Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[Charybdis]

If you've been following the discussions between Dervy, Sleigh, Judge, myself and others through the data collection you'd know that:

-It's not an obsession with Spell Speed. It's an avid interest in nailing down the stat weights for our job which many people are incredibly interested in. It's not as easy as saying, X>Y>Z. Not for us anyway. Every job will have some sort of stat weights. We are on the front lines finding those exact numbers.

-Spell Speed is proving difficult to find and early models from Dervy show that Spell Speed is in fact better than BOTH CRT and DET. He mentions this a few pages back. If this is the case it puts SMN in an interesting place with their relationship between Spell Speed and their damage.

-Being so dismissive about the stats, work, and interest of others makes a lot of the research that Dervy and myself do disheartening to hear. We are putting in a lot of time for every SMN that's interested in optimizing their stats for gear and further progression.

[Minorinz]

There is no way SS will be better than Crit also the model won't reflecting on actual practical instance/fights. Smns do not chain casts like blms and pets are a 1/3 or so of smn's overall damage. I'm not trying to discourage the discussion. I'm just being realistic. Yes, as a smn i'm interested to know the formula since I was the one who dragged dervy here and asked him on his own thread back then, and we got crit/det values but ss is just not really convincing atm, i'm sorry.

[T0rin]

There is no way SS will be better than Crit also the model won't reflecting on actual practical instance/fights. Smns do not chain casts like blms and pets are a 1/3 or so of smn's overall damage. I'm not trying to discourage the discussion. I'm just being realistic. Yes, as a smn i'm interested to know the formula since I was the one who dragged dervy here and asked him on his own thread back then, and we got crit/det values but ss is just not really convincing atm, i'm sorry.

How can you say there is no way SS will be better than Crit? What, you think it is literally impossible that SE would give it a higher weight? Doesn't that seem a bit arrogant?

SS effectively has two weights... one in how it affects DoT/Pet damage, and two in how it affects GCDs. The former can be modeled, and if early numbers are pointing at SS being weighted more heavily, without even getting into the benefits to GCD, how can you just outright dismiss it? Do you know something nobody else knows? I doubt it.

SMNs do chain cast like BLMs. We don't get a vast majority of our damage from chain casting (which is usually just ruin), but to say we don't chain cast means what, we just stand around doing nothing? Of course we're chain casting. Applying dots with a GCD benefit can and will mean occasional extra ticks that you wouldn't get without it. Spamming ruin (even more important now with DWT) always benefits from GCD improvements. Handling mechanics without interrupting casts, being able to slide cast sooner, minimizing lost GCD time while utilizing 2 oGCDs after instant casts, etc.. all benefit from SS.

But to outright say that SS can't be better than Crit with no evidence whatsoever? Really?

Personally, I _really_ appreciate the work that Chary and Dervy are doing to nail this stuff down. Right now, we just kind of use the first 210 piece we can get our hands on, but I would definitely like to know definitively that I am gearing correctly in the long run. I look forward to the realistic sims on actual fights (and dummy parses) to see how it all pans out.

[Minorinz]

How can you say there is no way SS will be better than Crit? What, you think it is ...

Have you ever seen parses with people saying i could've done better with a higher crit rate even if it's by 1-2%? I have. I have seen the difference of dps output with crit in 3.0 because i've pased so many times that I don't need a formula to tell me that. The discussion was about mostly det vs ss at the beginning then ss is now better than crit and det lol who's being arrogant here without proof? I have proof with my parses I can show them here all day every day and average them out. Again, I'm just being realistic about what I experience.

About GCDs, bio and ruin 2 are instant on gcds with 0 cast time, if ss is supposed to be top secondary stat then where does it exactly shine?!??!?! our ruin is already low on potency and weaving CDs will require you to use ruin 2, although a funny thought would be a smn asking for arrow which is an attack speed buff from astro over litany which is a 15% crit rate how's that even, I don't know I guess it's just me? See blm would die to get arrow and blm would benefit from arrow way more than smn which already tells you something.

Like i said i can show you my parses with the crit rate difference for you to see with your own eyes.

Nail what down? that SS is the best secondary stat for smn? well good luck with that!!

[T0rin]

So you give some anecdotal evidence about crit improving damage. Yes, of course it does. I'm sure if you made some effort, you could probably provide some anecdotal evidence for a couple hundred points of any secondary stat making a notable difference.

Nail what down? that SS is the best secondary stat for smn? well good luck with that!!

That's the whole point of the work being done! Nobody knows for sure, and anecdotal evidence is simply not good enough for a lot of people. It's not a matter of luck, it's simply a matter of gathering data, analyzing the numbers and coming up with provable weights, followed by a realistic sim. It will all happen eventually, as it always has.

Nobody at this point, except apparently you, is convinced of anything. People are remaining open minded, because nobody has proof one way or another. I certainly don't know if spell speed is better than crit or not, but I can't dismiss the possibility until the work has been done to prove it out one way or another. You're just advocating for a single point of view because anecdotally you find it unlikely that anything else would be realistic.

[Fainto]

... although a funny thought would be a smn asking for arrow which is an attack speed buff from astro over litany which is a 15% crit rate how's that even, I don't know I guess it's just me? See blm would die to get arrow and blm would benefit from arrow way more than smn which already tells you something...

Spell Speed increases the damage done by DoT spells. Fey Wind and the Arrow card DO NOT increase Spell Speed (and therefore SMN's dot damage) but rather Attack Speed. Attack Speed is a new terminology introduced in Heavensward and it means that cast times are reduced, the GCD is reduced and auto attack frequency is increased. Fey Wind and Arrow are not good buffs for SMN but that says nothing about the viability of Spell Speed as a secondary stat nor its weighting relative to the other stats.

[Dervy]

If I never tested stuff out and never identified how badly DET has been butchered as it scales differently in level 60, we'd still be on the DET > CRT > SS bandwagon as. This is clearly not the case.

Have you ever seen parses with people saying i could've done better with a higher crit rate even if it's by 1-2%? I have. I have seen the difference of dps output with crit in 3.0 because i've pased so many times that I don't need a formula to tell me that.

Again, anecdotal. We also said this exact phrase in 2.0, but oh golly gee, DET was still far more superior. That's like me saying "if I had more WD I'd do more damage". "if i had more DET I'd do more damage".

have proof with my parses I can show them here all day every day and average them out.
!

So why haven't you? I see you at the Dummys all the time. You've provided no factual evidence for your arguments.

About GCDs, bio and ruin 2 are instant on gcds with 0 cast time,

Ruin II is instant, but you're still locked by your GCD, which is a recast of 2.5, which is affected by SS, no?

That's like saying, just because all of my abilities on my Dragoon happen instantly with no cast time, SS is irrelevant. No, that isn't how SS works.

although a funny thought would be a smn asking for arrow which is an attack speed buff from astro over litany which is a 15% crit rate how's that even, I don't know I guess it's just me? See blm would die to get arrow and blm would benefit from arrow way more than smn which already tells you something.

Because SS has exponential growth on your DPS. This is a FACT. It's exponential for every Job. But, Black Mages benefit the most from it, not because of their cast time, but they have infinite resources and can stack Skillspeed with 0 downside. Doesn't this sound a bit like a Summoner? If I stacked SS on Dragoon, damn right it'll be better than Crit once I reach a certain point.

Like i said i can show you my parses with the crit rate difference for you to see with your own eyes.

Please do and average them out and try convince us rather than just saying "I saw with my own eyes it must be true!!!!!!!!!!"

Nail what down? that SS is the best secondary stat for smn? well good luck with that!!

Prove it isn't.

[Judge_Xero]

Looking at the scaling of Crit (which is amazing) I'm fairly convinced that Crit will be best (for all DPS classes).

I haven't seen any thorough DET VS SPD Dot testing, but the little bit I did showed results of
~52 SPD = 1% increase
~72 DET = 1% increase

So from a glance they just look so close when you consider the oGCD skills and the arsenal of SMN Dots.

So glad for people collecting data and creating the Simulator, because I think it would just be too hard to optimize otherwise.

[Minorinz]

So you give some anecdotal evidence about crit improving

It's common sense in some way, you don't need people to tell you that the sky is blue when you see that it is blue. You saying that you need people to convince you with evidence instead of thinking about it yourself with your own experience as a base assumption is not better than following the pack with your eyes closed. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one thinking Crit > SS otherwise I'm at complete awe with the current smn community s:

Spell Speed increases the damage done by DoT spells.

I was setting a comparison of how good spellspeed is for blm other than it being a better multiplier/secondary stat base. The example of "chaining spells" question being clarified with arrow since it obviously reduces the recast of a gcd. IF we are purely considering the damage increase on a dot vs the damage increase on all out going damage on smn then it's det vs ss otherwise if ss is better than crit, then, congratulations, the game just broke!

[T0rin]

It's common sense in some way, you don't need people to tell you that the sky is blue when you see that it is blue. You saying that you need people to convince you with evidence instead of thinking about it yourself with your own experience as a base assumption is not better than following the pack with your eyes closed. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one thinking Crit > SS otherwise I'm at complete awe with the current smn community s:

Did you just try to explain why it is more accurate to just 'go with your gut' rather than do analytical analysis of something? I'm sure a lot of people still think that Crit > SS, because that's how it was for a long time. Which really doesn't mean much of anything, since you know, stuff changes.

Thinking for myself and waiting on a proper analysis to be done are in no way related. If I want to know what is actually better, the only way to accomplish that is to wait until the analysis is done, or do it myself. Doing some parses and changing some gear is probably the least accurate way to come to an actual understanding of what is going on behind the scenes.