SMN and 4.4 Changes

If you haven't seen yet, this is what will be changing for Summoners once 4.4 hits, according to the latest preliminary patch notes:

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Radiant Shield - No longer reflects damage to attackers.
Earthen Fury - The effect is now applied as soon as the action is used.
Shadow Flare - The effect is now applied as soon as the action is used.

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This is a pretty significant nerf, imo. One of Ifrit-Egi's main selling point for the last several patches has been the ability reflect damage with Radiant Shield. Will these changes make Garuda more desirable? What do you all think?

I am in 50/50

That is the real question. Will a garbage-tier physical damage buff on 5 party members outdo a 'not garbage-tier but not stellar either' magic buff on 3 party members, of which only 1 is actually a dps?


I think the answer to that is kick the only meta caster out of the comp and replace it with another physical. All good things must come to an end. Its business as usual I guess.

Essentially it's like they have now forced the types on to the pets much more. So Garuda works best with other casters in the party, and with the patch Ifrit will work better with Physical allies. Currently Ifrit can work in any comp mostly because of that reflected damage, but moving forward perhaps reducing the potency of it may have been better but hey ho.

mmm small question, are the DoT from BRD considered magical dmg or physical? I personally assume "poison" and "wind" are magic damage.

Perhaps with the removal of the shield damage Garuda will see more use.
I mean, it's still a magical TA with a 15s duration.

If your team has a lot of magical damage perhaps it could be worth it (I highly doubt tho)
PLD burst windows aligns perfectly and I'm sure it will get more damage out of this than radiant shield
NIN Ten Chi Jin + Ninki skills could also benefit nicely. 10% for 15s could potentially out weight the radiant shield benefit
SMN itself will benefit from it, this is not negliginle especially considering it's a burst job.
BRD DoT refresh too assuming it is magical, altough this is clearly not worth it compared to radiant shield

healers too, altough I wouldn't hold my breath on the benefit of healers having their DoT under TA+Contagion


I don't think it will outweight radiant shield buff... but who knows, the damage removal could potentially balance things out almost evenly.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

mmm small question, are the DoT from BRD considered magical dmg or physical? I personally assume "poison" and "wind" are magic damage.

Perhaps with the removal of the shield damage Garuda will see more use.
I mean, it's still a magical TA with a 15s duration.

If your team has a lot of magical damage perhaps it could be worth it (I highly doubt tho)
PLD burst windows aligns perfectly and I'm sure it will get more damage out of this than radiant shield
NIN Ten Chi Jin + Ninki skills could also benefit nicely. 10% for 15s could potentially out weight the radiant shield benefit
SMN itself will benefit from it, this is not negliginle especially considering it's a burst job.
BRD DoT refresh too assuming it is magical, altough this is clearly not worth it compared to radiant shield

healers too, altough I wouldn't hold my breath on the benefit of healers having their DoT under TA+Contagion


I don't think it will outweight radiant shield buff... but who knows, the damage removal could potentially balance things out almost evenly.

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PLD buff windows aren't on exactly 60s timers, they naturally drift because of the delay in their rotation (Req comes up during your last RA combo before a GB), so that isn't necessarily going to work.

TCJ could work, but the timing could be awkward since you're trying to catch a TCJ before trick, which means you're putting it up before trick goes up hoping that you'll still get the entire trick duration. TCJ inside TA is bad, that shouldn't happen, but a kassatsu raiten might be a thing.

SMN does benefit but you're still missing out on Ifrit's better personal damage, even with the reflect gone.

Finally, the DoTs from Bard are physical, so they aren't affected either.

I'd need to go through the Balance discord to check, but contagion being worth it in a party requires a fairly large amount of magical burst, that which only something like a BLM could do if it lined up properly. Now that math probably has changed with the change to ifrit, but I'm sure we'll find out what those breakpoints are soon once people like Nemekh take a look at it and make a decision.

iirc they're waiting for full patch notes... but I read it late last night so I could be wrong. Definitive answers will come out though, and I doubt they're going to be terribly positive for Garuda. It'll probably just be 'less bad'.

The time has come. Blm is reaching for the stars, and needs more multipliers. Fear not book mages, you (garuda) will have a place on the blm+smn meme dream team. Double caster new meta

double caster meta.., we want tripple caster meta xD

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

double caster meta.., we want tripple caster meta xD

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Two blams, 1 sum, 1 sam, dark, paladin, white mage, astro.

The time is now.

Just for remember....
At Stormblood, before 4.4, i search what for ifrit is better... and i learn that :
Not for group but for summoner, ifrit is better because he can auto-hit... i look my dps with garuda and with ifrit, and the only real difference is the auto-hit.

Ifrit like a melee ; with instant for gcd and a good damage on auto-hit
Garuda like a caster ; with cast for gcd and no auto-hit except if she go to melee (and i think not possible for garuda)

I -ran- a triple caster on Exdeath. It's not worth it if your healers are trigger happy with their raises (unless the WHM has Thin Air up). SMN should get raise priority in that comp because they can afford to do that and Mana Shift on cooldown. It takes all three casters Mana Shifting on cooldown to equal one ranged DPS using Refresh on cooldown for just the healers, not even factoring in the benefits PLD/RDM would get if they had it. Hell the RDM can't afford to do it if they're raising.

I really hope they remove Refresh/Tactician and turn Mana Shift into a single target ally-only version of Refresh, then give it, Goad, and Diversion to BRD/MCH. That would free up a lot of space for casters.

question:

4.4, Smn + Ifrit still does overall more dps than Smn + Garuda (in standard comps)?.. cause of more procs?

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Originally Posted by Shiroe

question:

4.4, Smn + Ifrit still does overall more dps than Smn + Garuda (in standard comps)?.. cause of more procs?

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it depends on your healers. If you have good healers that dps well, Garuda should be better regardless.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

I -ran- a triple caster on Exdeath. It's not worth it if your healers are trigger happy with their raises (unless the WHM has Thin Air up). SMN should get raise priority in that comp because they can afford to do that and Mana Shift on cooldown. It takes all three casters Mana Shifting on cooldown to equal one ranged DPS using Refresh on cooldown for just the healers, not even factoring in the benefits PLD/RDM would get if they had it. Hell the RDM can't afford to do it if they're raising.

I really hope they remove Refresh/Tactician and turn Mana Shift into a single target ally-only version of Refresh, then give it, Goad, and Diversion to BRD/MCH. That would free up a lot of space for casters.

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BRD/MCH should get Diversion anyways, everything else you said was awful.

So I've been conducting my own "tests" since 4.4 dropped, and thus far my findings have led me to the conclusion that... Well, it's sort of variable. My raid static has two casters and two melees for DPS. However, we've found that while Garuda's contagion did assist my co-caster's numbers and the healers, overall my raid leader has helped me to confirm that Ifrit still seems to have somewhat higher numbers in terms of both my personal DPS as well as raidwide gains. Despite that, Garuda still has her place. We're presently working on O9S, and to ensure things go more smoothly during the Earthquake/Crystal phases I've found it safer to ensure Garuda's out beforehand so that Radiant Shield doesn't inadvertently go off and kill off the DPS by mitigating just enough to stop fatal damage from removing the earth debuff. Since Aetherpact is also dangerous to use in these phase, Contagion also becomes essentially your best bet for raid buffs at these spots, unless it would come off cooldown just after the debuffs wear off, in which case you might have time to Swiftcast Ifrit out in time for your physical attackers to benefit from RS.

In short, aside from certain specific situations, Ifrit appears to remain the more useful of the two for now. I wouldn't say what I've found is conclusive, exactly, but it's a start.

Radiant shield mitigates damage?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Radiant shield mitigates damage?

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No, it only bring 2% physical vulne to the opponent.

Double-checking the new tooltips, and you are actually correct: It doesn't appear to have any kind of mitigation effect. Granted, while this means it's probably fine during the Earthquake phase, Garuda is still probably a better option during crystal if only because the crystal itself is not inflicting any damage on players to make it more susceptible to Radiant Shield's debuff.

Learn the two pet opener and dazzle your static mates.

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

So I've been conducting my own "tests" since 4.4 dropped, and thus far my findings have led me to the conclusion that... Well, it's sort of variable. My raid static has two casters and two melees for DPS. However, we've found that while Garuda's contagion did assist my co-caster's numbers and the healers, overall my raid leader has helped me to confirm that Ifrit still seems to have somewhat higher numbers in terms of both my personal DPS as well as raidwide gains. Despite that, Garuda still has her place. We're presently working on O9S, and to ensure things go more smoothly during the Earthquake/Crystal phases I've found it safer to ensure Garuda's out beforehand so that Radiant Shield doesn't inadvertently go off and kill off the DPS by mitigating just enough to stop fatal damage from removing the earth debuff. Since Aetherpact is also dangerous to use in these phase, Contagion also becomes essentially your best bet for raid buffs at these spots, unless it would come off cooldown just after the debuffs wear off, in which case you might have time to Swiftcast Ifrit out in time for your physical attackers to benefit from RS.

In short, aside from certain specific situations, Ifrit appears to remain the more useful of the two for now. I wouldn't say what I've found is conclusive, exactly, but it's a start.

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I'm curious how the data was interpreted, because garuda has been higher rdps with double caster even before radiant shield was nerfed. Is your other caster just.... dead 90% of the time for these tests?