Anyone tried i90 ACN?

[Huntington]

Yeah, you're biased. The loss of gear stats, fester, pet potency, intelligence, spur and enkindle... farrrrrrrrr outweigh the minor things you get from ACN.

What gear is used on those results for both classes? Are you intentionally putting better gear on SMN and weakening ACN in the process? What enemies are you using it on?

Gear stats break a lot of mechanics Square Enix said themselves, Fester didn't make a difference in my parse data, Pet Potency by itself is miniscule in the differences with Garuda and Carbuncle, Enkindle is an over-hyped move attached to a 5 minute cooldown, which means it's rarely going to get used and make a difference. Blood for Blood, and Internal Release, which I did not use in my ACN test so that should have then made it do less damage, also give more power to a Crit class.

I would really prefer if people did not use acronyms, I haven't the faintest clue if BiS stands for Darklight, Crimson, Mythic gear, or otherwise.

[Lyrinn]

Are you accounting for Contagion? That alone seems like it would be a fair chunk of difference in damage. Also, he listed out exactly what he meant by BiS.

[T0rin]

What gear is used on those results for both classes? Are you intentionally putting better gear on SMN and weakening ACN in the process? What enemies are you using it on?

Gear stats break a lot of mechanics Square Enix said themselves, Fester didn't make a difference in my parse data, Pet Potency by itself is miniscule in the differences with Garuda and Carbuncle, Enkindle is an over-hyped move attached to a 5 minute cooldown, which means it's rarely going to get used and make a difference. Blood for Blood, and Internal Release, which I did not use in my ACN test so that should have then made it do less damage, also give more power to a Crit class.

I would really prefer if people did not use acronyms, I haven't the faintest clue if BiS stands for Darklight, Crimson, Mythic gear, or otherwise.

Best in Slot (BiS) for both classes.

ACN: (449 accuracy)

Allagan Grimoire of Casting
Allagan Circlet of Casting
Allagan Tunic of Casting
Allagan Gloves of Casting
Hero's Belt of Casting
Allagan Breeches of Casting
Allagan Boots of Casting
Hero's Necklace of Casting
Tremor Earring of Casting
Hero's Bracelet of Casting
Allagan Ring of Casting
Vortex Ring of Casting


SMN: (448 accuracy)

Allagan Grimoire of Casting
Allagan Circlet of Casting
Summoner's Doublet
Allagan Gloves of Casting
Allagan Rope Belt of Casting
Summoner's Trousers
Allagan Boots of Casting
Hero's Necklace of Casting
Tremor Earring of Casting
Hero's Bracelet of Casting
Allagan Ring of Casting
Vortex Ring of Casting

It is a simulation, aka a fair, but virtual comparison (based on provable damage formulas and stat benefits) between two different sets of stats/gear/skills, using the same 'rotation' in order to prevent one side from have a benefit over another. They both maintain maximum potential DPS, and the SMN comes out like 18% ahead. And my simulation was using Blood for Blood and Internal release, as well as Aero, and maximizing the benefits with Contagion as well.

SMN is not a "Crit class". BRD is a Crit class.

Are you accounting for Contagion? That alone seems like it would be a fair chunk of difference in damage. Also, he listed out exactly what he meant by BiS.

Emerald Carbuncle gets Contagion too, it's just called Shining Emerald. Does the same thing, though.

[Huntington]

Unfortunately I have neither the time nor actual gear on hand to accrue all of the Allagan gear and use it, I can only nod and take that as close to the chest as possible. I've done ACN on several Hard Mode Dungeons, and used it in nearly as many places as I've taken SMN, and still find ACN more favorable to use. Especially since SE decided to break up Jobs for some reason and give us Job-specific gear and the like.

So Fester crit'ing for 1K when my average right now is around 700 isn't anything to show for that? A lot of the gear adds to the Crit, so you can do as much damage as possible when you use abilities like Energy Drain or Fester, just because it has DoT abilities doesn't mean it isn't a type of Crit class. Especially when ACN can raise it's Crit just as much as a Bard can. All in all, I don't have enough space to type out all that I want, my short time here showed me that I'll never be able to type as much as I want when limited to 1000 characters.

[T0rin]

Unfortunately I have neither the time nor actual gear on hand to accrue all of the Allagan gear and use it, I can only nod and take that as close to the chest as possible. I've done ACN on several Hard Mode Dungeons, and used it in nearly as many places as I've taken SMN, and still find ACN more favorable to use. Especially since SE decided to break up Jobs for some reason and give us Job-specific gear and the like.

I'm not saying you can't do any and all content in the game with ACN, you can, you just do 18% less damage in the process. When your job is to deal damage, why would you pick ACN over SMN? So you can heal yourself a little better every now and then, an activity you shouldn't even be doing in the first place?

So Fester crit'ing for 1K when my average right now is around 700 isn't anything to show for that? A lot of the gear adds to the Crit, so you can do as much damage as possible when you use abilities like Energy Drain or Fester, just because it has DoT abilities doesn't mean it isn't a type of Crit class. Especially when ACN can raise it's Crit just as much as a Bard can. All in all, I don't have enough space to type out all that I want, my short time here showed me that I'll never be able to type as much as I want when limited to 1000 characters.

You can't raise it as much as BRD can, but you can get it pretty high with ACN gear.

But you need to stop thinking about critial hits, or the critical hit chance stat, as some kind of magical ability. In the end, just like spell speed and determination, critical hit chance is simply another way to increase your damage. It isn't even the best way to increase your damage on a point for point basis.

BRD gets special procs from crits, that have a substantial impact on their DPS output. SMN has no such thing. Our pet crits can proc a spell speed buff, that offers a very very very minor (0.01% ?) boost to your DPS. Nothing to write home about.

[Huntington]

I don't see the damage loss when I'm playing then, if you're going to say it's because I'm not using Fester, than that's negligible when I see what I do with an Energy Drain and a Ruin 2 in nearly the same amount of time, and can be used more often by the way as well. Which would mean that one Fester already got overpowered by 3 energy drains and otherwise in that ten-second cooldown, I had one that crit for 700 earlier, Energy Drain, doing 700, and giving me MP so I don't run out quick like Fester is loathe to add to. I told you in the other thread, I heal myself in pinch scenarios when I have a second if it's an emergency, otherwise I activate Convalescence and let the Healer do it.

Yes. Criticals matter substantially in this game, XI NEVER placed that much importance on your critical hits. They were few and usually far between, they're really common now since you yourself said that there's a lot that can boost them frequently, and when the stat gains equipment gives, matters more than it would for Spell Speed since that's a useless stat really. Yes, they have Heavy Shot and Straight Shot, which gives you a base increased crit damage rate, then Heavy Shot which can give you a guaranteed crit if it activates, while keeping alive the before mentioned rate. I'm raising a Bard now, there isn't much that's too hard to understand about the class/blarg, it's Job abilities all weaken you and boost or improve something, and the Archer abilities are visible to everyone else easily.

I also just did some more testing. Fester averaging around 670 to 700, Crits doing 980 to 1k and above. The standard three DoTs doing average of 243, Crits near 300, Miasma 2 being included doing 270's normally. ACN doing around 230 for the standard 3, 270s for crits. Aero then does an initial 110 or so, then bumps it up to 280 or averaging around there. Miasma 2 included does around 300 to 320. Aero does make a difference for it because it has a decent initial damage, this is also going in the Bio 2 > Miasma > Bio rotation as well. No buffs are being used here. Differences in other things are because of SMN's better gear right now, once ACN has a Crimson Robe to help up it, I foresee these being even more favorable for it.

[T0rin]

You get 3 festers every minute, just like you get 3 energy drains a minute. You can't say things like "I can do just as much with energy drain and ruin as I can with fester"... why wouldn't you compare that to fester and ruin? Because that's what you would be doing instead.

You don't compare your ability to put out 450 potency with 3 energy drains in 10 seconds to the 300 potency of one Fester in the same 10 seconds, when one Fester uses up a third of the aetherflow, and will allow you to do an extra 600 potency over the next 50 seconds.

These are absolutely inane comparisons, and do nothing to further the discussion. All of the anecdotal evidence in the world isn't going to prove that ACN is better. But, if you scrolled up and read, you would see where there is actual proof to the contrary.

[Viridiana]

Huntington, nothing in your last post makes any sense. You can not use Energy Drain more often than Fester, as they're both limited to 3 per minute. If your Energy Drain is critting for 700, a Fester in its place would have crit for 1,400. That's 2,100 max damage in a minute compared to 4,200 max damage in a minute. Even if none of the three crit, that's 1,300 versus 2,700. And that's not counting the boosted stats from SMN or anything. . .

[Pwnznewbz]

Since posting this, I have tried an ACN build with i86 gear (best I could manage in 1 week) that includes Allagan grimoire of casting. The dps is at least 15% less. Your ruins alone are doing 100-120 less per hit. The loss of 20 int is a bit hit. I don't mind the idea of trying ACN in DF groups, or even friendly instance/raids but don't come into the thread with completely false information. You do it because it's fun, not because it is better... that's okay, but acknowledge facts and don't push your bad logic on the community.

[loldrg]

SMN is not a "Crit class". BRD is a Crit class.

If the ridiculous BiS list you posted for both ACN and SMN wasn't enough this line is the icing on the cake of the bad advice you're putting forward. I've had 100% accuracy with <400 accuracy on all extreme primals. The number you are posting only even matters for turn 5 snakes and even then it's too high post 2.1 since pet accuracy seems to be simply your accuracy and not the arbitrary 450 it was before. You aren't using food in your total # and if you are you should specify which you are using for those accuracy heavy fights. You are also making some ridiculous gear choices, completely abandoning any crit for most of your slots. Crit is Summoner's #1 most important secondary stat. I happen to think there's a certain cut off point once you're in the ~550 range where certain gear choices towards DET start to make sense because crit gear up to 600ish max SMN can hit doesn't seem to produce too noticeable of a crit increase in parsers vs staying in the 540-550 range and getting more DET. But, you aren't even remotely close to that # with gear choices like allagan circlet or caster ring (or myth legs + circlet + tremor earrings, etc.)

SMN is more of a crit class than any job in the game besides Scholar. Bard has 2 DoTs who's crit rate matters for DPS increase (River of Blood trait and only 3 DoTs total) and even then it's only a 50% chance that the crit proc will trigger River of Blood ontop of certain fights like Atomos or Ifrit Extreme where 1/2 of the dots that matter for River of Blood can't be used.

SMN can crit the following every 3 seconds: Bio II, Miasma, Bio, Shadowflare, (this is already a higher # of things that can crit than BRD's 2 DoTs + Flaming Arrow every 30sec), Ruin I/II, Pet attack, Auto Attack, and Miasma II if its Contagioned. That's 5 attacks that you should have up 100% of the time and 2 more (Miasma II and Auto attacks) that get used situationally. So that's 5-7 attacks that all can crit independent of eachother. And that's not even counting the spell speed trait when your pet crits or Fester/ED criting. SMN is a crit based job through simple probability.