Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[Fyce]

Edit: Do not use this. While the "15s" chunks are quite nice, the opener is way too slow. 2F1P is way better.
Also, it appears that staying in DWT as long as possible is a thing of the past (at least for the opener). The nerf to Ruin III and the new Ruin IV makes DWT a lot less valuable for the potency boost and Ruin III discount than what it used to be in 3.x. Contagion is also a reason why staying in DWT during the opener is a bad idea.

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I posted that on the "Summoner and the upcoming changes" thread, but I think it's actually good enough to bump this one as more people starts to hit Lv.70 with their Bahamut lovers.
My intent is to start getting the logic behind the job before the deeper theory craft starts. I have no idea how relevant this will be in the future, or even right now. I may have made blatant mistakes. Feel free to criticize it or give your opinion on some parts. Here we go:



Q: Is this the best opener?
A: No. This doesn't have any theory crafting regarding potencies. I just tried to make sense in GCD and oGCD usage.

Q: Are you sure?
A: The above means that this isn't an optimal opener. It's just... "something". Feel free to try it, or completly ignore it, or even improve it for your own gameplay. But don't come at me saying "this rotation isn't optimal!" I already know.

Q: Does this rotation is complete? Does it loop after that?
A: Absolutly not. As you can see, the last line has a Tri-disaster right before the end of DWT. Why? Because TD comes back with DWT. So there's some DoT clipping, but at least you spend your Trance under Ruination and your DoTs won't fall.
After that last line, you have to spend 30 seconds without any Aetherflow stack, even if I took the slowest approach with Triple Festers. This is probably the point where the rotation starts to calm down and Ruin spam will probably come in play.

Q: What's the deal with Tri-Disaster being in the prepull?
A: It should be casted at 0s, followed by Ruin II and then Fester.
You can't Tri-disaster and then Fester immediatly, btw. Fester will fail because the DoTs aren't applied yet. The Ruin II acts as a buffer. Unfortunatly, I don't think that this Ruin II can benefit from the Ruination effect. I haven't tested it though, it's just from a few observations.

Q: Why is there a single Ruin II during the "NO TD Trance" line?
A: If you can have a last Bahamut Shockwave with this Ruin II, then do it. If not, replace by Ruin III or summon Ifrit sooner.

Q: Can't you place a 6th Ruin III during DWT?
A: I tried it, thinking that the 16 seconds buff was enough, but with my current casting time and ping, I can't. There's only something like 1.5 or 2 seconds left before Deathflare. Maybe with more SS, but currently it's out of reach for me.

Q: I see Lucid Dream on the third line. Is it required?
A: I haven't done much testing on the timing for Lucid Dream, but since this opener is quite agressive regarding Ruins III, I thought it was good enough there.
But yes, it's a required cross-role skill for SMN. Swiftcast probably still has the #1 priority because of the SMN raise and the fact that egi-swap is a thing, but Lucid Dream is a close #2.
Note that any Ruin IV proc will drastically reduce MP usage on Ruin III outside DWT. So if you are lucky enough, maybe Lucid Dream will have to be used later.

Q: Did you take party buffs into account?
A: Not really. But DWT's TD should hit at around 15s. So, Trick Attack is out of the question, Chain Strategem is a "maybe", and Battle Litany is a yes. Edit: I actually have no clue about Trick Attack as I have absolutly no idea of what the SB NIN opener is.

Q: Did you try that rotation?
A: My muscle memory is all over the place right now. I can't even do the first two lines properly.

Q: LOL, you can't even do what you are suggesting?
A: No, I can't. I'm a filthy casual. Also, I click on some of my skills because I'm a clicker scrub.
Maybe some day.

Q: Wait... Is this really a 120+ seconds "opener"?
A: I have no clue where to draw the line. Maybe after the "Bahamut!" line? But yes, this is really long and busy. Whoever calls SMN "boring" should try pulling this off on a training dummy.
I say on a training dummy because I can't even remember a boss which would leave you alone for that long without throwing some mechanics at you to deal with... Which makes us come back to the first questions. This chart is probably impossible to do, but should give people an idea of how to handle Stormblood's Sumonner.

Q: It's 120 seconds chart but I don't see Aetherpact being used again?
Maybe it could fit somewhere? Idk. I don't really care about that buff. Your Egi stops doing what it's doing to cast it, and you have absolutly no control over who in your party will get the buff... which is not that great to begin with. Meh.

Q: What's your opinion on the fact that Tri-disaster now applies two DoT? Shouldn't it be called Bi-disaster?
A: When you push that button, it applies Bio III, Misma III... and Ruination. I think Tri-disaster is still justified, thanks to Ruination.

[Brinzy]

^ Good followup. That confirmed a lot of what I was thinking. If I recall, it was tough/impossible to get 6 Ruin III at the very start of HW. By the time you got Alexander gear, it was tight but doable, and then after it was no problem.

[Fyce]

Please keep in mind that it's a very slow "opener". When potency calculations will be made, maybe that the double 1F1P1E to summon Bahamut asap will be better. I have no idea at this point.
Party buffs will probably have an important role to play.

[Vulcwen]

@Fyce Why are you not waiting with bahamut summon until aetherflow is back up so you can use all 3 stacks during bahamut (and addle) for extra wyrmwaves.
The DoT clipping makes you lose a lot of potency already.
Further, you can't use radiant shield with bahamut out.

[urgentpicnic]

Question - do DoT ticks that are boosted by something like DWT still remain at that increased potency after DWT has worn off?

I'm still working through the early new content and dungeons and don't have the new bells and whistles yet, but i'm trying to figure out the best options for AoE, and it seems that Bane may be entirely worthless in favor of Painflare now.

By my math (and i'm no math wiz), the only scenario I can find that Bane would offer more DPS than Painflare on a mob pack is if you apply it to a DWT buffed Tri-disaster when there are only 2 enemies. So in theory, to make it worth it, at the end of DWT, you'd have to Tri-disaster, Death Flare, and Bane all within 3 seconds.

And even if you do that - it's only an extra 47 potency max over 30 seconds, compared to Painflare.

EDIT - man, I am bad at math. Nevermind - I was only comparing 3 PF to 1 Bane, not considering the advantages of adding 1 bane and then 2 PF. lol.

[Fyce]

@Fyce Why are you not waiting with bahamut summon until aetherflow is back up so you can use all 3 stacks during bahamut (and addle) for extra wyrmwaves.
The DoT clipping makes you lose a lot of potency already.
Further, you can't use radiant shield with bahamut out.

You're right for Radiant Shield. I was focused on the animation delay for using it after summoning, so I forgot that ifrit wasn't on the field anymore. Derp.
But yeah, delaying everything by 15s might be worth it. For Triple Fester Shockwaves.

This change made swapping Egis at this moment is quite hard to do. Also, summoning Ifrit in order to use Radiant Shield should have quite a big delay as Radiant Shield is best applied on the main tank so it might be quite unresponsive.
Besides, having Contagion up for the Bahamut and the Triple Fester is more important than Radiant Shield.
So I relocated the summoning... Which raised an issue: Contagion will be up way sooner than Swiftcast, so we should expect a 15-20s Contagion lost in terms of cooldown uptime. I don't know if summoning Ifrit for Radiant Shield is worth it. It probably is.

Thanks.

So, I made drastic changes to the second half or the rotation:
- "Ruin time" is now a thing, along with DoT refresh and a few Ruins.
- This is now super Ruin III heavy. I didn't calculate MP consumption, so people should assume that if mana gets too low, Ruin I should be used instead of Ruin III. I also didn't took Ruin IV procs into account.
- Contagion is now used one GCD before summoning Bahamut, in order to secure the first Akh Morn. With the delay, I still don't think that having the two Akh Morn inside Contagion is doable. Need more ingame testing.
- Delayed the Bahamut summoning by 15 seconds in order to be able to Triple Fester while Bahamut is on the field.
- This had a positive impact on Tri-disaster usage, meaning that DoTs clipping shouldn't be there anymore.
- The Ruin II after the second Akh Morn should proc a Shockwave before Bahamut goes away.

Picture updated.

Edit: I just realized that the second Shadowflare could be used a bit later in order to be under Contagion. I won't edit again right now, but... yeah.

Question - do DoT ticks that are boosted by something like DWT still remain at that increased potency after DWT has worn off?

Unless Stormblood changed that, yes, the buff stays for the whole duration.

[Vallhallix]

Can't wait to see more level 70 summoner's chime in on the situation. I'm not one to believe in the yoshi p hates SMN conspiracies, but it is kinda ridiculous that they kept BLM more of the same with improvements to mobility, turned RDM into a broken combat medic with good bursty skills and completely over nerfed SMN while giving us arguably the weakest utility (devotion) of the casters, and rendering our one great one resurrection inferior to RDMs. Removed two of our dots, pretty much rendered shadowflare useless since the majority of the time tanks will pull out of it and not bring mobs back into it. Also nerfing our ruin III which was just ridiculous. We already had to work twice as hard, to do the same or similar amount of damage as the more burstier dps classes. Honestly what were they thinking? it always seems like SMN is an afterthought to the devs at times.

[Priya]

I don't mind fewer dots or more ruin spam. In fact, I like less dots, but I do think ruin 1 should disappear forever. But why on earth is summoner so punishing now? If you make one Aetherflow mistake, you're hurt for a very long time afterward. If your pet dies, you better not have swift cast on CD or that's going to punish you too. The redesign doesn't feel like it matches their plan of lowering the skill floor at all; be perfection or be nothing.

[Vallhallix]

I don't mind fewer dots or more ruin spam. In fact, I like less dots, but I do think ruin 1 should disappear forever. But why on earth is summoner so punishing now? If you make one Aetherflow mistake, you're hurt for a very long time afterward. If your pet dies, you better not have swift cast on CD or that's going to punish you too. The redesign doesn't feel like it matches their plan of lowering the skill floor at all; be perfection or be nothing.

They're probably going to correct this at a later date. We're one of the only dps ranged classes whose max damage depends on our stacks, which aren't available to us without aetherflow which is still on a 60 second cd. Hurting us for that long because of one mistake is just bizzare for a class that already has to manage more than the other ranged.

[Brinzy]

Looking for a source on stat weighs, or at least a general idea of what we should be doing.

I was planning on just throwing in Crit materia like before, but I'm sure we'll have a Spell Speed threshold to reach like before to make DWT phases smoother. I just don't know what that value is yet.