Some ideas for changes for Summoner

[Soranika]

Okay I was wondering if there was some super secret "summoner only" reason for using "claws" on skeles...

Misconceptions by players who have not invested anytime into playing smn. Pred. Claws is known to be one of the strongest physical BPs. Heavenly Strike is known to be one of the strongest BPs (only cause people are under the assumption that Shiva has more INT than other avatars.) However you can exploit skeleton types mobs weakness to blunt and fire element attacks to produce some decent numbers. That should be DD basic 101 to anyone though.

[Olor]

yeah, I expected to see a lot of titans... but I saw only 1, and a whole flock of garudas pounding scratching skeles

[Hayward]

I'm of the opinion that S-E has been way too cautious with SMN's potential in FFXI. Historically, Summoners have been the most powerful jobs in the FF series. People know the Avatars/Eidolons/GFs/Espers by name and face. If perpetuation costs are indeed necessary, it should be expected that the avatars have the same damage potential as any melee job and the same magical capabilities of any mage (this goes especially for elemental spirits). This whole fear of being overpowered has rung hollow for years given that S-E threw game balance out the window with various melee jobs (see: Warrior, Samurai, Monk, among others).

I'd want perpetuation costs for spirits cut to celestial avatar levels and the new spells, excluding AoE-based elemental spells, from 76 to the current cap included (yes, even Comet). I'd also want the casting times for avatars to be cut in half. There's no good reason for this anymore and needlessly hampers our ability to react to situational changes. For the perpetuation we currently expend, I'd also want avatars' Delay addressed with a Martial Arts-type job trait and their overall attack/accuracy/MAtk/MAcc improved to scale more in line with any other job as we level.

[Alhanelem]

Okay I was wondering if there was some super secret "summoner only" reason for using "claws" on skeles...

Yeah, that reason is "I like doing reudced damage"

[Razushu]

I'm of the opinion that S-E has been way too cautious with SMN's potential in FFXI. Historically, Summoners have been the most powerful jobs in the FF series. People know the Avatars/Eidolons/GFs/Espers by name and face. If perpetuation costs are indeed necessary, it should be expected that the avatars have the same damage potential as any melee job and the same magical capabilities of any mage (this goes especially for elemental spirits). This whole fear of being overpowered has rung hollow for years given that S-E threw game balance out the window with various melee jobs (see: Warrior, Samurai, Monk, among others).

I'd want perpetuation costs for spirits cut to celestial avatar levels and the new spells, excluding AoE-based elemental spells, from 76 to the current cap included (yes, even Comet). I'd also want the casting times for avatars to be cut in half. There's no good reason for this anymore and needlessly hampers our ability to react to situational changes. For the perpetuation we currently expend, I'd also want avatars' Delay addressed with a Martial Arts-type job trait and their overall attack/accuracy/MAtk/MAcc improved to scale more in line with any other job as we level.

There's nothing wrong with our damage capabilities, both magical and physical that can't be fixed by an adjustment to Blood Pact delay. Our Rages do fine damage, the gap between them is what lets us down. Our Avatars differ from melees in that they are Spike DDs rather than DPS, not forgetting it's hate free damage. The same goes for our standing as magical DD, our Avatar's nukes are both hate and TP free, it does seem balanced that we are weaker than offensive mages, seeing as it's unlikely they could happily pump out damage like we can in the same carefree manner.

You can cut Elemental spirit perpetuation cost to Avatar levels already, the reason it's higher as standard is because their nukes cost us nothing but time. We pay the MP cost for them as extra perp, and it's barely anything at that nowadays. It's highly likely that if SE ever adjusted spirits to be useful past level 20 outside of siphon, they would have to overhaul the balance between them and Avatars. As the job is now spirits are low level pets with limited high level use, but on the flip side factoring cost of use(both their attacks and their perp), they are almost completely free, whereas Avatars exact a much higher toll for their attacks. if they were to make Spirits viable nukers, they would create an imbalance in how the job was designed, and as such we would likely see something to the effect of adding new spells but leaving the damage terrible, or making it so that the Spirit drains our MP to cast it's nukes.

While stuff like a "Martial Arts", and adjustment to would be nice(and I wouldn't complain if we got them), I think if they ever get round to adjusting BP delay like they promised that will be the single biggest thing to happen to SMN in years.

[Razushu]

Yeah, that reason is "I like doing reudced damage"

Although there is the fact that Garuda's floating green booty is much easier on the eyes than Titan's manthong.

/shudder

[Malamasala]

I still don't get people who say SMN empyrean armor is awesome. They are just like gigantic band aids to cover all issues with the job. In the end what they are without regard to perpetuation and skill over cap bonus...

2 MP per tick refresh
10% bonus to BPs
Enhanced magic accuracy

Imagine if the WAR set had:

2 HP per tick regen
10% bonus to WSes (does not work with relic/mythic/empyrean wses or fellcleave)
Enhances accuracy of elemental WSes

Would you still say it is the best armor set WAR ever got?

The SMN empy is lacking obvious things like pet haste, pet DA and all other stats the WARs actually got. All we got were band aids to make our job average.

Is it the best armor we've ever gotten? Sure, but it is still worse than the armors WAR had from old 75 level content. We are just doomed to get stuff that nobody else than a SMN would think is good.

[Razushu]

I still don't get people who say SMN empyrean armor is awesome. They are just like gigantic band aids to cover all issues with the job. In the end what they are without regard to perpetuation and skill over cap bonus...

2 MP per tick refresh
10% bonus to BPs
Enhanced magic accuracy

Imagine if the WAR set had:

2 HP per tick regen
10% bonus to WSes (does not work with relic/mythic/empyrean wses or fellcleave)
Enhances accuracy of elemental WSes

Would you still say it is the best armor set WAR ever got?

The SMN empy is lacking obvious things like pet haste, pet DA and all other stats the WARs actually got. All we got were band aids to make our job average.

Is it the best armor we've ever gotten? Sure, but it is still worse than the armors WAR had from old 75 level content. We are just doomed to get stuff that nobody else than a SMN would think is good.

Thats a fine comparision except not only are you are you ignoring some of the other stuff on Caller's set like Avatar :TP Bonus, enhances mana cede, and the +2 set bonus. Complaining that summoning magic skill, and - perpetuation are main stats on the set is like the WAR's complaining that they have haste and accuracy on theirs, as they should be hitting that well and fast already.

In case you haven't noticed everything in this game has a downside, we have perpetuation cost(easily negated now), and WARs have the possiblity of being floored by a mob. Every mage job wears gear with skill on the only difference between us and them is how that is applied as a bonus, they get Macc and -spell interupt, we get a wider array of bonuses from this extra skill.

In case you haven't noticed in all your years of playing Summoner, our Avatars are treated as spike DDs, not WARs, they don't really need WAR stats, the only thing holding us back is BP delay(which is due a fix), other than that maybe a new tier of rages would be nice.

[Alhanelem]

I still don't get people who say SMN empyrean armor is awesome.

Regen to refresh comparison is invalid because Regen is not a necessary element to power WAR abilities, you skewed the other comparisons as well.

Your ideas do not work. Making Carbuncle cost 50 MP instead of 5 is not a tradeoff for no perp cost. Yes, perp may feel like an artificial limitation, but it's a minor one and it was needed early on to make it be not too easy for SMN to solo compared to other jobs. Similarly, everyone would just spam 3 fire maneuvers on PUP (3 ice on mage frame) all the time and not try other maneuver strategies if they were given the chance and knew it would work.

These limitations are there for balance reasons and that is why we have to do some work to offset them. The SMN empy is so good because it makes it easier to offset those balance effects and gives you refresh which every mage needs and wants (unlike regen which no one cares about on armor) and other beneficial effects. Yes, it doesn't have BP delay minus, but there is plenty of gear you can swap in for the 0.5 seconds each minute you need to be wearing that gear.

[Enkrateia]

This is an excellent discussion of some new ideas. Since it revolves solely around the SMN job, I will move the thread over to the SMN forum.