SMN help

I've always wanted to play SMN, and thought I had the basic idea down. At 60 SMN seems like basically just put up your dots, pop your stacks, hit dwt, pop buffs, tridisaster, contagion, ruin 3, then deathflare rinse and repeat. And SF ofcourse. Aoe is pretty standard. Do I have about the gist of it? Whenever I play SMN it seems like my damage is super low even on a1 as a 184 SMN. Any general tips for really increasing my damage and handling certain things like bringing down an add quickly? I wanna play SMN at a good enough level to do raids but I'm just not there yet

For the adds in A1S, I used to have at least two stacks when the boss first starts casting to summon them. Then I watch the person, on my side. When they connect a hit with the add, I Bane & Painflare immediately then Miasma II followed by Blizzard II. At this point assuming you started with at least one stack of Aetherial attunement, you'll have three stacks. While running to the laser, you can Ruin II your add and then after you position it, you can pop DWT and Ruin III it down a bit till death. If you are too far behind on its HP, then Deathflare it and continue. The faster you kill it, hopefully with 2-3 Ruin IIIs, you can get a few DoTs on one of the bosses and Deathflare that instead.

Keep DoTs on both bosses all the time outside of handling an add. That's pretty much it.

If you still have issues with DPS, you need to consider your rotation a bit more. Line up DWT with Aetherflow, Tri -Disaster and Contagion for example.

Just read the SMN guide by Haven, and/or Hai Hai's guide if you wanna get deep into the numbers.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...FJWVSKlvU/edit

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Summoner-Guide

Concerning bringing down adds as SMN, it's semi-polarized. You need to focus on how long you have to kill an add before it enrages or otherwise is a problem to be alive and adapt DoT timers to that, you need to see if you can get free AoE damage out of it with Deathflare/Painflare, and you need to see if you should or shouldn't be doing the add at all. SMN can be king at doing an add, like in A1 or A1S where a Bane and some Obey action destroys the add you pick up, or it can be negligible like in A3/A3S's add phase where you'll scarcely have done a Ruin II before your target's dead. It's very hard to even bring up a priority list you should use for adds because sometimes you just have to get freaky and mess with your ideal rotation in honor of bringing down an add, but generally, Bane if you can and it will survive long enough to be worth it, Bio > Ruin spam on short-lived adds you couldn't Bane, and try to Painflare as much as possible on targets or more without shooting your Aetherial in the foot.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

For the adds in A1S, I used to have at least two stacks when the boss first starts casting to summon them. Then I watch the person, on my side. When they connect a hit with the add, I Bane & Painflare immediately then Miasma II followed by Blizzard II.

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Maybe slightly OT because I'm not sure if OP is doing A1S quite yet (probably talking about regular A1). This is dependent on the group, especially if you're PUGing, but this is waaaay overkill on the first adds and a waste of your DoT's strength, though far from as bad as when I'd blow a second DWT there to get a milkathon Deathflare. Just a SCH Bane and SMN Bane with pet AoE and Shadowflares will pretty much do it, at very worst throw in a later Painflare.

On the real adds you have to place, Bane > Obey on the your add is enough even with crap gear.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

snip.

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You can pretty much solo all the add sets on A1S, which is something I do. This allows the melees to stay on the boss full time which a big plus for them if the missiles happen to spawn far from the Oppressor/0.5, while also having your DoTs up full time on both Oppressor and 0.5 .