Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[Sleigh]

Hey any tips for Ravana extreme as SMN? I noticed if you use your stacks on CD you will either have to enter DWT early and can't Deathflare or you will lose your stacks.

Tried Ifrit vs Garuda, even without 8 way split cleaves I was getting higher with Ifrit but I'm still fresh on the fight as SMN.

[Havenchild]

Hey any tips for Ravana extreme as SMN? I noticed if you use your stacks on CD you will either have to enter DWT early and can't Deathflare or you will lose your stacks.

Tried Ifrit vs Garuda, even without 8 way split cleaves I was getting higher with Ifrit but I'm still fresh on the fight as SMN.

So using Ifrit, if you have a group with average DPS, then you can enter DWT twice in a row before he finishes Preparation to Liberation and get two Deathflares before then.
However when your group is pretty good, this will no longer be possible to make full use of the skill the second time, so you will have to start timing your last use of an AF skill, say Fester right before he finishes casting a type of Liberation. This will refresh the Aetherail counter back to 30 seconds, which will cover the downtime. When he returns, pop DWT , Manual DoT / Tri - D if it's up, Raging/Pot as accordingly when he returns.

Most of this fight will revolve around you knowing when the Liberation skills are coming, and timing your AF skills before they finish. Once you lose the Aetherail stacks, you take a big hit over the course of the fight and lose pretty much one full DWT phase. Optimizing the add phase is also pretty essential.

So I've heard from some SMNs that opening with energy drain and holding off on CDs to pop them in dreadwyrm trance is the ideal route what is your opinion on this Avalen? :P

I think that's the widely accepted route, not sure if it's the best route. At the moment, largely what I've been doing is testing different openers in fights with Ifrit and trying to see how I can spin it for higher damage overall by moving different skills in different locations and such. I won't really get a solid understanding of most optimal openers until I see how Alexander raids are. I'm not exactly impressed with some of the striking dummy parses I've seen with full 180+ hive book either but I'm also not as geared as they are. A lot of people seem to be stacking a lot of their skills in the beginning and think it's optimally sound because it gives them a bigger burst. A bigger number in the beginning, is not what I care about but rather what puts you higher after a set amount of time (3 or 4+ mins).

So far the ones (SMNs) I've went against start out higher in the beginning but come out lower then me in the end but I haven't asked their rotation to tell if it was just user error that lowered their parse or was it the fact that it was simply a worse rotation overall than the one I was using. Need to DPS race against some more people to see what's better. However, there are a few rotations I've seen that look pretty good. A lot of them don't use Energy Drain or save Raging Strikes solely to use before going into DWT.

[OneWingedSora]

Hey any tips for Ravana extreme as SMN? I noticed if you use your stacks on CD you will either have to enter DWT early and can't Deathflare or you will lose your stacks.

Tried Ifrit vs Garuda, even without 8 way split cleaves I was getting higher with Ifrit but I'm still fresh on the fight as SMN.

Depending on your groups DPS like Haven said, you could get two DWT before the first liberation but I doubt you get that so the way I do it is, I just use the normal Shadowflare prepull > Bio 2 > Miasma > Bio > Painflare > Fester > Ruins till fester is up then Fester > Ruin 2 > Spur+Rouse+ Ruin 2 > AF+RS > Ruin 2 (Liberation is usually starting to cast at this point)> DWT > Pot > Fester > Tri-D > Ruin 3 > Ruin 2 > Enkindle > Ruin 3 > Ruin 2 > Fester > Ruin 2 > Deathflare(Shouldn't bother refreshing Shadowflare since it won't get the full ticks) since use the laster fester just as the boss is about to jump.

Then when the boss is back, your DWT should be ready along with AF and you can just refresh your dots using Tri-D after you go into DWT and use festerx2+painflare+deathflare(with ruin 3s in between) and your DWT should be up by the time the boss comes back again from those ifrit dives.

Basically like Haven said, it's all about knowing when Liberation phases are coming and making the best use of your buffs then to get the most damage and making sure you always have DWT ready everytime the boss goes offscreen. And if you are lucky, you can get those sweet AOE painflares/deathflares during the adds phase.

I personally don't bother using Garuda on that fight since the boss jumps a lot and Contagion doesn't get its full effect most of the time save for a few parts of the fight.