Summoner questions!

[NekoMancer]

garuda garuga garuda. in obey stance, doing magical ranged damage, while you manually control Contagion, (and I macro'd Aerial Slash onto my own aoe's, bane/bliz2/shadowflare)

oh, there's a couple fights where ifrit is better. In Copperbell HM, on boss 1... there's a lot of moving, and intensely damaging ground effects, and garuda is a pain to micromanage positionally through that walkway-dps-race. Ifrit will follow the boss all the way through, instead of standing in fire shooting at range like a dope, and he requires no input at all, just sic him on the boss, and pay attention to your own self thereafter.

Also, there are a few fights where you lose your pet "often" to aoe. if you have to recast your pet 2-3 times during a boss fight, it starts to become very reasonable to use Titan egi instead. He doesn't hit as hard, but as long as there's no extra danger/damage from melee distance, he may stay upright much longer than either of the 'dps' pets.

good spots for ifrit or titan are rare. no one will look at you odd if you just use garuda full time.

[NekoMancer]

Actually i also macro'd garuda to obey 'at' my target whenever i cast ruin, ruin2, or bio II, so that she's always being helpful to what I am trying to do when I have to switch targets.

[T0rin]

oh, there's a couple fights where ifrit is better. In Copperbell HM, on boss 1... there's a lot of moving, and intensely damaging ground effects, and garuda is a pain to micromanage positionally through that walkway-dps-race. Ifrit will follow the boss all the way through, instead of standing in fire shooting at range like a dope, and he requires no input at all, just sic him on the boss, and pay attention to your own self thereafter.

I heard that recently, and tried it the other night. What ended up happening was that Ifrit would indeed follow _behind_ the boss, even if the boss was standing at the edge of the fire, meaning Ifrit would be standing in the fire. Ifrit was also a liability when the exploding bomb thingies spawned, as he would have to chase them around, rather than sit there shooting them constantly. There was no benefit to having Ifrit on this fight, only liabilities.

Also, there are a few fights where you lose your pet "often" to aoe. if you have to recast your pet 2-3 times during a boss fight, it starts to become very reasonable to use Titan egi instead. He doesn't hit as hard, but as long as there's no extra danger/damage from melee distance, he may stay upright much longer than either of the 'dps' pets.

If you are ever losing your pet 2-3 times in a fight, that tells me one thing: You aren't healing it enough. Healing a DPS pet instead of using a crappy tank pet is going to be the clearly superior DPS method.

Actually i also macro'd garuda to obey 'at' my target whenever i cast ruin, ruin2, or bio II, so that she's always being helpful to what I am trying to do when I have to switch targets.

That's bad. What if you tell Garuda to Contagion, then go to cast a ruin? Know what happens? Garuda stops trying to cast Contagion and goes back to Wind Slash. You could, say, just hit obey once when you switch targets. I know hitting two buttons instead of one is asking a lot.

[NekoMancer]

words

point 1: "the tank can pull forward further"... problem solved. the best place for dps/heals is also behind the boss as well, so this is by far optimal. also, the bombs travel to the edge of the fire, right near ifrit. Ifrit is great in that fight, your tank not as much.

point 2: it's "very rare" to lose a pet that much. ergo it's "very rare" that titan would be helpful at all. If you go too overboard on heals, that itself can be a dps liability.

point 3: I have an alt-cast ruin II which does not include obey for those situations. it's debatable whether my settup saves any time or effort. it is 'slightly' faster at focusing down adds with fairly frequent/quick re-targeting. which is when i most feel the need for every possible advantage i can get.

[T0rin]

point 1: "the tank can pull forward further"... problem solved. the best place for dps/heals is also behind the boss as well, so this is by far optimal. also, the bombs travel to the edge of the fire, right near ifrit. Ifrit is great in that fight, your tank not as much.

So now we're relying on the tank to position in such a way to prevent our pet from dying? Sounds like an awful thing to rely upon. Most tanks in DF or PF groups are going to simply sit on the edge of the flames when they spawn, since they don't need to move back towards the adds until more flames spawn. In this case, Ifrit is an additional liability. Plus, any situation where you have to rely on another player's positioning simply to justify something as 'being ok' is an obvious sign that it is not 'ok'. The only thing you need to do in this fight to make Garuda _easily_ a superior alternative is hit Heel twice throughout the entire fight. Not to mention Ifrit is _still_ doing less DPS than Garuda, is no easier to position (even if you do move him ahead of the boss, which is the only complaint people ever make about Garuda in that fight) and still doesn't have Contagion. I still haven't seen a single shred of actual evidence that Ifrit offers _anything_ in that fight, that Garuda doesn't. The only thing he does is less DPS.

point 2: it's "very rare" to lose a pet that much. ergo it's "very rare" that titan would be helpful at all. If you go too overboard on heals, that itself can be a dps liability.

Overboard on heals? You heal when your pet needs healing. In every scenario, it will always be better to heal occasionally instead of re-summon from scratch. It is never a DPS liability compared to the alternative.