Thread: Summoner's in 4.4 PVP and beyond.

Hello Summoner friends (and Monk friends) (and Red mage friends)

In today's ARTV, Project Manager Moriguchi gave a couple explanations regarding the Patch 4.45 PvP changes made to Summoner, Monk and Red mage - let me share these with you!

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First of all, the main objective of the PvP action adjustments made in Patch 4.45 was to buff jobs with which it's relatively difficult to win, when compared to other jobs of the same role.

Summoner
The difficulty of winning as a Summoner is the lack of burst and survivability. As such, it has been decided to adjust the potency of Energy Drain to improve both burst and self-heal.
We are aware that some of you are requesting Tri-bind or any kind of CC ability to be (re-)added, as well as some changes to Bahamut, but for the moment we would like to see how this change to Energy Drain feels.
Please try it out and do let us know what you think!

Monk
Wind tackle is the only mobility skill for Monks and although it can be used twice in a row, it has a rather long cooldown. For this reason, it was shortened so that it could be used for both offensive and defensive purposes.

Red Mage
Shorter cast time for Vercure will enable a more usable emergency heal.
Since Red mages have to dive in melee range for their physical/burst combo, its potency has been increased to balance out that risk.

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And that's it! As usual, please let us know your feedback on these adjustments and we'll escalate it to the devs. Good luck in Season 11!

I don't often play Red Mage in PVP but it always felt like going into melee range was a death sentence. Thank you Kaposhipi for the updates!

Originally Posted by Kaposhipi

Hello Summoner friends (and Monk friends) (and Red mage friends)

In today's ARTV, Project Manager Moriguchi gave a couple explanations regarding the Patch 4.45 PvP changes made to Summoner, Monk and Red mage - let me share these with you!

=====

First of all, the main objective of the PvP action adjustments made in Patch 4.45 was to buff jobs with which it's relatively difficult to win, when compared to other jobs of the same role.

Summoner
The difficulty of winning as a Summoner is the lack of burst and survivability. As such, it has been decided to adjust the potency of Energy Drain to improve both burst and self-heal.
We are aware that some of you are requesting Tri-bind or any kind of CC ability to be (re-)added, as well as some changes to Bahamut, but for the moment we would like to see how this change to Energy Drain feels.
Please try it out and do let us know what you think!

Monk
Wind tackle is the only mobility skill for Monks and although it can be used twice in a row, it has a rather long cooldown. For this reason, it was shortened so that it could be used for both offensive and defensive purposes.

Red Mage
Shorter cast time for Vercure will enable a more usable emergency heal.
Since Red mages have to dive in melee range for their physical/burst combo, its potency has been increased to balance out that risk.

=====

And that's it! As usual, please let us know your feedback on these adjustments and we'll escalate it to the devs. Good luck in Season 11!

Whilst I appreciate the communication, you knew what SMNs were asking for but gave us something we didn't really ask for. Even after nerfing BRD's silence, SMN is still horribly behind in the utility department from every range. The damage isn't even that bad when Bahamut feels like actually responding, but buffing 250 potency to ED and then on the same wavelength buffing RDM to me changes nothing. SMN must go to melee range in Wither, there is not a lot of gain from the risk. RDM is melee/range based damage, SMN is a pure caster - so why are we in melee range?

This is why you should have given us a training break or a pre-season instead of just going straight into S10, you're asking me to test something on a live ladder, which isn't fair on me and isn't fair on people I get paired with nor is it for any other SMN.

SMN is still a joke with these new changes. Just give SMN a cc already.

The other 3 ranged have an escape ability (blank, repelling, rdm jumps, aethereal manip)

The other 3 ranged have a cc that can be used defensively (stun, bind, sleep, heavy, etc)

The cc the other 3 ranged have can be used offensively (stun, silence, sleep, etc)

SMN have NOTHING yet if they die while AF is on cooldown they are basically useless. There is basically zero room for any skilled play with SMN, there are no options on the table other than to do damage and run.

Also it is deceptive to look at the damage done at the end of the match by SMN. Sure it does damage, but it's useless damage in the game mode. The other jobs dump their damage in a burst on a single target, while SMN damage is all spread out and pointless.

You'd think that a job that is basically a sitting duck, takes huge penalties once killed, and has no offensive or defensive cc should at least have some midgare like burst, but no it does not.

And why is it still possible to LOS bahamut? You can literally negate half of a burst cycle from SMN by just LOSing bahamut, since it doesn't move and just twitches around when it can't see the target. As healer I've hidden from the entire duration of the bahamut summon. It's an absolute joke.

Can the devs please explain why SMN was designed this way? What secret power does it have that necessitates that it be so lacking in utility?

Being a SMN main dying to play this on ladder:
1) Being useless if you die with AE on CD - why can't ruin reduce AE CD? SCH still has this same weakness the difference is you can broil your aetherflow stacks if you don't have the cd, we don't have this.
2) Being able to cast on the move is nice, unfortunately unlike PvE where we hardcast out of DWT, PvP we hardcast IN DWT, why is such a relatively big CD so weak? We don't have tridisaster and thus don't even get any kind of reset from going into DWT. In fact aside from spamming ruin pressure (if you can even hit anything that doesn't instantly LoS you) you're better off getting out of it asap because the benefit from being in it is a damage increase that you can't make the most of (hardcasted ruins, no ruin procs, reapplying dots for a 5% damage increase is expensive etc - literally serves just to pop bahamut)
3) Speaking of bahamut, this is so painfully useless I'd rather just not have it and be buffed somewhere else. Having Akh Morn actually go off when you want it to is an absolute wildcard.
4) Going back to 1, I die. A lot. Even if I sit back there's no answer to the damage I take in because energy drain is weak and punishes your burst window for sustaining from it and I don't have any kind of snare or bind, I have to rely on tank/healer to peel. Healer won't peel because he'll be too busy spamming cures into me.
5) I don't have CC, I am literally useless compared to MCH, BRD and BLM who have better CC and more reliable burst and can run and peel - especially at the most crucial moment of the end of the game when I need to run and peel if winning.

Man I could go on but half of these reasons are enough as to chortle ungraciously at the state of the job. I remember a few seasons back when Lyegah hosted streamed and casted customs and people commented I was doing a lot of damage, yes I was getting 250k+ every game but most of it was useless tickling cleave from flare/morn and initial dots spread.

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

Snip

Yeah when you compare SMN to something like RDM, SMN is an absolute joke. SMN pretty much doesn't even have a burst. Deathflare is only 2,100 potency with the Dreadwyrm buff and only 2,200 if you put yourself in danger and get a Wither in. And that debuff only lasts 5secs lol. So if I use max damage potential it will be 2,200 potency. Then comes Bahamut. There's a gap in between Deathflare and Akh Morn which is also only 2,000 potency and extremely unreliable and hard to time with a countdown. Then there's the issue with SMNs running out of MP trying to apply DoTs. Honestly why does something so important to SMN even cost MP? Especially when BRD DoTs are free?

I don't even play SMN but I do observe them and read tooltips so I can get a good idea of how bad it is.

RDM:

Compare SMN to RDM which throws out absurd numbers with no effort and a ton of speed. And has a free permanent 10% damage buff to apply on any enemy at will. With that buff the Enchanted combo with Corps-a-Corps and Displacement does 11,550 potency all in about 7 seconds. That's just insane. Then a RDM can casually throw around 3,575 potency every GCD by using Jolt II -> Impact. If you have Muse you can really abuse that. If you don't want to do that, you can just do the normal free combos that do 3,025. That's more than SMNs strongest attacks which both need gauge build-up to even use, all within one GCD. It's no wonder why RDMs do absolutely insane damage numbers by the end of the match. No DoTs, just pure DPS. And then they can heal when needed to. That can be the difference between a win or not.

BRD:

Compare SMN to BRD. First of all, BRD gets FREE DoTs. In Wanderer's Minuet BRD can use Akh Morn(Talking about Pitch Perfect) every 3 GCDs and having high sustained damage on the side without having to worry about any gauges. Heavy Shot -> Straight Shot, DoTs, Empyreal Arrow, Sidewinder. It has Troubadour with a 5% party-wide damage buff too. Then in Warden's Paeon you can open with 4,000 potency using Barrage if Straight Shot is up and you combo it with Empyreal Arrow. You can do it twice too! Adding Sidewinder to it making it 5,500 potency burst within 1 GCD. BRDs also tend to pull very very high numbers. And they have Repelling Shot to escape or bind melees/tank, Blunt Arrow to silence healers and 5% damage buff/5% damage taken reduced party buffs. SMN has nothing. I also play BRD whenever queues allow so I at least have experience playing it.

Compare all that to SMN who has no utility and it's burst is restricted to one reliable 2,200 potency and another unreliable 2,000 potency with other small attack damage spread out through 20secs. Spread damage like that is useless in Feast where you need damage RIGHT AWAY.

Honestly I'm not really sure how to fix SMN. It's concept just doesn't seem like it can work in Feast unless it gets massive buffs to Deathflare and Akh Morn. It's weird because despite all this stuff, I'm getting teamed up with SMN and MCH more often than BRDs and RDMs. Getting alot of BLMs though...

When I see BLM I go melee or stop queueing. I struggle so hard healing against BLM...