Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[pandabearcat]

Hmm, I have mana issues during the fight because I painflare more than I bane, I prefer to multidot as I believe it is a dps increase. Certainly I tend to be more free with tri-d in phase 3 since i only hop on during carapace 1, 3 so I have ~2 free tri-d to use.

I also ruin II constantly which is not quite sustainable - our bard usually does not play ballad but sometimes I'm happy when other dps die because then it means he does, then I get to free dps =D

I find melee is not even worth the hassle anymore. Previously when it was maybe a 5% dps increase I don't see it even being a 1% dps increase now...my melee is still ~90-100 damage, which means it is 30 MAX out of 800+, which is...really trivial for the effort. Bottom line is, melee will almost never save you a cast, and may save your raid something like 2 seconds off a kill which...for the hassle, is not worth it.

Ruin II during tornados I completely endorse, however.

The other issue is that imo dps isn't everything - if you can safely melee and stand there then sure, but if its a hassle, leads to more AoEs dropped on top of real melee, then you need to think real hard about whether its just dps padding or actually helping your comp. I'm not a dps queen - I dislike all the talk about stats and stuff - I simply wish to be a good (and better) player, so that is the philosophy I go into the fights with.

I'm far more impressed with an SMN that knows when to virus than I am with someone who does 20 more dps =D

EDIT: i'm not sure why I was talking about melee. I sometimes go off on tangents...