ESPER DPS

[Cassious]

Esper DPS Guide [Drop 8 or whatever this is now]

By Cassious >> May 16^th 2017

Welcome,

Are interested in being a badass, magic swinging, illusionary trickery, face rolling playstyle, and the notorious “Bird”? Well then this guide is for you! This guide will be a build and continuation of the style and format of the Enigma drop 6 guide (so shout out to Daruka). This focus of this guide will be how to DPS as an Esper for end game PvE content such as raiding. For the most part, I will be assuming you have a decent and basic background and understanding of the game. This is geared towards level 50 players. Hope you like, and leave comments!

 

About the Author:
I have been playing Esper as my main for about a year now; I have all classes at 50, and have raided on all 6 of them. From my experience, I find Espers to be the most face rolling and enjoyable class. It is not that hard to master this playstyle and is quite fun! I have done a bit of theory crafting and testing to try and find the most efficient and highest dps build. If you have any comments or questions, please let me know!

 

Basics

What is an Esper?
Espers are illusion masters and can use psychotic powers to mess shit up. We have weapons that sit on our back that don’t do anything, but we can summon psiblades and many more!

 

Armor
Espers are one of the two light armor classes, the other being Spellslingers. So when that light token drops, fight tooth and nail for it.

 

Weapon
Espers have a Psi-Blade that allows us to summon deadly projections and pets.

 

Limited Action Set (LAS)
In WildStar we have a bar of up to 8 class specific abilities to use in fights and in general. In general, this will be referred to as your LAS

 

Interrupt Armor
Some enemies in the game will have what is called an interrupt armor. This armor can be broken with some CC abilities in the utility branch such Crush! As an Esper you can go up to 4 interrupt armor removal.

 

Moment of Opportunity (MoO)
This is what happens when you interrupt a casted ability from an enemy there will be a moment of opportunity where the enemy’s health bar will turn purple and they will get stunned. This will allow for increased damage on them!

 

Raid Content
Genetic Archives: (GA) is the first entry level raid. This raid drops base level gear of ilv 100. It is composed of 6 boses: Experiment X-89, Kurlak the Defiler, Phagemaw, Phagetech Prototypes, Phagetech Convergance, and Ohmna .

Datascape: (DS) is the Second level raid. The base level gear is of ilv 120. It consists of 9 boss fights: System Dameons, Lattice, Limbo, Malstorm, Gloomclaw, three pairs of the 6 Elemental bosses, and Avatus.

Redmoon Terror: (RMT) is the latest (and possibly last) raid in Wildstar. It is broken down into two sections. Will get into this more later.

 

Resources
There are two major resources for Espers:

 

Psi Points
These are generated and used by most of our abilities, our major casting building spells are Telekinetic Strike and Psychic Frenzy for DPS. Our major damage comes from our abilities that consume Psi points such as Mind Burst (BIRD!).

 

Focus
This is mostly for support based abilities used to heal. As a DPS spec you will not need to worry about this so much.

 

Stats

Primary Stats:

Strikethrough: Reduces the chance that a foe can deflect your attack. (st that exceeds the foes deflect rate is then converted into armor pierce)

Critical Hit Chance: The chance that you will critically hit a foe (soft cap is at 30%)

Critical Hit Severity: Factors the critical hits damage by that percent (soft cap is at 250%)

Multi-Hit Chance: The chance for each application of damage to applied an additional time at a reduced value (soft cap is at 60%)

Multi-Hit Severity: Factors the multi-hits damage by that percent

Vigor: While you have full health, your damage is increased by that percent, scales with percentage of health you have (soft cap is at 30%)

Armor Pierce: Your attacks pierce through that percent of the foe’s mitigation

 

Secondary Stats: *ehh does stuff

Heroism:

Tenacity:

Hope:

 

Espers & Critical Hit Chance
Now a vast majority of our abilities and AMPs will have some proc to add or increase Critical Hit chance and Critical Hit Severity. This combined with the fact that we have less “hits” or attacks per second than some other classes, means that for Espers, Critical Hit is preferred over Multi-Hit.

 

Stat Priority and set up:

Strikethrough should be up to a certain cap depending on your content level.

Dungeons: 8%*

Genetic Archives: 12%*

Dataspace: 17%*

Redmoon Terror: 19%*

 

*note: so you can use the fusion hand rune “True Strike” that will add ~2.5% strikethrough so you would subtract 2.5% from whatever the above number is!

 

Critical Hit / Critical Severity build (Mind Burst (BIRD!) or Telekinetic Strom):

You should try to follow this model for your stats in order of Priority:

 

Strikethrough* > Critical Hit Chance** > Critical Hit Severity > Vigor > Multi-hit

*Now you only need to get your Strikethrough up to the cap listed below, after that focus on Critical Hit Chance

**Now the soft cap for Critical Hit is 30%, so it is best to target to get your critical Hit Chance to around 18-23%  

 

Runes

Fusion Runes

 Head
Deadly Blows

Special: Deadly blows: when you critically hit with a direct damage attack, gain an empower for 5 seconds.

Empower: Increases critical hit severity by 248. Stacks 5 times.

 

Chest
Flurry
Special: Flurry: When you critically hit with a direct damage attack, gain an empower for 5 seconds.
Empower: Increases Multi-Hit rating by 124 stacks 5 times. When you Multi-Hit with a direct damage attack, gain and empower for 5 seconds.
Empower: Increases critical Hit rate by 124 stacks 5 times.

Or

Full Strength
Special: Full Strength: Gain and empower based on your health.
Empower: Increases Vigor rating by x and lifesteal by x.

 

Hands*
True Strike:
Special: True strike: When you land a direct damage attack, gain an empower for 5 seconds and apply an expose to the target for 5 seconds.
Empower: Increases strikethrough rating by 500.
Expose: reduces deflect chance by 2.5%

*NOTE: You do not need to use this rune! The only reason you would use this rune is because you are not quite at the strikethrough cap (Discussed below).

 

Weapon*
Mordechai Redmoon Ammunition Fusion Rune: Melee Build
Special: Detonation: Your direct damage attacks have a 10% chance to Detonate, dealing technology damage to the target and 4 foes with 4m of the target. can only occur every 1 second.

Venom Fusion Rune: Ranged Build
Special: Venom: Your direct damage attacks apply venom to the target.

Venom deals 329 technology damage every 1 second for 5 seconds.

*NOTE: while there is a split preference between which of the two to use, I find that Venom is more consistent with damage, since Espers hit less per second than a class like Medics and Engineers. Now Detonation can be better, but you would need to be making far more hits a second for this.

 

 

Class Rune Sets
Now there are six class rune sets, three of which are for healing; so we only be talking about the dps ones. The first one being the ilv 100 Rune set from GA: Mental Prowess, the next is the ilv 120 Rune set from DS: Fiendish, and finally the 140 RMT Rune set: Déjà vu.

*Note: The best thing you can do is to put this rune set in a pair of Elden Gauntlets (the ones drop from dungeons that you need to imbue through GA. The bonus on this will equate to about a 2-3% of your damage and makes it worthwhile until you get ~145 hands). If you do not have Gauntlets you can put them into your Shoulders, Pants, or boots if you want.

 

Mental Prowess:
2 power: 0.18% critical hit chance
3 power: 0.80% critical hit severity
4 power: Mental Prowess: When going above 3 Psi Points gain an Empower for 4’s. Empower: Increases Magic damage dealt by 4%.
5 power: 0.30% strikethrough
6 power: 0.28% critical hit chance
7 power: 1.20% critical hit severity
8 power: Mental Prowess: Creates a field that last 10’s. While in the field consumers that deal damage reduc the cooldown on Assault abilities by 2.5’s.

 

*Note: This should be the second class set you get, and should go into a 120 piece of gear. I recommend using either your shoulders, pants, or boots.

 

Fiendish:
2 power: 0.21% vigor
3 power: 0.23% strikethrough
4 power: Fiendish: Upon generating a Psi Point, gain an Empower for 3’s. Empower increases Magic Damage Dealt by 1% per stack. Stacks 5 times.
5 power: 0.30% vigor
6 power: 0.33% strikethrough
7 power: 0.36% vigor
8 power: Fiendish: At 3 or more stacks of Fiendish, your Telekinetic Strike and Psychic Frenzy deal an additional 629 Magic damage to foes.

 

*Note: This is the last class set you will be getting, and can only go into your helm, shoulders, or legs. You will be able to buy Risen Class Foci: Minor from the RMT rep vendor for 10 Triploons per foci. When you get to the 2/3 mark, You will need to run the Mind Burst (BIRD!) build.

 

Déjà vu:
1 power: 1.50% strikethrough
2 power: Déjà vu: Casting Mind Burst (BIRD!) with 3 or more Psi Points grants a charge of Concentrated Blade
3 power: Déjà vu: Every third cast of Mid Burst (BIRD!) with 3 or more Psi Points triggers an additional Mind Burst (BIRD!) after 0.5’s
 

*There is also an Augmenters set, but nobody will realistically get this, also its more multi hit so it is not as important.

 

Regular Rune Sets
Here we will mostly be using Devastation for our gear, as the Critical hit is very important for our build. Now you should be trying to use the 2 set bonus runes in your gear to maximize our set. For ilv 90 and up use the pure ilv 100 runes, for ilv 110 gear and up use the divine 120 runes, and for ilv 130 gear and up use the risen 140 runes.

 

Devastation:
2 power: 0.21% strikethrough
3 power: 0.20% critical hit chance
4 power: 0.90% critical hit severity
5 power: 0.25% critical hit chance
6 power: 1.10% critical hit severity

 

Now we can use Onslaught to fill out our gear that has one or rune slots left. We Primarily use the Onslaught Vigor runes, but we can use Strikethrough if you are not at the strikethrough cap.

 

Onslaught:
2 power: 0.21% vigor
3 power: 0.24% Strikethrough
-
-
-

 

Builds
*These builds can be adjusted for different stats to better fit your situation. Note: These builds all are considering that you have max ability and AMP points without using the Primal Matrix

 

Pre-RMT Class Set Build
This Build is for those who do not have the RMT Class set quite yet, or need to run Telekinetic Storm for the deflect debuff. This build also works better for lower Critical Hit Severity builds (ie. lower ilv gear).

LAS and Abilities

 

So here we put our ability points, in order of priority, in Mind Burst (BIRD!) (or use Telekinetic Storm instead for the deflect debuff) to Tier 8, Telekinetic Strike to Tier 8, and Haunt to Tier 8.

You also will want to use the following at Tier 0: Concentrated Blade, Spectral Swarm, and Reap. Fixation is optional, but I highly recommend using it. This will leave you with one open utility spot; so I put Crush, our interrupter, in as the last ability.

If you need to take a second utility ability I would recommend either taking out Reap, this is more of a matter of preference and depends on your AMP points.

 

AMP Points

 

Now you can customize the amps as much as you want. But after messing around I found these can make a pretty solid build. Now If you only have 57 (the max amount without primal) I can leave 2 out of Armor pierce.

 

RMT Set Build
This Build is for when you have at least 2/3 or 3/3 of your RMT Class set. Now there is a slightly different rotation for when you get this class set and have Concentrated blades at Tier 8. Now that your 3 Psi point or higher Mindburst (BIRD!) adds another concentrated blade, we want ot put points in to blade instead of Haunt.

 

LAS and Abilities

 

So this is almost identical to the above build, however now we run Concentrated Blade at Tier 8 instead of Haunt. The AMPs are also the same for the most part

 

RMT Set & Primal Matrix Build
This is still new stuff so here is where things may or may not be 100%. Please share suggestions and comments!

So now let’s say that you have all your Amp and Ability points, all three Class sets, and now are filling out your Primal Matrix. So the New Esper dps ability is “Locus of Power” and allows you to place a small telegraph under your feet that if you stand it, you do extra damage. This build is a continuation off of the RMT set one.

 

LAS and Abilities

 

Now
*NOTE: When you get your other 9 Ability points out of your Primal Matrix, I would put them into Locus of Power to bring it to Tier 4!

 

The Key thing in this build is that you will place your Locus of power inside your Mental Prowess ring and stand still to do lots of damage! Then with the AMP to rest cooldowns by 45% and Fixation’s 20% reduction you should be able to keep popping your Locus of Power up!

 

AMP Points*

 

Now when you hit 66 Amp points you can do a lot of different Amp possibilities! Now you can do something similar or different from this, but I would recommend to use this build IF you also have your max ability points as well.

 

Rotations 

Pre-RMT Class set build
This rotation is very simple!

Opener: Face roll on keyboard pressing all the buttons and using all the abilities!

Priority Order:

1)    Reap and Spectral Swarm are off the GCD, and should be cast as soon as they get off cooldown

2)    Haunt should always be cast on cooldown

3)    Spectral Form and your Gadget should be cast on cooldown usually

4)    Concentrated Blade should be cast during the GCD after Casting a finisher

5)    Telekinetic Strike is your builder, and should be cast when you cannot cast anything else

6)    Cast Finisher (Mind burst or Telekinetic Storm) at +5 Psi Points

 

Now this becomes just a game of learning timing and being able to cast your finisher as soon as you hit +5 Psi Points and being able to build back up to 5 as soon as you can.

 

RMT Class set build
This rotation has a bit more to it.

Opener: Launch all three concentrated blades, THEN Face roll!

                        *this allows you to generate one back after casting your Mind Burst (BIRD!)

Priority Order:

1)    Reap and Spectral Swarm are off the GCD, and should be cast as soon as they get off cooldown

2)    Haunt should always be cast on cooldown

3)    Spectral Form and your Gadget should be cast on cooldown usually

4)    Concentrated Blade should be cast during the GCD after Casting Mind Burst (BIRD!), as it will generate more!

5)    Telekinetic Strike should be cast when you cannot cast anything else

6)    Cast Mind Burst (BIRD!) at +5 Psi Points

 

The overall feel is very similar to that of the Pre-RMT Class set build, you just need to learn how to now cast the concentrated blades in-between.

 

RMT Class set & Primal Matrix build
This rotation is essentially the same thing as above! The only difference now being that you should cast your Locus of Power right before you start so that you have all your opener go off inside it for the buff! Now you want to cast Locus of Power right after you cast a Builder for maximum casting time. Always try to cast one while you can off cooldown!

 

 

So that’s all folks!
Thank you for reading through this, I hope it was helpful! Again, I really would appreciate some positive critical feedback! So if you see a mistake in here, or have a question/comment on something I wrote, please feel free to say so! And remember, BIRD!

[kyaras]

Good start Cassious! Beat me to it! Looks really good! Was just about to start the dps guide just was finishing up the healing esper one first. Will look it over again but quick glance looks great!

Edit: Only thing I found that I would do different is under your Full AMP/Ability points with Primal Matrix, I would tier up Haunt as it will add damage from the magic debuff for the Espers and Spellslingers more so than tiering up locus which would increase the Esper's damage but not anyone else in the raid. Still guide looks great! You did a good job on it! 

Edited May 28, 2017 by kyaras

[Cassious]

Thanks! yeah looking back I see some things I might need to change but i think it's a decent start

[kyaras]

Hey, found some interesting things the other night. It does appear that there are some melee espers who are pulling some crazy numbers on wildstar logs.  Tested out the melee build by switching T8 telekinetic strike to T8 psychic frenzy while also changing fusions Full Strength to Flurry and Venom to Detonation and the difference is amazingly better than the ranged build. I even switched out some vigor Concentration runes for Striker just to see the changes. I'll post the screenshots of the test parses in another topic as I can't figure out how to attach the screenshot besides linking out of the website, but there's about a 4-5K dps difference between the ranged build and the melee build from what I can tell. Considering taking T8 Locus and Quick Response AMP once I have the purple essences to do so just for curiosity.

 

Edited May 31, 2017 by kyaras

[coden1ke]

test