How to play smn in the feast

[Drtoxicmedica]

So I've finally been able to actually play pvp now with the event going on and I've got a decent grasp of most of the dps jobs. Smn however just seems really awkward for some reason I can do around 200k sometimes less if a match goes for awhile but I just can't seem to land many kills even when I choose not to bane my dots and just focus one person down. Is there some trick I'm missing here?

[Arthur_Gwen]

I do wanna answer this actually but since someone told me my smn never kill ppl and I'm pretty bad

Let's wait for other platinum+ smns' answers together

[SuperZay]

After nerfs summoner's burst is much weaker than brd/mch, and while they still do respectable damage over match it doesnt matter much because slow dots easily healed through and only sudden bursts/kills/dropped medals decide the win. There are some ways for a summoner to succed though. They are excellent at draining healers mana, so never focus a healer first unles he's totally new, let him run out of CDs/MP which will make kills much easier later.
Blood for Blood icon on enemy dps is an excellent time for burst because it'll increase all you damage by 25% (15% if drg). For burst come in close/melee range and do
Raging Strikes - que Rouse+Spur+Enkindle (it has small delay) - Tridisaster-Painflare-Fester-Energy Drain - Dreadwyrm Trance-Deathflare - Aetheric Burst+Wither.
Aerial Blast should hit at the same time as Deathflare and with following two melee-range skills it's probably the best chance to kill anything.
Be careful with Fester, if Tridisaster will be instantly purified it'll kill your burst, and you can't apply it immediatelly after TD because of slight lag. Use second Energy Drain instead.
I saw a lot of summoners just running around with full MP spamming their weak 80 potency Ruin II and thats why you dont see a lot of them in Top 100. Good summoner maximizes his dps with Ruin III spam and traited Manadraw, it'll allow 15 200-potency casts outside of DT. When nothing is going on just apply dots, especially on enemy tank with stacks.
And of course winning is not only about killing, its about not letting your teamates die too. You can save them several times per match with Blizzard II/Tribind every minute or two, Virus on melee dps if you feel like he'll LB soon (pops Fetter Ward). Use Eye for the Eye every 2 minuts on whoever is focused or on a healer.

[Nirokun]

After nerfs summoner's burst is much weaker than brd/mch, and while they still do respectable damage over match it doesnt matter much because slow dots easily healed through and only sudden bursts/kills/dropped medals decide the win. There are some ways for a summoner to succed though. They are excellent at draining healers mana, so never focus a healer first unles he's totally new, let him run out of CDs/MP which will make kills much easier later.
Blood for Blood icon on enemy dps is an excellent time for burst because it'll increase all you damage by 25% (15% if drg). Alternatively Full Swing applied by a tank will boost you by 20%. For burst come in close/melee range and do
Raging Strikes - que Rouse+Spur+Enkindle (it has small delay) - Tridisaster-Painflare-Fester-Energy Drain - Dreadwyrm Trance-Deathflare - Aetheric Burst+Wither.
Aerial Blast should hit at the same time as Deathflare and with following two melee-range skills it's probably the best chance to kill anything.
Be careful with Fester, if Tridisaster will be instantly purified it'll kill your burst, and you can't apply it immediatelly after TD because of slight lag. Use second Energy Drain instead.
I saw a lot of summoners just running around with full MP spamming their weak 80 potency Ruin II and thats why you dont see a lot of them in Top 100. Good summoner maximizes his dps with Ruin III spam and traited Manadraw, it'll allow 15 200-potency casts outside of DT. When nothing is going on just apply dots, especially on enemy tank with stacks.
And of course winning is not only about killing, its about not letting your teamates die too. You can save them several times per match with Blizzard II/Tribind every minute or two, Virus on melee dps if you feel like he'll LB soon (pops Fetter Ward). Use Eye for the Eye every 2 minuts on whoever is focused or on a healer.

^Mostly this. For the bolded part, you prevent the enemy healer from recovering MP by offering no breaks in the match. This means you need to extend the encounters. You do this by playing safe, not over-extending into the enemy team, and being very aware of what the enemy is doing. I feel like you have a really impact by watching the enemy ranged (using focus target helps, but will not always display their Hawk's Eye buff due to the limit on the [de]buffs shown) if they are MCH or BRD, and using Virus to nerf their burst (very potent burst delivered in a short period of time, cooldown [Hawk's Eye] lines up with Virus' cooldown).

Because you cannot talk to your team, you can no longer inform/prepare your healer that the burst is incoming to help your team survive, which is very bad after the chat ban. If you can, however, manage to live through that burst, usually that MCH or BRD is spent on their burst, and and the encounter is extended another 90s (so long as nobody on your team dies). The entire time you keep layering DoTs with repeat Bane and spamming Ruin3, the enemy healer will be losing a lot of MP. Their AoE heals are less efficient on 4 targets compared to 8, and they're forced to make decisions on who to heal first.

Eventually the enemy healer will miss party heals due to needing to heal themselves, and they will not be able to keep up. When someone dips below, oh, 80% or so, you can kill them. Use Garuda's Shockwave (pushback) on the enemy healer and start your burst (an alternative to Enkindle mentioned above). The pushback cannot be negated (except for attunement, and the healer is unable to heal at this time and it's a waste to attune for a slowly approaching Garuda) nor is it affected by diminishing returns. The healer will have to heal through your burst, already on low MP with multiple PT members low on HP, while losing a cast to knockback. It can be really nasty for them.

If you can bide your time and stay alive, you will get more than one kill at a time this way. Of course both MCH and BRD can recover the healer's MP with PVP skills (ideally), but the chat ban prevents the healer from being able to ask, and the onus is completely on the MCH/BRD to mind their healer.

Make sure you take off quelling strikes and replace it with hawk's eye when you plan to PVP. You can strip off attunement (if you're lucky) by using hawk's eye to make it hit through attunement's stupidly high evasion and strip a single debuff. It feels really good when you do that.

I havent found misty veil to be the most impactful skill, I mostly use it on an enemy healer healing from a distance (preventing him from healing his distant party members, so they die!) or on a DPS while you retreat so they cannot hit you if you hit them with a bind/miasma first to create distance.

[KusoWat]

Just wanted to add a bit, one being that of SMN's capability of going through one of WHM/PLD's most powerful CDs, Sacred Prism and Cover.

SMN also has a healing down debuff single/multiple target (:Malady,Miasma/II) that can really make healing stressful paired with their sustained damage.

Most of SMN's burst is AoE, so if you can train/bait/force the opposing team to clumping up, you can burst multiple people at once making it very hard for the opposing healer to recover, if they do. Paired with a nicely timed stun on healer it's pretty much GG if the team is caught in it.

SMN has mini-burst every 60s (Aetherflow) which allows them to consistently follow up their melee to net a kill or with a quick hot swap on to another target for sudden burst.

SMN's 100 -> 0 Burst is every 180s, which is quite a long cd, but keep in mind it is AoE.

As a SMN, your goal should be to maintain maximum pressure with Aoe damage, quick mini-burst, the big burst, and debuffing/peeling for your team.

SMN's burst isn't what makes them less desirable than BRD/MCH, it's their lack of MP regeneration. Putting MP Regeneration aside, SMN is very competitive with BRD/MCH.

EDIT: One more thing, Full Swing only effects Physical Damage, so SMN does not benefit from Full Swing.

Also SMN, has Blind, which is one of the more broken Debuffs, so if used correctly, can really ruin someone's day.

[Arthur_Gwen]

No one save the deathflare and use that with next burst?

So 900damage can be done within 3sec, with raging 1080
+2pvp skills = around 5sec
(This can make you loss DT for the 3rd burst so have to calculate cd in sec

Without saving deathflare, 900burst will cost around 7sec so healers can heal up

Swiftcast b2 if tank and melee on you swiftcast tribind for running away, if all on you, well you can try to run but you'll die anyway

Save deathflare for taking kills below 15% but... No smn can't carry a game at all even if you do 5 kills a game just change to another job and start over

[SuperZay]

1080? I counted SMN's burst as 2024 potency with Raging Strikes
Fester 360
Painflare 180
Energy Drain 180
Deathflare 390
Spur+Rouse+Enkindle 470
Aetheric Burst 204
Wither 240
=2024
Plus Tri-Disaster 132 total potency dots ticking every 3 seconds and Garuda's autoattacks

which is still lower than bard's 2,625 which also takes much less time to execute.

[KusoWat]

BRD/MCH with GB/WM places their potency's near caster potency's (no buffs). So when calculating brd/mch/blm/smn burst, don't give the brd/mch the extra 30% from GB/WM for a more accurate calculation. Just incase you were doing that.

Also Garuda's potencies are lower than a SMN's, I'm not sure by how much though.

[Geologo]

As SMN I try to line up my burst during the Dreadwyrm trance.
I get 3 stacks of DT, I pop it and then I start the burst, it will give you +10% damage up and also you have you Deathflare ready, instead of "pop DT, wait for the delay of Deathflare get available, use Deathflare".

But this sometimes will make my Dreadwyrm trance stacks management cripple, because in the next Dreadwyrm Trance phase I could have no Aetherflow Stacks :/

[Exira]

Equip mch stone!