SMN Situational DPS Tips (i've seen the rotation thread)

Going to start with the basic rotation for those of you who haven't seen the other threads.

Bold - Cross Class, Italic - Pet bar, Underline - Aetherflow
Fight Starts:
Obey>Raging Strikes>Bio2>Miasma>Bio>VIRUS>Fester>Rouse>Spur>thunder>Contagion>Enkindle>Swiftcast>Shadowflare>Fester>Energy Drain>Ruin2

Post Raging Strikes you should maintain all of your dots up 100% of the time. This includes shadowflare.

Garuda is the optimal pet for most fights I've encountered. (EXP up to turn 4 in coil)

This allows your initial dots and abilities all to happen under the affect of Raging Strikes.

-Employ this same rotation if a certain phase of a fight has a DPS race. I.E. Titans Heart

-I've heard but have not seen proof that SMN ACC is cap is 445 for coil.

-ACC>Int>det>crit>speed>vit (this is my opinion I don't have data to back it up yet but I'm working on it) Vit goes above anything if you don't have enough hp to not get 1 shot by encounters.

-On titan if your team members will stand under titan when gaoled you can bane+Ruin1>Ruin2>Fester>energy drain to almost insta free them.

-Virus directly increases damage taken I haven't tested if applying dots with virus up first makes them tick for more the entire duration. I have tested with virus up while casting fester and see about a 50 dmg point increase.

-Virus also decreases enemy damage out

-You have Eye for an Eye. USE IT coordinate with your healers so you're not overlapping.

-You also have swiftcast raise. You should be the first one bringing someone back into the fight not your healers. This will come into play in many endgame fights.

-You have Physick You should be healing yourself anytime you can't dps. Again Titan is a great example of this if he jumps and shadowflare is recently put down you can pre-heal yourself to make sure YOU don't die. Also if someone is raised post heart and has weakness during tumults you should be healing them to ensure they don't die again.

Another scenario I find myself off-healing is caduceus sometimes things can get a little hairy and the slime kiters need a little extra healing.

The biggest to realize with healing is to make sure you're smart about it If you have to heal or raise your DPS is going down and you're wasting mana.

Fester is your biggest dps booster you have you shouldn't use energy drain unless you need mana. That being said you need to manage your mana with your healers mana. What I mean by this you need to have mana until your bard casts ballad. If he casts it for you, you are lowering his damage. If healers need mana its essential and thus has to happen.

-Miasma 2 is affected by contagion

-Pets should be micro managed. Garuda can knock back a lot of enemies which is really valueable when trying to save squishies.

Garuda sisters, hands during nero tol scaeva fight, etc. You experiement I made my point

Garuda has an aoe spell use it when aoeing... stuff like that

***you have to control when you use contagion to get the most out of it.***

make your pet dodge Aoes Steady+follow(or place).


I think that's it for now I hope this helps some of you. If you already knew all of this good on you. If you have something to add please do.

this post makes no mention of using abilities off the GCD synergistically with abilities that have no cast bar but are on the GCD.

also i'd be interested in hearing opinions about controlling pets. in my opinion, most of the time, you are better off just letting the pet control its own abilities rather than wasting APM trying to micro to get the most out of it. i think it is very possible that investing your focus on your pet could actually net a DPS loss rather than a gain. a lot of that is due to the clunky pet interface. possible obviously being the operative word there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Napp

this post makes no mention of using abilities off the GCD synergistically with abilities that have no cast bar but are on the GCD.

also i'd be interested in hearing opinions about controlling pets. in my opinion, most of the time, you are better off just letting the pet control its own abilities rather than wasting APM trying to micro to get the most out of it. i think it is very possible that investing your focus on your pet could actually net a DPS loss rather than a gain. a lot of that is due to the clunky pet interface. possible obviously being the operative word there.

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I usually start my pet off with Obey so that it doesnt use contageion on its own. I was thinking of changing this tho. Instead of leaving it on obey, maybe macro in contageion then /wait 1 sic.....but I have no idea how to macro in pet commands. I wish SE addresses this.

the whole pet system is so lame. incredibly frustrating to use.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Napp

the whole pet system is so lame. incredibly frustrating to use.

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Couldn't agree with you more. We could be doing better DPS if we could pick and choose which abilities we want the pets to auto use.

You cannot macro pet control command in anyway unless SE add it.

What's so bad about pet control? I use obey, another keybind for contagion and return, and middle mouse wheel click to place pet where I want. How is that terrible control?

The only thing bad about pet is that:

A) You can't control it while casting.

B) It is vulnerable to deadly diseases. Its aoe resistance is also incosistent against some attacks/fields. You have no real way to efficiently cleanse your pet of debuffs as a SMN.

C) Most of the pet skills are so weak, they are useless. Ifrit/Garuda aoe skill is on a large recast time for a measly 90 potency AoE with a really small range. Ifrit's shield is useless as it'll rarely get hit and when it does it is bound to die anyways as it only has resistance to aoe, not single target attacks and pet hp pools are minuscule.

The pet thus far is basically a DoT with a fancy model as its only use is the extra damage from autoattacks.