Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[audi5000]

i tried using ifrit in a4s a couple of times. i had trouble killing my add without garuda, and radiant shield was useless, but it honestly wasnt too bad.

[Fernosaur]

Dunno how they could buff Ifrit wihtout buffing SMN, but I'd be open to something cool.

In my somewhat ignorant and humble opinion, Ifrit should just flat out do considerably more damage than Garuda with his attacks instead of having that weird damage penalty that puts them both on par. Not only is he at a bigger risk of eating cleaves and melee AoEs, but the downtime he gets from forced movement is terrible... I also see no reason to use him q-q

[Sleigh]

Ifrit does do more than Garuda.

It is not Ifrit doing the same DPS as Garuda. It is Contagion being so strong with the opener and further DWT that even the two out for the most part. Radiant Shield does make Ifrit theoretically pull ahead of Garuda, but there are many advantages to Garuda, both in efficiency and convenience, that just make Ifrit so questionable.

[Fernosaur]

Ifrit does do more than Garuda.

It is not Ifrit doing the same DPS as Garuda. It is Contagion being so strong with the opener and further DWT that even the two out for the most part. Radiant Shield does make Ifrit theoretically pull ahead of Garuda, but there are many advantages to Garuda, both in efficiency and convenience, that just make Ifrit so questionable.

Yeah I know he does more, but the damage Ifrit brings vs Garuda's damage boost from Contagion "balance" out in a way that it all ends up being in Garuda's favor. I sorta meant that Ifrit should be able to deal a much more considerable amount damage by himself than Garuda in order to compensate for his obvious and unavoidable flaws. Garuda just works way too well with SMN's toolkit.

[Takaokami]

Any thoughts on SMN melds? I'm completely new to melding TBH, but read some people said VIT is a good investment to start doing Midas savage. Not sure if they were generalizing for all classes or actually referring only to tanks...

[Fernosaur]

I'd personally go Accuracy (if needed) > Crit > Spellspeed. The later only works for the amount of Ruin IIIs you can fit into one Dreadwyrm Trance, so I dunno if there's gonna be a soft cap for it or not. People need to do some maths on that I guess.

Then again, I'm a philistine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[raspberrytealeaf]

How viable is Ifrit on Sephirot? With all the raid damage is it enough physical to make Radiant Shield useful?

I've been able to clear Sephirot using Ifrit only, Garuda only, and also Ifrit through adds and swapping to Garuda for the last phase. Admittedly, I'm still trying to figure out how to play this class, but I don't see much of a difference DPS wise?

From my understanding, Radiant scales on your characters physical attack power so you will reflect low damage and your physical dps and tanks will reflect more damage. But the tanks' physical attack power went down as of 3.2 and they're the ones who are getting hit the most often. (The WAR in my static, at least, said he had more attack power with the same gear pre-patch.) Perhaps Radiant was stronger pre-patch? Edit: Btw, I should mention for Sephirot, he quits autoattacking during the final phase, so the only time the shield would be useful is when the sets of adds appear with the whirlwind.

[Abylim]

So what should I be doing during an add kill phase when bursting them down is king? It wont live long usually, what should I be doing? Run III?

[Havenchild]

I'd personally go Accuracy (if needed) > Crit > Spellspeed. The later only works for the amount of Ruin IIIs you can fit into one Dreadwyrm Trance, so I dunno if there's gonna be a soft cap for it or not. People need to do some maths on that I guess.

Then again, I'm a philistine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't think you will need Accuracy. The gear is already overloaded with it. In terms of Spellspeed, you can get a pretty meaty side of SS just from gear alone. To get an extra Ruin III, you will need likely over 900 to 1k+ and that won't be worth the exchange from possible Crit and Det, unless at least with Crit, there's some sort of softcap.

Crit > Det melds will almost undoubtedly be the best on every piece.

[audi5000]

all of the 240 gear is overloaded with acc and spell speed zzz this is so annoying. plugged in different acc caps into ariyala between 600 and 650 (tentative estimated a8s acc cap?) and they all have builds with at least 700 sps. super annoying