SMN - knowing the class (part 1)

[Sacerdos]

I have a question.

How do people keep Ifrit egi alive in heavy aoe fights like the ones in Stone Vigil and Garuda? I find on every attempt I've done, my egi dies partway through the fight.

Now I know it's my responsibility to monitor its health but between focusing on my rotation and avoiding the aoe's myself, I often only notice when it is nearly dead and have not enough time to get in range/react.

How are folks managing this as they are a chunk of our damage?

Cast Sustain once in a while. If that isn't enough for a specific fight, then you'll need Swiftcast from THM to resummon it.

Generally, Garuda-Egi is much better since you can leave it in a safe place in most fights, and Contagion is really good.

[Shamirah]

Rover1983, you are so clueless. ShadowFlare is an aoe "dot" that is really good for ST and AOE. You cast it, it lasts 30 seconds. You can then cast your dots, use bane to dot all the other adds. You will do far more damage than everyone else 'cause your AOE damage are still going while you do your ST rotation. We are not about BURST. We are a DPS class.

Ofc if the adds die in 2 sec, shadowflare is useless and you'd better off using something else but you just forgot how good it is. Just look at every fight when you have to move a lot : while you are moving, your dots, your pet and your shadowflare are still hurting the boss hard. Meanwhile the BLM can't do shit except some instant, the melee class can't do shit either since they are not in melee. Only the bards are doing something.

[Sacerdos]

Summoners have to stand to cast for at least 11 GCDs out of 24 GCDs a minute (2 Bio 2, 2 Shadow Flare, 3 Miasma, 4 Thunder). Better than a Black Mage, but we're still vulnerable to having to move when a DoT falls off.

[Shamirah]

Summoners have to stand to cast for at least 11 GCDs out of 24 GCDs a minute (2 Bio 2, 2 Shadow Flare, 3 Miasma, 4 Thunder). Better than a Black Mage, but we're still vulnerable to having to move when a DoT falls off.

Yeah, but I generally ask the tank to pull just before I finish the cast of my first dot. And Garuda helps with that. I was talking in general. And when you are used to a fight, you know when you will have to move etc so you can time your dots/garuda's "refresh"

[Sacerdos]

Something I'd like is for bind to disable threat gain like sleep does. You can't actually use Tri-disaster as CC for melee mobs in a dungeon since the healer will get massive amounts of aggro on bound enemies.

[nimuniverse]

Clearly tanks suck then, if other people are getting targeted. Tank's job is to get agro from all mobs and maintain it. Both tank class have aoe tanking skills, it's just that tanks are not using them. They will use it once at beginning of the fight then they don't put the aoe agro skill in their rotation. How hard is it to put aoe agro or frontal cone agro and use them? I am even considering going back to tanking just cause I am annoyed with tanks from DF. I have met only 2 tanks so far who knows their class and keep hate from all mobs.

[Sacerdos]

Clearly tanks suck then, if other people are getting targeted. Tank's job is to get agro from all mobs and maintain it. Both tank class have aoe tanking skills, it's just that tanks are not using them. They will use it once at beginning of the fight then they don't put the aoe agro skill in their rotation. How hard is it to put aoe agro or frontal cone agro and use them? I am even considering going back to tanking just cause I am annoyed with tanks from DF. I have met only 2 tanks so far who knows their class and keep hate from all mobs.

If you hit a bound enemy, Bind breaks. So the tank can't build aggro on them if you want to keep them CC'd with Tri-disaster, but the healer is gaining healing aggro since unlike Sleep, Bind doesn't stop healing aggro generation.

Not an issue with tanks, Bind just isn't as useful as Sleep as a CC.

[nimuniverse]

As paladin, you can do fast blade -> savage blade -> rage of halone, then flash. You don't need to even get up to rage of halone, you can use flash to maintain agro on your first add. If you run low on mp, use fast blade -> riot blade. You can put flash in every 3-4 skill rotation. Even if your enemy is bound, flash still put agro from them. It's simple. As warrior, you can use overpower and steel cyclone (when available) to keep hate on all mobs. It's not that easy as paladin's flash, but you can keep hate from all mob. I haven't tanked as warrior, but I think you can also get flash from cross-skill. If they do their job, there's no need for bind or sleep. If blm is in party and want to sleep, that's fine.
If you hit an enemy that is asleep, sleep breaks too. But yes, to your point sleep CC is better than bind CC. But my point is if tank knows how to play their class then no reason to cast tri-disaster.

[Sacerdos]

Its easier on the healer if you CC. Against a single mob, the Healer can just dps in Cleric Stance while Regen/Fairy is enough healing to keep the tank up.

[Rover1983]

Shamirah,How am I clueless when Im clearly stating a fact. It would take multiple casts of Shadow Flare to equal 1 or 2 AoE's from other classes. Tell me where the logic is in that if were talking about "balance". It takes me 13 seconds for all my dots, not including shadow flare to finally start ticking. 13 seconds. Thats 13 seconds other dps classes can dish out lots of dmg. I feel with how "slow" our class is right now, we wont ever be cometitive in dmg. I know were a dot class but it takes us too long right now to start doing dmg. We need our GCD's on our dots lower, or cast time to be instant so that our dots can start rolling. If we were given the ability to throw our dots quicker it would be great, but it currently takes way too long to get our abilities up.