Is this truly wrong?

[ChaoticCrimson]

Cool! Sorry, I'm at work so my reply was delayed a bit... I'm not an expert, but I'm mainly going off of advice from my static and things that I've read, so please bear with me. Anyway, what I'm noticing that a lot of your gear is pushing your spell speed. Now, for a BLM, spell speed is excellent. Even RDM enjoys a little boost to it. But for SMN... It's bad news. If my static leader's advice is anything to go off of, 1000 spell speed on a SMN is pretty much the absolute max a SMN can really support before it starts goofing things up with timing. In fact, you could probably get away with the bare minimum spell speed if you wanted to, but a couple pieces of gear with minor increases of it probably won't hurt as long as you stay under that 1000 threshold. Instead, the secondary stats you should look for as a priority are Crit > Direct > Det. You do want to keep upgrading to higher ilvl gear since INT is your main priority, but just be very wary the gear isn't pushing spell speed too high.

I believe we're about the same ilvl atm (359). I'm not positive that my gear is absolutely "ideal", but you can take a look on my Lodestone profile if you'd like to get an idea of what I've been going for, statwise. Of course, bearing in mind that you're still working on your melds, it looks like once you're able to flesh those out that'll also be close to an extra 350 point boost to spread out for your stats however you prefer. That's a pretty significant amount to work with, and should make a nice difference! Beyond that, I haven't seen how you play as SMN, so I can't really advise there. But hopefully the advice on gear that I've learned from my static helps a little bit!

[KaivaC]

snip

Well according to the logs, I am terrible at SMN haha.

Yeah, I don't meld towards spell speed, so I'm not sure how to counter that when the gear itself increases that particular stat. I do have enough clusters that I can push for crit...somebody did show me the kind of materia I should be going for right now, but without crafted gear to have additional meld slots, the prospect of breaking out of that percentile is not looking good right now. I just need to stop doing worse than what I've been doing.

[ChaoticCrimson]

<snip>

Right, it's not so much your current melds you need to worry about rather than the caster gear you currently have that's boosting your spell speed. You just need to swap out for some different pieces and save the other things for your other casters. For example, a lot of your left-side gear could probably stand to be swapped with different pieces. Since you're working on Eureka, as long as you're sticking with the NM train and leveling steadily it shouldn't take long to upgrade your relic body gear. It'll be a slight decrease in INT, but the gain in other important secondary stats and the five materia slots should more than make up for it. I'd also recommend saving your mendacity tomes towards the 360 hand, legs, and feet gear, with a priority on the legs since the current leg piece you have adds a ton of spell speed. If you can snag a 370 belt from O5S, then that could help too, but I don't think it's as big a priority. Your right-side gear is probably fine for the most part, so I don't think you need to change much there for the time being. It may take a few weeks altogether to save the tomes for the pieces I recommended, unless you already have some in reserve, but I think you'll find it worth it. Ariyala's toolkit site is also nice for planning out your gear progression and what stats you can expect to get out of them.

That said, I still think you're being too hard on yourself for those logs. You're still just starting out in the job, and like I said before, almost no one starts out being instantly good. I'd still like to encourage that you take some time now and then to practice your rotations, and brush up on some online guides for tips and tricks you might not have considered. I hope I'm not seeming like a pest, but I really do believe you can improve. Perhaps you can also get some practice in by doing some easier content that isn't liable to be parsed by anyone, like normal Byakko. That way you can get a feel for things with far less pressure, and you can continue to tank in savage until you feel comfortable to try again as SMN. Just be patient with yourself, and you'll get there in time.

[Dzian]

To emphasise this, I generally average high 80s to mid 90s. With a death this week in o6s, I still reached 62% A 25% penalty for 90 seconds is far harsher than a random Ninja messing up Trick Attack. Will you dip in a less optimized group? Of course, but you aren't going from 95% to 50%. Bard and Machinist, unfortunately, stand as the sole exception due to piercing.

No entirely. Because if you change the jobs on that link to say monk

You see a very similar pattern where something like an 8-10% difference in damage will throw you up or down 40 percentiles in much the same way it does for a bard. Sam and blm are about the same..

It really doesn't take a lot of lost dps for any number of reasons to have a significant impact. Even being just a few points lower could put you down significantly.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Is that my most recent run? Oh, that was a really terrible run for me. I think I died once or twice. But comparison wise, I missed a lot of holy spirits, which I do know I tend to forget about in sword oath. Same with requiscast.

Nah it was from like Mid Feb. You didn't die at all. I chose it to make sure it was as close to a 1:1 comparison as possible (a tenet to ensure good log review).

Looking at it:

• You can see you have too many fast blades and that they don't align with your riot blades
• I didn't show it here, but I'd bet your Goring Blade uptime was a good bit lower than mine too, as evidenced by the fact you cast it less
• Your Riot Blades don't line up with your GB + RA casts
• You missed a staggering number of HS casts and Requiscat
• Poor usage of Sheltron -> Shield Swipe
• Sub-optimal defensive CD usage as well

Now I know that PLD isn't the job you're referencing, but I wanted to just paint a picture that a PLD is actually a pretty mechanically easy job to play, and there's a lot of mistakes here, that will absolutely translate to SMN, which is considerably more in-depth to do well with.

This is just comparing casts too. There's a lot more to look into, but this is a great place to start. To look into where you're missing things.

No entirely. Because if you change the jobs on that link to say monk

You see a very similar pattern where something like an 8-10% difference in damage will throw you up or down 40 percentiles in much the same way it does for a bard. Sam and blm are about the same..

It really doesn't take a lot of lost dps for any number of reasons to have a significant impact. Even being just a few points lower could put you down significantly.

Dzian - is there any reason you ignored my post to you a few pages back? I'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to read it and respond. It's good for the community to make sure that we don't spread misinformation and I want to help clear up any misconceptions you might have.

[KaivaC]

Nah it was from like Mid Feb. You didn't die at all. I chose it to make sure it was as close to a 1:1 comparison as possible (a tenet to ensure good log review).

Looking at it:

• You can see you have too many fast blades and that they don't align with your riot blades
• I didn't show it here, but I'd bet your Goring Blade uptime was a good bit lower than mine too, as evidenced by the fact you cast it less
• Your Riot Blades don't line up with your GB + RA casts
• You missed a staggering number of HS casts and Requiscat
• Poor usage of Sheltron -> Shield Swipe
• Sub-optimal defensive CD usage as well

Now I know that PLD isn't the job you're referencing, but I wanted to just paint a picture that a PLD is actually a pretty mechanically easy job to play, and there's a lot of mistakes here, that will absolutely translate to SMN, which is considerably more in-depth to do well with.

This is just comparing casts too. There's a lot more to look into, but this is a great place to start. To look into where you're missing things.

I went PLD because I didn't like the feel of DRK. It wasn't until recently in the last week or so when I actually tried that I started learning the important of lining up those buffs. I don't intend to master PLD, though, but from your analysis...yeah...nvm, you have a point. Too many mistakes on PLD on my end.

[Dzian]

Dzian - is there any reason you ignored my post to you a few pages back? I'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to read it and respond. It's good for the community to make sure that we don't spread misinformation and I want to help clear up any misconceptions you might have.

missed it.

Firstly let me ask - do you use FFLogs? Do you know how to read it? All of its functions?

From time to time and I would say i'm quite familiar with how it works

This is 100% inaccurate. It will be lower for sure, but it won't be "no where even close". I had plenty of purples where I had a team of 10th percentilers.

In many cases it actually really will be quite a significant impact. if you look at this if you took a 99th percentile player and put him in a random pug or group of 10% players. it's not to unreasonable to suggest that for one reason or another that players dps might be 10% lower. as a result of party compostion buffs usage or even things like player positions causing a few missed gcds. yet that 10% would result in that 99th percentile player ending up right down near 60... which is no where close to 99..

This is also 100% incorrect. FFlogs can tell you all of that if you know where to look and how to read the logs. Every single one of these is captured in the logs and easily viewable.

Ok here I might actually not know something... I'm pretty sure though ACT and thus fflogs doesn't track position or movement and almost certainly cannot log where in an arena an aoe or telegraph is going to hit. nor can fflogs tell you I had to move because the sch was 1 step to my right or something like that ... if I am wrong and it can show this information then please do show me where...

This is also 100% inaccurate. It would not take a 6.5k DPS MNK and make him do 3.25k DPS. Please refrain from spreading misinformation.

ok perhaps bad phrasing. it shouldn't drop a 6k monk to 3k. but it could quite easily drop an 80th percentile player down to the 40th or something similar thus slashing there performance ranking quite significantly..

I'm also not disputing that things like buffs and trick attacks aren't viewable in the logs. what I said was that how they're used in a fight can have a very significant impact on your performance. and thus a good chunk of what makes a players damage in the x% is down to the rest of the party and not actually down to them selves... a party that uses buffs and cooldowns more optimally could easily push your dps up by 8-10% for example. and in most cases that's enough to fly up the percentiles....

I think i'm quite clued with how logs works even if I don't use it regularly... so many things can affect your numbers that it creates an innacurate reading. I could for example play my samurai perfectially in the most optimal way and be the most skilled sam in the game (I'm not) but my sam being I350 instead of i370 for example might is gonna really impact my numbers. and no amount of player skill will ever compensate...

[FeliAiko]

This might have been said already but... you just need to educate yourself on the fundamentals of SMN. Never mind gear, ilvl, melds, etc. You need to grasp the foundations first, and use that as a platform to grow from there.

From looking at your Apr 4th log, it's clear that you have no knowledge of the SMN opener, or rotation, at all. So right away you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. Therefore my suggestion would be to: find and learn said/opener rotation from a guide (I recommend this one as a start: SMN Starter Kit), then practice over and over on a dummy until you can do it without much thought, and then go into content and test yourself there.

[KaivaC]

Good points made

Yea, I'm aware. Like I said before, 4.3k is probably the best I have ever been, and that's a crap log. Hence why I've essentially given up. I know I'm just absolute shite at the job, so rather than beat around the bush and create this false belief that I'll get better, I'm just cutting my losses. If I can't figure out how to play better...well, that just means this isn't for me.

[FeliAiko]

Yea, I'm aware. Like I said before, 4.3k is probably the best I have ever been, and that's a crap log. Hence why I've essentially given up. I know I'm just absolute shite at the job, so rather than beat around the bush and create this false belief that I'll get better, I'm just cutting my losses. If I can't figure out how to play better...well, that just means this isn't for me.

If you've read guides, learned/practiced the opener repeatedly only to then struggle to transfer it into content while handling mechanics then that's one thing. However, if you're just completely winging it, just randomly pressing buttons, with no rhyme or reason behind your decisions, then of course your logs are going to be bad. There is information out there on how to play the Job and get better, but if all you're going to do is just claim you won't get better without even trying then you're not doing yourself any favours. With that mentality, your issues won't just apply to SMN but just about any Job in XIV.