Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[Sleigh]

I don't even really notice a difference in HW to use Ifrit or Garuda on a dummy, which is bad for Ifrit since Garuda does offer so many advantages. Ease of being able to Ruin spam, heavy MP gains, ranged (which is not only a DPS boost but a survival boost), mega-powerful Banes.

Only time I do Ifrit these days is trash pulls in dungeons, because Contagion's worthless in a good group. Also A2S possibly, in a good group ... still experimenting with that but the theory is solid.

[audi5000]

i spend td, 2 festers and put garuda on jagd dolls. at this point rouse/spur are also being used so that helps a lot. it's usually enough damage to feed on time. i ruin ii while i move in to feed at about 14 percent, it dies at single digit percents at that point.

[Sunako]

I think ifrit is doing weaker damage now because it increase more tank damage with radiant shield. It is pretty hard test how effective radiant shield is against dummy. Potentially tank get more dps and treat from it = less aggro combo = more dps combo = more damage. Only problem is current encounter right now that is mostly magical damage.

[IceSpear]

Now that it's been a few months since Heavensward came out does anyone know which is better; Spell speed or Determination?

[Sidra]

Determination. Per Dervy's blog at: https://dervyxiv.wordpress.com/2015/...ghts/#more-162

Summoner w/ Garuda – No book smacking:

WD: 11.602
INT: 1.000
DET: 0.137
CRT: 0.147
SS: 0.119

Summoner w/ Ifrit – No Book smacking:

WD: 11.602
INT: 1.000
DET: 0.136
CRT: 0.147
SS: 0.115

Also of note he does his testing on single target. Any AOE or double tapping moves it more towards det.

[Judge_Xero]

Speaking of Stats, has anyone noticed if the Pets are properly scaling with SPD yet? I see the bug report is still in Accepted Bugs and haven't heard otherwise.

[Morningstar1337]

Okay I am leveling SMN (among SCH for obvious reasons, as well as AST and WHM) and Right now I'm at 56 and regained Tri-Disaster. I'm wondering if a macro involving this, Contagion, Miasma II and Bane could be viable.

Normally the usual questions to DPS rotation macros are "lol you suck scrub", but mostly because most of the attacks in the rotations are on the Global Cooldown, However the Aetherflow abilities and Pet Abilities for both SMN and SCH are off the Global Cooldown. With the only GCD attacks being considered are Misama II and Ruin II (mostly for the extra DoT and because both are instant-casts). What do you think. Can this macro work, can it be expanded to a full blown Aethertrail Attuning macro or would it be just as unviable on SMN as it is on the other DPS classes? Also in the event that this idea is viable, I'd like to know how long it takes for Contagion to take effect

[AnimaAnimus]

Imo no. Macros are bad for smn. You want to learn to manually control your pet.

Mainly because if garuda is doing a move or is on cooldown herself, the time between hitting the contagion button and it actually taking effect can vary greatly from one contagion to the next so you may not bane the contagion or chance loosing a few ticks on all the mobs around by making the wait time longer.

I will Tri and then immediately start a ruin and hit contagion (which if done right is seamless) while I'm casting so I can either bane immediately after if it take effect or hit ruin 2 for a an extra bit of dps on the main target while waiting on contagion and still be able to bane as soon as it does take effect. Make sense?

Also miasma 2 is weak so unless you have it hitting multiple targets (it doesn't bane so you can technically make contagion extend the durations of it on the original target) its worthless and you don't want to delay casting or anything to move in to do it, so it can be very situational

[UBERHAXED]

I think ifrit is doing weaker damage now because it increase more tank damage with radiant shield. It is pretty hard test how effective radiant shield is against dummy. Potentially tank get more dps and treat from it = less aggro combo = more dps combo = more damage. Only problem is current encounter right now that is mostly magical damage.

Radiant shield affects everyone in the party including other pets (lol selene and eos). I also believe that (based on logs) Ifrit does a counter attack whenever other targets get hit. It doesn't seem right that Ifrit is using radiant shield only when he is hit when in some fights he'll take literally no damage and still counter attack (take A3 for example).
http://www.fflogs.com/reports/7zZ4TR...-done&source=2

It goes without saying that no pet have an attack called "attack" (pet's don't auto attack, they use their base attack, in this case burning strike every 3 seconds). In the log I linked, Ifrit also used "attack" more times than burning strike, which leads to believe that he used attack for every physical hit received under the duration of radiant shield. Further digging through that log reveals that Ifrit took no damage during the encounter outside of splash and (aside from splash not being physical anyway) radiant shield was not active during the damage intake. Looking at the log though it seems that he will continue to use attack well past the duration of radiant shield.

In other words, any damage done to party members during increase the DPS of summoner, not just the target. That said, training dummies obvious cannot proc attack from radiant shield so if Garada + everything ~= Ifrit + everything - radiant shield, then there's an obvious reason to use Ifrit over garuda. In the linked log, including enkindle attack, "attack" contributed 28% of Ifrit's damage.

Also in case you were unaware, when radiant shield is used, it's effect appear to reflect the attack. So if it was proc'ed by "attack" then the target and Ifrit will counter with "attack". If it was proc'ed by "kamehameha" then the target will have appeared to use "kamehameha" in the log (and Ifrit will use "attack", as per radiant shield's description). The exact damage seems to be calculated strangely though. It appears to be a 50 potency auto attack for player, but in the case of SMN pets, the damage will be based on INT, rather than strength (SMN auto's are based on strength) and SCH pets will be based on what appears to be the SCH strength stat (although I suppose it could be INT seeing as INT for healers is low).

http://www.fflogs.com/reports/7zZ4TR...s=-2&source=24
Same report, selene uses fluid strike. Based on correlation, this appears to be the STR stat, but I digress.

http://www.fflogs.com/reports/7zZ4TR...done&source=37

Same report, but looking at the bard. Bard's don't use auto with WM so nothing to compare against, but this is clearly using the DEX stat for "fluid strike" and "shot". Interestingly, in the same encounter, Ifrit did not use "fluid strike" or "shot" (as pet's don't get hit by that attack) but still got the standard "attack" counter attack from it.

http://www.fflogs.com/reports/7zZ4TR...one&source=109

Looking at the main tank (the counter attacks are at the bottom since they weren't cast) we can pretty much confirm that it is about 50% of the regular auto-attack potency (the top attack). Going back to the report with Ifrit, attack will hit a bit less than half of Burning strike (burning strike happens to be more than 100 potency, so it also lines up with 50 potency).

You can fumble around the rest of the report, but the fact of the matter is that there is a misconception of the effect of radiant shield and a lot of summoners are missing out on large dps gains (and raid gains) by choosing to use garuda. By itself, the radiant shield should be able to cover the additional damage from contagion (especially, since you can synchronize with rouse 100% of the time and spur 50% of the time). It also increases raid dps by an amount proportional to the incoming physical damage (notably the MT is always getting hit by physical attack, autos or not, barring fights like A4). It also doesn't help Garuda's case that every single one of her attacks have less potency than Ifrit (making his DPS - Radiant shield > Garuda - Contagion).

Final determination is that if you have not trouble with keeping Ifrit with equal up time as Garuda you should be using Ifrit. As for the case of magical damage based fights, as a person pointed out above, Ifrit on a dummy (i.e. no radiant shield) is about the same as Garuda on a dummy (all skills including contagion) so it's not really a loss even then to just use him for the higher potency skills, given you have no problem with uptime.

Of course, Ifrit is melee, if you have him chasing things around, his efficacy decreases so there are obvious cases when the uptime factor counts. But in reality, enemy movement can be controlled a large percentage of the time.

Lots of controversial opinions here (particularly I'm challenging the opening post's opinion of Ifrit in post 58 content) so feel free to discuss any obvious oversights in the thought process, errors in the provided data, or contradictions in the logic.

[OneWingedSora]

It goes without saying that no pet have an attack called "attack" (pet's don't auto attack, they use their base attack, in this case burning strike every 3 seconds). In the log I linked, Ifrit also used "attack" more times than burning strike, which leads to believe that he used attack for every physical hit received under the duration of radiant shield. Further digging through that log reveals that Ifrit took no damage during the encounter outside of splash and (aside from splash not being physical anyway) radiant shield was not active during the damage intake. Looking at the log though it seems that he will continue to use attack well past the duration of radiant shield.

Ifrit auto attacks, and that is what it refers to in the log by "Attack".