Summoners of the past?

Not sure if an Atma is the proper answer, especially since BP delay reduction is hard capped to result in a minimum of a 45s delay. Expanding the hard cap to let it go down to 30s would probably be overpowered though. Jobs with pets are extremely hard to balance against those without, especially SMN since the spike damage output is so great.

@Evilvivi
Ok, My smn can keep up with all the DD's (- the emp weap ones) using af3 +1 head body and feet, relic hands, and af pants(ACC+)/relic pants(BP-) using a combo of different ATMA's depending on which avatar Im using. For ex: I use MM Noxious Fang and Beyond with Levi using grand fall(5/5) 3-4k+ everytime, or garuda (Predator Claws) MM VV RR 3.5k-5k everytime using Fay Crozier prep-3 BP-3 Pet MAB +2. My gear isnt the BEST but it is Above average, NOW compared to my blm, My blm out damages my smn Every Single Time using bliz5/fire5. both blm and smn are fully merited and both have above average gear. so idk where you got your stats

Your spike damage is giving you the illusion that you are keeping up with melee DDs. Parse a few fights and you'll quickly find that their normal melee attacks, with many crits due to RR atma (and no an avatar's melee attacks can't even compare to a good melee DD's), combined with the much higher frequency of weaponskills compared to BPs pretty much blow you away.

You are correct about the BLM part though. Not taking into consideration the fact that a BLM must eat the hate generated by his damage he can most certainly out-damage a SMN very easily.

BP rage & ward are on different timers now they unlinked them a while ago.

I agree that seeing some adjustments to BP: Ward to make them more useful would be good -and before everyone starts flaming me I know they are useful & I should use them more. At most I can stack maybe 3 depending on buff duration, I know they extended duration based on SMN skill already but as far as I know -& correct me if I'm wrong - these are still capped at 75 skill levels.

I would really like to see them improve avatar magic accuracy to so the enfeebles would be more useful. As it is now I rarely use them because they're pretty unreliable -though my skill is still horribly gimped from the level increase.

I would also love to see them improve avatar's restorative abilities, whispering wind is next to useless, spring water is mostly just useful for removing debuffs & even healing ruby 2 doesn't give much back, at lv99 it should return roughly 428HP -not accounting for avatars TP.
I'm often & much to my displeasure invited to parties only to discover I'm a main healer or as has also happened many times THE main healer lol. Even if they improved Light Spirit's AI that'd be great this would also be good for those times when your fighting something & your WHM gets face raped so that the SMN could step in temporarily & keep people alive until your group recovers. An ability to sacrifice the avatar to restore HP to a single or multiple party members might be good as usually if you want to use a healing pact & you don't have that avatar out you need to dismiss the one you do have, summon the one you need, wait for it to get within range then wait for it to use the BP all of which can easily mean a lot of death.

At the moment because SMN can do such awesome damage I find myself being mostly a DD -which doesn't worry me at all really lol- but I would like to see our support abilities improved so we can enjoy a more varied role again -and again before people start getting up me about this yes I do use my wards & favour where appropriate & yes they are useful but compared to how other jobs can buff/ debuff/ heal now SMN isn't as useful in these roles as it once was.

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Originally Posted by Strife

BP rage & ward are on different timers now they unlinked them a while ago.

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I was referring to the idea of unlinking individual Wards themselves, basically allowing you to use one Ward from each avatar on independent timers. Another alternative would be to make it so that BP delay is not simply a flat 1 min, but related to the BP itself. For example making Whispering Wind give a base BP-Ward delay of 45s whereas Hastega could remain at 1 min. Just a thought :)

I really like that idea about being able to sacrifice an elemental to cure. With a timer of 3 or 5 mins it could be a really effective way to boost the SMNs support role.

Yes I love all these ideas and i wish SE would take these idea into consideration. And glitch you are so right i forgot about the damage in between the rate of melee hits which pretty much makes them all just dominate us and your right also about the illusion of our spike damage making us think we are keeping up. I hope SE does something with summoner to make it one or another or we can do both maybe like light arts and dark arts something on that line would be awesome. Maybe like DD mode = lessen BP timer and raise mab acc att and acc etc and Buff mode= Longer buff duriation and stronger buffs etc. i think that would be amazing.

I had the occasion to parse Smn in many situations inside Abyssea and I can attest on how strongs avatars can be with the right atmas, even against skilled War/Nin/Mnk/Blm (Sam and Drk shoudn't be mentionned... these jobs are mainly deads in Abyssea for good reasons and I will be curious to see those "9k Gekko average").

1 BP every 45 sec (adding melee hits) is generally enough to keep up now. Blm can nuke for 5k once every 15 seconds? That's good but after 2 nukes on the same target they will have aggro (assuming there is no form of MDB on said monster) then what do they do? Mana Wall? Enmity Douse? Recasts Blink/Stoneskin? They certainly stop to nuke for a while. I agree that Blm is very good for chaining xp monsters but it's not the same story as fighting an NM with 50k HP (or run a clock to see if they really are nuking as frequently and not simply tossing 2 nukes in 30 seconds every 3 min)

As for support/buffer role goes, I'm very satisfied since the addition of Inferno Howl. People (with capped/high Summoning skill of course) really should try this BP, it's much more than a copy of Rolling Thunder and not just supposedly effective on fire weaks monsters.

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Originally Posted by Glitch

Your spike damage is giving you the illusion that you are keeping up with melee DDs. Parse a few fights and you'll quickly find that their normal melee attacks, with many crits due to RR atma (and no an avatar's melee attacks can't even compare to a good melee DD's), combined with the much higher frequency of weaponskills compared to BPs pretty much blow you away.

You are correct about the BLM part though. Not taking into consideration the fact that a BLM must eat the hate generated by his damage he can most certainly out-damage a SMN very easily.

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I have parsed a few of my groups, and my SMN has outdamaged the entire alliance, I just dont normally save them, but given this was at the 85 cap new gear has come out, so when the servers are back up I will pull my SMN out again, and reparse the results, and post the results.

I am sorry to all the summoners who say they can keep up with a DDs damage because i don't believe that its true. I have capped summoning skill and cant keep up at all. . . Sure my bps do 3.5k+ but my melee hits on smn hit for like 50-65 i see monks sams or drks hitting for 100+ per hit easy now mutiply that by there double att % and there triple att %. . . . And also the delay on smn attacks are long. Like glitch said you may think your keeping up but the illusion of the spike damage your seeing is only making you think that your keeping up. Maybe also giving the smns the stats you get from gear would help ? like if you have str on a piece of gear so does your smn etc.

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Originally Posted by jeffanddane

I am sorry to all the summoners who say they can keep up with a DDs damage because i don't believe that its true. I have capped summoning skill and cant keep up at all. . . Sure my bps do 3.5k+ but my melee hits on smn hit for like 50-65 i see monks sams or drks hitting for 100+ per hit easy now mutiply that by there double att % and there triple att %. . . . And also the delay on smn attacks are long. Like glitch said you may think your keeping up but the illusion of the spike damage your seeing is only making you think that your keeping up. Maybe also giving the smns the stats you get from gear would help ? like if you have str on a piece of gear so does your smn etc.

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A way around that is to break the "expected"of the smn and actually, maybe, melee? Sure, that doesn't bring a smn up to par with melee dd jobs. However, drop alot of the mp gear and rely on smn's naturally high mp more than other mp-reliant jobs and replace it with something to boost your own attack and str (not dropping gear than enhances your pet's ability of course).

I know, we can't explore that at the moment with the servers down. But, saying "it won't work" is the same as saying "even though I haven't tried it, my opinion will remain opinion and never fact".