Feldon 
If you’re a Scout, a Fighter, and maybe even a Cleric, Druid, Enchanter, or Mystic in EQ2, and you push yourself to play the absolute best (even if you’re not geared the best), you’re probably already familiar with the concept of Autoattack.
Game Update 61 introduced a new type of Autoattack called Spell Autoattack for Mages and Priests. You might be tempted to jump on the DPS bandwagon, but before you run out and equip a Wand, there are some things you really ought to know!
UPDATE: This article has been updated thanks to feedback from Ferk, Anaogi, Barx!
If you can already feel your eyes rolling in the back of your head at the approaching technobabble, click the link below, we won’t think any less of you…
Holy Crap This is Too Detailed! Take me to the “Too Long; Didn’t Read Version” >>
Ok, so you’ve decided to stick it out for the technical explanations. Read on!
What is Autoattack?
Autoattack is the automatic swinging (or firing) of your weapon every few seconds at a targeted enemy. For scouts and fighters especially, Autoattack can account for some 30-50% of your DPS or Damage Per Second.
Whenever any character, whether a mage, scout, priest, or fighter engages an enemy, either by casting a Combat Art or a Spell, swinging your sword, firing your bow, or even by walking up to an enemy and pressing Attack, you begin swinging your primary weapon at them. This weapon “swing” happens on a regular timer based on the Delay of your weapon (common Delays are 1.5, 4, 6, or 9 seconds). You can determine the Delay of your weapon by typing /weapon.
Timing Autoattacks
Because of the amount of damage each Autoattack can do, fastidious players have learned not to interrupt, delay, or “miss” an Autoattack by casting a Spell or Combat Art at the inopportune time. Some players (I among them) have taken to installing an Autoattack plugin into our EQ2 to get a visual readout (a progress bar) of the next Autoattack.
Others have setup Advanced Combat Tracker (ACT) to play a “bell” sound whenever a successful Autoattack occurs, granting the player a few seconds to squeeze in as many combat arts as possible before the next Autoattack. The concept of holding off on casting the next combat art until the right time is called timing Autoattacks and it has been a part of EQ2 gameplay strategy since at least Echoes of Faydwer.
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Before Game Update 61, there were actually two types of Autoattack — Melee and Ranged. When you click a melee Combat Art, your next Autoattack is automatically set to Melee. However if you cast a ranged-based Combat Art, your next Autoattack is toggled to Ranged. Having the wrong type of Autoattack running can be disastrous for your damage output and your casting order, especially if your Autoattack is set to Ranged, but you are too close to the mob, or vice versa. In this situation, your Autoattacks will “stall” until you switch to the correct type, or move closer or further from the enemy.
Tip: Autoattacks will also stop if you are Dazed by an enemy. |
| Rangers in particular have been forced to use kludgy macros which, after each Melee Combat Art, re-toggle Ranged Autoattack (/auto 2) to ensure that only Ranged Autoattacks are being performed. Due to server and connection lag, this can result in “sticky” arrow pulls of faraway enemies as the group or raid’s tank switches to the next target.
Two years ago, it was announced that an Autoattack Preference would be added to the EverQuest II Options window to allow us to choose which type of Autoattack we would prefer — Automatic, Melee Always, or Ranged Always. To date, this feature has yet to be delivered. |
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You might think we’re only talking about Scouts and Fighters here, but the benefits of melee Autoattacks have long been known by Druids, Clerics, and Enchanters due to some of their Alternate Advancements (AA) choices that enhance the effectiveness of melee Autoattacks (and in the case of Enchanters, debuff the mob so spells are resisted less frequently).
Stats That Improve Autoattack
There are several stats that improve Melee and Ranged Autoattack damage and speed. Some of these stats are on a curve of diminishing returns.
- Attack Speed/Haste — Increases your casting speed by a percent value. At the the soft cap of 200 Attack Speed, you get an actual increase of 125%.
- AoE Autoattack — A percent chance that your melee or ranged attack will hit multiple targets. Maximum value is 100%.
- Multi Attack Chance — A percent chance that you will attack multiple times with one autoattack. At 237% multiattack, you have a 100% chance of attacking three times, and a 27% chance of attacking a fourth time. At the soft cap of 600%, you attack a total of 7 times. Beyond 600%, you are on a very steep curve and must acquire a stunning 1000% to guarantee an 8th attack.
- Damage Per Second — Increases your autoattack damage by a % value. At the soft cap DPS value of 200, you get an actual DPS increase of 125%.
Starting with Game Update 61 (and as announced at Fan Faire), some of these stats have “Overcap Stat Conversion“. You can read more about these “overcap stat conversions” in this thread on the EQ2 Forums. Note that the initial post contains the old numbers which were changed in response to player feedback.
A Third Type of Autoattack
With Game Update 61, Spell Autoattack was introduced. Regardless of how you feel about the concept, and there have been plenty of philosophical debates on both sides, the implementation of Spell Autoattack has been problematic to say the least.
Rather than tune the damage output of Mages and Priests downwards by 40% to match that of Fighters and Scouts and then introduce Spell Autoattack as a direct analogue of Melee Autoattack, SOE introduced new stats just for Mages and Priests which only affect Spell Autoattack:
- Spell Weapon Attack Speed
- Spell Weapon AoE Autoattack
- Spell Weapon Multi Attack Chance
- Spell Weapon Damage Per Second
This duplication of stats has resulted in a bewildering array of blue stats appearing on items, as seen in the item examine windows below:
The bigger problem however is that some Priests and some Mages, specifically Clerics, Druids, Mystics, and Enchanters, all have Alternate Advancement (AA) lines which favor standing at Melee range and using Melee Autoattacks. All those abilities and buffs are lost by using a Spell Autoattack Wand.
Those who have done side-by-side comparisons of Melee Autoattack (using a standard Secondary/Ranged item) vs. Spell Autoattack (using a Focus/Ranged ‘Wand’) have reported substantial drops in DPS, especially the classes listed above.
This is surprising, considering that Spell Autoattack doesn’t even require “timing” Autoattacks. Spell Autoattack happens automatically, even if you are casting spells, and doesn’t stop until combat ends.
Too Long; Didn’t Read (TLDR) Version
If you are a Scout or a Fighter, Autoattack is a no-brainer. It can do up to 30-50% of your damage (in addition to your combat arts). You should try to time your autoattacks, either by just leaving a 0.5 sec pause after each combat art, watching the swinging animation of your character, installing an Autoattack Status Bar UI plugin (as I have done), or installing an ACT plugin to make a ping or bell sound every 4 seconds.
If you are a Mage or Priest, the decision is less clear-cut. If you are a Cleric, Druid, Mystic, or Enchanter, you should seriously consider NOT equipping a Wand because this will change your Melee Autoattacks to be Spell Autoattacks. By choosing to stick with Melee Autoattacks, you take advantage of Alternate Advancement lines available to your class which either boost melee DPS or debuff the mob so your spells are resisted less often.
An example of a Spell Autoattack Wand, indicated by the Focus/Ranged designation.
Can you have the best of both worlds by setting up macros to toggle back to Melee Autoattack?
Unfortunately no. Unlike Scouts and Fighters whose Autoattacks start the moment you click a Combat Art, Spell Autoattacks trigger at the end of a successful spellcast. As a result, any macro you set up will see your character switch to Melee Autoattack when you click a spell, and then toggle back to Spell Autoattack once the spell finishes casting. It’s just not possible to force a Priest/Mage character wearing a Ranged/Focus wand to exclusively use Melee Autoattacks.
Although this means your character will be left out of some of the nicer upgrades in Drunder, Echoes of War, etc. especially Wands with Red adornment slots, consider that Spell Autoattack damage is minimal for the time being and is accounting for less than 5% of even the best-geared players damage.
We’ll all have to reconsider this decision in the future if Spell Autoattack starts turning in real damage numbers, but for now, for many spellcasters, Spell Autoattack and thus Focus/Ranged items get a “Don’t Buy” rating from EQ2Wire.
I equipped one of those wands out of the x4 on my defiler, and yes it killed my melee dps. You say a defiler does dps, yes in a raid I can push 20-30k dps and still heal. That wand took my dps down to about 8k bottom of the pack. I know some folks will say you are a healer you should not be dps’ing. Not true all dps adds up, everybody should be doing at least 10k dps at level 90 and if your not then something is wrong.
Just a few things that are a little off:
You point out that druids, clerics, and enchanters use autoattack heavily, but mystics are also melee healers, and second only to inquisitors in terms of DPSing in such a way.
Also the 200 point cap for DPS and Haste was taken away in a recent update. DPS now increases damage of autoattack in the same way your primary stat increases all damage, 200 still = 125, but going over 200 will continue to add to your damage ie 300 = ~135. Haste “caps” at 200 still but over 200 gives small amounts of flurry. While the 200 = 125 is still in effect, over 200 now does something for you now.
Multiattack is also no longer capped, though the defacto soft cap is 600 (it was changed several times between 500 and 600 during testing). 600 is the last time that 100 MA = 1 extra swing, after this the next guaranteed extra swing is 1000.
I don’t mean this to sound like I’m telling you “you’re wrong” or anything like that, but I spend a lot of time with raidmates, particularly scouts, trying to help them understant that autoattack is so huge and the exact stats they need to strive for.
Thanks for the great writeup and for calling attention to this issue. I’m an enchanter so I’m defintely frustrated by this… at the speedy rate I cast spells there’s no hope my combat arts are going to reset the autoattack meter in time. An a side question, too: why haven’t they made the autoattack timer part of the standard UI yet? It’s helpful for eveyrone to know when they are or are not autoattacking. IMO it should be a toggleable window out of the box.
I also wish a had a proximity based setting that would simply default to melee when I was in melee range (even if I were overlapping, favor melee) and ranged autoattack when I was not. That way, it would truly feel “automatic” to me.
Wait, it gets worse.
Spell autoattack has one difference from normal autoattack, and that’s how it works with your ‘normal’ casting. In most cases, auto is stopped by combat arts and casting, so you have to time things to get the swings in on schedule. With spell auto, hostile spells do not affect it at all, though heals and CAs will.
Personally, I hate it. I just unequipped it on my ‘namesake’ main character, a warlock, because it was simply more hassle than it was worth. (I also got something better for that slot, so…) But YMMV.
A wand isn’t worth the trouble until you have the gear to support it (with the spell auto stats). As current tier stuff doesn’t have it until EoW+ you won’t benefit from a wand at all for a very long time.
Also, DPS mod doesn’t cap out anymore, it’s just a soft cap that decreases the gain by a ton.
Anaogi,
Darn I knew I forgot something. Yes Spell Autoattack doesn’t require “timing autoattacks” which is good and bad.
Good writeup. This issue was one that was pointed out to SOE back in testing and has been continually stressed ever since it went live, since it can significantly reduce the DPS of melee priests. Considering they did not remove the regular ranged slots from drop tables many of those priests are just using the non-wand items because of this. The sad irony of it is, the priest-targeted wands have melee stats and yet those stat gains are easily offset by the how crappy spell autoattack is.
All they need to do is add a toggle to prevent autoattack from changing or even a toggle to disable spell autoattack outright. It was a mediocre idea to start that bloated stats quite a bit (especially after their “lets simplify stats” crap). They flubbed again by having mage and priest versions of each and yet making them usable by both. It’s just another terrible itemization decision in a year that’s been plagued by them.
Should be noted DPS Mod & Haste above 200% is now supported.
Going from 200% to 300% dps mod equals to a 10% increase in weapon damage (135%).
Haste 200% to 300% is 5 or 6 furry.
Honestly, even my enchanters skip using the wands, as it can be very problematic trying to do crowd control when you might find yourself in ‘spell auto-attack’ mode at any given time.
Thanks to feedback from Ferk, Anaogi, Barx, I’ve updated the article to address Overcap Stat Conversion, the lack of Spell Autoattack “timing”, and Mystics affinity for Melee Autoattack.
I had initially left out the overcap stat conversion info to keep the article from getting too long, but I see how the omission could have led to confusion.
I do wonder — with the infinitesimal gains once you are over cap, and the desperate need to use all the Critical Chance and Critical Mitigation we can get, I wonder how many people are going out of their way to get that tiny bit of Flurry or Spell Doublecast.
You say this:
“Going over 200 starts to provide a very small amount of Flurry, which allows you to hit multiple targets in the area.”
but isn’t it overcapped Haste that grants Flurry? Also, your description of what Flurry does is incorrect; what you’re describing is AE Auto.
Would also like to nitpick one more thing — the article mentions flurry as something that “allows you to hit multiple targets in the area”. This is incorrect. What the author is referring to is AE Autoattack. Flurry allows your autoattack to hit the target multiple times and it stacks with Multiattack, effective doubling MA.
AB, Lexing,
Sorry but with the other news breaking today, I’m gonna just remove my details about Stat Overcap Conversion and direct people to the forum thread. Hope you understand.
Cleric, druid or “mystic”???
Even here defiler’s are being ignored 🙁
This spell auto-attack concept has got to be the dumbest thing I’ve seen since I saw rick perry draw a mind blank about what else he’d remove after he said he’d remove the education system if elected. That pretty much sums up my feelings about it right there.
What about weapon skills over the caps of 650? rangers get focus aim which shoots up our weapon skills does thios add to the base damage of your weapons or to the less chance of missing, reason why I ask is because this is something that The Legendary Ranger From Guk Landacet Of Ancient Legacy And Lord Jacun of LCN have discussed and parse overall throughout some time.
Does a higher weapon skill raise base damage of weapons or increase chances of hitting.
I just stand in front of stuff and hit it until one of us falls over.
Clearly I need to roll a Shaman or two and smarten myself up a bit.
Furys actually do more dps with a wand because of the druids wardens are the melee class and Furys are the casting class. In order for a fury to have a max output of heals and dps they have to be constantly casting spells and heals and there by never allowing melee autoattacks to land anyways. I know there is some melee AAs a fury can get but it just takes the spots of more effective AA choices for them, unlike wardens who actually have melee AAs in their class specific tree. So when you say druids it should really be wardens.
“Clearly I need to roll a Shaman or two and smarten myself up a bit.”
Ewww no.
Lol. I agree with Nalol, Although, my Druid didn’t get much dps increased with the Wand, it allows me to keep casting and I don’t die to Melee AoE’s.
My Coercer uses Melee and doesn’t use a Wand, because she can use self-only AoE Blocker Str Endline and stay alive, and it makes sense to use the Enchanter Combat Arts. Fury doesn’t really have any reason to be out there in melee taking those AoE hits…
Bards matter in the group though. Defiler with a Dirge loses a ton of Dps, because the Wand turns you into a Caster, and the Dirge buffs are being wasted. So, unless you are a Fury or with a Troubadour, you’d usually be best off leaving Wands to the Sorceror/Summoners.
The real question is whean are you guys ganna add spell auto atk to the new raid gear other wize that iteam is usless.
Has the m.a. mechanic been altered since this thread was active? Seeing some different things when cursoring over m.a. modifier in drumsui char. window, things not consistent with the mechanic outlined here…For example, at +635 m.a., cursoring over tells me that will yield “one additional attack, plus 10% chance for an additional”…..
Trushott,
It’s an in-game display bug. With 635MA, you are getting 6 extra attacks, and a 35% chance of a 7th attack. 700% is the soft cap by the way. Beyond that, overcap stat conversion applies.
I noticed on my congy the spell auto does some damage but does not crit 100% of the time. I have over 300 cc. Do I need to work on my weapon skills? Ie adornment of weaponry or are mages just doomed not to spell weapon crit 100% of the time.
I am a raiding coercer. If I need to be at range, I have a macro which equips my Focus Ranged Item and switches to ranged auttoattack. When I can meelee I use another macro which equips a non focus ranged item and swithes to meelee autoattack. This seems to work fine for me, or am i understanding the complaints about focus ranged items (wands) incorrectly?
Unequipping and equipping items is the only way until we get an autoattack setting.
I have been standing in front of the mob playing EQ2. After reading this article, I now can say I am just understanding the game after reading this article.
After reading this months ago, I’ve been reforging my (non-raid) gear to reduce the spell weapon stats into other more useful stats.