SMN questions

[Keylus]

I was planning to be a healer in this game, but a friend told to me that he needs a dps, so i become a SMN ((I was a SCH))
I've readed a couple of guides and i've searched tricks, but there are some unanswered questions that I still have, so i want to ask them to experienced players

1- How do I track my DOTs when I am in an alliance?
When a boss have a lot of debuffs the dots stop showing in their health bar, then they become hard to track

2- Is it worth to change your pet in the middle of the battle?
I was thinking in start with Garuda, then use contagion in my dots with pot/raging strikes, then change with swiftcast to ifrit until I have raging strikes again
I readed that ifrit has more dps that Garuda, but Garuda has more utility (AKA contagion), so i was planning in use both, but I don´t know if changing the pet could become a DPS loss ((I will make the change in melee, so Ifrit could start to do DPS sooner))

[Keylus]

3- What is the travel time of spells?
Just to know the optimal time to clip my dots

4- Are parsers still ilegal?
I want to practice my class before start raiding, but i think it's kinda meaningless do it if I don't know how I am doing. I searched a little, but most of the post are old and may be outdated, some of those say that it could be legal in the future

I double check my grammar, but I still can have some grammatical error, I hope that my questions are clear

[Exodus-E]

(For the record, you can edit your posts in order to bypass the character limit)

1 - Your DoTs have their time colored in light green to differentiate yours from others'.
And even if you can't see them anymore (due to how many of them can be shown at once) it doesn't mean they aren't still working.

2 - Not really.
You got to understand that the act of summoning something costs almost as much as resurrecting someone. Which is a lot.
Thus, changing Egis mid-fight (especially if it's a long one) is simply unpractical.
There are exceptions of course, but still...

3 - "Travel Time"? Do you mean how much time they need for them to be cast?
Because if so, it depends on both, the spell in question and your Spell Speed stat.

4 - It's not "illegal" per se, but you shouldn't be out shouting/advertizing about them either (it'd encourage elitism/bad behavior, otherwise).

[Dyvid]

1. There are options in character filter to only display your debuffs

2. Swiftcast > Egi can make it possible to hot swap pets but it does consume more mp than contagion would save.

3. Bio II is 30 secs, Miasama is 28, and Bio is 18. Best advice though is to not macro your DoTs and just cast independent when needed. Miasama II is 18secs and Shadow Flare is 30secs.

4. Shhhhh

FYI, you can edit post and by pass the 1000 character limit.

[Natsuno]

Travel time: I think he means the time it takes a completed spell to travel from the player to the target.

[Havenchild]

1) Your best option for Hunts or 24 - man raids is slightly modding your opener to make sure your DoTs are on the mob and viewable. Use Bio 2 -> Bio -> Swiftcast Miasma, and you will guarantee that no matter how many people are on the mob all of your DoTs will be viewable. From then on, you simply have to refresh your DoTs before they fall off and that's pretty much it. Like someone stated already there is also an option to hide all other status afflictions not belonging to you but this also hides Boss buffs like damage reflection.

2) My personal opinion on switching pets simply for Contagion whether in the Beginning of a fight or mid fight has to be validated by the MP you are using. Ifrit is higher DPS then Garuda unless an extreme amount of very big movement hinders him. Thus it is better to open up with Ifrit regardless of the fight unless you are 100% sure you will not need the 532 MP later on. In which case you can do a Garuda opener with Contagion but it is a very very small damage increase, possibly not recognizeable at all, hence not even worth it.

Now there are exceptions to when you want to switch in Garuda mid-fight. Some examples would be, T12 Bennu / Rebirth phase, T13 Storm Phase. Either of these examples are places where you can have a buffed set of DoTs from Raging Strikes, contagion'd and baned onto at least 3 or more mobs. This would then validate the MP cost associated with the switch back and forth to increase your DPS. However, to stay doing maximum DPS for the remainder of the fight, Ifrit would again need to come back to action after these phases are finished, meaning that you need to find instances where you can validate the usage of 1064 MP, the cost of switching twice at level 50, a third of your mana.

3) You essentially never want your DoTs to fall off or fall off for less then a second if they do. You can accomplish this by beginning a cast at the 4-5 second mark or in some cases the 2 second mark. Miasma I applies immediately as well as Miasma II, thus these two skills can be pushed slightly closer to the fall off point (3-4 second mark). Bio II is the second fastest DoT to apply so recast at 4-5 seconds. Finally Bio is the slowest skill to apply however it is also an instant skill, so it can be used at the 2 second mark or roughly so and still not fall off.
ShadowFlare, you can reuse at the 4-5 second mark since it has a long cast time, however if you are able to allow it to tick all the way to 0 and recast one immediately, without letting it fall off, that is a DPS increase, as a tick from Shadow Flare occurs at 0 and at 30 seconds when it is first dropped.

4) Parsers are perfectly fine as long as you are not using them to abuse others. Also make sure you do not bring them up in a conversation where DPS may be slacking and you can see this. You can and will be temp-banned if you can be interpreted as using parsers to offend others.

[Keylus]

Next time I will edit my post xD

I will search for the option to hide other debuffs, if the boss have a buff that i need to know, I will activate to see all buffs for just that fight

So the true reason to no switch summons is the MP cost? I think that i will make some tries to see how mana starve I will be

As Natsuno says, what i mean is the time that the spell takes to hit the target after you finish cast it. I see that spells like Bio have some travel time ((or maybe is more like a animation time, the animation in this game is kinda important)), if you use contagion just after you cast a bio, the contagion not takes bio into account, even if it is already cast

Ok, so only use parser to monitor myself, that is all what I need

thanks for your answers

[Havenchild]

As Natsuno says, what i mean is the time that the spell takes to hit the target after you finish cast it. I see that spells like Bio have some travel time ((or maybe is more like a animation time, the animation in this game is kinda important)), if you use contagion just after you cast a bio, the contagion not takes bio into account, even if it is already cast

To combat the travel time of Bio, for skills like Fester or Contagion that you need to have Bio registered, many users resort to throwing in an oGCD (Swiftcast, Rouse/Spur) or Potent Poisoning Pot, to stagger your animation just long enough to let Bio apply and then use either Fester or Contagion to never have issues with that. An effective workaround.

[Sanguisio]

IMO it is worth extended fully buffed DOTs with contagion on pull.

By this I mean X pot, PPPs, everything, then get Ifrit.