SMN Ruin II vs III help

Today, I was called out during a lvl 70 dungeon (the burn) by a scholar for using Ruin II vs III for my rotation prior to dreadwyrm trace.

The last information I read was that the 20 potency of ruin III wasn't worth the extra 2.3 sec delay over Ruin II and that you do more dmg with ruin II. I don't run a parser, so based my information from several real good smn.

Help I need is, this still true? - now we are 4.4 and wondering if I missed something. I only been playing casually and don't raid anymore - so it's possible i'm out of touch.

Thanks

They are under the mistaken impression that "Instant" cast is better than a cast time just because it's instant. In actuality, the two spells take the same amount of time. The difference is that Ruin II's damage occurs at the beginning of the GCD and Ruin III's damage occurs at the end of the GCD.

Since they take the same amount of time, you should be using the one that does more damage unless you are exploiting the instant cast in order to use oGCD abilities.

If you do have an oGCD ability to use, it's better to use Ruin II and then the oGCD ability. If you try to use an oGCD between casts of Ruin III, the next Ruin III will be delayed by about 0.7s because you're casting for about 2.3 seconds and then you're free to use the oGCD ability, which takes about 0.7s. So, for example, RuinIII(120) + Fester(300) is 420 potency but takes roughly 3.0s, for 140 potency per second. Compare to Ruin II(100) + Fester(300) for 400 potency in 2.3s, or 174 potency per second, because oGCDs don't take any extra time when used after an Instant spell.

Global cooldown is the factor you're missing. Casting r2, you wait your gcd before doing another action. Casting r3 is the same duration. Meaning in the same period of time, you will get off just as many r3s as r2s, so you're wasting that 20 potency.

Ruin 2 is only for 3 purposes:
-prolonged movement where slide casting r3 would prove too difficult
-weaving ogcds
-bahamut. Though mostly for the same reason as point 2.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zerathor

Global cooldown is the factor you're missing. Casting r2, you wait your gcd before doing another action. Casting r3 is the same duration. Meaning in the same period of time, you will get off just as many r3s as r2s, so you're wasting that 20 potency.

Ruin 2 is only for 3 purposes:
-prolonged movement where slide casting r3 would prove too difficult
-weaving ogcds
-bahamut. Though mostly for the same reason as point 2.

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One other place I've found doing maps, all the aoe's put the HP really low on all targets and by the time you get done casting ruin 3 the rest of the dps has killed your target. That's a good time as well for ruin 2.

Basically what everyone else said was correct. You only really want to use Ruin II for when you have to weave in your oGCD's or when you have to move. While it doesn't seem like much, an extra 20 potency every global can make a massive difference over a longer time frame.

Also bear in mind that you can also use R3>R2 concurrently, due to the GCD finishing during R3's cast time. Depending on OGCD usage, this can often be useful in the second Trance buildup before you can summon Bahamut (ex. R2>Aetherflow>Fester>R3>R2>Fester>R3>R2>Fester>Trance). Without other OGCDs to weave before Fester can be cast again, it's a bit stronger to do R3>R2 together than waiting to do two R2s then Fester, and generally flows better this way.