2.4 SMN Class Issues

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Originally Posted by Lamia-Blackheart

I agree. Waaaay too much BS being thrown around.

People are claiming 450-500 when the only actual clear videos ive seen that have dps # and a summoner in the group, the best smn are pulling 429 max on t10 and 11 with 401 max on t12. Lots of claims of higher numbers but no videos to back them up.

This is after hearing weeks of "oh with the adds in t10/11/12 summoner should be hitting 500 dps easily. Probably close to 700 during the adds phases."

for those of you that want to see the best numbers on film that i've found so far, check out http://www.twitch.tv/crimmmd/profile

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http://i.imgur.com/8xYi0iZ.jpg

From a little over a month ago.

Highest ive done in T10 was 480ish almost 490, but i dont have that screenshotted

If you looked at the video though, Sen, you would realise that the video he posted was from November 5th. 2 and a half months ago. He pretty much had a perfect run and was above the Black Mage. Although the SCH was using EoS which is a quite a big DPS decrease for a BLM. The discrepancy between your gear and his gear in time is probably the main thing. I'm certain that Lamia his DPS will be a lot higher by this time considering his dots never fell off, his Shadow Flare was up pretty much all the time, he baned both adds and LB, and spent almost no time with no MP. Although, as you can see he has to use energy drain like 5 times.

480 dps is no proud achievement if you were to show it off to other dps who can get higher numbers. Hell, I have a screenshot of me doing that much too, but I get beaten by NIN and BRD.

http://i.imgur.com/YAdr87H.png

Please do note a few things: the NIN is about the same ilvl as me (ilvl 124) and he only died at the last 5 seconds of the fight, DRG had to deal with RNG mechanics and has i120 weapon, and BRD has i135 weapon and played songs of course (disembowel too good on BRD). I was using Ifrit-egi and forgot to compensate for how much higher accuracy is required. I really hate this part about SMN is the fact that we have to lose some secondary stats to get accuracy for our pet, so I hope they change this. I also had to LB and couldn't auto-attack the boss for 2/3rds of the fight to maximize dps.

Not like it matters though cause I'm sure a really good BLM could do 10%-15% better than a SMN anyways. *shrugs*

Edit: I've seen that SMN in that stream on my server and well, he doesn't play SMN anymore. He's playing NIN now.

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

Interesting thought about the Enhanced Pet Skill.

Seeing as how it's SMNs proc skill and due to how the spell speed stat works it amounts to just shy of nothing, I get the feeling that it was a design flaw.

What I think it should be is
"Increase Casting Speed by 20%"

This would put SMN @ 2s GCD or less when it procs and give it an opportunity to make up damage when it procs.

For SCH this shouldn't have a major impact over WHM who has a CD for the same effect.

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Example using Ifrit for the double proc rate and crit gear @ (i130) on average you should be able to get an extra 3-4 Ruins each 60s.
(~24 DPS on the high end)

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While this would be indeed a good change, it would just make our MP issues even that much more apparent. If that change were to happen, it would have to happen alongside a MP solving fix else we'd just go starving for MP that much quicker.

The problem with the Summoner is it's a DoT based DPS which means to be effective they have to know the fight better than the White Mage in order to plan out actions before hand which is a massive design flaw for a DPS it guarantees only 2% of the population that mains Summoner will be able to play in very high level raid encounter like Coil or even Alexander because lets face it Alexander is probably going to be a lot more intense and punishing then FCOB. The way other DPS are designed they don't have to deal with knowing every single aspect of the Raid like the Summoner or having to over gear to be accepted into progression groups. The fact that a massive amount of players ran from Summoner and switched to Ninja, Black Mage and Healer should tell SE that the Summoner has a broken design.

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Originally Posted by Dwill

While this would be indeed a good change, it would just make our MP issues even that much more apparent. If that change were to happen, it would have to happen alongside a MP solving fix else we'd just go starving for MP that much quicker.

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That's true. I could see it being balanced with an energy drain.
(3 Ruin 240 Potency 237 MP)

But that cuts into you gains @ +90 Potency/min.

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

That's true. I could see it being balanced with an energy drain.
(3 Ruin 240 Potency 237 MP)

But that cuts into you gains @ +90 Potency/min.

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Exactly, using Energy Drain would kill nearly any gain we'd get. As drastic as this might sounds, if it was up to me, I would:

• Remove Foe's Requiem from the game (Being balanced around the off chance that casters might get it sometimes at some point while melee don't have to worry about it is a massive design flaw and adding a melee counterpart to Foe would be adding more issues than solving them), increase the potency of every spells that benefits from it (as in every WHM/CNJ, BLM/THM and ARC/SMN spells) by ~3-4% to compensate.

• Increase the potency of Bio II, Bio, Miasma by 10% Ruin I and II by 15% to increase single target damage (which would result in an average gain on single of about 8%)

• Decrease Arcanist/Summoner's spells MP cost by 10% across the board OR increase the potency of Energy Drain to 225 and increase its MP return to 75% to reduce the damage penalty of using Energy Drain.

This should be Summoner pretty close to Black Mage in single target, Black Mage would still be the king of AoE and Summoners could actually not go out of MP past 3 minutes without throttling their damage to a good degree.


And for anyone who might find the numbers too much/too little, these are ideas so numbers are purely theoretical.

hey there fellas.

I don't know what should be done for balance since I don't play mage classes. I just want to pose some questions, Should smn really have higher ST than blm in a standstill fight? If the do, the gap would be pretty big in highs with high movement wouldn't they?

Then we'd be seeing blm crying for buffs. It's a pretty viscious cycle until the are doing the same amount as melee dps in a fight lol. As soon as that happens, melee will go extinct because there would be no reason to bring someone who is limited to staying on the boss for damage and in "more danger" of taking damage than ranged. They'd be a liability in every way except for limit break.

Then the melee will cry for buffs.... and so on.

Maybe smn and blm should be tied In ST damage in fights with smn pulling ahead in heavy movement ones?

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Originally Posted by Leonus

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A really good blm should know how to manage themselves in high movement fight and not be a liability. If they utilize manawall/manaward at the right time and use aetherial manipulate, they don't need to move around a lot. In pre-echo T8, BLM can do really close to or the same as melee DPS in that fight if they don't really have to do anything. Meanwhile, SMN's are all the way down there by a 60-80 dps gap, but of course this was with i110 gear. Even in T11, a slight movement fight, SMN does 40-70 dps lower than a BLM cause most of that is ST. You would think that SMN's can be closer in damage with how there's 3 nodes, but there's a risk to that since 2 adds need to be killed at about the same time.

If SMN and BLM should be tied in ST damage, I guess that would be ok, but BLM will still be superior in AoE damage, so there will still be an advantage of bringing BLM if a fight had some part to AoE at, like T12 and 13. But having the gap be closed or somewhat closer would be nice to see.

I never had an issue with BLM being the superiod AoE DPS back when SMN was better with single target damage, but to have your only competition (in terms of ranged caster DPS) be superior on both fronts is not right.

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Originally Posted by Leonus

hey there fellas.

I don't know what should be done for balance since I don't play mage classes. I just want to pose some questions, Should smn really have higher ST than blm in a standstill fight? If the do, the gap would be pretty big in highs with high movement wouldn't they?

Then we'd be seeing blm crying for buffs. It's a pretty viscious cycle until the are doing the same amount as melee dps in a fight lol. As soon as that happens, melee will go extinct because there would be no reason to bring someone who is limited to staying on the boss for damage and in "more danger" of taking damage than ranged. They'd be a liability in every way except for limit break.

Then the melee will cry for buffs.... and so on.

Maybe smn and blm should be tied In ST damage in fights with smn pulling ahead in heavy movement ones?

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Soo.. BLM gets to be better AoE, Single target, aaand burst while having no resource pool? BLM mobility isnt bad, although a bit RNG, and SMN mobility isnt as good as people think it is. SMN also need to be in melee range to really take advantage of their DPS.

The difference between Black Mage and Summoner is that Black Mage has a bursts phase astral fire and MP regen phase Umbra Ice which averages there DPS around the middles while the Summoner has a slow ramp up then they Bursts around their peak and after 4mins they bursts around their minimum. Their is no easy fix for the Summoner without breaking job balance. Since SE doesn't know how DoT DPS work they should rework the Summoner into a Pet Based Job. In order to balance a DoT DPS so players will use it in hardcore endgame it has to be balance around content and intentionally made overpowered otherwise it'll be useless.

Something that might be neat on SMN is if Bane reset the Dot timers for mobs it spreads to.

- Bane keeps the snapshot of the original dots. (I.e RS POT + TA)

So this might shift the focus of MP conservation to keeping your buffed dots going as long as possible by bouncing them back and forth between mobs.
Also, not having to refresh them before using Bane would be amazing.

1. Reduce enkindle cd to 120s
2. Make bane effect all enemies in radius.
3. replace 3 disaster with mp buff
4. increase melee type egi damage resistance
5. change egi design to be like actual primal. size can be the size of hyur race n it will not block any player view