Summoner Unused Skills?

Since I'm on a PS3 and want to keep my actions to 1 maybe 2 hot-bars, I've had to sacrifice some skills. Some of the sacrificed job and cross skills for me have been: Tri-Disaster, Surecast, Blizzard 2, Hawk's Eye, Sustain - and with limited usage Virus, Eye for Eye and Miasma 2 oddly enough. Some may say - Eye for Eye is a must, but with 180 cool-down and only active for 20 sec, seems like it may not make the cut. Just curious to see if I have some on here that are a big mistake and why you may think that - for example, I'm still trying to find out what Disaster and M2 actually do, I know what they say, but I don't see it on the field as easily as other skills. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

As far as the skills go: Eye for an Eye is way more useful than most people give it credit for (but I don't really use it on SMN, whereas I use it all the time on SCH and WHM). Virus is a must-have. Miasma II... well, if it's safe to be in melee range AND you can Contagion it, fine, but is otherwise pretty useless. I did make room on my SMN bar for Sustain (but not Physick, oddly enough). I have never even used Tri-Disaster or Hawk's Eye at all, and haven't found a use for Blizzard II or Surecast on SMN either.

I use a controller on PC, but this also applies to PS3: One way to deal with the limited real estate on a controller is by combining skills with long cooldowns into a single-button macro, so that when you press the button once you get the first skill in the list that isn't on cooldown. You do lose some flexibility this way, since you must always use the skills in a certain order, but IMO it's better than not using them at all because they don't fit on your bar.

Tri-Disaster really shines in Garuda HM.. but that's the only place that I can think of it having a use.
Sustain is useful to keep your Egi alive in places like CT's poison pools and you have it set to a different mob than the main one you're attacking.
Virus should be used by a SMN or SCH before a BLM/WHM due to arcanist's supervirus trait.
Surecast will prevent LB from being interrupted and is useful for ressing if Swiftcast is on cooldown.
Eye for an Eye has a shorter recast time on SMN & SCH due to an arcanist trait.
Miasma II is an AoE dot if it's safe enough to be in melee range.

I have 2 hotbars and im on ps3, and u should read this, u will know what skills to use http://shinra-ffxiv.guildwork.com/fo...ow-to-summoner miasma IIis very important and i asume u dont have contagion on your hotbar, read the guide, it will help u a lot

Tri-disaster you can really do without its usefulness is mild.

The only usefulness I have got out of Blizzard 2 is in coil turn 4. It's more dps using that on 6 spiders than just using ruin. Same with miasma 2 unless you happen to be in melee range and have contagion up. I'd set up a hotbar simply for aoe instances so you can have those up but otherwise.. yeah..

I don't have virus or eye for an eye on my bar but that might just because I'm bad

Thanks for all of the replies, much appreciated. I was playing around with a lot of this last night, gonna find room for Eye and Virus for now, rest will have to be adjusted as situation warrants. Thanks again.

M2 - If you want to maximize your DPS you'll be using this. All the Ex primals involve you being right on them for a lot of the fight, except for the garuda sisters phases and half of Twin's HP. There's no reason not to use M2 before Contagion and it gives you more off-GCd time like Bio to use something like spur or rouse. Basically if it's a fight where you can auto attack, you should be using M2 with every contagion cycle. If you plan to PVP it can be useful for instant slow/heavy/disease. but lolpvp


E4E - You definitely need to be using this. In any fight you'll have at least 2 E4E casters available from the healers, then any SMN and BLM can also have it meaning a fairly solid 60-80 seconds uptime on the tank (or if you watch the debuff timer on the enemy, even more). SMN/SCH have a reduced cooldown trait as well that gives you a lot of uptime, and that mitigation is nothing to laugh at when death sentences are coming.

Virus - You need this, no question. As a SMN you have the enhanced virus trait and between the SCH and yourself you can always virus at important spots between anti-body, instead of just the SCH doing it and possibly missing important mitigation since theirs is on CD.

Tri-D - only really helpful in WP speedruns or stopping Garuda HM's feathers if you're good

Surecast - If somebody is dead, nobody has swift and you might get it it's great. Otherwise eh.

Sustain - Short cast time, heals slightly more than a physick for garuda, and is really good on titan. It can save you from having to resummon your pet.

Hawk's eye - shit

I'll just say now though, controller does not fit SMN playstyle very well.

IMO

Summoner's unused skills of all time is Eyes for an Eyes

I don't care to save Tank ass, I signed for DPS jobs

tri disaster needs an overhaul its the one skill I hardly use because the damage is so low

I macro virus and eye4eye together, they both do relatively the same thing and depending on your target you can pick which goes off.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Altimis

IMO

Summoner's unused skills of all time is Eyes for an Eyes

I don't care to save Tank ass, I signed for DPS jobs

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Less damage on the tank = Healer MP lasts longer = you don't die longer

There's literally no reason not to use it whenever it's off CD. If you don't know how to macro just use <tt>, you won't have to untarget the boss.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lollie

I macro virus and eye4eye together, they both do relatively the same thing and depending on your target you can pick which goes off.

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Virus needs more micro-managing but that's not a bad idea.

the int debuff on imp virus doesn't really do anything and since antibodies I don't really see a big need when it's free, off the gcd, and healers have more free skill slots than I do(I already have like 20 keybinds)

Tri-Disaster - Can be safely passed since it uses are very situational. The only times you would really use it are Garuda HM (For binding the razor plumes) and rushing WP (If you lack a BLM).

Surecast - Also can safely passed. The only times I use this are when during the "Suparna-only" method on Garuda EX (To resummon the pet during Aerial Blast) and Twintania (Fireball interrupts casts).

Blizzard 2 - Don't need it. As far as AoE goes, the only times you should be using it are if all enemies have DoTs on them from Bane, Shadow Flare is up, and you've used Miasma II on them. Even then though, its a bit harsh on MP as well and still doesn't do an impressive amount of damage. I prefer "cleaving" with Ruin instead.

Hawk's Eye - Can't think of a single reason to use this.

Sustain - There are a few places where the pet can take considerable damage with CT being the main one. Its also handy on Titans as well, since even if Garuda is over the edge she still takes damage from Tumult and stray Landslides. The main thing is, if your pet dies your damage suffers. Having this helps prevent that.

Virus - With the Virus nerf... you can probably pass this up, though ideally you should be rotating it's use in tandem with any SCHs you're teamed up with.

Eye for an Eye - Actually quite valuable. SMNs have trait to reduce it's CD and its a good way to mitigate damage. Tank should have this up at all times.

Miasma II - This is actually a key damage skill so not using it is just silly. You should always being using it when faced with multiple enemies or against single targets when Contagion is available.

Tri-disaster is probably the only "skip-able" ability imo, obviously some have less use than others, but that's really the only one I don't use very often. The only cross skills I use are swiftcast, blizzard II, and raging strikes. Quelling strikes might be ok (idk, not got an archer that high), but surecast and hawk's eye isn't very useful imo. Something that really helps me using a controller is instead of using r1 to switch between bars, I have the main hotbar, and use l2+r2 and r2+l2 for the other abilities. To me it just makes it much easier/faster, but may vary per person. With this setup on my main bar I have 3 dots + ruin, ruin II + rouse/spur macro + contagion + tri-disaster, raging strikes + blizzard II + Physick + (drawing a blank, can't think of what's here), aetherflow + fester + bane + energy drain. L2+R2 is resurrection + limit break + eye for an eye + virus, swiftcast + shadowflare + summon + summon II. Then for R2+L2 obey + sic + heel + place, miasma II + aerial slash + sustain + enkindle. I've got another bar with teleport, return, etc. for all my classes that i've got summon III on, but other than soloing, I don't use it enough to justify it being on my main bars.

You can have your main powers together, aetherflow abilities together, swiftcast abilities together (pet, res, sf), pet controls, and aoes are somewhat together. Obviously you don't have to do it just like this, but it's 10x easier imo doing it this way than to switch hotbars.

You can fit every ability from the SMN's Action list, as well as Steady, Obey, Heel, Place, Contagion, and Aerial Slash on 2 Cross Hotbars, and still have I think (at least) 2 free slots.

If you cannot learn to at least quick swap between 2 Crossbars, you will have to live with the fact that you simply cannot play your class to it's full potential.

Using the R1+L1 and L1+R1 extra bars on a controller helps a lot for complicated classes/jobs who have a lot of abilities. For me, these jobs are SMN, SCH and WAR. For simpler classes/jobs like WHM, BLM and PLD, you can easily fit 90% of the stuff you use in every battle in the first xbar and just leave the stuff you rarely use, like Protect and LimitBreak for WHM, for the second bar. Can't speak about MNK or DRG because I haven't leveled them.