Why is Summoner the most ignored, misunderstood and broken job?

[Korpg]

If your staff skill didn't blow chunks, your pet wouldn't be disposable.

That's right! Because with a decent staff skill, your avatar wouldn't have the chance to die, before the summoner dies!

Avatars won't be disposable anymore. You will. Both in parties and solo.

[Neisan_Quetz]

CG on outmeleeing a naked blm?

[Neonii]

I'm gonna reply to the OP

You really don't understand Summoner at all.

SMN in abyssea can pretty much solo any mob in abyssea it takes time but still it's an impressive thing outside that it does enough DMG to get by and u can astral burn crap for boxes.

honestly theres plenty SMN can do in abyssea and yes it's not a fast DD but thats never what SMN is about.

Outside abyssea it still has it's niche as the safe/low hate DD if you have a had to handle mob (voidwatch this is the case ALOT) SMN can constantly pump DMG out meaning all the rest of the party has to do is stay alive.
still one of the most reliable method of killing crap is Tank party + SMN party.

outside this there is alot of obsolete rubbish on SMN Favors, spirits ect but forget that stuff.

honestly when i read the OP all i got from it was "O SE tell me how to play my job cause i'm too lazy to work it out or ask other useful SMNs"

Will you share with me how you manage to proc mobs solo in Abyssea? I can solo stuff but I have found doing the necessary procs difficult. However, I am willing to learn and improve. Care to share some of your bag of tricks? I would imagine it has to do with sub job? I prob need to level more at this time I only have whm and rdm sub leveled. In fact I think we should make a whole topic called SMN bag of tricks so the smn community can network.

[Zanoza]

[/QUOTE] Does SMN always have something to do? No, and it's one of the only jobs for which that's true. However, the avatar is not monopolizing the summoner's resources; they could be tossing buffs or cures from your subjob if they're that bored. What's more, is they're one of the only jobs that can be contributing to a fight while staying near-constantly out of AoE range and having very little risk of taking hate in a party situation.[/QUOTE]

all avatars do monopolize SMN's main resource to be an effective back-up healer or nuker, MP, the higher you get the more mp it costes to keep em out. a way that a smn can compinsate for this is in fact melee with staff since Spirit taker converts damage done into MP which can let the smn keep the avatar out longer and possibly have the mp to toss a cure here and there. Having the global cooldowns does in fact suck since it does lower dps of avatars. If you want something dead we get the short end of the stick. If SE gave us other stuff to keep us busy during the cool down and DONT say heal since a RDM or SCH main is a much better healer then smn is since they have a much higher healing skill.

[Dallas]

CG on outmeleeing a naked blm?

Congratulations on undernuking a melee RDM.

[Razushu]

Does SMN always have something to do? No, and it's one of the only jobs for which that's true. However, the avatar is not monopolizing the summoner's resources; they could be tossing buffs or cures from your subjob if they're that bored. What's more, is they're one of the only jobs that can be contributing to a fight while staying near-constantly out of AoE range and having very little risk of taking hate in a party situation.[/QUOTE]

all avatars do monopolize SMN's main resource to be an effective back-up healer or nuker, MP, the higher you get the more mp it costes to keep em out. a way that a smn can compinsate for this is in fact melee with staff since Spirit taker converts damage done into MP which can let the smn keep the avatar out longer and possibly have the mp to toss a cure here and there. Having the global cooldowns does in fact suck since it does lower dps of avatars. If you want something dead we get the short end of the stick. If SE gave us other stuff to keep us busy during the cool down and DONT say heal since a RDM or SCH main is a much better healer then smn is since they have a much higher healing skill.[/QUOTE]

Even half decent gear nowadays is enough to have free avatars. MP shouldn't be an issue at all any more unless you're still using a gear set from lvl75 cap. Until they fix the BP delay system back up healing/support is the best use of our time between BPs. We're not DDs SMN is a DD/support hybrid our DPS is lower than DDs through intent not completely failed design(Global timer indicates partially failed design though). If you find yourself at too much of a loose end start cycling buffs in a party. Also healing skill does next to nothing for Cure spells(below Cure V) only interupt rate.

[Razushu]

Congratulations on undernuking a melee RDM.

Congrats on not understanding what SMN is

[Toukai]

I always melee as Smn in abyssea parties, working on Shareeravadi+2 for pet M.atb atm which has some decent Dmg on it. My gear aint pimped out, nothin too special, but even using M.atb Atma for shiva, I do fairly well. Pull out garuda for hastega now and then (since lets face it, not many ppl really haste/buff in aby parties) or a titan for Stoneskin, keep shiva out for ice spikes and 4.5-5kish heavenly strikes, then spirit taker for my mp. Just don't like sittin on my butt for too long, love to be in the fray.

I don't bother healing unless i think i can save a life with my lolcure III if im /rdm. If i really am just in a DD mood, /sam ftw heh. The way I see it, A job can be anything you make it out to be. Even if Smn was never "meant" to DD with the big boys, we got spirit taker, some decently high damage staves, means to keep Avatars out for a long time and boost their damage. I'm not hoping to outparse a mnk in a Dolls party but i know i've outdamaged a ton of mediocre DDs with crap Atma lol. And thats enough :3 Although I would like to see some more DD gear for smn. Gimme a haste set or somethin. Don't wanna redo my scenario gear though >.>;

[Ketaru]

Melee traits:
Resist slow
Auto-refresh

They aren't spectacular, but none of them are needed at backlines where you can just avoid slow, erase your own slow as /WHM, or kneel and rest MP with your clear mind trait.

It is of course still just opinions. Like my opinion is that RDM has refresh to allow them to melee and regain MP. Your opinion might be that RDM is a terrible melee, so they got refresh to be good at backlines instead.

That's a terribly thought out case. Slow is detrimental to the magic side of things too, especially to casters that depend on casting in rapid succession like healers or blink tanks. Not to mention that Resist traits have never been dependable. They're just there so you can grin and say "Lucky me" every 1 out of 15-20 times you actually resist because of the trait.

Besides, if you were being treated like a legitimate damage dealer, most forms of Slow should never land on you because you'd have Haste effect anyway.

Ditto to Refresh which, regardless of your opinion, or backliner opinions, it functions just as well either way.

If you were going to make a case for RDM, you wouldn't go with "It has Refresh." You'd go with reasons like: native access to good critical hit weaponskills, spells that directly increase the damage of melee swings that are not a function of the weapon's DMG rating itself, a job ability that increases Accuracy and decreases casting load, and sufficient gear availability to allow you to cap gear Haste. In case you haven't noticed though, even all that doesn't produce the necessary numbers to convince the greater playerbase. And nobody can even say any of these things about SMN.

I always melee as Smn in abyssea parties, working on Shareeravadi+2 for pet M.atb atm which has some decent Dmg on it. My gear aint pimped out, nothin too special, but even using M.atb Atma for shiva, I do fairly well. Pull out garuda for hastega now and then (since lets face it, not many ppl really haste/buff in aby parties) or a titan for Stoneskin, keep shiva out for ice spikes and 4.5-5kish heavenly strikes, then spirit taker for my mp. Just don't like sittin on my butt for too long, love to be in the fray.

I don't bother healing unless i think i can save a life with my lolcure III if im /rdm. If i really am just in a DD mood, /sam ftw heh. The way I see it, A job can be anything you make it out to be. Even if Smn was never "meant" to DD with the big boys, we got spirit taker, some decently high damage staves, means to keep Avatars out for a long time and boost their damage. I'm not hoping to outparse a mnk in a Dolls party but i know i've outdamaged a ton of mediocre DDs with crap Atma lol. And thats enough :3 Although I would like to see some more DD gear for smn. Gimme a haste set or somethin. Don't wanna redo my scenario gear though >.>;

You know...I'm sure some people are going to get on my case of being some sort of internet Grammar Nazi who doesn't like to have any fun and doesn't appreciate some good light-hearted chit chat.

But some of you guys use too many smileys, too much internet chatspeak, too much "I do this" or "I do that" without seemingly any intent to prove a point. Normally, I'd completely skip over a reply like yours. But it's about time somebody puts this in writing.

If you want to convince people of your stance on something, that's a terrible way of going about it. Stuff like this belongs on AOL Instant Messenger. When I type, I'm doing it with the intention of making sure people can read what I'm saying.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Congratulations on undernuking a melee RDM.

The game, you just lost it.