Spell speed up

[UBERHAXED]

As a summoner, I feel this is too random to use effectively. Unlike other random procs like Free-cure, Thundercloud, or River of Blood, this is no strategical use of this and this is too hard to account for when doing any type of theory crafting. This trait should be changed so at least we can choose when to use the spell speed increase from the skill. At the very worst, give Arcanist an additional skill (like White Mage got Stoneskin II mid tier) that only activates when the trait activates and we have a few seconds whether to press the button before the proc disappears. A better suggestion is to change to proc all together and make it do something else. Good suggestions are:

• Reset a cooldown
• Decrease MP costs
• Pet buff

Resetting a cooldown doesn't mean something broken that heavily affects DPS, like resetting Aetherflow or Tri-Disaster. It could be something simple like resetting the 10 second recast time for bane, painflare, or Fester, which are all still tied to Aetherflow usages so we still don't get more than 3 per minute. It could change the dynamics of openers to make the class a bit less mechanical.

We've also already seen that there is a trait to reduce Ruin III cost in DWT. It would be great if we had reduced costs (even if just for Ruin III) for even 5 seconds out side of DWT too. Of course, that's a huge DPS buff so reducing the cost of everything except Ruin III (for example Ruin II) also would be great. If the skill reduced the cost of Ruin II to the cost of Ruin for 10 seconds it wouldn't be that much of a DPS increase (or any in that moment) but it would be a great cost savings for MP to use for something later.

The obvious thing is just to buff your pet by some value (20% maybe). I'm not seeing why this would be broken seeing as this is random anyway.

I play almost every day as a Summoner and most of the time forget that this thing even exists because I have no choice of what happens when it procs, nor does it even influence my game play when it does. Also, Unless you are staring at your character's buff bar, you won't even know it happened. At least some animation around the player to alert them would be nice.

[AlFarabi]

I have to agee abou the Spell Speed Up proc.

I'm seeing people talking about focusin on crit since it also helps with SSU. I have two thoughs on this; 1)DoTs don't crit as far as I know, so how important is crit again? 2) How much DPS gain am I getting out of a 20% SS buff?

[Cherub]

Dots do crit. Dot up a striking dummy and you'll see it'll do more damage at times than usual. Thats a dot crit.
BioII Bio and Miasma tick for around 1.1k and crit for around 1.3k on the dummy on my character.

The BRD's bloodletter proc relies on dot crits.

[Cabalabob]

I don't think the spell speed up is meant to be used tactically really, it's just a bonus, yes DoTs do crit and crit fester/painflare/deathflare yes please, so as a SMN you're going to be using crit regardless of if the spell speed buff is there or not, same goes for SCH, they use crit for the Aldo bonus so they're just going to have crit.

I'm not saying it couldn't benefit from a change or that a change to it wouldn't be nice, I'm sure there's plenty of more interesting things it could do, I'm just saying I don't think it was really designed with tactical use in mind and is just, there.

[Judge_Xero]

SSU is just one of those things that gets more useful with gear progression.

Also if SPD on pets has been fixed then it will be highly effective. i.e. more pet attacks at a higher crit rate is a lot more procs especially from Ifrit who can proc SSU from AA damage.

SPD on SMN is kind of rough though so there isn't much point stacking it to any great benefit. 1000 SPD would give somewhere around 3% dot damage on a proc. So in that regard it would be nice to change it.

[AlFarabi]

When dots crit, do big numbers pop up? 'Cause I remember waiting for that and it didn't show up.

Stat-wise, I'm guessing the focus should be still INT>CRIT>DET?

[Ricdeau]

When dots crit, do big numbers pop up? 'Cause I remember waiting for that and it didn't show up.

Stat-wise, I'm guessing the focus should be still INT>CRIT>DET?

No, DoTs do not display crits like other moves because the scrolling combat text for DoTs is an aggregate of all DoTs present from your party. So while some DoTs will crit as part of that aggregate not all do. You can easily tell on a dummy when a DoTs crit though as the number will be much larger than the typical non crit spread that you see.

[Shurrikhan]

I think the main issue is just that it's a spell speed increase rather than a cast increase, such that it's only noticeable at higher SS numbers, which are generally wasteful; an extra Ruin III doesn't make up for a missed Ruin III crit and all of them hitting 12% harder, etc.. Worse perhaps, because so much of this addition is in the base spell speed, as well, your attempts to increase this bonus aren't going to be efficient until, say, having reached double the base SS. Until that point, increases to Crit instead, especially with Ifrit, will probably create a greater spell speed contribution over time. Last but not least, Ifrit only attacks per ~1.5s and Garuda per 3.0s base. At a mere 20% chance, that's admittedly kinda pitiful. Theoretically, Ifrit should be able to maintain the buff (5 hits within each 8s duration), but as RNG as it is, that will rarely happen. Theoretically Garuda should have it up half the time, and could at least quickly score it off an AoE if needed. But she rarely does.

I suppose one thing that could work well in its favor is to simply have it go off every 5 hits instead. Or, give some element of control by which to rush pet attack rate temporarily as through oGCDs (think of it as River of Blood being changed out for Hail of Arrows, where every attack, including Blunt and Repelling, has a chance to refresh Bloodletter/Rain of Death and how you might want to pace those to get the most out of those procs) or a modification of Spur (not just a second Rouse), so that it actually takes some pet control beyond Contagion to optimize your own dps.

[UBERHAXED]

I think the main issue is just that it's a spell speed increase rather than a cast increase, such that it's only noticeable at higher SS numbers, which are generally wasteful; an extra Ruin III doesn't make up for a missed Ruin III crit and all of them hitting 12% harder, etc.. Worse perhaps, because so much of this addition is in the base spell speed, as well, your attempts to increase this bonus aren't going to be efficient until, say, having reached double the base SS. Until that point, increases to Crit instead, especially with Ifrit, will probably create a greater spell speed contribution over time. Last but not least, Ifrit only attacks per ~1.5s and Garuda per 3.0s base. At a mere 20% chance, that's admittedly kinda pitiful. Theoretically, Ifrit should be able to maintain the buff (5 hits within each 8s duration), but as RNG as it is, that will rarely happen. Theoretically Garuda should have it up half the time, and could at least quickly score it off an AoE if needed. But she rarely does.

I suppose one thing that could work well in its favor is to simply have it go off every 5 hits instead. Or, give some element of control by which to rush pet attack rate temporarily as through oGCDs (think of it as River of Blood being changed out for Hail of Arrows, where every attack, including Blunt and Repelling, has a chance to refresh Bloodletter/Rain of Death and how you might want to pace those to get the most out of those procs) or a modification of Spur (not just a second Rouse), so that it actually takes some pet control beyond Contagion to optimize your own dps.

Well it being a SS increase does technically more than increasing cast time. That said, a reliable way to proc the buff is another alternative that I didn't mention but it still feels out of the control of the user really.

[Shurrikhan]

Well it being a SS increase does technically more than increasing cast [speed][?]. That said, a reliable way to proc the buff is another alternative that I didn't mention but it still feels out of the control of the user really.

How do you mean? A 20% increase to spell speed, at base SS stat (~70 bonus), is a far cry from a 20% increase to casting speed (from 2.5 to 2.0 GCD, i.e. a BLM's dream proc). I don't think I've seen it cut more than .08 seconds personally, even with a lot more SS than I'd have liked.