Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[audi5000]

what should an i200 smn be pulling on dummy over 4 min with no food, pots, or party bonus?
i've been looking for parse vids for reference but almost every single one of them uses either food, pots, or both

[Sleigh]

I think the simplest way to find out how you stack up to your references is to whip out your Chocobo, go to the MB and buy some food/pots, then go to Summerford and do some testing.

[Havenchild]

So after spending some time in A4S, I've come to realize I hate this fight. To many times, I feel I have to save Tri-Disaster for example, to make checks or kill things in a timely fashion (EX: Quarantine). However, I also feel it's hurting my DPS significantly. If I don't save it, let's say for quarantine along with three AF stacks, than the tank has a high chance of dying in quarantine.

On top of the fact, burning AF to use as many EDs as I've had to in this fight is saddening to say the least (eating 3 mana drains total). Curious at what some of the SMNs have been doing both strat wise and where that's leaving them in DPS relative to the fight.

[OneWingedSora]

snip.

I would say, as long as you are killing things/beating enrage on a fight like A4S, you shouldn't really give a crap about your personal DPS. This fight is a total mess design wise, and gets harder the more geared you get. We are at the point where we have to stop DPS during the first quarantine and wait for the people in quarantine to get out or else they die by mortal revolution.

Quarantine is cancer for any DPS. Even as a BLM, I will either have to A. Prepare for it(but that would be a dps loss if I DON'T get sent into quarantine). or B. Continue w/ my normal rotation and pray I don't get quarantine.

After this reset, I will be doing A1-4s on SMN. However, I will really only ever do A4S on Summoner w/ the nisi strat. I just don't see myself ever doing A4S on SMN with the other strat. However, you probably already do this but on the 3rd/4th leg and final phase, since your mana is going to hit 0 anyway, you can probably go crazy w/ ruin 3s outside of trance which would kind of make up for the potency loss from replacing a fester by energy drain I think ?

[Hakmatic]

We just don't enrage dolls in my group cause bard, smn. Still let nisi drop though.

[Havenchild]

I would say, as long as you are killing things/beating enrage on a fight like A4S, you shouldn't really give a crap about your personal DPS. This fight is a total mess design wise, and gets harder the more geared you get. We are at the point where we have to stop DPS during the first quarantine and wait for the people in quarantine to get out or else they die by mortal revolution.

Quarantine is cancer for any DPS. Even as a BLM, I will either have to A. Prepare for it(but that would be a dps loss if I DON'T get sent into quarantine). or B. Continue w/ my normal rotation and pray I don't get quarantine.

After this reset, I will be doing A1-4s on SMN. However, I will really only ever do A4S on Summoner w/ the nisi strat. I just don't see myself ever doing A4S on SMN with the other strat. However, you probably already do this but on the 3rd/4th leg and final phase, since your mana is going to hit 0 anyway, you can probably go crazy w/ ruin 3s outside of trance which would kind of make up for the potency loss from replacing a fester by energy drain I think ?

Well the Ruin III thing, I was already kinda low on MP depending on how the fight turned out so yeah it's some minor help for DPS. If you get a chance and don't mind, could you give some details of how you decided to handle things like quarantine and the adds for example. See I've held things like Tri-Disaster and AF for quarantine or adds because otherwise either A ) tank gets way too many stacks in quarantine or B) Jagds take long to die otherwise and thinking its costing me alot of DPS.

We just don't enrage dolls in my group cause bard, smn. Still let nisi drop though.

The dream strat. RIP all the SMNs taking that MP burn consecutive times.

[MohShuvuu]

So after spending some time in A4S, I've come to realize I hate this fight. To many times, I feel I have to save Tri-Disaster for example, to make checks or kill things in a timely fashion (EX: Quarantine). However, I also feel it's hurting my DPS significantly. If I don't save it, let's say for quarantine along with three AF stacks, than the tank has a high chance of dying in quarantine.

On top of the fact, burning AF to use as many EDs as I've had to in this fight is saddening to say the least (eating 3 mana drains total). Curious at what some of the SMNs have been doing both strat wise and where that's leaving them in DPS relative to the fight.

For the quarantine part, your tanks need to git gud then. You can easily kill the dolls with your tank and still only get two stacks on your tank. I've never had to save Tri-Disaster for any portion of the fight to meet certain DPS checks.

[Sleigh]

SMN's actually quite good at the sac strat itself, since it lets you sac a healer in a DPS's place - we're talking about skipping a DPS death + 2 minutes of weakness. It is the MP burn ... you have two choices, either kill Strafs and SMN will earn its keep with decent DPS but you will be wasting a lot of total DPS on the Strafs you could just not attack, or you will let the MP burns happen and lament bringing SMN entirely because SMN loses multi-DoTs (and thus will be so low you shoulda just brought another MCH/BRD or melee) and MP and is just quite frankly garbage. Neither is very desirable if you're skipping Nisi since you don't need MP for your healers in that case.

It's funny, a couple months ago before I got to or even saw final phase I thought, man, there's GOTTA be some awesome LB3 moment in final phase. Something you bring caster for, 4 Strafs spawning at once or something and they'd blow up and kill you after 20s. Nope, never came to be I'd go BRD/MCH if I had the same gear, caster got dunked on for A4S in a "why bring this guy if you have MCH" sense.

[Akariel]

Quick question on A3S. What did you guys do as SMN to meet hand of pain dps check when you were just progressing through it? Should PF, DF, SF be used as it will hit both hands? Or just dots and fester on the target hand? Feel a bit helpless when bursting it down -_-;

[NutBurner]

Quick question on A3S. What did you guys do as SMN to meet hand of pain dps check when you were just progressing through it? Should PF, DF, SF be used as it will hit both hands? Or just dots and fester on the target hand? Feel a bit helpless when bursting it down -_-;

Right before Equal Concentration casting finishes, you shall have AAIII and AF cd at 1-3 seconds left if you spent the last AF stacks on baning/PF at split. Enter DWT->3D and do your regular ST things including DF until the check ends. Regarding if you should do more AOE than that, I guess the stronger your raid ST DPS is, the more AOE you could do. However, I am not sure how exactly that check mechanism works since we had a pretty high chance of passing the check with one DD having damage down during our progression and our raid ST DPS wasn't great back then, when we had two SMNs.