SMN BIS 2.3

[Illa]

The strength if your DoTs are stronger using a max Det novus or a book of spades then using a HA book.

However the overall strength of your spells like Ruins and Fester do "decrease". Reason for quotes is more the window of damage is greater on the lower end. You can still hit as high as the HA book with say a Fester but you can also hit lower more often.

I hate to break it to you, but the only thing that DET augments is your Ruin, Ruin 2 and Fester damage. It does not augment any of your DoT damage by any significant amount. Considering that most of your damage dealt is from DoTs, it would be foolish to not try to increase that damage as much as possible. INT has always been the only way to raise your DoT damage and raising your DET is only valuable up to a certain point, so the DR on critical strike rate is not so heavy. Like accuracy, once DET reaches a certain point, the value per point greatly diminishes.

[Dwill]

I hate to break it to you, but the only thing that DET augments is your Ruin, Ruin 2 and Fester damage. It does not augment any of your DoT damage by any significant amount. Considering that most of your damage dealt is from DoTs, it would be foolish to not try to increase that damage as much as possible. INT has always been the only way to raise your DoT damage and raising your DET is only valuable up to a certain point, so the DR on critical strike rate is not so heavy. Like accuracy, once DET reaches a certain point, the value per point greatly diminishes.

I hate to break it to you but sacrificing too much DET for a pittance worth of INT isn't better either. Also, DoTs makes up between 40-45% of your damage% of your damage with the remaining damage coming from Wind Blade, Enkindle, Fester, Ruin I, Ruin II

The thing about DET isn't the astonishing amount it gives to one DoT, it is its effect of affecting every single spell you cast, which includes every single DoT which adds up over time. Near BiS level of gear, your Int will not move a lot but depending on your choices of gear, your secondary stats can and picking up a balanced amount of CRT and DET will yield better results than just picking 2 INT and sacrificing 20-30 DET for it.

After getting my HA book, I was looking at the numbers in coil and it seemed that it hardly increased, if any at all from the Book of Spades. I thought it was definitely a mistake or a bug or something until I read this today. So I was intrigued and went to test on a training dummy and over the course of 30 dot ticks, the average tick from BB2M seemed to be around 360-400 per tick without food. The highest tick for HA was 415 whereas there was a tick from BOS at 482. I also did further testing of a 3 min rotation on a dummy and I hit 415 d[s with BOS and 420 dps with HA which was really shocking since an upgrade from i110 to HA was at least a 20-30 dps increase for other classes. So does this mean that det>crit and also what is the reason for the dots having the same/slightly higher tick than HA?

DET and CRT have an approximately equal value. The reason your damage didn't spike up really high between Book of Spades and High Allagan is the lose of DET for Spell Speed but the gain of 2 Weapon Damage and 15 CRT and for summoner, damage increase via Weapon Damage is not as high as melee since the base is so high to begin with.

So in the end, High Allagan is an upgrade from Book of Spades but it is a little one, not a big one like melees.

[skaterger]

DET and CRT have an approximately equal value. The reason your damage didn't spike up really high between Book of Spades and High Allagan is the lose of DET for Spell Speed but the gain of 2 Weapon Damage and 15 CRT and for summoner, damage increase via Weapon Damage is not as high as melee since the base is so high to begin with.

So in the end, High Allagan is an upgrade from Book of Spades but it is a little one, not a big one like melees.

Ok so based on a pure numbers standpoint, you get 3 int, 2 WD and 15 crit for HA vs 31 det for BOS. If crit and det are approximately equal, that means 3 int + 2 WD is only slightly better than 16 det? It really seems like crit/det is pretty undervalued or WD really sucks for summoner.

Interesting. I just got my HA book recently. First raid I was able to use it was last week. I noticed my numbers increase by roughly 20-40 DPS over previous weeks. Increases of roughly 40 DPS t6-8 and about 20+ on t9. But this was also upgrading from ST legs to i110 soldiery legs. So a good chunk of that damage could also be from that rather large upgrade. 29 det that I did not have before.

I am behind on soldiery gear because I was a late re-roll to SMN from DRG and BRD prior. 2 weeks til I get my soldiery body and then I just need the HA ring for full BiS.

Hey if you could, test out on a dummy with the HA and BOS but with the same gear for everything else and get back to us? Cuz I'm only seeing a 5-10 dps increase using HA. It would be quite interesting..

[RinchanNau]

Hey if you could, test out on a dummy with the HA and BOS but with the same gear for everything else and get back to us? Cuz I'm only seeing a 5-10 dps increase using HA. It would be quite interesting..

I can do that tonight with a few different configs. Since I'm pretty new to SMN still I try things out Garuda only, Ifrit only, and pet swap after RS contagion. Last night I saw pretty similar results from both Garuda and Ifrit. Pet damage is 20-25 higher with Ifrit, but my damage is 20-25 lower. Balances out. And obviously in an actual fight Garuda may come out ahead if there is a lot of movement and/or opportunities to make use of things like using bane on contagioned dots.

Last week in coil I used Ifrit to get said results. This week will be Garuda only. Same gear. Well, last week I pet swapped the opener for t9 and during Heavensfall. But ehh... not going to try any such things this week.

I do have a question about SMN that's probably been discussed plenty before. Is Miasma 2 really worth using with contagion? I have been using it most of the time but have thought about dropping it. The potency seemingly isn't worth the MP cost if it forces me to use energy drain over fester more than I would be otherwise.

[Dwill]

Ok so based on a pure numbers standpoint, you get 3 int, 2 WD and 15 crit for HA vs 31 det for BOS. If crit and det are approximately equal, that means 3 int + 2 WD is only slightly better than 16 det? It really seems like crit/det is pretty undervalued or WD really sucks for summoner.

Using http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/NK61 as a base BiS set and changing between Book of Spades and High Allagan, the average damage per spells will only change by approximately 2%, so on an approximate 430 DPS in BiS, you are talking at about 8,6 DPS upgrade on average.

Casting Rotation comparing full Spell Speed BiS VS Normal BiS (Recommended using Ifrit Only)
Spell Speed Gear http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/NK7T

A: 2.34s GCD
Bio, Mia, B2, SCSF, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, Bio, Ruin, Ruin, Mia, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, B2, SF (2.8s), B, Mia, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, B, Mia, B2, SCSF (at this point it repeats itself)

VS

B: 2.43 GCD

B, M, B2, SCSF, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, B, Ruin, Ruin, M, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, R2, SF, B, Ruin, Ruin, M, Ruin, Ruin, B, Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, B2, SCSF (Rotation has not yet repeated itself, but it has reached the 70.66 Seconds that Rotation A repeats at)

Total Potency of Rotation A: 5240
Total Potency of Rotation B: 4860 (This has 3% more damage due to higher Crit/Det, so equivalent to 5005)

So a difference of ~4%

What's the link to your non Spell Speed set ? Also, I do not see any Fester in there which would change your rotation to a degree.

[skaterger]

Using http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/NK61 as a base BiS set and changing between Book of Spades and High Allagan, the average damage per spells will only change by approximately 2%, so on an approximate 430 DPS in BiS, you are talking at about 8,6 DPS upgrade on average.

Ah I see thanks for the clarification.

[RinchanNau]

Using http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/NK61 as a base BiS set and changing between Book of Spades and High Allagan, the average damage per spells will only change by approximately 2%, so on an approximate 430 DPS in BiS, you are talking at about 8,6 DPS upgrade on average.

Is that really better than this? http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/NK8W I understand that you're only sacrificing 4 int for an amount of crit and det that more than makes up for it. But you're also losing 50 spell speed... which isn't particularly great for SMN, but I thought it still had some weight?

[Dwill]

Is that really better than this? http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/NK8W I understand that you're only sacrificing 4 int for an amount of crit and det that more than makes up for it. But you're also losing 50 spell speed... which isn't particularly great for SMN, but I thought it still had some weight?

While Spell Speed has some weights, it is terribly low (~15 Spell Speed = 1 Int). So you gain 7 Int (with Spell Speed converted) and 11 CRT but you lose 61 DET in the process. Not worth it.

[RinchanNau]

While Spell Speed has some weights, it is terribly low (~15 Spell Speed = 1 Int). So you gain 7 Int (with Spell Speed converted) and 11 CRT but you lose 61 DET in the process. Not worth it.

Interesting. I don't yet have the HA mask OR HA ring, but if your BiS list is correct I don't need the HA ring. And I do have the mog neck and ramuh ring.. Would have the get that soldiery bracelet after I finally get my soldiery chest too. Now I want to test it out.

Edit: my list did not include food. So the difference isn't as large as you mentioned. Seems much closer with black truffle factored in.

[Havenchild]

Ok so based on a pure numbers standpoint, you get 3 int, 2 WD and 15 crit for HA vs 31 det for BOS. If crit and det are approximately equal, that means 3 int + 2 WD is only slightly better than 16 det? It really seems like crit/det is pretty undervalued or WD really sucks for summoner.

It would be better to disregard Crit in this comparison because both books have Crit and it's not a dependable stat to compare because of the minimal increase between the two books and the nature of Crits proccing. If we were to talk about direct damage modifier weights however, you would need about 45 DET to beat 2 WD + 3 INT.

The fact that the BOS book has 31 DET which is about 2/3s of the way there, lines up with the minimal damage increase you can get from upgrading to the HA Book.

After getting my HA book, I was looking at the numbers in coil and it seemed that it hardly increased, if any at all from the Book of Spades. I thought it was definitely a mistake or a bug or something until I read this today. So I was intrigued and went to test on a training dummy and over the course of 30 dot ticks, the average tick from BB2M seemed to be around 360-400 per tick without food. The highest tick for HA was 415 whereas there was a tick from BOS at 482. I also did further testing of a 3 min rotation on a dummy and I hit 415 d[s with BOS and 420 dps with HA which was really shocking since an upgrade from i110 to HA was at least a 20-30 dps increase for other classes. So does this mean that det>crit and also what is the reason for the dots having the same/slightly higher tick than HA?

This falls in line with what I was actually seeing in game as well. Putting the calculations of stat x weighs aside, in game I was also physically seeing higher DoT ticks with the BOS. Largely it shouldn't make sense for this but, this is in fact happening in game. This is why I also believe there's either a damage bug in play for DoTs with WD more then likely not affecting it or there's a slightly different equation at work here for DoTs which favors DET more, because its largely ONLY the DoTs that increase in damage from the BOS, everything else is stronger with the HA Book from my testing which would imply 31 DET > 2 WD + 3 INT for DoTs otherwise I can't think of another way to explain this discrepancy.

I do have a question about SMN that's probably been discussed plenty before. Is Miasma 2 really worth using with contagion? I have been using it most of the time but have thought about dropping it. The potency seemingly isn't worth the MP cost if it forces me to use energy drain over fester more than I would be otherwise.

Miasma II is only worth using in an AoE situation with 3+ mobs imo or when couple'd with Contagion for the duration increase. If your using Energy Drain more then not, you should in fact examine your rotation a bit more. The only fight you should be having some MP issues, not counting any ressing, is T8 because that fight is quite long with no breaks in between.

Perhaps you're over using Ruin II's (unquestionably the biggest mana drainer). You should only be using Ruin II during forced movement(Landslides, Twisters etcetc) or right before Fester comes off GCD.

Or you could be clipping your DoTs too early, another culprit of heavy MP drain. Making the best of things like Bane for AoE situations saves you alot of MP as well so working with your party for those situations plays a big role also.