Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[audi5000]

snip

in a solo scenario, an opener with 2 festers +1 painflare seems to have the best balance between the speed at which you burn aetherflow stacks and how quickly you go into dreadwyrm trance. however, in a party scenario, it's imperative that your opener is quick enough to fit tridisaster and enkindle inside any or all of trick attack, bv foes, and/or litany. i personally have started using a 2 painflare + 1fester opener to achieve this, but many people advocate either a 1fester + 1energydrain + 1 painflare opener or a 2fester + 1 painflare opener.

as for switching pets in a5s faust, you can swiftcast ifrit during the downtime you have after you kill the first 2 small fausts: this will ensure you do not waste a gcd resummoning while dpsing hummelfaust. however, i personally just stick with garuda the entire fight so i can use the extra mana to spam ruin 3 outside of dreamwymr trance.

speaking of openers, im pretty upset about the amount of gcd clipping openers have now for the sake of using ruin 3; makes figuring out whats best on single target a pain

[Koyuki38]

Snip

Thanks for answer.

About pet swap, i was talking about switch DURING the fight, not between the 2 phases.
I was trying to get both Contagion from garuda AND ifrit master race DPS on the same monster. but I'm not sure if it's worth it since the GCD loss seems high.

[WyrahFhurrst]

Thanks for answer.

About pet swap, i was talking about switch DURING the fight, not between the 2 phases.
I was trying to get both Contagion from garuda AND ifrit master race DPS on the same monster. but I'm not sure if it's worth it since the GCD loss seems high.

It wouldn't seem terrible if you only used it when Swift-Cast was up, but then you'd miss out on using it for Shadow Flare.

[giantslayer]

What are the normal timeframes to expect Foes, Trick Attack, and Battle Litany to be up and running?

[Miah_Maxwell]

Hi, I finalized my new opener, currently 1732 DPS at ilvl 219.
Here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYUd8ol3Lc8

[audi5000]

What are the normal timeframes to expect Foes, Trick Attack, and Battle Litany to be up and running?

bv foes from 0s-25s ish
trick attack from 9s to 19s
litany from 1-21s

[Takaokami]

Somebody told me that a full SS meld was suggested for SMN. However, reading stuff here around the forum I've only ever seen people mostly recommend CRIT and DET.
Are full SS melds even a thing for SMN? thxkbai

[Keldion]

Somebody told me that a full SS meld was suggested for SMN. However, reading stuff here around the forum I've only ever seen people mostly recommend CRIT and DET.
Are full SS melds even a thing for SMN? thxkbai

DET is worth more than SS, but not by an overwhelming margin. It makes sense if every single item we picked up was CRIT/DET, which would leave little or no room for those melds. It may also be an observation of the fact that Savage Might IV materia only adds 6 DET, while Quicktongue IVs add 9 SS.

[Milkbeard]

ok so forgive me, but this is a lot to search through. What would be the strongest or different variations of an optimal sumn opener. Which page on this thread has the most modern written rotation. I notice Miah Maxwell has some good videos. The opener seems wonky but it looks like it works. The last time I played sumn was around 3.0 and the 3.0 extensive guide was my strongest resource. Things have no doubt changed since then with the ruin 3 buff. But yea...what do modern sumns do in their openers? what needs to happen in dread trance. What happened to 2pf1f? is it not as viable anymore? Why are people throwing out ED in their openers!?

[Koyuki38]

3.2 has brought some change on the rotation.

Before : In the 3.0, the best rotation was to use DW Trance 1 once evey minute. During this Trance we had to use Tri-disaster, Contagion, 2 festers and Ruine 3 fillers.
Now on 3.2 : Using fester is not needed anymore. In fact it might cause DPS loss.

DWT lasts 15 secondes. We are supposed to do 6 Ruines 3 in this, then we have 3 extra festers out of the DWT.
This means 6 x 220 + 3 x 300 potency => 2 220 potency over 1 min (+ the usual dots ands fillers)

If we use Fester, it's pretty impossible to get 6 Ruines 3 in 15 secs ;-;
The best we could have is 5 x Ruine 3 and 1 fester + 2 fester outside of the Trance.
This deals 5 x 220 + 1 x 330 + 2 x 300 => 2030

So, what we have to know is that any action that causes a GCD loss in DWT will leads to dps loss.

Now it's time for reality to strike back : http://f1.thejournal.ie/media/2013/1...6e-630x322.jpg
I tried it : Within 15 seconds, it was completly impossible for me to cast 6 DWT. I don't know how exactly, but's i found already hard to have 5 ruins in 5 seconds, 6 is barely impossible, even if theorically 15 sec = 6 GCD, moveover when the 'real' cast time is about 2.40s.

It already was hard to have 5 ruines 3 within the DWT T^T.
I was able to cast 1 fester only if i used Swift Cast

About the opener, we can say that SMN has an opener each minute (except for 1 pet buff, Enkidle and Ragin Strikes).
That opener really starts when we use the DW Trance.

Everything that happens before might be considered as extra time.
So 3 possible cases :
- Fester + Painflare + ED => low time + low damages
- Fester x2 + PainFlare => more time + more damages
- Fester x3 => maximum time + maximum damages

Since that everything is reseted right after once we enter the DW Trance, all we have to figure is which Damage/Time is the best.