Quote Originally Posted by Israacf View Post
As a new Summoner, when you guys have to burst kill an add, how do you do it? Do you use your aether stacks?

I'm kind of confused with that because whenever I use a cooldown that's normally used within Dreadwyrm Trance I feel like I mess up a lot.
I'd like a little help on CD management and all that.
For adds as SMN you have to evaluate how long the add can stay alive, and more importantly, how long WILL the add stay alive with your current group? What's the rest of your group going to do? I mean in a coordinated group, if an add spawns that has to die within 20s and a set of DoTs from you will single-handedly kill it, you'd DoT it and milk it for all it's worth and gain a lot of personal and group DPS, but in a PUG, you're best off completely ignoring it because there will probably be half or more of the party blitzing it and you might as well have done a Ruin on the boss instead. But yes, if you have to burst something down with urgency, Fester into Painflare and if you MUST, Energy Drain, with Ruin IIIs. Usually someone messed up if this is the case, or your group is a PUG.

DWT stacks are actually exceedingly easy unless you're very unsure when a boss will go invulnerable/disappear, as long as you know the fight. Core usage is 2 Festers in DWT, final Fester around your Bio reapplication. You adjust to Bane or Painflare or timer needs, usually just taking out one of the DWT Festers but sometimes doing no Festers in DWT, sometimes doing 2 and having one Bane for later as long as you hold up your Aethertrail.