SMN - Why it is not a very interesting job and not a good upgrade from ACN

there are already ZOUNDS of summoners around, relax.

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Originally Posted by Inosaska

The class needs an overhaul and you can tell it was rushed out the door just to make release. I would have rather waited and get it later in an expansion or a big patch.

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Ya but people don't want a warlock like from WoW they want it to be a summoner and to make the pet the vocal point of it and with that they would need to massively change the class and that will depend if they will ever undertake such a task.

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Eh its probably true what you are saying as most in the topic said square missed the point of the class considering the name IMO.

Maaan, I wish I'd seen that thread earlier! D:
I wrote a similiar thread in the german forums since it really bugs me how they implemented SMN.

Thank you kindly for having written such a detailed complaint, which I agree completly!

Actually Ifrit is completely worse than Garuda. His stun puts diminishing returns on bosses and when you need to interrupt something and you can't because Ifrit stunned or you accidentally canceled obey you will most likely wipe. The Garuda-Egi is the pet to use for all dungeons. Garuda is ranged, boosts your own dps, and is much likely to survive each encounter. Ifrit has no real purpose sadly.

This is not the only class suffering from a weak class issue, for example I also find BLM pointless vs THM, while THM brings in a solid set of skills BLM only adds some -very situational- skills with almost 0 synergy with the base class skills, it feels like they just rolled a dice and thrown in some random skills. I really hope they will listen and actually overhaul SMN and BLM job skills.

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Originally Posted by Samuraiking

Even though I am not a fan of WoW, it's certainly polished and was a good choice to draw inspiration from. However, mimicking WoW classes instead of keeping with the wonderful iconic theme of the FF universe is sad. They have pretty much ruined SMN. Don't get me wrong, the class functions as a class, what they have ruined is what SMN is at its' core, a summoning class that relies on the raw power of its' summons. The summons are, as OP has stated, quite shit. While FFXI wasn't a paragon of excellence in the SMN department(being a terrible healer with huge nuke bursts, but only every minute), it was still better than what they have done here. I don't have anything against a warlock, but it's not what I wanted to play, a real SMN was.

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Exactly I wanted a summoner someone that commands and deals their main damage through pets.

I actually like all the DoTs, I think a lot of people underestimate the value of them. However, I do agree that the class doesn't place enough importance on your summons. When I first read about the class I thought it was going to feel very similar to using a Red Mage in FFXI. It is similar but it feels like a watered down version of what a RDM could do.

I think adding a unique aura to each pet would be an interesting feature. For instance: Garuda's could deal DoT damage to any enemies in it's aura, Titan's could grant a damage reduction to enemies, and Ifrit's might give allies a bonus to their attacks. This is something that could add more focus on the summons and benefit the entire party.

More than anything I'd like to see more pet abilities. It would be nice to have a buff or two available like regen or some kind of dmg booster and I'm dying to have some CC added to the class. We get bind, but that's about it. I'd like to see us get some sleep, paralysis, or slow at least.

I did not notice that about Ifrit. Thanks for the warning about the Stun, and i agree the summons just aren't what the should be it is very much a clone of Warlock and im already leveling my next class rather than work on my 50 Summoner.

Scholar on the other hand seems alright.

i'm glad i leveled 50 arcanist for scholar and not summoner... summoner has good sustained dps, but it's so damn boring

edit: and we really need a way to toggle only our detrimental effects on an enemy, it's hard to see the time left on all of my DoTs when there's so many spell effects already there

I think a big problem is people not playing SMN correctly. Doing lvl 50 content on my SCH, I notice that I'm keeping my dots on bosses more often than SMNs in our group are, who constantly let their pet die, don't resummon them, and seem to just Ruin-spam.

Saying that, the parser's I'm seeing on the forum seem to have SMN damage competitive with BRD, slightly above BLM, and quite a bit higher than DRG and MNK. The damage definitely takes some rampup, and not managing your skills correctly can lead to a large damage drop off, but any flat buff to SMN damage would allow a properly played SMN to blow past the other jobs. QoL fixes, like a way to cleanse pets/being able to command them while casting/proper Obey function is all that's needed.

Also remember that having a 50 SMN gives you access to SCH too, which is significantly more powerful than WHM by every metric save burst-AoE healing.