SMN Theorycraft and comparison to Blm

[hallena]

Black Mage issue is they made thundercloud proc cause a dps loss all they need to do is increase Astral Fire and Umbra Ice to 15s

That is one of their issue yes, not all of it

[Zencurse]

Excellent work by Hai Hai. Though I currently believe that Black Mages can't be discounted in a raiding environment as those played at the top level will be able to deal with the mobility issues and the better synergy will increase output in the long run, I can see and more importantly respect his opinion on the matter of BLM vs. SMN, he clearly has a lot of knowledge on the subject and as someone who has mained BLM since day 1 and thus needs more guidance on SMN (in the scenario where playing SMN is 100% better) I would reference this guide any day.

Well done.

[Craiger]

This has to be tested in raids before we can make up any concrete judgement...

On paper it looks like SMN is way better, but as people learn to play BLM better, they might be able to get a lot out of BLM in raids.

I've said it many times since the Heavensward release, but why do so many players look at Bismarck/Ravana fights when comparing jobs?(not saying Hai Hai is) By that logic, MNK would never had been picked for raids in 2.0... Primals are completely different, and there's usually a lot more movement in them. Raids can easily screw over BLM ofc, but we should wait and see how much movement there actually are before discounting BLM for raids.

[Sunako]

but why do so many players look at Bismarck/Ravana fights when comparing jobs?

Indeed. Primals have always been movement heavy fights with lot of downtime. After all it does not matter how bad your dps in primals. I have been in some ravana groups where 7 players die then I pop healer limit and we still had more than enough dps kill the boss. Primals never been really high dps checks and never supposed 2 be balanced fights between other dps jobs. We should wait for the actual content before comparing jobs how they fit in the fight.

[pandabearcat]

More ticks...has nothing to do with contribution from crit...

[HaroldSaxon]

My point was that SMN gets better usage out of it because of the way DoT's work as SMN can recast towards the end of Battle Litany and gain a longer usage of the buff if you recast them towards the end, plus Garuda’s Contagion - and that they tend to itemize crit anyway.

If i'm wrong in the way that it works, i'd love to see some math/theorycrafting proving me wrong as i'm at work right now and I can't exactly do some serious testing.

[pandabearcat]

My point was that SMN gets better usage out of it because of the way DoT's work as SMN can recast towards the end of Battle Litany and gain a longer usage of the buff if you recast them towards the end, plus Garuda’s Contagion - and that they tend to itemize crit anyway.

If i'm wrong in the way that it works, i'd love to see some math/theorycrafting proving me wrong as i'm at work right now and I can't exactly do some serious testing.

If we assume both BLM and SMN do roughly the same amount of dps, it does not really make sense to think SMN will gain more from it.

DoTs are not some magical thing that somehow gets "drastically" better by snapshotting. DoTs are merely high damage nukes - that can be thought of as having a cooldown the length of their duration. I hope you can understand this.

With that out of the way, merely extending or having buffed our DoTs isn't some big deal. DoTs are roughly 30-40% of a SMN's damage. They do a total potency as "nukes" of 350, 290, and 240.

On the other hand a BLM's Fire I does 270 potency, Fire III does 432 potency. So we consider these nukes as well.

So why would they do the same damage? It depends on how lucky you are with timing of the buff.

If the BLM is in Blizz phase during that, or doesn't have Ley Lines or Enochian, or has to move, he is going to do less dps than the SMN. Or if unlucky streak of Fire III procs.
If the SMN is not ready to 3-D or Dreadwyrm during that, he is going to do less dps than the BLM.

So really while the idea of the buff being good is valid, both Harold and Sovereign have incorrect reasons as to why it's better for one class or the other.

What it boils down to is, do your cooldowns line up. Having a DoT and having a nuke based class is irrelevant to this.

[HaroldSaxon]

If we assume both BLM and SMN do roughly the same amount of dps, it does not really make sense to think SMN will gain more from it.

DoTs are not some magical thing that somehow gets "drastically" better by snapshotting. DoTs are merely high damage nukes - that can be thought of as having a cooldown the length of their duration. I hope you can understand this.

With that out of the way, merely extending or having buffed our DoTs isn't some big deal. DoTs are roughly 30-40% of a SMN's damage. They do a total potency as "nukes" of 350, 290, and 240.

On the other hand a BLM's Fire I does 270 potency, Fire III does 432 potency. So we consider these nukes as well.

So why would they do the same damage? It depends on how lucky you are with timing of the buff.

If the BLM is in Blizz phase during that, or doesn't have Ley Lines or Enochian, or has to move, he is going to do less dps than the SMN. Or if unlucky streak of Fire III procs.
If the SMN is not ready to 3-D or Dreadwyrm during that, he is going to do less dps than the BLM.

So really while the idea of the buff being good is valid, both Harold and Sovereign have incorrect reasons as to why it's better for one class or the other.

What it boils down to is, do your cooldowns line up. Having a DoT and having a nuke based class is irrelevant to this.

I'm unable to right now, but surely you could just use Miasma 2, then Tri-disaster as close to the end of Battle Litany as you can and then Contagion to get your DoT's refreshed with the buff, lasting longer?

Wouldn't that add 1450 potency onto SMN that is affected by the buff? (although you would lose potency from the original casts due to clipping).

And surely it is better on a class that has more Critical Hit Rate due to having higher critical damage?

[Meleoffs]

I'm unable to right now, but surely you could just use Miasma 2, then Tri-disaster as close to the end of Battle Litany as you can and then Contagion to get your DoT's refreshed with the buff, lasting longer?

Wouldn't that add 1450 potency onto SMN that is affected by the buff? (although you would lose potency from the original casts due to clipping).

And surely it is better on a class that has more Critical Hit Rate due to having higher critical damage?

You should know blm typically stacked crit in arr after SS... Also, the spread of damage isn't nearly as large as you would think, the sim thread suggests its about .02 more damage average per crit and less than 1.5 if you don't have any crit in the gear we have now. Crit had worse scaling and if you got the same amount of det as you would crit from a slot you went det, but that doesn't change the fact that you went for crit because in spite of the scaling difference you got 70%~ more crit per piece slightly out weighing det. A good example of this being the IW hat + gloves vs Dread hat + gloves, you got 28 det vs 44 crit

[HaroldSaxon]

You should know blm typically stacked crit in arr after SS... Also, the spread of damage isn't nearly as large as you would think, the sim thread suggests its about .02 more damage average per crit and less than 1.5 if you don't have any crit in the gear we have now.

Of course I know that. But that was only because you got less det on gear. Now, while that is still the case, the difference is FAR less (E.g. i180 Caster - Headpiece main stat is +42 Crit +28 Det, the Hands are +40 det +30 Spellspeed). When it came to custom relics you melded Spellspeed/Det because point for point, Det was better than crit.