SMN pet not responding 100%

[Takaokami]

Question for people with long-term SMN experience!

Sometimes (when on OBEY) while Garuda-egi is already engaging the enemy and auto attacking, it just doesn't feel like responding to that AERIAL SLASH, CONTAGION and ENKINDLE command, even though I see the skill button lighting up and indicating that it is being pressed. My SMN mostly isn't performing any other skills during that time. So I just end up standing there, spamming one of them until they are actually executed.

Why is this happening? Am I timing it badly during a pet attack animation or? Anybody experienced this?

Usually pet skill execution works fine, but sometimes it seems like the pet is stubborn :/

Executing any of the above skills before Garuda-egi starts auto attacking is mostly instant, without the issue mentioned earlier.

[Wolfenkritter]

Garuda usually won't respond if she's in the middle of a cast, she will refuse to cancel a cast. Its annoying, but you'll have to mash that Contagion key until the stubborn bird actually uses it.

You can put her on Steady to ensure she'll actually use it, but it does take her a while to wind back up again.

[UBERHAXED]

Effectively what this poster said^^^.

Imagine you had 3 oGCD skills to use and you want to press them all before the next GCD, we all know that's not going to happen because skills can only be used after the animation of the previous one finishes, so you end up with some dropped commands. For reference, image you hit fester the same time you hit ruin II. One of them will chock (probably the fester) and you'll have to wait for the animation of one to finish before retrying to use the other. Same thing when you (issue the command to garuda to ) used (e.g.) contagion the same time garuda uses wind blade.

[AniCelestine]

The biggest problem is that there is no ability queue for pets. That would solve the unresponsiviness (ditched smn for mnk due to it's unplayable in 2.3 and haven't missed that abomination at all.

[JerinRycik]

I macro contagion to make three attempts at 1 second intervals so that one of them will catch her in between casts.

/micon "Contagion" pet
/pac "Contagion" <t>
/wait
/pac "Contagion" <t>
/wait
/pac "Contagion" <t>

[Rongway]

I macro contagion to make three attempts at 1 second intervals so that one of them will catch her in between casts.

/micon "Contagion" pet
/pac "Contagion" <t>
/wait
/pac "Contagion" <t>
/wait
/pac "Contagion" <t>

It would be better just to have a full 14 lines of
/pac Contagion <t>

Each press effectively gives you 1/4 - 1/2 second of spamming it.

[giantslayer]

The biggest problem is that there is no ability queue for pets. That would solve the unresponsiviness (ditched smn for mnk due to it's unplayable in 2.3 and haven't missed that abomination at all.

They fixed that a long time ago. Sometime either at or shortly after the release of Heavensward. I was the one who first spread around the macro with multiple wait lines someone else posted up here. I've ditched it and just use the regular action with no macro now. Been doing it for a while. Haven't messed with SMN a lot in 3.2 yet, so not sure if it is all working right in the current patch.

Note: technically the fix was that if your pet automatically started casting something, then you could queue an ability for afterwards. If you had manually commanded the pet to cast (e.g. Embrace spam), then the queue doesn't work. Since manual spamming of Wind Blade isn't a thing, Garuda was effectively fixed. Eos was hit and miss, so I kept my macros for her.

[TSLsmokey]

I wind up spamming it. As for Enkindle, I've learned that it only refuses to work if you've already set a command in and Garuda-egi is using that. Otherwise she will use the Enkindle strike right after her next wind blade.

[verandal]

You need the cascade badge from cerulean city. It makes all Poke... Errr pets up to 60 obey you.

[Marianno]

That bird is especially disobediant and hard-headed. She does not do the enkindle sometimes even when I put her on steady sometimes. How do I remedy this? Sorry to take over your post OP but it makes me angry sometimes.