + Essence, which would let you wait until the 3rd Essay for the next refresh.

That leaves only advantages for refreshing Scathing while it's blinking.


C) Should Scathing Mockery get refreshed if the fight is about to end soon?

The difference between Scathing Mockery's and Fiery Ridicule's initial hit is 1460 tooltip damage. There's minimal risk for using Scathing Mockery and it pays off already when the dot runs 3s longer.



Summary
- Essay of Fire always comes before Smouldering Wrath unless the fight ends in the next handful seconds.
- Single-target: If Essence of Flame comes off cooldown shortly before Smouldering Wrath it can be used first. But if both are ready to use then Smouldering Wrath comes first.
- AoE: Essence of Flame always takes priority over Smouldering Wrath.
- Use Essay + Distracting Flame instead of Essay + Ridicule before Smouldering Wrath if you know there's enough time left on Fiery Ridicule's dot.
- Scathing Mockery: refresh when blinking. If the alternative is Essay + Ridicule, use & refresh Scathing Mockery all the way to the end of the fight.

[Dragofer]

AoE: Smouldering Wrath or more Fiery Ridicule?

Smouldering Wrath does more direct damage while Fiery Ridicule has at least 6x as many fire skill hits and can set up or upgrade dots.

This comparison is over 15s and assumes this: using a fire skill every 2.5s hitting on average 3 targets, there are 6 targets, fire skill hits are spread evenly across targets, Writ is at t3, no induction buffs so 2 Fiery Ridicules for 1 Smouldering Wrath.


Direct damage
Smouldering Wrath does 61700 damage and 6x Fiery Ridicule hits do 29540 damage. Fiery Ridicule is behind by 32160 damage.


Dot damage
Using more Fiery Ridicules allows the dot or a tier upgrade to start 5s-10s earlier depending on whether Smouldering Wrath also gets followed by Essay + Essence and Combustion.

Starting the actual dot 5s earlier on 6 targets is 26000 more damage, almost enough to compensate for the difference in direct damage.

Starting a tier upgrade 5s earlier on 6 targets is 4000 more damage.


Searing Words
With Smouldering Wrath for 5s every 15s, each target gets hit by a fire skill every 6.9s (13 hits in 15s on 6 targets). At a proc chance of 20% it takes on average 35s for Searing Words to proc. With a duration of 14s this is an uptime of 28.6%. With 2x Fiery Ridicules instead, uptime would be 35.9%.

An extra 7.3% of a Searing Words dot on 6 targets over 15s means Fiery Ridicule does 11700 more Searing Words damage.


Mitigation debuff
Same as above except that the mit debuff has a proc chance of 30% and a duration of 20s. For Smouldering Wrath uptime would be 46.5% and for Fiery Ridicule uptime would be 54.5%.

An extra 8.0% chance for a 35% damage debuff means +2.8% damage. On 6 targets over 15s, assuming you use all relevant skills as often as possible, this is a maximum of 14000 damage. (that'd be 5500 tooltip dps per target/33000 in total)


Totals
Smouldering Wrath always does 61700 damage.

Two extra Fiery Ridicules do 29500 direct damage + 11700 more Searing Words damage + 14000 more mitigation debuff damage = 55200 damage in 15s before considering dots and without induction buffs.

Having 6 t1 dots 5s longer raises Fiery Ridicule's total to 81200 damage.
Having 6 tier upgrades 5s longer raises Fiery Ridicule's total to 59200 damage.

What this shows is that t1 Fiery Ridicule dots have to be set up before using Smouldering Wrath. After that, Smouldering Wrath and Fiery Ridicule are similar in damage.


Comparison
Smouldering Wrath becomes better if:
- the fight is about to end, because much of Fiery Ridicule's damage is over time.
- some targets have higher morale. The best distribution of damage is the one which kills all enemies at the same time because it meant you had the full number of targets for the entire fight. More targets = more dps.

Fiery Ridicule becomes better if:
- there's a high number of targets. Fiery Ridicule dots expire much easier which would be a major hit to dps, see 'Totals' above. Also, Searing Words becomes more likely to proc because fewer targets already have it.
- grouping with loremasters or any physical AoE class because they benefit from the higher mit debuff/armour debuff uptime.
- all targets have the same morale because Fiery Ridicule spreads the damage evenly so that they all die at the same time (see last point for Smouldering Wrath).


Summary
Start with setting up Fiery Ridicule dots on all targets. High-morale targets & priority targets should be focused down with Smouldering Wrath, otherwise Fiery Ridicule is generally better. In the final phase (last 15s) use a Smouldering Wrath on the target that has the most morale left.

[Dragofer]

Conventional single-target rotation


- Distracting Flame, Essay + Fiery Ridicule #1, Writ #1
- Smouldering Wrath
- Essence of Flame, Writ #2 (free induction)
- Essay + Scathing Mockery
- Fiery Ridicule #2, Distracting Flame
- Smouldering Wrath
- Writ #3 (free induction)
- Essay of Fire + Essence of Flame, Writ #4, Fiery Ridicule #3
- From then on, use Essay (+Essence), Smouldering Wrath and Essence of Flame as soon as possible in that order
- Spam-alternate Writ with Ridicule in that order whenever those skills are on cooldown
- Refresh Distracting Flame economically and refresh Scathing Mockery when the dot is blinking
- For details on how these last points were determined, see: post #4 use of Writ & Ridicule, post #24 Distracting Flame, post #48 skill priorities


This is a conventional rotation, meaning that skills are used in a fixed order which is expected, on average, to do the highest damage.

For example, with t0 Searing Words:
- delaying the first Writ for 6s has a 50% chance to proc t0 Searing Words. This is is on average a gain.
- delaying the first Writ for another 6s only adds 17% chance to proc t0 Searing Words. This would on average be a loss.

This is the 'easier' rotation because it automatically handles Searing Words. There are also these situations where you could prefer to use the conventional rotation over the proc-based rotation:
- Grouping with other runekeepers so that you can't tell which tiers the Searing Words are on (without a plugin).
- Fights which take a lot of concentration on other things than dps.


Breakdown of the rotation
(Writ tiers are brought up in the next section)

- Starts with Distracting Flame. This has the following advantages:
A) Almost the same damage because it buffs Essay + Ridicule to compensate for shorter dot duration. But captains have more time to apply damage buffs before those skills start.
B) Many runekeepers start directly with Essay, so a delayed Essay + Ridicule can take advantage of any mit debuffs they proc. The early Distracting Flame also helps their Essay, especially if it's Essay + Essence.

- Essay + Fiery Ridicule at the start.
A) Fiery Ridicule has a strong dot that can start a good deal earlier, enough to become equal to Essence of Flame.
B) As it is a dot it can take advantage of mit debuffs and any other +inc damage like Oathbreakers that proc after it begins.
C) Essence of Flame when it does get used has stronger buffs and is likelier to have a mit debuff.
D) Fiery Ridicule if it came 2nd couldn't profit as much from these buffs as Essence because it'd only run for a short time until the next refresh. And it would have to 'beat' the earlier Fiery Ridicule who's dot would still be active the entire time (+2 pulses).

- Writ before Smouldering Wrath #1.
A) 50% chance that the first Searing Words has procced by this point and chances will only slowly increase from there (+10%, +8%, +7%, +7% etc. proc chance for each further skill). So on average you can expect more from the extra mit debuff chance just before Smouldering and ofc the Writ's dot damage.
B) [This is different from the 'advanced' rotation because there you upgrade the Writ tier every time Searing Words procs, basically keeping proc chance at 20% per skill. That makes it worth holding back the Writ at this point.]

- Scathing Mockery at 2nd Essay.
Scathing Mockery is the weakest of all dots in single-target so it's applied last.


When would Essay of Fire + Essence of Flame at the start be a better choice?

- For very short fights that end already during Smouldering Wrath #1. Fiery Ridicule wouldn't last long enough.
- For bursts. Essence of Flame does the damage all in one go, so if it crits/devs it's the same as if all Fiery Ridicule ticks had critted. The opposite happens if it doesn't crit/dev. So Essence of Flame has a bigger range.


Searing Words

This uses the following number of fire skills at each tier of Writ. The Writs themselves count as part of the next tier.

t0 - 3
t1 - 3
t2 - 5
t3 - indefinite

5 is the absolute limit for how many skills it makes sense to use in a row. The more skills you use in a row the likelier it becomes that Searing Words is already active and blocks new procs. After 14s, so 6 skills, Searing Words start disappearing again so then you reach a plateau. See the following:

Additional proc chance for the xth skill:
1 -> 20%
2 -> 16%
3 -> 13%
4 -> 10%
5 -> 8%
6 -> 7%
7 -> 7%
8 -> 7%
9 -> 7% etc.

Consider this:
- The 4th fire skill used at t2 Writ has a proc chance of 10%.
- The 100th fire skill used at t3 Writ has a proc chance of 7% because it's at the plateau. The difference is 3%.

This means the advantage for using 4 skills at t2 instead of 3 skills at t2 and an extra skill at t3 is only 3% of a Searing Words on average. This is worth 630 damage, so it's meaningless.

The minimum number of skills after the first Writ is 2 (i.e. Writ, Ridicule, Writ). Putting a 3rd skill inbetween is an advantage of 6% of a Searing Words, or 1260 damage on average. Also not much.


In other words, in a conventional rotation with fixed Writ tiers, delaying Writs doesn't really increase average damage. This is because proc chance per skill drops quickly so that it won't be much higher than if the skills had been used after tier 3. It's better to use Writs in a way that supports the rotation, for example by helping to proc mit debuffs before Smouldering Wrath or induction buffs before Essay.

This is different than in a proc-based rotation because that sustains proc chance at 20% until t3. (see next post)