SMN in T12 help

Hi, I've been in T12 with my static for a week or two now as SMN. I can't work out if I'm using my aetherflow stacks efficiently or not. I'm using bane on dots from Phoenix onto Benny and then another aetherflow stack fester on the benny. I'm also using bane for blackfire so that's pretty much all my stacks prioritised and none being used on Phoenix itself. I've watched a few SMN POV videos, but they don't seem to be doing this and focus just on Phoenix. The other DPS in my static are BRD, MNK and BLM. Any feedback appreciated.

I usually save one bane for the blackfire and one for the bennu. I m not using fester on bennu at all. It also depends your strategy. Usually our BLM shoot one flare on blackfires and my dots finish those blackfires off. Against bennus it is pretty much enough if you only bane dots on them and keep dpsing the boss. Bard and blm can easily kill those bennus themselves. Idk are these good advices, but that is what we do.

Thank you, that makes sense. I can try doing this.

I usual bane bennu, bane black fire, and fester phoenix.

Next phase : bane bennu double fester phoenix

Bane at beginning of bennu rev phase LB then I'm just careful and use the stacks to gain MP back during this phase as dont need fester really too much here.

Last phase just fester, hope this helps.

Let SCH Bane Blackfires. His spread out dots are enough to finish them off.

lol look its alan, would be better but his don't always last long enough to kill them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sanguisio

lol look its alan, would be better but his don't always last long enough to kill them.

---

Well, normally they're ticking long enough, exception is many misses on DOTs then he loses some seconds, true. But then he finishes them off with Ruin or Bard shoots. But mostly SCH alone is really enough. I can only speak for our group, though

Thanks, it sounds like bane bennu and bane blackfires and that should be it. Tbh, I'm wondering if it's even worth using Bane on blackfires as they seem to go down quite quickly. There always seem to be 1 blackfire though where my dots don't reach, but 1 or 2 ruins seem to bring it down quite quickly.

[QUOTE=moggleton;2768044snip[/QUOTE]

yeah for me it is, simply because the other DPS are melee so the more time they have on the boss the better.

SCH
- Bane Black Fires
- Bane Bennus

SMN
- Stand in melee Range of Phoenix for AA Damage
- Use all Aetherflow to Fester Phoenix
- Use Ifrit - Keep Ifrit on Phoenix only
- Bio + Miasma II the Bennu's (Virus when you can)
- If you and the Bard are the only ranged then you will have to cast Ruin on the Bennu's till dead. If you have a BLM then they can attack the Bennu while you stay on Phoenix (BLM will want to rotate Virus with the SMN anyways)

Your Melee should also be able to throw their quick dots on the Bennus as well if Phoenix is tanked in the center. (quick dots are the ones that only last 18s so there is little wasted damage vs 30s dots )

NIN - Shadow Fang (440 Potency)
MNK - Demolish (this is hard to time for Bennu Spawn) (270-310 Potency depending if you get the positional)
DRG - Phlebotimize (350 Potency)

2 X Melee combined with SCH + SMN + Bard = ~2200 potency when it spawns. Won't pull hate, and allows the bard/smn to easily finish it off when in position.

-------------------------------------------------------

This will give you the most uptime on Phoenix while wasting the least amount of resources, which all helps to push 4 or less Bennu.

In all honest opinion, you shouldn't need to bane blackfire and bennu at all if you got a blm in your party.
Your party composition is exactly the same as mine, and this is how my group does the first 2 phases:
MNK: on phoenix the whole time
BRD: on bennu, does bluefire/redfire
BLM: on bennu, aoe the the blackfires
SMN (me): on phoenix the whole time

The thing with baneing blackfire is that, if you got a BLM that does aoe, he can finish them down with 2 attacks, whereas SMN(+SCH) takes a bit more time, and imo waste an aetherflow stack, whereas BLM just ....infinite mana pool
With bennu, yes you can bane each one of them, yes you can fester, but imo bennus die way too fast before the dot does any real damage and pretty much all you do is fester it. Of course you could manually put up 3 dots (and still have enough mana by end of P2), but again, the up time of the bennu isn't worth it for me to do it. Besides.....BLM and BRD should have enough dps to purse it down.

I think I will focus on Phoenix more. Maybe one or two dots manually on Bennu. I just find if I don't focus on Bennu, it does seem to go down quite slowly. Maybe BRD is finding her dots aren't worth it due to mine taking it down quick, I'll need to find out. But I will cut out bane on blackfire. Thanks for the great advice.

In my setup with a BLM, I bane onto first Bennu and first and only set of blackfires since my Sch doesn't, and the BLM and BRD handle the bennues while i just stay and perform optimal rotation on boss.

If you are required to do bennus then hopefully your tanking the boss right over the spawn point to bane onto them and ignore afterwards.

If you dont do blackfires, then just bane onto bennus. Granted all of this is assuming optimal placement. If you have to manually DoT bennus because the boss is somewhere else, thats likely killing your numbers. Staying on the boss most of this fight imo is how you will get your biggest numbers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

Your Melee should also be able to throw their quick dots on the Bennus as well if Phoenix is tanked in the center. (quick dots are the ones that only last 18s so there is little wasted damage vs 30s dots)

---

Your melee should never come off the boss period. Just wasting dps that way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by moggleton

I think I will focus on Phoenix more. Maybe one or two dots manually on Bennu. I just find if I don't focus on Bennu, it does seem to go down quite slowly. Maybe BRD is finding her dots aren't worth it due to mine taking it down quick, I'll need to find out. But I will cut out bane on blackfire. Thanks for the great advice.

---

Note that if a Bennu spawns during bluefire/redfire mechanic, your BRD will do approximately 10% of her DPS until she got rid off bluefire debuff. That shouldn't be more than 5 seconds though, but sometimes, 5 seconds is all it takes...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hakmatic

Your melee should never come off the boss period. Just wasting dps that way.

---

Melee dots are their highest potency/gcd. If Phoenix is tanked where the Bennus spawn they can each apply their dot then immediately switch back to Phoenix. Dot ticks aren't effected by damage type debuffs so there's no penalty for switching targets (other than the small amount on the ones that apply damage first)

Switch to Ninja that'll help out

SCH should really Bane the Blackfires. No BLM Flare, no SMN Bane - these are wasteful and lower sustained DPS on Phoenix. It's simple logic - a SCH stack is worth an Energy Drain, and a SMN stack is worth a Fester, so you go with the equivalent of an Energy Drain.

If the SCH Bane fails to kill the Blackfires, they Baned too soon (or didn't have all their DoTs up due to missing or not DPSing, both fixable issues). Wait until Whitefire goes out and then Bane all DoTs with good durations. Blackfires actually take a really long time to enrage, trust me the DoTs will get them.

SMN with resources could actually win in T12 over BLM in 3 Bennu groups - BLM can't get much going in add phase, due to the rarity of 3 clustered targets (first Bennu is burned damn near before they're all grouped up, and only once the big Bennu has reached the two small ones can you do a small portion of AoE before it's back to single target), while SMN can keep up its AoE non-stop, and a SMN will win on Bennus P1/P2 with Banes. Too bad resources are what they are.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sleigh

SCH should really Bane the Blackfires.

---

Since SCH do not have 100% accuracy. What if SCH miss that bane strategy is kinda messed up?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sunako

Since SCH do not have 100% accuracy. What if SCH miss that bane strategy is kinda messed up?

---

Bane can't miss and when applying dots, only Miasma can miss because it does an initial damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sunako

Since SCH do not have 100% accuracy. What if SCH miss that bane strategy is kinda messed up?

---

As mentioned above, only Miasma can miss, and you have a lot of time to set it up before you need to Bane. Besides, the accuracy of a SCH without ACC gear (shame on your SCH!) isn't so terrible, if you miss more than twice in a row you have a terrible curse upon you that pull.