How important is Thundercloud Procs to Blm and how important is melee to Smn?

[Renryuu]

Heya, I had a couple questions about the two caster dps and figured I'd ask both in one topic instead of making two separate ones and becoming an annoyance.

1. How important is Thundercloud Procs to Blm at level 60? I've been trying to practice the rotation and at the moment I can't really seem to find room to use TC procs without either losing Enochian or Astral Fire. Am I missing something or is TC more of a thing to worry about once I have higher spell speed?

2. How important is melee to Smn? I'm hearing about Smns meleeing, but is this really something that Smns have to do or is it people trying to get world first clears on Savage?

[Maero]

Thundercloud is the most potent, even moreso then FireIV. Enochian upkeep with it should not be of an issue, it just takes timing is all.
Normally it is better to use thundercloud under UI however this is not always the case that you can do so.
What is your current spell speed?

As for your 2nd question, never heard of such sorry cannot help here

[Lemuel81]

Thundercloud procs should be used, it is important. I have not played Blm in 3.0 but in 2.0 it was a big dps loss and not even logical not to use them.

Smn melee can add quite a bit of dps, and few smn have done it since 2.0. Iirc it can add up to 30 dps, but without testing this is just hearsay from others who do it. I do not do it personally.

[MicahZerrshia]

as a smn I am usually in the thick of things with bliz2 casts on pulls of 3 or more so I am likely meleeing too between casts here and there, but I haven't tested it at all to see if its helpful.

I would like to know this too if anyone has any parser info or anything on it.

[Renryuu]

Alrighty, I'll try to keep practicing with TC procs since they are important. My current spell speed is 562 since I hadn't touched my casters since I came back as I was leveling Drk and trying out tanking (which ended up with me realizing once again I just can't enjoy melee classes as much as I do caster classes) so my gear is all from 3.0 when I had taken a break to try and catch up on my backlog of games. At the moment I'm just trying to catch up on info as I debate on if I should focus on Blm or Smn.

[Mercutial]

Once you gear up a bit, you'll find your SSPD more in the 900-1100 range. At this point, your ENO timer will be lax enough to more easily fire off those TC procs. I can understand your issues at 562 though. A pretty safe place to cast a TC proc at your current spec would be on the first ENO timer right after F4, F4, F1.

[Renryuu]

Alrighty, thank you. I'll stick with Blm and gear it up and see how I'm feeling it once I have higher ss. Thanks for the help.

[Kitfox]

2. How important is melee to Smn?

Well, a quick afk at the dummy and it seems like my i226 SMN with a Horde Grimoire does a whole 37 book-smacking dps. That likely goes down while casting spells, and the normal rotation seems to be around 1600 dps in my gear so... If that ~30 dps is important to you then have at it.

[MagiusNecros]

Fire off procs in between b3 and b4.

That's how I do it.

If AoE you can fire off f2 and a proc off at the same time. Looks cool too.

[StouterTaru]

2. How important is melee to Smn?

I melee a decent amount as BLM. There's a boss or two every patch that has at least a phase where they randomly turn and fire off a cone attack, but never do a radius attack. Those are easiest to dodge point blank, so I melee while there.