How to play Summoner

[RAIST]

I would have to say this thread has gotten the most bang-for-the-buck from Karbuncle's 2-cents.

It really all boils down to the playstyle you and your friends feel most comfortable using. I would hazard a guess I am most versatile on SMN out of all my jobs, except maybe NIN. With 240 slots to carry crap, I am a virtual walking armory and am able to swap out gears to change my role quite easily. Couple that with all the macro banks at our disposal now, it's not too hard to swap gears out to try to optimise your better WS.

I have a small group I do a lot of stuff with, 3 of us have SMN leveled. When it becomes necessary, I usually get the honor of going into full battlemage mode as I have the most gear to support that role and still maintain 1 or 2 mp refresh as SMN/WHM with no refresher and no Favor, while the others will take the more traditional BP and support roles. It works well for us. I can set up the skillchain for someone else to close, then the avatars can burst off it.

Again... it's all really situational and according to what you are most comfortable with and prepared to do. Just because it traditionally has been seen as a backline, stay away from danger type of job, that doesn't mean that is the only way to play it--just means that is how most people chose to play it based on the situations they were faced with.

[Secondplanet]

Raist i'm glad to see another smn such as yourself who doesn't categorize this job between 2 different play styles, i posted earlier in the board but got drowned out for bickering that had nothing to do with the topic on hand which doesn't surprise me with these boards. Thats why i say you can't write a guide for how to play this job when this very job is a creation is made by the player using it.

[Draylo]

How to play summoner:

Astral flow > Alexander > finished.

[Korpg]

How to play summoner:

Astral flow > Alexander > finished.

Ask a BLU how to play SMN, and this is what you get.

[Karbuncle]

How to play BLU

Nation > Mog house > Change jobs

I can be sarcastic too

[Korpg]

How to play BLU

Nation > Mog house > Change jobs

I can be sarcastic too

But what about yellow procs!!?!?!

[Draylo]

How to play BLU

Nation > Mog house > Change jobs

I can be sarcastic too

O hell naw

[Dallas]

I told you to choose your lies more carefully. It's like the WAR trying to convince us that anyone lets their 1-trick pony job zerg anything in Abyssea but Chloris. SMN only deals measurable damage in VW because a real DD isn't even present. Don't insult DD by thinking anyone ranks your BP/release at all.

[Korpg]

Dallas, I think you are just jelly that a WAR can deal 11k damage from a WS they got 100% TP from in less than 3 seconds.

So, lets figure that out, you get 300% TP in, what, 100 seconds. I get 100% TP in 3 seconds. Assuming that I'm fighting a mob(s) that won't die in less than 100 seconds, I deal, what, 336k damage from WS alone. Hypothetically of course. No mob out there would last that long, specially junk mobs that you can melee.

Can you deal that much damage in that amount of time though?

[Malamasala]

Why I say SMN is great for keeping up damage without using TP is because the TP can be stored or reserved for WS procs, which is a fact of how Voidwatch usually works. All jobs, including SMN, will also be holding their TP until they can use it to proc on something.

I'm still annoyed at it only saying "Blood pacts" as a hint. Well, yea, I only have 50 of them, thanks for the hint. Might as well say "Weapon skills" or "Magic" for trigger hints. I seriously think SE needs to change this to "Shiva pacts" and such in description, but the problem is that it would create 9 categories for SMN only, and make SMN THE most important VW job.

I think a better system would be if only 70 and 75 pacts can proc. That is just 12 pacts to try, which is more similar to all the dagger WSes or all the Sword WSes.