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]

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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]

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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.