Summoner: A Guide

[Sol_Aureus]

What's the damage like on those poison potions? I'm curious, but I can't test because I'm at work.

It scales with level. I tried it out on Garuda EX the other day and it was dealing ≈65/tic. It's a nice boost in damage and its cooldown is only 2 min (1 min 48s HQ), however the drawback is that you have to be in melee range to use it. For fights like Twintania where you're right on her anyway it's worth using.

[Aetherdancer]

Sol, I just noticed the math that you did with critical hit rate and determination. You said that you believe that 14 critical rate equates to about 1% extra crit chance, which is essentially .5% extra DPS, given all of SMN's multiple damage ticks and the fact that crits do only 50% extra damage, not 100%. 37 determination you said boosted your low damage from 95-98 and your high damage from 106-108. This is roughly a 2-3% increase. Determination weighs against crit at an 11/16 rate, meaning that 37 determination swapped for crit rate would equate to 54 (rounded up) crit rate.

If these calculations are correct, then 54 crit rate should equate to a 3.85% increase in crit chance, which is a 1.93% increase in DPS.

Can you take a look at this? Because if my math and your math isn't wrong, it sounds like det is the way to go.

EDIT: I understand that you must consider the pet spell speed buff as well, but I believe it's barely considerable. An extra 5% crit rate leaves your Egi with an extra 1% chance to proc the buff. 10% extra crit chances leaves it with a 2% higher chance. All in all, a pet isn't likely to proc that trait very often, and even if it did, the impact is negligible. The most powerful spells that SMN has can't be cast any more often than their durations allow, so the only thing that you'll really be able to do is weave another Ruin in every so often, which with 3 casts cutting about .1seconds off the GCD, means you'll get another Ruin approximately every 8 procs of the buff. Since ruin is about 200 damage, optimally, each proc gives you about 25 total extra damage. And that, best case, will happen once every 25 pet auto-attacks. It's about 1 extra damage per pet autoattack. I think that sounds right.

[Sol_Aureus]

Sol, I just noticed the math that you did with critical hit rate and determination. You said that you believe that 14 critical rate equates to about 1% extra crit chance, which is essentially .5% extra DPS, given all of SMN's multiple damage ticks and the fact that crits do only 50% extra damage, not 100%. 37 determination you said boosted your low damage from 95-98 and your high damage from 106-108. This is roughly a 2-3% increase. Determination weighs against crit at an 11/16 rate, meaning that 37 determination swapped for crit rate would equate to 54 (rounded up) crit rate.

If these calculations are correct, then 54 crit rate should equate to a 3.85% increase in crit chance, which is a 1.93% increase in DPS.

Can you take a look at this? Because if my math and your math isn't wrong, it sounds like det is the way to go.


EDIT: I understand that you must consider the pet spell speed buff as well, but I believe it's barely considerable. An extra 5% crit rate leaves your Egi with an extra 1% chance to proc the buff. 10% extra crit chances leaves it with a 2% higher chance. All in all, a pet isn't likely to proc that trait very often, and even if it did, the impact is negligible. The most powerful spells that SMN has can't be cast any more often than their durations allow, so the only thing that you'll really be able to do is weave another Ruin in every so often, which with 3 casts cutting about .1seconds off the GCD, means you'll get another Ruin approximately every 8 procs of the buff. Since ruin is about 200 damage, optimally, each proc gives you about 25 total extra damage. And that, best case, will happen once every 25 pet auto-attacks. It's about 1 extra damage per pet autoattack. I think that sounds right.

You make a fair point. Like I said in my original post, I haven't done a lot of heavy stat weight testing quite yet. So today I started off by doing some Determination testing.


I still haven't gotten Garuda's casting ring (lost 4 lots on it and it never drops for me when I'm with FC :/ ) so I still had to use my spread of 244 → 281 Determination. All gear used in testing was i90, so no WD or INT fluctuation (obviously). Numbers are not including crits as my goal was just to find the rough % damage increase from stacking Determination. For each Determination value, I cast 200 Ruins and had Garuda cast 200 Wind Blades.

244 Determination:
Ruin damage range: 193-214. Average: 203.5
Wind Blade damage range: 203-224. Average: 213.5

281 Determination:
Ruin damage range: 197-218. Average: 207.5
Wind Blade damage range: 206-227. Average: 216.5

So Ruin ends up having an increase of 4 damage which is ≈2% with an increase of 37 determination, which converts to ≈0.05% more damage point of Determination for Ruin.

Wind Blade on the other hand only has an increase of 3 damage which is ≈1.4% with an increase of 37 determination, which converts to ≈0.037% more damage per point of Determination.

In all likelihood there isn't a separate formula for pet to determination straight damage increase, but it's probably something like based on your WD, INT, and base potency of the skill, each ability has a certain Det value that it needs in order to increase it's base damage by 1. So basically with 69 WD and 496 INT, Ruin would require something like 242, 253, 264, 275, 286, etc. DET in order to increase damage range by 1. However, because the formula is based on multiple factors, Wind Blade would require something like 243, 253, 263, 273, 283, etc. DET in order to increase damage range by 1. Obviously this is just conjecture on my part, however it is difficult to test for due to the linear progression of gear and the limited number of i90 pieces that I have access to in order to test it.

In any case, those are my Det testing numbers. I'll try to get some crit testing done as well, however it will take me a bit longer as crit is not a consistent increase like DET is, so I'll need a much larger sample size in order to get accurate numbers.

[Aetherdancer]

I have Garuda's casting ring, and a fair amount of i90. I think my SMN DET is sitting at over 290, so I'll do some testing myself. and report it to you. First, I need to know how much INT you have, Allagan book or not, etc. I don't think you'd have the Allagan book, since your DET is so low. I'm only i87 SMN, so I may not be able to help that much.

EDIT: With 487 INT, and 294 DET, my Garuda Egi had a minimum of 204 and a max of 226 on her Wind Blade. I assume this is vastly under your INT though, and INT means a whole lot more than DET, I think. I don't have any i90 switch options, so I cannot change my DET without changing my INT.

[Sol_Aureus]

I have Garuda's casting ring, and a fair amount of i90. I think my SMN DET is sitting at over 290, so I'll do some testing myself. and report it to you. First, I need to know how much INT you have, Allagan book or not, etc. I don't think you'd have the Allagan book, since your DET is so low. I'm only i87 SMN, so I may not be able to help that much.

EDIT: With 487 INT, and 294 DET, my Garuda Egi had a minimum of 204 and a max of 226 on her Wind Blade. I assume this is vastly under your INT though, and INT means a whole lot more than DET, I think. I don't have any i90 switch options, so I cannot change my DET without changing my INT.

Yeah, that's the unfortunate part about trying to test this stuff. You need consistent iLVL so that other variables such as WD and INT don't change, since I'm fairly certain they affect your damage so much. i70 crafted gear with materia is a good option for testing, but the problem is having the INT values of i90 gear might affect how effective DET is for increasing damage.

My testing was done in full i90 for both tests, which means 496 INT. I also do not have the Allagan Book yet, so I was using the Veil of Wiyu Zenith and Omnitome for testing (both i90 weapons with 69 WD).

[Thorauku]

Guess I can ask this here,

How do you manage your pet in Ifrit EX fights? I know that I'm still learning on how to manage it properly, but my pet seems to die quite fast. I don't have much problem with Garuda EX and Titan EX though.

[Shamirah]

Put Garuda at the place where you are when you enter into Ifrit arena. Since you normally dodge the eruptions by going right (if the debuffed healer is at the left). Garuda won't take any eruption damage. When Ifrit dashes... Garuda won't die even if she gets it by all dashes and you can cast 1-2 Sustain while dodgin'. WHen Ifrit do his special attack, bring Garuda in the middle so that she takes all the heal and put her back at her place. Voilà.

[Thorauku]

What about Radiant Plume? Can Garuda can tank the damage of it?

[Ardan]

Pets take reduced damage from mechanics. I believe it's around a 90% damage reduction. Garuda could stand in plumes all day long and probably won't be killed due AoE heals.

[Sol_Aureus]

It depends on your strategy for Ifrit EX. If you're using the healer swap strat, place Garuda on the side where the healer is not standing as others have said. If you have the healers just sitting on the w/e side, I often place Garuda on one of the healer's sides and throw Sustain occasionally