Bane/Sustain in 4.1

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Bane looses 80% of its damage. How is this less than the 50% loss of Hissatsu:Guren?

Guren loses 75% of it's damage by the third target hit, going from an Impressive 800 to a meager 200. Bane on the other hand only drops by 80% on the fifth target hit.

[Jonnycbad]

Bane was nerfed because you have Bahamut now. His Shockwave and Ahk Morn more than make up for Bane's AoE

[Hyperia]

They removed sustain because they thought that the improved pet survivability changes would negate the need for it. Pets are now supposed to take much less damage from AOEs but are now weak to direct attacks from mobs. That last part was intended, the wanted you to keep the pet away from the boss and not be a tank.

[Tsumdere]

The summoner's pet might as well be an autoattack/ DoT outside of a summoner's actual skillset. Not having a pet is, indeed, a DPS loss.

However, I have to ask: How much of a DPS loss is it, now, to swiftcast a pet back into battle? Before, you used Swiftcast for shadowflare. However, that's now an instant cast on cooldown. I get missing a GCD is DPS loss, but how bad is it actually?

It costs 2400 mana to resummon a pet. That's the DPS loss - all the Ruins you now don't have the mana for.

[kikix12]

Stupid isn't it?
But get this - SMN is not a pet job, it's a DoT job... Wait it's actually also BURST job. So smn is pet\dot\burst job. How does that make any sense at all? haha... It doesn't.

Get this...White Mage is better DoT DPS than Summoner...Summoner IS a pet job. Whatever you say won't change the fact that significant portion of the damage a summoner does is pet-based, that burst you spoke of included.

As for the DoT, yeah. White Mage deals more damage over time than Summoner. Don't believe?! Here.

White Mage's Aero II have a potency total of 350 over 18 seconds. Aero III have a potency total of 370 (AoE that is NOT decreased in effect on latter enemies) over 24 seconds.
Summoners Bio III have a potency of 400 over 30 seconds. Miasma III have 440 over 30 seconds. You need to use Aetherflow to use Bane (loss of 300 potency Fester or, worse yet, 200 potency AoE Painflare). And when you DO use Bane, second and every later enemy will get significantly reduced damage.

For potency, I divided the time by 3sec and added initial potency (50 in case of all but Bio III). Don't remember whether there is an initial "DoT" tick at the beginning, but I doubt it. And it wouldn't really do that much of a difference anyway.

What does that mean?! Lets see. We'll assume that the player is fantastic at keeping the DoT on (because we're talking about the best possible use of the class), so they are reapplied right after their last tick. We'll assume 360sec, as that's the lowest possible amount of time that can be divided by 18, 24 and 30.

White Mage total potency is 7000 from Aero II and 5500 from Aero III (AoE), for grand total of 12500 against single target. Summoner total potency for Bio III is 4800 and Miasma III is 5280, for grand total of 10080 against single target. Yes, summoner have about 19.5% LESS potency over time than White Mage against single target.

And against multiple targets?! Let's ignore the skill names, I'll give the total over 360 sec.

For White Mage it's 18000, 23500, 29000, 34500 and +5500 for every additional.
For Summoner it's 17760, 23520, 27360, 29280 and +1920 for every additional (remember that initial Miasma III damage is NOT spread by Bane). Also, this is only achievable with a 0 PING, when Bane is used instantly upon using Miasma III and Bio III, meaning no loss of time on the spread debuffs, which is impossible.

That's right. Summoner NEVER deals more damage with DoT than White Mage, all the while spending more resources (comparable MP granted lower durations of Aero II and Aero III, but Aetherflow). It's also a lot easier for White Mage. Cast Aero II, cast Aero III. Cast whichever runs out. You need to use Bane as well for Summoner. And as if that wasn't enough salt added to the injury, White Mage can just start going and casting Aero II on additional targets for larger DoT, easily maintaining it on two or three while still having time to cast other spells. In case of summoner, having to cast both Miasma III and Bio III, keeping it on three mobs is already significantly limiting, while still not giving more potency than for a White Mage.

To be honest though, Summoners "saving grace" is Shadowflare which increases summoners "DoT" (technically) by 250 every minute, so 1500 in 360 sec, which is not decreased by number of enemies. As such, we have total potency of 11700, 20880, 28140, 33480, 36900 for one, two, three, four and five mobs respectively, +3420 for every additional mob. That would mean that White Mage would still win against one mob, but lose against two to six mobs (340 potency only when there are six), but get more and more potency over summoners at seven and more mobs.

Don't get me wrong. We're just talking about DoT's here. Summoners damage is higher than that of White Mages. But their DoT potential, not taking into consideration crit, direct hit, magic attack stat etc...is just pretty much inferior. You get less bang for a higher price.

[Jonnycbad]

Stuff

It's obvious SE is moving SMN away from DOT gameplay and towards being a more burst DPS job. I mean SMN was never touted as being a DOT-centric job, its just how it ended up being. I don't see what your gripe is. DoT makes better sense for healers anyway since the damage is being dealt while they're healing or shielding people, whereas a DPS would want to constantly damaging the target. They took your DPS damage and pumped it into your flare attacks and your summons/Bahamut.

[kikix12]

To underline the problem with bane, its not simply a matter of the skill being sort of garbage; it's the fact that in the majority of multi-target pull configurations (Over 3 targets), it deals less potency-per-target that Painflare, which shares the same resource pool.

There is almost no situations in which you would choose Bane over Painflare, thus rendering bane nothing more than skill clutter.

This is actually horribly wrong. Bane will virtually always deal more damage than Painflare. By "virtually always", I mean that it will tie to Painflare on twenty mobs and start dealing more damage if there are over twenty mobs. Here is the potency ADDED by Bane and Painflare (not counting the initial target for Bane, but counting all targets for Painflare) for two to fifteen mobs.

Bane 640, 1120, 1440, 1600, 1760, 1920, 2080, 2240, 2400, 2560, 2720, 2880, 3040, 3200
Painflare 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800, 2000, 2200, 2400, 2600, 2800, 3000

Remember that though Painflare is fixed 200 potency for every target, and that is certainly quite significant, over their full course, Bio III and Miasma III deal damage worth 800 potency. 20% of that is still 160 potency, meaning that the gap is closed by mere 40 potency with every additional enemy past four. However, stacking Bane does nothing at all, so Painflare should be used in its place every time in AoE situation that the DoT's are already on the targets.

And no. Unfortunately, a single casting of Ruin III is better than what you gain from hard-casting Bio III and Miasma III on second and further enemies. It's 150 VS 80 potency gained from hard-cast Bio III (on second target, meaning best-case scenario) or VS 130 potency gained from hard-cast Miasma III (again, on second target, and remember that it deals additional 50 potency damage when hard-cast).

So yes, Bane is the first go-to AoE spell in every single case there are two or more targets if one requirement is met: the mobs won't die significantly faster than 30sec.

I don't see what your gripe is. DoT makes better sense for healers anyway since the damage is being dealt while they're healing or shielding people, whereas a DPS would want to constantly damaging the target. They took your DPS damage and pumped it into your flare attacks and your summons/Bahamut.

You completely missed the mark here. I firmly believe that a DPS should NOT be DoT-heavy, since that absolutely sucks for DPS checks with little time. I merely stated the facts of what IS the case and compared it for two classes. Never did I say whether it's good or bad for summoner to be a DoT king.

Also, your argument that DoT is good for healers because it deals damage while they are healing is actually wrong. That's not why it's good for healers, because it doesn't matter whether they deal damage while healing or not. What matters is that when it is done over time, it is far easier for the tanks to keep enmity (or rather, not lose it against healers) than if it would be sudden burst of high damage.

[Pells]

Also, your argument that DoT is good for healers because it deals damage while they are healing is actually wrong. That's not why it's good for healers, because it doesn't matter whether they deal damage while healing or not. What matters is that when it is done over time, it is far easier for the tanks to keep enmity (or rather, not lose it against healers) than if it would be sudden burst of high damage.

By this reasoning, dots are essential for any non-tank.

Healers aren't going to out-enmity the tank by doing damage, by burst or dot or whatever else. Not without the actual dps ripping off the tank first.

[Jonnycbad]

I merely stated the facts of what IS the case and compared it for two classes.

Why are you comparing dps of a Healer job's DoTs vs dps of a DPS job's DoTs again? That's like comparing Clemency to Physick.

[Yallaid]

Bane was nerfed because you have Bahamut now. His Shockwave and Ahk Morn more than make up for Bane's AoE

lmfao is this a joke response? Bane is an aetherflow ability so you can use it pretty loosely, such as you can be confident it is available at the start of a pull so you can maximize its damage.

Ahk Morn is available, what -- i don't play SMN -- every 120 seconds? So if you're lucky, that 120 second window might line up with where you can maximize AoE. It sounds to me like SMN AoE was nerfed in many more ways than just lost potency. Their whole ability to optimize their dps for AoE damage is ruined because the Bahamut rotation is so restrictive.