SMN questions

[Havenchild]

1) Your best option for Hunts or 24 - man raids is slightly modding your opener to make sure your DoTs are on the mob and viewable. Use Bio 2 -> Bio -> Swiftcast Miasma, and you will guarantee that no matter how many people are on the mob all of your DoTs will be viewable. From then on, you simply have to refresh your DoTs before they fall off and that's pretty much it. Like someone stated already there is also an option to hide all other status afflictions not belonging to you but this also hides Boss buffs like damage reflection.

2) My personal opinion on switching pets simply for Contagion whether in the Beginning of a fight or mid fight has to be validated by the MP you are using. Ifrit is higher DPS then Garuda unless an extreme amount of very big movement hinders him. Thus it is better to open up with Ifrit regardless of the fight unless you are 100% sure you will not need the 532 MP later on. In which case you can do a Garuda opener with Contagion but it is a very very small damage increase, possibly not recognizeable at all, hence not even worth it.

Now there are exceptions to when you want to switch in Garuda mid-fight. Some examples would be, T12 Bennu / Rebirth phase, T13 Storm Phase. Either of these examples are places where you can have a buffed set of DoTs from Raging Strikes, contagion'd and baned onto at least 3 or more mobs. This would then validate the MP cost associated with the switch back and forth to increase your DPS. However, to stay doing maximum DPS for the remainder of the fight, Ifrit would again need to come back to action after these phases are finished, meaning that you need to find instances where you can validate the usage of 1064 MP, the cost of switching twice at level 50, a third of your mana.

3) You essentially never want your DoTs to fall off or fall off for less then a second if they do. You can accomplish this by beginning a cast at the 4-5 second mark or in some cases the 2 second mark. Miasma I applies immediately as well as Miasma II, thus these two skills can be pushed slightly closer to the fall off point (3-4 second mark). Bio II is the second fastest DoT to apply so recast at 4-5 seconds. Finally Bio is the slowest skill to apply however it is also an instant skill, so it can be used at the 2 second mark or roughly so and still not fall off.
ShadowFlare, you can reuse at the 4-5 second mark since it has a long cast time, however if you are able to allow it to tick all the way to 0 and recast one immediately, without letting it fall off, that is a DPS increase, as a tick from Shadow Flare occurs at 0 and at 30 seconds when it is first dropped.

4) Parsers are perfectly fine as long as you are not using them to abuse others. Also make sure you do not bring them up in a conversation where DPS may be slacking and you can see this. You can and will be temp-banned if you can be interpreted as using parsers to offend others.