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[PvP] Indepth Guide to Pyro/Dom and Chloro/Dom
Table of Contents:
1. Specs and Variants
2. General Playstyle
3. Pyro/Dom Playstyle
4. Pyro/Dom Macros and Rotation
5. Chloro/Dom Playstyle
6. Chloro/Dom Macros and Rotation
7. How to Fight Other Classes
8. Tips and Tricks
Guide to Pyro/Dom and Chloro/Dom
First things first, the specs:
35Pyro/31Dom/0Archon – inspired by Bleedz as this spec is his baby
31Chloro/35Dom/0Archon
Reason why I went only 31 Chloro instead of 32 is because Corrosion sucks donkey balls, Living Infusion is negligible at 32 points, and Living Energy often gets purged in combat. The extra point allows me to go deeper Dom for a more powerful Reflective Presence or a stronger Mana Wrench. Notice I also only got 4/5 in Swift Control. This is because Chloro/Dom still uses a 1.5 second GCD and having even 3/5 Swift Control allows you to cast Vile Spores in under the 1.5 second GCD. 4/5 allows you to receive some pushback while still remaining under the GCD. 5/5 Swift Control is mostly redundant and is better suited to put those points elsewhere. Some people spec into Radiant Spores, I chose not to as it will often be AoE cleansed and the heal has a pretty low chance to heal and isn’t always worth the GCD.
Now you’ll see that I didn’t get a few abilities such as Priest Lament, Arresting Presence, Backdraft, or Fire Storm. Reason why will be explained under the Abilities and how to use them tab.
What’s nice about any xxx/Dom spec is that there is a decent amount of variety you can fit into the spec to make it your own. The one provided is a spec I run with. Some people may want to change a few points around or add a few abilities here and there, and by all means test it yourself and see what works best for you. Maybe you care more about survivability or want a stronger reflect. It’s all subjective.
1) General Playstyle:
If you’ve ever played any form of Dom you’ll quickly realize that 75% of your skills are situational. What this means is macros won’t be of much use here nor will a rotation. Dom excels at countering and nullifying enemies and this creates a decently high skill cap. Having a deep knowledge of enemy abilities and what they do will drastically help your survivability and killing potential.
As in all my guides, I’m going to preface this by saying USE POSITIONING TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. Too many times I’ve seen mages attempt to face tank and try to kill warriors by eating their swords. That for the most part, won’t work. You’re a MAGE. Mages should be using their 30 meter range spells to their advantage and that means being BEHIND the warriors and melee rogues SUPPORTING them in combat. What does it mean to support? It means to “Assist Target.” What assisting means is attacking the same person as your team, or focus firing. You can enable this option by going into Interface -> Combat -> Enable Target through Target. This will allow you to attack whoever your target is attacking instantly without having to tab through a group or manually click on a person. Now click on the biggest, baddest Warrior you have on your team and attack who he’s attacking. Focus firing wins confrontations, not spamming AoEs that the healers will easily heal through (AKA Fire Storm/Devouring Shadows/Fan Out) Damage numbers don’t mean anything if you don’t kill anyone.
Learn to kite enemies. Use your knockbacks, snares, roots, and squirrels to create distance and KEEP THAT DISTANCE. Face tanking a Warrior or Melee Rogue is never the answer (unless you’re Medusa). Pre-kiting is making sure you are always the same distance away from an enemy. If he moves up 5 meters, you move back. If he moves back 5 meters, you move up. Try to keep to 25-30 meters at ALL TIMES or you’ll quickly find yourself getting trampled by porting Warriors and Rogues. Being alive longer = more time to kill and capture objectives. Pick your battles and don’t mindlessly walk into 5 people defending Codex without any form of backup. Use your minimap to your advantage and watch to see if your teammates are coming back from the respawn and can support you in the battle. Otherwise pick a fight elsewhere if you know you can’t kill whoever your facing.
2) Abilities and how to use them:
Traitorous Influence: Your main cripple ability. Use this on Warriors and Rogues when they initiate to drain their power/energy immediately. This is also great damage and awesome for draining mana in an AoE setting.
Transference: Another cripple ability to be used on Warriors and Rogues. More or less useless on Mages and Clerics, drains mediocre mana so don’t expect much. Instant damage as a last resort finisher. Do NOT use this ability while Traitorous Influence is still up or you will waste both abilities’ effects.
Split Personalities: Your main offensive/defensive CD ability. These ghosts attack the FIRST person that either attacks you, or you attack. They do NOT attack squirreled opponents, so avoid squirreling players your Splits are attacking. I recommend casting Neural Prod on your target as soon as you pop this CD to make the Ghosts instalock-on.
Incompetence: Mostly a raid heal debuff you place on a melee. Use this whenever you have someone attacking you in melee range.
Accelerated Decay: Relatively useless on melee as it will only increase the delay autoattacks are hit. VERY useful on casters, especially other Pyros during Heat Wave and Clerics.
Haunted Pain: THE MOST UNDERRATED DEBUFF IN THE GAME. This is an AMAZING debuff. The reason why this is an amazing ability is that it becomes the game’s best buffer debuff. Its stacks will only be cleansed 1 at a time unless by a full cleanse thus essentially making debuffs (read Traitorous Influence and Storm Shackle) uncleansable.
Void Shroud: Your basic 50% healing debuff that gets overridden by pretty much every other healing debuff in the game. Use this if your Warriors/Rogues are being silly and don’t have Fell Blades/Lingering Wounds/Vampiric Munitions.
Reflective Presence: Great Anti-Caster buff that more or less makes you God-Mode against them for however long you have charge. This is a targetable buff that you can place on someone being focus fired or yourself. It will only work against Clerics and Mages. If you find yourself fighting another Dom and he casts Reflective Presence on himself, use Transference on him. This MAY backfire and reflect onto you, but if it succeeds he will lose 50 charge and his Reflective aura will be dramatically cut short.
Mana Wrench: The bane of healing Clerics existence. This is your main way to be a nuisance and steal all the mana from Clerics in about 10 seconds. Be sure to cast a Life spell if you’re Chloro/Dom to gain 25% more mana to make Mana Wrench steal that much more effective.
Deny: The best cleanse in the game. Learn to recognize debuffs and what they do so you can cleanse those off. First things to recognize is Traitorous Influence and Storm Shackle. Be sure to cleanse those off as Deny more or less nullifies other Doms.
Thunder Blast: Actually 2 Interrupts if the person isn’t movement CC immune. The first interrupt is when casted and the second is when they get knocked back. Combo with Transference for an instant damage finisher.
Degeneration: A channeled purge. Very decent to use if your opponent isn’t smart and realizes that this channel means, “REAPPLY YOUR BUFFS I’M PURGING YOU!”
Reflective Command: Basic single reflect. It’s really difficult to predict when to reflect a fight-changing ability, but if you ever see someone Hard Cast Cinder Burst, be sure to reflect that ;)
Mass Charge Shield: Whenever you’re in a group battle be sure to pop this to make that Cab kill himself! Be sure to also use this when you cast Splits to add more damage to whoever AoEs.
Mass Exhaustion: Mostly situation as a targetable AoE mez. Helpful when you see a stack of marksman or mages in the back. I mostly don’t find myself doing this as it would mean I have to be in the middle of the fight to reach them.
Streams of Reclamation: Terrible ability with only 1 redeeming factor – it gives A LOT of charge. Only use this ability when you need charge and only let it tick once. Channeled abilities are a big no-no in PvP as a giant laser from your hands is a dead giveaway to your position and prevents you from being mobile.
Flashfire: Not terribly helpful in xxx/Dom as you’ll want to often use that DR with a Transmogrify, but is still very useful to stun someone as they’re about to die to prevent them from full-healing or using CDs.
Burning Bonds: The best root in the game. 30 meters and unbreakable makes this ability borderline-OP. You can stack this ability WITH Transmogrify which means they will still be rooted as a squirrel to make sure he can’t escape you.
Flicker: The most awesome movement ability ever. You can use it offensively as well as defensively, just make sure if you flicker towards an enemy, you know you won’t be getting ganked by the entire enemy team. Also, when you’re CCed, make sure your character is facing the direction you want to port in before you click it because often times you’ll just port into the enemy face if you’re stunned since you can’t change directions.
*Useless* Abilities to avoid:
Now this list of abilities are all something to avoid because of the 1 reason: They activate a CC Diminishing Return. DR returns fall under 2 categories in Rift. Control and Movement. Control is CC that prevents your character from using abilities. These include, but are not limited to, saps, stuns, disarms, silences, sheep, and fears. The second category, movement, is CC that prevents your character from properly moving, such as roots and snares. CC can only be used twice in the same category before the target is CC immune for 15 seconds (counted after the first CC was used). DR kicks in after the first CC has been used and the next form of CC will only last 50% as long as the tooltip indicates. After the 2nd CC, all CC under that same category will not work. This means if you squirrel someone then use a stun that should last 4 seconds, they will be squirreled for 8 seconds (the maximum time limit for any CC) and then be stunned for 2 seconds. They will then be immune to all Control CC for 15 seconds.
Now that I explained how DR works in Rift, you’ll see that most of these abilities are bad because they aren’t reliable forms of CC or CC opponents that could otherwise be Transmogrified for Swift Control.
Arresting Presence: There’s a lot of debate with this ability. I’ve found it to be marginally useful but more often a hindrance towards the team. Reason is being an AoE Silence it affects everyone in the radius which means the Warriors and Rogues are also getting their DR started. Thus if you wanted to sheep a warrior that was next to that cleric you silenced, you might not be able to since you wasted a DR on him with Arresting Presence. (However, a great way to troll your team is by spamming Arresting Presence on the enemy team all the time so they become completely CC immune)
Death’s Edict: This ability is bad because it wastes 2 DR, movement and control. It does pitiful damage and it is much better suited to just sheep the target for more Swift Control.
Priest Lament: Some people spec into this because really the only trade-off is 2% intelligence which is rather negligible. I choose not to get it because it is an unreliable form of CC that can easily make my target immune to my Transmogrifies. Often this ability will instantly make your target CC immune since it’s a debuff it will trigger twice within a second.
Grasping Void: A ground AoE snare that is completely useless as people just walk out of it. Don’t even have this on your bar.
Backdraft: Now a lot of people spec into backdraft. I’ve already said my case why I don’t use this ability since it wastes a DR for an ENTIRE TEAM that I could have used with Transmogrify.
Withering Flames: Costs too much charge for too little damage. Charge is much better suited for Internalize Charge/Entropic Veil or Reflective Presence.
Fire Storm: I firmly believe that AoE has no place in a warfront other than to disrupt people from capturing objectives. It is much better to focus one target down and actually kill him than to fluff your scoreboard numbers with crits of 500 that will be easily healed through.
3) Pyro/Dom Playstyle:
Pyro/Dom has a very fast and “machine-gun” playstyle. With the use of Swift Control, each Transmogrify gives you a mini-heatwave. You’ll want to stand in the back lines and targeting down the squishiest targets first. Pyro/Dom is VERY squishy. Don’t get too caught up in KBs and neglect to see that your entire team is dead and you’re the last one standing. If an equivalently geared rogue or warrior even looks at you with your CDs off, expect to die before you can kill them. Pyro/Dom is very good at bursting down enemies before they can react. The major hindering factor though is Swift Control. As amazing as Swift Control is, if you find yourself unable to squirrel anyone due to Diminishing Returns, then you’ll feel like DPSing at a snails pace. You don’t want to be spamming your transmogrify just for the sake of squirreling and enemy and fawn over their cuteness. I’ll be going over tips on how to overcome DRs later on in the guide so stay tuned for that.
4) Pyro/Dom DPS Rotation:
As I said earlier, any xxx/Dom doesn’t really have a fluid and consistent rotation, but there is a more effective rotation for bursting down people in Pyro/Dom.
Rotation is as follows:
Rotation #1: Transmogrify -> (Hard cast) Cinder Burst -> (Internalize Charge) Storm Shackle -> Fireball -> Fireball -> Flame Bolt -> Traitorous Influence
Rotation #2: Transmogrify -> Fireball -> Fireball -> Fireball -> Fireball -> Pray for a Cinder Burst or Wild Fire proc
Now you’re probably wondering why you don’t start off a Flame Bolt to gain that 10% more damage initially, reason being is that it is often a great finisher move that is instant and you want to be able to save that when you’re on the move or if the person you’re fighting starts running away. In skirmishes you should always having the 10% buff from Flame Bolt as you will be incorporating that into your rotation, just not the first one.
Pyro/Dom Macros and Buffs:
Buffs are (IN THIS ORDER OF APPLICATION): Flaring Intellect, Mass Charge Shield, Glyphs of Power, Pyromancer’s Armor. Reason for this buff order is to prevent the most important buffs from being purged first while applying Mass Charge Shield to your team and overriding your own with Pyromancer’s Armor.
#show Fireball
suppressmacrofailures
cast Fireball
cast Flame Bolt
cast Countdown
cast Burning Shield
cast Neural Prod
*This macro is mainly so you will always cast something even if you have to move. Keep Flame Bolt/Countdown as a separate button so you can use them when needed*
#show Inferno
suppressmacrofailures
cast [notactive] Internalize Charge
cast Inferno
#show Cinderburst
suppressmacrofailures
cast [notactive] Internalize Charge
cast Cinderburst
cast Fireball
#show Storm Shackle
suppressmacrofailures
cast [notactive] Internalize Charge
cast Storm Shackle
#show Void Shroud
suppressmacrofailures
cast Haunting Pain
cast Void Shroud
cast Accelerated Decay
#show Deny
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui Deny
cast @self Deny
cast @self Reflective Command
#show Reflective Presence
suppressmacrofailures
tar @self
cast [notactive] Reflective Presence
*This macro makes you automatically cast Reflective Presence on yourself and prevents you from accidentally double-tapping it and turning it off. Remove the tar @self if you want to be able to cast it on an ally or enemy.*
#show Heat Wave
suppressmacrofailures
cast Split Personality
cast Heat Wave
use (insert offensive trinket)
5) Chloro/Dom Playstyle:
Chloro/Dom is has a significantly different playstyle than Pyro/Dom. Pyro/Dom’s main purpose is to kill people and disrupt enemy lines. Chloro/Dom’s goal is to support your team with heals, disrupt enemy lines, drain cleric’s mana, and be a general nuisance to the opposing team. Your survivability is insane, only matched by a Chloro/Lock. Use Deny on yourself and teammates frequently as cleansing hard counters many specs. Be sure to cleanse yourself of Fell Blades and Vampiric Munitions before you heal yourself as well. Whenever you use Traitorous or Mana Wrench, be sure to cast a Life spell so those abilities will deal extra damage and drain more mana to the surrounding target. As always, be sure you’re not in the front lines and can heal with Vile Spores and Nature’s Fury. You can play offensively as Chloro/Dom as well with Swift Control making mobility very easy. This is a spec where you *can* face tank enemy teams, but there’s no reason to unless your group has no warriors or rogues to do it instead. You WILL run out of mana and will run out fast. This is why I specced into Improved Mana Wrench to alleviate this issue and it also helps mana drain Clerics much faster.
6) Chloro/Dom Rotation:
Rotation is similar to Pyro/Dom but is much less of a rotation since you really only have 3 attacks
Rotation #1: Transmogrify -> Nature’s Fury -> (Entropic Veil) Storm Shackle -> Vile Spores
Rotation #2: Transmogrify -> Vile Spores -> Vile Spores -> Vile Spores
Then you just spam your Nature’s Fury Macro. That’s pretty much it.
Chloro/Dom Macros and Buffs:
Buffs are: Mass Charge Shield, LifeGIVING Veil. Order doesn’t matter as LGV is unpurgable.
#show Nature’s Fury
suppressmacrofailures
cast Nature’s Fury
cast Vile Spores
cast Ruin
cast Withering Vine
#show Storm Shackle
suppressmacrofailures
cast [notactive] Entropic Veil
cast Storm Shackle
#show Void Shroud
suppressmacrofailures
cast Haunting Pain
cast Void Shroud
cast Accelerated Decay
#show Deny
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui Deny
cast @self Deny
cast @mouseoverui Nature’s Cleansing
cast @self Wild Abandon
cast @self Reflective Command
#show Reflective Presence
suppressmacrofailures
tar @self
cast [notactive] Reflective Presence
#show Bloom
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui Bloom
#show Essence Surge
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui Essence Surge
7) How to fight other classes:
Vs. a Mage/DPS Cleric: Reflective Command whenever it’s off CD. Continue your usual rotation and be sure to use Deny on yourself whenever you get too many debuffs. Once you get ~75 charge or more, pop Reflective Presence and watch the caster kill himself.
Vs. a melee Rogue/Warrior: Try to keep Incompetence on him at all times and create some distance. Once he initiates, use Traitorous Influence OR Transference to cripple his power/energy regen. Once one or the either falls off, use the other ability. If he gets in melee range, use Thunder Blast on him. If he ports to you afterwards squirrel him and run away BEFORE you break the squirrel. Distance is key to winning these battles. Purge him early to get rid of his buffs and be sure to cleanse yourself before you use a heal. Attack via bunny-hopping. DO NOT BACK PEDAL. Jump in the opposite direction and turn your camera so you can continue to attack him while keeping full movement speed.
Vs. a Marksman: Storm Shackle him and make him chase you. You want him to use all his movement CDs early chasing you so he won’t be able to escape. Just proceed with your usual rotation and use LoS to your advantage. Don’t bother using Splits unless you have a stack of 5x Searing Vitality up and a few other buffs otherwise he’ll just purge it away. If you see him casting Deadeye Shot or Empowered Shot, try to hide behind a bush or cliff to prevent him from getting it off.
Vs. a Healing Cleric: Don’t even bother attacking him unless you can easily burn him down in 5 seconds. Instead, drain his mana. Put on Haunting Pain -> Traitorous Influence -> Transference -> Mana Wrench spam. Keeping him at 0 mana is better than killing him because now he’s just dead weight unable to contribute to his team soaking up heals. He’ll most likely try to LoS you so try to get behind him so he’ll have to LoS into your team making it him an easier target to.
8) Tips and tricks to make you an uber xxx/Dom:
1) Create an @focus Transmogrify macro. This macro looks like this:
#show Transmogrify
suppressmacrofailures
Cast @focus Transmogrify
Cast Transmogrify
Now the reason why you make this macro is so you can stay on target with whoever you’re fighting without running into DR quickly. If you see someone you’re fighting already become CC immune, find a random person and set him as your focus so you can squirrel him instead while still attacking your main target.
PRO-TIP: Pets and NPCs have NO DR. This means if you see someone using a pet or in Port Scion with a lot of NPCs, SET THOSE AS YOUR FOCUS TARGET and enjoy unlimited Swift Control!
2) As previously mentioned, use Haunting Pain as a debuff buffer to prevent your main debuffs (Void Shroud, Storm Shackle, Traitorous Influence) from being cleansed. Too often I see people ignoring this AMAZING ability as I just cleanse Traitorous and Shackles off.
3) With short cast abilities such as Swift Control Fireball, you can actually jump and still be able to cast. How you do this is by start casting while you’re landing half-way in the air and your character should still be able to cast while in mid-flight.
4) Use Searing Vitality and Pillaging Stone as a purge buffer for Split Personalities. Any smart Marksman will know to Eradicate you when they see those ghosts up, so be sure to stack as many buffs on yourself as possible before popping Splits.
5) Flicker’s CD is reset with Heat Wave! If you find yourself in a really bad position, Flicker away and reset it via Heat Wave for a double Flicker port.
6) Use your Battle Rez! You have to be quick on these since people often click the respawn within milliseconds, but if you can get a BRez on someone it can only help your team win the battle. Prioritize healers over DPS when Rezing and make sure you’re safe before you Rez! Otherwise the enemy just gets a free double-kill. Macro looks like this:
#show Soul Tether
suppressmacrofailures
cast @mouseoverui Soul Tether
7) Keep Neural Prod as a separate button for the instant cast/no travel time ability to interrupt people capturing objectives. Transmogrify works as well, but I wouldn’t risk the CC immunity.
8) Use Karuul’s Alert or nKRebuff. I have these addons set to show when my buffs are being purged, how long I have left on my Swift Control, and much more. Spend the time to set these addons up and it will give you much more awareness on your buffs without having to constantly glance at your buff bar.
And there’s my indepth guide to how to play Pyro/Dom and Chloro/Dom. Feel free to add any other suggestions or tips I may have missed. If you never played a xxx/Dom spec, expect to get your butt handed to you for a good week until you learn how the playstyle works. Pyro/Dom isn’t for everyone and requires a high skill cap to excel with, but once you master it you become a formidable force to reckon with! Any constructive criticism is welcomed and I hope someone learned a few things from reading my guide. Now go out there and own it up in some warfronts!
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Originally Posted by Valnak 
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