Help with Rain vs. Spiral vs. Pillar/Column

[Colossusa Forbin]

To get the bane spells you have to quest them, and they cost 2 peri's per cast. I understand what they were for, but on an Avatar or War raid, I didn't have the giant bane spell and I still manage to do plenty of damage to all the uber giants. If the spells did 6K of unresistable damage, they would be interesting, at 2K they are a joke

How about a spell that generates almost no aggro. Doesn't have to be used in Melee range. You are real low on the summoning list. And is unresistable.

Oh wait, that is the bane spells. You use a stack of p-dots and the raid usually pays stone fund anyhow (1k at most).

They rock.

[Ringo]

To get the bane spells you have to quest them, and they cost 2 peri's per cast. I understand what they were for, but on an Avatar or War raid, I didn't have the giant bane spell and I still manage to do plenty of damage to all the uber giants. If the spells did 6K of unresistable damage, they would be interesting, at 2K they are a joke.

They offer other things as well -- Dragonbane lets you hit from range on Lendi, for instance, instead of standing under her belly to nuke. That means less time spent either recycling Force Shield (more DPS overall) or less time for the healers spent keeping you alive.

There's a fair argument that Giantbane isn't that needed if you're over level 62, but Dragonbane is a great spell. And even Giantbane is your best choice until level 63.

[Chiptooth]

At 65 and 100aa I still choose the bane spells whenI can use them. The reason have all benn stated. You can cast from range on mobs with the "must be in melle range to hit" thing ..... Its invaluable to just stand back and let loose. And I rgularly crit them for 4k instead of the standard 2k so I think they are great!

Unresistable means I dont have to rely of moving everywhere the mob is pushed to for placement to cast, I dont have to worry about insane pushing the mob away from me after i have vasted and causing an innate range resist and finally I dotn have to rely on proper debuffing or the fact that on some mobs it can be ineffective anyway.

Bane spells are great!

[Jadrax]

I tend to mem giants bane and use it if the damn fool melee start pushing it places i cant be arsed to walk too ;o)

[banghi]

i still think rains have their place. for example we just did the emperor for the first time last week (damn game crashed on us before we were able to dish out the loot, two swords and that ft4 cape... also lost about half the rifts). i was doing some spellshield duty on the tank, but pretty much chained tears of marr. i couldn't get concussion to land so felt this was an easy low aggro spell i could use from engage. by the end of the 12 minute fight i was almost oom and ended up doing just under 80k of damage (more than anyone else by far). sure there were plenty of resists and nothing was focused, but the bard i had in group didn't have rizlonas in any form so i figured it was a small loss.

as for the banes, dragon owns but i never mem giant anymore. draughts or whatever do just fine. but as whizbang notes being able to nuke dragons from a range is nice.

[Zyligryx]

I prefer rains in group environments myself. However, I also load both Lures I currently have, because I can chain then starting at 95% mob health in relative safety, even without Concussion (I know, I'm a slacker for not getting it yet). The only times I have aggro issues are when the tanks can't hold aggro on an orc pawn. Still, I want the added security of Concussion. Guess I have to round up some guildmates to get it done.

[Eddak]

One thing not mentioned here...

Rain spells generate far less aggro than draughts or big nukes (Ice Meteor, AT, SoS), so they are a great start for your first nuke in an xp group or LDoN dungeon.

I generally have two Rains memmed (ToMarr, ToRo), cast them both almost at the beginning of the fight, then finish with SoS. That will give you about 7500 damage (assuming crits balance resists on Rains) which is very respectable for a 12K hp mob, and rarely get aggro.

[Aiyane N'Farre]

Lots of people are saying how good rain spells are meaning "TEARS" spells. The original poster is only lvl 21.

So: don't use any of the under 50 rains, they suck. Like the spiral spells they have very low efficiency because they originally hit unlimited targets.

Just to repeat, do NOT use rain spells under lvl 50.

[Jarnin Fisheermann]

I like my draughts and my SoS. They are fast, efficient, and will not cause unnecessary aggro or wake a mez'd baddie sitting in the corner.

Learn how to move mobs with Thunderstrike. Then you don't wake up any mez'd mobs, and you get to use a fairly efficient way of nuking.

I've been using Tears of Marr in Cazic Thule while camping my sanguine tome, and it shreads those lizards. I usually cast a ToM, then an Ice Meteor, then another ToM and a Draught of E`Ci. by that time, the lizard is either dead or below 7%.

Rain spells are about as close to a DoT as our class will ever get. If you're on a horse, have some AA crits and a mana preservation item, rain spells kick ass.

Oh yeah, and this...

Thunderbold
unlimited targets in range of you
mana 300
damage 600
2.0 dmg per mana but unlimited targets. also a 3 second stun which lowers efficiency for balance reasons. 20 targets gets a 40 dmg per mana ratio though so can be very powerful.

... is completely inaccurate information. Thunderbold is a targeted AE, and so it has the same target cap as circles, columns and pillars (4 targets max).

[Soldarin]

Thank you all for the great info! I am very impressed with the vast amount of info that was shared with this newbie wizzy. I am pushing 29 now and am looking forward to trying to quad (or at least dual). I finished my Jboots quest and am halfway through my Staff of Temp Flux quest. Trying to build a competent wiz and I appreciate all the insight posted here.