SMN DPS for T8?

Recently did a T8 farm for some people in the FC; we had two healers in the group already (my main is WHM) so I swapped to SMN to see how much damage I could do. No MNK, and I'm terrible with Ifrit's skills anyway, so I used Garuda the whole time. On what I felt was my best attempt, I did 365 DPS without Foe Requiem, pots, or food... Is that a good number? I'm a 110 SMN, no HA book but have a 120 bracelet thanks to Shiva.

Long story short, SMN is the job I want to play, rather than WHM, and a DPS opening in our raid group might be happening soon. So I'm trying to figure out if my skills are up to snuff. If 365 is a bit low, any suggestions on how to optimize would be great. I follow the threads on SMN pretty actively (minus the ones QQing about egis), so I feel like my understanding of the job is decent, I just think there might be some "tricks" I'm missing.

It could be a little better honestly. I pull 420 dps on a dummy in a 5-minute parse so I would estimate that you should be doing around 380-390 dps without Foe Requiem. I have pulled around 410-415 dps with Foe Req, food, pots, and no i115 weapon.

What I would suggest to you, is to keep auto-attacking the boss, especially when you switch targets, cause that's around 5-10 dps right there you're missing (my estimation might be a bit off). You can also place garuda-egi on the tower spot so that it won't get pushed around by the mines. I would also suggest saving 1 stack of aetherflow to bane onto dread and make sure to put up shadowflare and miasma II for when dread is about to spawn or has spawned. Use miasma II when you also have contagion, so put your pet on obey. And clip your dots at around 2-4 seconds and use ruin II sparingly. That's about it.

I averaged 360 at i99-102, if I pushed I'd do 380-400. haven't been in since those ilvls tho

shiva bracelet is worse than evenstar fyi

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Originally Posted by Shizuna

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5-min parse on a dummy...? Was that with two Enkindle, then? I was pretty bad about getting the second one in.

I think the issue I'm having is that I'm not clipping my dots as you've described. You should reapply them at ~4 seconds or so? I was trying for 1-2 seconds. I also don't auto-attack, either... I always forget since I'm so rarely in melee range for other fights. ^^;; Same with Shadowflare/Miasma II on dread - I'll work on that.

Other than that, I seem to be doing the things you describe. I only use Ruin II while moving to my tower and always save a Bane for the dread. I wasn't having MP problems like I hear some SMN do on T8, so I think I have that aspect under control. Miasma II is only used if Contagion is up, though I might have missed a few.

Seems like I just need to tighten up my rotation, then? Maybe I'll try some tests on a dummy today with a Foe's bot and see if I can't get the numbers listed here.

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Originally Posted by sackm

shiva bracelet is worse than evenstar fyi

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I confess to not looking closely at the stats. I figured the det on Evenstar would be offset by the increase in int. I'll do proper stat weight calcs when I get home. Thanks for letting me know.

I do 400-420 while doing Towers and popping Mines. That's with HQ Buttons and Foes at the beginning.

Because it's a long fight you have to pace yourself to not go out of MP or having to substitute Energy Drain for Fester.

So that means. Limit use of M2 unless it's with Raging/Contagion (Not really worth it on Dreads due to MP cost)

Bane DOTS to Dread + 1 Fester. Try to time them to be almost new.
Aerial Slash/Enkindle for Dreads.

Keep Rouse/Spur on CD. - Do not save it for Dread Spawn.
Keep Shadow Flare up. Ideally Swift Cast.

Try to limit use of R2. Even if you have duties.

I'm sure that SMN could do a lot more in this fight if they don't have any duties and if they are getting a lot of ballad (460 DPS). But unless Healers need Ballad you shouldn't depend on it and if you have BLM in your party, then Foe is better for the party. Also it's nice to give Paeon to any Monks in the party.

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

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Our only BRD is swapping to NIN for the 2.4 raid cycle and beyond, so unfortunately any sort of BRD song (whether it's Foe's or Ballad) can't be relied upon to buff my DPS.

At any rate, the universal consensus seems to be that Shadow Flare and Contagion'd Miasma II might constitute the bulk of my missing DPS... I'm glad that an unbuffed 365 is only about 15-20 DPS off from estimated unbuffed numbers, though... Not bad for someone who is a healer main.

The immediate crisis in my raid group has passed, but I'll work on a better DoT rhythm and on possibly getting a HA book, just in case I need to switch for Final Coil.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

5-min parse on a dummy...? Was that with two Enkindle, then? I was pretty bad about getting the second one in.

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1 enkindle I think. Maybe 2. I only parse myself once in a while, when I feel like it and a lot of times when I parse I don't have party buff and such either.

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Originally Posted by sackm

shiva bracelet is worse than evenstar fyi

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You should never consider secondary stats to be worse than the primary stat gain. 13 det equals like less than 3 int that you're getting from the Shiva bracelet. That's why they're called secondary stats. Keep the Shiva bracelet on until you can get the i130 ones.

A slight update: we cleared T10 last night, after many hours of wiping and frustration. Our raid SMN parsed 321 DPS on our clear attempt...almost 100 below our raid BLM. This is as a 110 SMN, and we had no deaths on our clear except our OT at like 4%, so I don't think anyone even bothered raising until afterward lol.

Any tips on how he can improve his numbers? He starts out strongish (we had a wipe at like 1 minute in and he was 353, so not the best but not bleeding terrible), but the longer the fight goes the more his numbers dwindle. If this keeps up, we may have to ask him to go back to BRD, which was his job at the start of the 2.2 raid cycle.

More specifically, how should SMN handle the first and second add phases? He drops Meteor on the second set but only after dots are up.

Your raid group won't have a bard? O_o that's fine once content is on farm, but ballad can be very useful for progression.

I expect in 3.0 some other job will have an alternative for ballad so that BRD isn't necessarily necessary.

As for SMN in t8. Was around 400-420 the other day in t8 without food or pots, but I am pretty sure I at least had foe's to open. i110 w/ i115 book. With a i110 book I don't think 365 is too unreasonable. Could probably squeeze another 5% more. Definitely auto attack. No matter how minimal it may be there isn't much reason to not right click on the boss.

Ballad for whom? Our raid SMN? I think he was OOM at the end, but I also think he had to resummon Garuda-Egi twice, because it kept being in cleave range and he couldn't figure out where to put it. Of course, I've also heard that maintaining 100% optimal SMN DPS does require some Ballad at some point during the fight, so re-summons might not have been the sole contributor to his MP problems. More importantly, I'm worried about T11 where it seems like pet micro-management is crucial...we may ask him to go back to BRD for that turn if he can't keep his pet alive.

Getting back on the subject of MP; unless I die, I never need Ballad. Even then, I use every other resource available to me before asking for it. Our SCH never needs it, period. So if you're concerned about the healers, there's probably no reason to be. Our BRDs (yes, we once ran two lol) both declared their intentions to swap mains right around the time we started T9 progression, so as a WHM I've worked hard to wean myself off of Ballad in preparation for the switch. There might be one or two wipes where we think, "Ballad might have saved us there", but not enough wipes for us to force our DPS to play a job they don't fully enjoy.

If anything, the loss of Foe Requiem will probably pain us more...lmao. Our BLM is already making QQ faces at us because of the hit he'll take to his numbers.

I still need to do a parse on a dummy to see what kind of numbers I can push. I only did 341 on Shiva EX...I was too afraid to Miasma II and Contagion because I hadn't quite grasped the pattern of AOE in that fight. My WHM Nexus is almost done, so soon I'll be back to playing SMN exclusively in non-raid content, which hopefully means I'll sharpen up my skills quite a bit.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

More specifically, how should SMN handle the first and second add phases? He drops Meteor on the second set but only after dots are up.

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My first clear, I had 360ish-370ish at the end (second was lower because my Garuda died (from being in the wrong spot) and I had to throw out a few rezzes).

For the add phase, I try to go into them with at least one Aetherflow charge. Dot up first daughter, bane to son, buff pet, get an Arial Slash in there, then switch to the other daughter, dot up > contagion, then bane when I have another aetherflow charge. Enkindle the set of adds we don't focus down first (should still be buffed from when I did Arial Slash). By the time I get back to the first daughter, it's almost dead so I redot up the first son and get that down. For the second set of adds, I usually LB3 before I do dots (I try to pre-cast it so when the adds actually spawn, Meteor's pretty much dropping). By the time I'm out of animation lock, the first daughter is either dead or very close to, so I dot up the first son, fester, then switch to the still alive daughter, dot and bane. By the time the first son is dead, the next adds spawn and that tanks grabs them. Once the second daughter is dead, I'll dot up the third one then switch back to the other daughter if it's alive and get it down etc.

Disclaimer: By no means am I perfect, haha. There's probably a better way to do it, I just haven't figured it out yet. I do find I can get VERY low on mana in T10 so in the coming weeks I hope I can figure out what I can do differently so I don't get that low.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Any tips on how he can improve his numbers? He starts out strongish (we had a wipe at like 1 minute in and he was 353, so not the best but not bleeding terrible), but the longer the fight goes the more his numbers dwindle. If this keeps up, we may have to ask him to go back to BRD, which was his job at the start of the 2.2 raid cycle.

More specifically, how should SMN handle the first and second add phases? He drops Meteor on the second set but only after dots are up.

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Sounds like a rough start. With 4-5 Aether stacks to use within the first minute SMN DPS should be 500+, ideally peaking around 700.

If party DPS is good enough you can save 2 Aether for the first set of adds (Bane +Fester the first Sister)
Then Contagion Bane the next set.

SMN should own T10 cause of multi Dotting.

1 minute at 353? That is not "strongish" considering summoners have some of the best 1-2 minute DPS in the game. If your summoner can't reach close to 400 for the fight then there is absolutely no reason he should stay summoner when he'd probably do more as bard I'm guessing and also have twice the utility. I'm confident I could get 300 on SCH if all I did was DPS. Summoners aren't going to do better than monk or even a well played BLM no matter what anyone says but they should be up there.

Yeah...after testing myself on a dummy for about four-and-a-half minutes, I'm inclined to agree. Unbuffed (no food, Foe's, pots, or even a party buff), I did 392 DPS, and that was with derping one or two parts of my rotation (not having Swiftcast up at the start for an RS'd Shadowflare, for instance >__>). With a tighter rotation, I could have broken 400 unbuffed easily. I might do a test with the full spread of buffs, just to see how much I can do, but I was tired last night and didn't want to waste food or pots on less-than-optimal play.

Any advice on how to approach him about this? He plays SMN because he likes to play SMN, so I don't quite feel comfortable saying, "you're bad at it, go back to bard". Our raid group makes solid progression, but we're nowhere near the top of the curve, so we're willing to work with him on improving his numbers. (It's not like we have server firsts we're shooting for or anything.) I'm just concerned that any advice I might give will fall on deaf ears, because I'm "just the group's WHM" and don't play SMN in enough progression content to feel like my input would be meaningful. I DO play it a lot though, and as I said I out-perform him in the content that I AM able to complete as SMN, so I feel like I'm qualified. So anything I can say or suggest that might soften the initial blow of, "your numbers are terrible brah, and they're only going to get worse when our BRD goes NIN"?

Thanks as always for the responses in this thread. :)

Just practicing on a dummy is good. Mastering the opener, using pet on obey , Rouse/Spur Enkindle usage. And getting very familiar with watching DoT timers. 100% DoT up time without applying them too soon. Then using AA where ever possible.

It sounds like your friend isn't using a good opener, or Rouse/Spur and maybe has their pet on Sic. Those are all simple things to change.

I know this will seem silly to most, but.... is there a way to parse yourself on PS4?

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Originally Posted by Duragon_DCUO

I know this will seem silly to most, but.... is there a way to parse yourself on PS4?

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You can't use a parser on PS4, but you can have someone else (who plays on a PC) parse your numbers for you.