Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

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Originally Posted by Skeith-Adeline

Still refining my DPS on a Dummy before I try in real scenarios (I know, Echo, but I still want to be absolutely comfortable), but, should I ever be hardcasting Shadowflare? I only use Shadowflare when Swiftcast is up. I was able to obtain 527 on a dummy (Ifrit) without hardcasting Shadow flare.

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You should keep shadowflare 100% of time up(in case your target stand still and not moving around) just like other dots. Not matter do you have swiftcast or not.

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Originally Posted by Sunako

Waiting for that kind of situation is theoretically dps loss. You wanna use it every time skill is out from the cd. I have not calculated what would be most wise way use this kind of ability since it is not even important cause anything is not confirmed, but i think you should use it after next what ever dot is gonna fall of from your target after skill drop out from the cooldown so you can use it often as possible.

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I think for any type of single target rotation, if 3D is on a CD and depending on which CD, that you would want to use it:
A: With Raging Strikes in this order - Hard Cast Dots B2, M, B and then use 3D for a full Refresh when Bio drops to extend your buffed dots.

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Like if it's no Aetherflow, it's gonna be amazing to use around just generally especially when like you have two DoTs at like lets say 5 seconds and another at like 1 second left fairly sure if you use it in a moment like that, it would be a DPS gain.

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Which is essentially this, as you would have this {B2 13s M 9s B 5} before you Refresh. Since if 3D is free, then why not while you're buffed, since it's higher Potency/s.
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Hard Casting DoTs VS 3D - If it's around a 235 Potency Loss (75 Dot Setup + 2 X Ruin) each time it's on CD and you don't use it you could pre-determine if it would be ideal to hold it for an AOE situation.

3D + Bane would be a 75 Potency Gain per target + Ruins. So withholding 3D 1 time in an effort to 3D Bane 2 or more Targets would be a DPS increase IMO.

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This would really streamline the decision making for SMN if that is the case.

So you can think of tri-disaster as saving you 3 GCDs over the course of 30 seconds.

Eyeballing dot casts, assuming 100% uptime, if you RS > bio II > miasma > bio, you'll have bio II up at 2.5, miasma at 5, and bio at 5.5

Assuming we will tridisaster at 19.5, you end up having

Bio II 17 duration, 13 clipped
Miasma 14.5 duration, 9.5 clipped
Bio 14 duration, 4 clipped

Purely looking at GCDs saved, you end up losing 13/30 + 9.5/24 + 4/18 = 1.05 GCDs of value.

Er, its an odd metric but essentially what it means is it saves you one less GCD than usual. So we now calculate whether thats worth it.

As opposed to letting dots run out, we gain

Bio II - 17 seconds
Miasma - 14.5 seconds
Bio - 14 seconds

So we get 17/3*35 + 14.5/3*35 + 14/3*40 = 554.16. So with 20% RS it will give us 110.8 potency. Since a normal GCD is roughly 80 potency (as we'd never skip dotting), this is worthwhile, with a net benefit of roughly 30 potency.

So the problem is, will it be more useful instead of we used it at the beginning of RS?

Or rather, is it better if we use it when dots are all ticking down?

So assuming instead that we merely want to save GCDs during RS (3 GCDs, to be exact), we'd actually only gain 2 (since 1 last GCD is used to hit a bio right at the end of RS).

2 GCDs of Ruin during that phase will end up being 32 potency greater (due to RS) so actually depending on dot timer sync ups this is the same as trying to do the whole tri-disaster at the end thing.

I'm not a fan of pre-overwriting dots. I will always wait until dots are <5 seconds and mostly sync'd up before reapplying.

RS provides 7-8 potency/3 seconds, while reapplying a dot early results in more than that.

Also sorry someone asked a question sometime yesterday but I hit post cap, whomp whomp.

Something I think people haven't thought about with Tri-Disaster is it's possibly free to cast if it's attached to Aetherflow or a CD. That might not mean much in the opener since you usually get all your MP back anyway but past that it could be a nice little MP bump up.

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

Something I think people haven't thought about with Tri-Disaster is it's possibly free to cast if it's attached to Aetherflow or a CD. That might not mean much in the opener since you usually get all your MP back anyway but past that it could be a nice little MP bump up.

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So what we can definitely agree on is:
1) if the skill is oGCD and it requires no AF use, that's a huge DPS gain in all scenarios.

2) If it's on GCD and requires no AF use, still a net gain in most scenarios. (We've never really seen a skill like this though. An Instant skill on GCD that has a longer recast time then the actual GCD and also uses no AF.)

3) If it's oGCD but uses an AF stack, depending on if we are looking at GCD or potency per second in relation to the server tick, it may or may not be better then a rotation that starts with Bio II precasted + third Fester.

4) If it's on GCD and uses an AF stack, this is likely worse then the previous option because you lose an extra ruin.

What I'm guessing you are referring to is situation 3. Using an extra AF is not giving you more MP just shifting the timer you burn stacks by 10 seconds once we get out of the opener which has AF off cd by the time you need to recover stacks.

Now situation 3 might actually be worth it but it will solely depend on this DreadWyrm stance and how much potency you get in the 10 seconds you got into it sooner.

Oh I was just referring to MP costs, that's all. IE in something like Ramuh Extreme, you will go OoM (or have to start cutting out Ruins) shortly after the add phase if you don't get trapped, but if you actively would use 3D you're saving yourself 400~ MP every so often that might alone justify it, potency be damned.

That's of course assuming MP management is gonna stay similar to what we have now. For all we know Dreadwyrm stance attacks are gonna be free to cast or something, it's truly a mystery.

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Originally Posted by pandabearcat

Please remember that "snapshotting dots"...

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Well technically it's all about the packet loss, so squeezing the second fester is very much doable. I have already been able to squeeze it in multiple times especially when you are festering upon your third dot instantly. Although I still have this bad habit of not going for the third fester and energy draining instead, simply because I cannot bear the sight of AF not being on CD for 10 more seconds.

I m pretty sure tri disaster have no gcd because there is not single ability in this game that have gcd(if we do not count pet abilities) with cooldown based ability. If I can guess it will have 10 sec cd and will burn aetherflow like bane.

Applying all dots actually is never as huge of a dps gain as one might expect.

I anticipate unless there are extremely niche scenarios like needing to bane a group of adds that are far away from target, OR its cd is extremely short (I'm talking like 30-60 seconds here) it will amount to a fairly negligible increase in dps.

Assuming best case that it is an oGCD ability that doesn't use aether, then its damage contribution is 240/CD pps.

In general, SMN pps is roughly ~85pps or so (This may be wrong. I remember doing the math for this AGES ago...but I totally can't remember now and can't be bothered). + an additional ~30-35pps from pet.

So if you look at it that way...

30 sec CD = 8pps, 7% dps increase
60 sec CD = 4 pps, 3.4% dps increase
120 sec CD = 1.7% dps increase

etc etc. I mean its possibly -useful-...but its not very good guys. No matter how you look at it, the actual dps increase over its CD is minimal. Esp if it has an extremely long CD, it would be much better to use it for disconnects/add bursts rather than use it on CD for tiny dps increase (kind of like how monks use PB).

Skill/spellspeed increases DAMAGE of DoTs confirmed by PCGamesN Q&A. Apparently a decrease in DoT tick timing caused a lot of balancing issues. I can see why, Bards would be insane.