Ruin 1 or Ruin 3?

[Claviusnex]

It's kind of true. Energy Drain has the same potency as Ruin III at 150, with the bonus of draining HP and MP from the target. But ED really would be a last resort if you need MP more than anything, as there are much better effective choices to use your Aetherflow stacks on.

As I said "Between Aetherflow, Energy Drain and Lucid Dream" it is rare to run out of MP. I wasn't trying to imply that Energy Drain is a preferred action. There are times you need to rebuild MP quickly such as after dying where Lucid Dream and Aetherflow are on CD. ED fills this need. The key point I was trying to make is MP is not that restricted of a resource as there are ways to rebuild it.

[Kurando]

snip

Oh I'm not questioning your own methods in any way, just trying to clear it up a bit for Riyshn, thats why I said "it's kind of true" because there can be exceptions. Rarely ever had to use Energy Drain myself, but definitely you wouldn't want to be using it too much if your left with zero stacks and still 20s cd to go. I know a good SMN can manage stacks but for some it's easy to panic and go a bit crazy, ha.

[Ash_]

I find I can just R3 spam, only stopping to refresh Bio/Miasma, just fine without running out of mana purely through the use of Lucid and Aetherflow. I do it until its time for DWT, R3 spam more, flare, AF back to almost the top of my mana. Rinse repeat. Stopping temporarily for AOE's and switching to R2 on the fly also helps with MP management.

If I use R3 -> R2 spam though, that's when MP runs out faster. The only thing I question is if it's better to R2 spam with Bahamut up.