Critical Rate is very necessary, just as it is for any other DPS. It boosts the critical chance of your summons.
Yes it is. It uses your final Magic Attack, SPR, and other stats you have on summon.
If you don’t have a fully upgraded rod, the summon will do bad damage because its stats are determined on summon. As for the skill level stuff, Desmodus damage bonus is determined upon summon hit, so if you’re not actively wearing the rod, the summons don’t benefit from the +1 skill level on Desmodus; it doesn’t snapshot on the debuff on application. The change you mentioned for Durandal only applied to Gung Ho, nothing else.
Ideally you use damage spells with a staff, Evocation with a rod, summon and use Riding with a staff, cast Summon Servant with a rod, and otherwise full time rod+shield for the extra defensive stats and the extra damage for summons on Desmodus. You have to swap constantly in combat and use the right weapon for the right situation for optimal efficiency. It is a very active playstyle and requires keeping track of a lot of buffs, debuffs, timers, and which weapon needs to be equipped at the right time.
You can, of course, play however you want. There’s a lot of optimization that can be done, and the main summoner in KR plays only using a rod (never uses a staff) and plays Chronomancer instead of Featherfoot. As of right now, I prefer my route.
I took a break for over 2 months so I’m still optimizing and catching up on what needs to be done to improve, including my own gear.
It’s a significant difference. Using my staff I gain 6000-8000+ more Magic Attack over using the rod. If you want to maximize damage, this cannot be ignored.
Desmodus is better because it can achieve a higher skill level. Summon Familiar is broken and doesn’t scale with your Magic Attack properly, so they do very little damage. Both summon debuffs are still useful in a pinch and to properly spread out your summon damage bonus, especially in CM.
