Thread: SMN 4.2 Advice

Hey all, sorry I've been a bit late to respond. I also want to apologize if I didn't make my original post clear enough. I haven't been able to have a chance to get a video going yet as the last few days I've had some irl stuff to deal with. In any case, I still want to thank those of you who offered some advice!

Originally Posted by Ryannex

I think the easiest thing to miss as SMN is weaving in skills. For example, I see a lot of SMN's casting Ruin 3 - Fester - Ruin 3 - Fester, when in fact there is time to get the extra dps of doing Ruin 3 - RUIN 2 - Fester - Ruin 3 - RUIN 2 - Fester, etc.

Oh yeah, I actually was taught that trick a relatively early on while leveling. Still a great thing to note though!

Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

Meh, I have just 1 suggestion, set the damn bahamut's size to small.....please

Already done lol. I'm not sure how people can see what they're doing when he's any bigger.

Originally Posted by FeliAiko

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Originally Posted by Karshan

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Originally Posted by ShaolinMike

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Originally Posted by Nemekh

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This is all very good input! On some level I kind of felt that the SSS dummies were somewhat overtuned, but it's good to get some confirmation. I'll also have to try out these suggestions, particularly the pet swap opening, and see how it works out. Since I'll probably be back on later tonight, I'll see if I can get a video going soon, but for now you've all definitely given me some stuff to work with

Finally have a video, and tried out the pet swap opener. I fudged up a couple things on my controller, but got it down to 1%. Didn't beat it tonight, but I'm still getting used to the new opening I suppose. The food I used was really cheap stuff for barely any gains, so it won't be nearly as potent as what I'd use for actual fights, and of course I don't waste any kind of pots on dummies.

You touched on the controller fumbles, so will go over more of the timing and general action usage.

Your second TriDisaster ends up clipping around 10 secs remaining (3-4 ticks worth) of your first TriDisaster. In general you want to avoid this - now what you could have done was in DWT Ruin3 away until those ticks had nearly expired, then weaved in that DWT buffed TriDisaster (on your video this would have been around 3s left on your gauge timer).

You cut off your rouse duration by about 5 seconds when you summoned Bahamut. Not ideal but not the worst clipping of it I've seen. It's ok to let it run its course then transition to Bahamut, or opt for the rouse use after Bahamut. It mostly depends on how many uses in a fight you'll get.

Now your Bahamut window could do with a bit of work. You R4 into Enkindle Bahamut - the first action may not have resulted in a Wyrmwave before the immediate Akh Morn. In general you want to avoid Akh Morn right at the start so that you can get in a couple of wyrmwaves first. There's also some inefficiencies in your action use where some weaves are done too soon, double weaved or not spaced out enough. This results in lost wyrmwaves and is thus a dps loss. You want to imagine them like a metronome where there's a fixed possible time in between.

The idea is to perform a pattern such as 2 ww Akh Morn 8 ww Akh Morn ww, or 2 ww Akh Morn 9 ww Akh Morn, or 3 ww Akh Morn 8 ww Akh Morn. As such, avoid doing things like R2 -> Fester -> Addle especially while he performs Akh Morn. I'm pretty certain all of those actions didn't perform a single wyrmwave, meaning the timing of your fester and addle were wasted. This also resulted in some dead time during Bahamut where you had to wait for the cooldown of certain actions just to weave and force a wave. But as mentioned in general avoid double weaving things during Bahamut that all target the enemy like Fester + Addle, TriDisaster+Fester.

Aim for 11 WW 2 Akh Morn in general. You can count the entries in the battle log after your run and see how many ww you had.

Aside from that, one SSS dummy optimisation - rush your final DWT before Bahamut and cut it early with deathflare, then make sure you have Bahamut out with enough time left to perform 14s worth of actions, so that your final Bahamut can do 2 Akh Morns.

Got to get back to work but I hope that helps to point out some areas.

Originally Posted by Nemekh

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Thanks for taking the time to look into that and write all this out! I watched the video again, and it does indeed look like a few wyrmwaves didn't go off. I'll be more careful about my weaving in the future. I'll also try to fix those timings with rouse/tri-d too and see how it works out.