We have finally come full circle, SMN's need help!

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Originally Posted by Clarkamite

EDIT: As of today, I was told for at least the first half of the fight (t11) our SMN was maintaining 500 DPS. Again sounds pretty legit to me. No idea what he ended up at. I just ask for my numbers to compare to myself. My only point with any of this was to say that here our SMN is apparently pushing really high DPS and I've seen him several times use a battle rez when people (our bard; twice in the same run today) are dying for no apparent reason. He never seems to be running out of mana. I just don't know what other people are doing compared to him that make them so starved for mana. I'm not criticizing or arguing, just offering perspective from what I see with my group.

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Can we have his gear? Our MNK, NIN and BLM are hovering around 600 when the add phase comes, usually 10-20 less depending on where we push.

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Originally Posted by Xolotl

An easy fix would be to break the connection fester has with aetherflux, or make it like a bard's bloodletter

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Making it like Bloodletter would be ludicrously overpowered in situations where SMN can Bane. A BRD multi-dotting to fish for River of Blood will use up a lot of TP and several GCDs to do so...a SMN with Bane could achieve the same result instantly. In addition, BRD only has two dots that can produce a proc, whereas if Fester "procs" were triggered by any SMN dot (including Shadow Flare), SMN would have a whopping 5. Traiting SMN's "Enhanced Pet Actions" to give another Fester might be an okay alternative, idk.

I like the idea of simply removing Fester from Aetherflow consumption the best, though. Not only would burning stacks on Energy Drain make SMN self-sustainable, it would be a DPS boost as well, as Drain can be used off GCD and DOES have potency, even if it's small.

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Originally Posted by Orrias

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Well, I can't make sense of your post because it contradicts somewhat so I didn't even want to try to understand it. What really is the point you're trying to make in that post? Also Aetherflow mp returns are dependent on how much mp you have; you restore 20% of your max mp. It may not be the best fix, but it is the quickest and somewhat tiny fix that kinda matters at this point, and it doesn't affect the SCH counterpart. I don't want to see a SCH buff/nerf coming into effect just because of how many issues a SMN have.

I play both SMN (main character) and SCH (alt character). A change to both Aetherflow and Energy Drain that you're suggesting right now would make it so SCH's have no mp issues whatsoever and can up their dps potential as a healer. Basically, they can use more of their stacks to Lustrate and use Sacred Soil. Really good SCH (with reliable WHM) could probably be in Cleric Stance for like 40%-60% in high-end fights. Right now SCH is at a good position for being a healer and has decent dps to help out with pushing. They can even get more dps than a tank, depending on the fights.

Any dps simulator will show that the longer the encounter the lower the Summoner's dps will be regardless of mana issues. There is something inherently broken with the Summoner's design.
Final Fantasy XI- Summoner's game play was fun but was useless in endgame content because it was a nerf healer and is poorly optimized
Final Fantasy XIV-Summoner's game play is boring and has become useless in high end raiding content because of broken class combination and poor optimization.

Good job SE you have successfully found two broken game play styles for the Summoner.

A good way to fix the Summoner is to take the Summoner from Final Fantasy Tactics and adapt it to this game.

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Originally Posted by Akiza

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Final Fantasy Tactics - Summoner's gameplay included powerful, very large AoE magic that depleted MP extremely fast and had no way to regenerate MP.

...which basically boils down to the exact same issue you're saying FFXIV's Summoner has, only significantly more skewed. "Okay, I'm going to deal 2x as much damage as a BLM for the first five minutes, aaaaand Ballad plz"

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Originally Posted by Shizuna

Well, I can't make sense of your post because it contradicts somewhat so I didn't even want to try to understand it. What really is the point you're trying to make in that post? Also Aetherflow mp returns are dependent on how much mp you have; you restore 20% of your max mp. It may not be the best fix, but it is the quickest and somewhat tiny fix that kinda matters at this point, and it doesn't affect the SCH counterpart. I don't want to see a SCH buff/nerf coming into effect just because of how many issues a SMN have.
I play both SMN (main character) and SCH (alt character). A change to both Aetherflow and Energy Drain that you're suggesting right now would make it so SCH's have no mp issues whatsoever and can up their dps potential as a healer. Basically, they can use more of their stacks to Lustrate and use Sacred Soil. Really good SCH (with reliable WHM) could probably be in Cleric Stance for like 40%-60% in high-end fights. Right now SCH is at a good position for being a healer and has decent dps to help out with pushing. They can even get more dps than a tank, depending on the fights.

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You found my post contradicting, and hence "didn't want to try to understand" it, and yet you want to know what "is the point [I'm] trying to make in that post"... (¬.¬)7

As this is a SMN orientated thread, what I mention is going to be related to them, and not SCHs. Why would I advocate adding more Aetherflow stacks to SCHs..? I know full well that the Jobs are intertwined, and I take iit for granted that the people posting here have the intelligence to know that too.

In any case, my post before the one you quoted made mention that I thought "Aetherflow is also a nuissance, as any buffs it could potentially receive are, under the current Job system, [are] going to be subject to watering down due to it being a ACN ability". I've also mentioned in several other thread posts that having SMN & SCH linked via traits, and crucially Aetherflow, is a bad idea. Personally, I'm all for splitting the two Jobs apart from one another, or removing the shared traits factor between the Jobs.

In regards as to why I'd like to see more Aethflow stacks, as opposed to PIE or stat 'band aides', if you play SMN competitively, then you'll know that Festers are needed to keep up with every other dps apart from BRD, in FCoB. As it stands, once the initial stacks (that can be used from the start of the fight) are gone, and you now have to wait for Aetherflow to come off of CD, your dps drops very quickly, because you have nothing with which to spike your dps. I was arguing that SMNs need more stacks, not SCH's, however, that doesn't seem likely given that it is an ACN ability, as is Energy Drain.

As for Energy Drain, because BRD's won't sing ballads for SMNs only in FCoB (as it's a dps loss), a SMN has to resort to either mp pots or Energy Drain. If you were to use Energy Drain instead of Fester, then you've lost a huge chunk of damage, and, the mp returns on its use are meager (e.g. ~250-275 mp when it doesn't crit, and ~400-430 on a crit, and Energy Drain hardly ever crits). It is essentially a waste of Aetherflow stacks for a SMN and should have the Aetherlfow stack requirement removed from it and it's potency increased to improve mp returns.

Even if you were to buff Energy Drain, and you were to 'solve' the mp issues SMN has in FCoB, you haven't solved the problem of them dropping such a large amount of dps due to not having an Aetherflow stack at-hand to be able to fester. Both SMN & BRD are inherently flawed, as they both rely heavily on nuanced fight mechanics to cover up the fact that they peak quick, but fade to a timid lull, whilst over Jobs either treadmill up to a high plateau (e.g. MNK/ NIN/ DRG), or have the ability to spike their dps based on lucky procs (i.e. BLM).


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Originally Posted by HakuroDK

Final Fantasy Tactics - Summoner's gameplay included powerful, very large AoE magic that depleted MP extremely fast and had no way to regenerate MP.

...which basically boils down to the exact same issue you're saying FFXIV's Summoner has, only significantly more skewed. "Okay, I'm going to deal 2x as much damage as a BLM for the first five minutes, aaaaand Ballad plz"

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If we did twice the damage as a Black Mage in the firsts five minutes it will make up for our dps drastically dropping off to 185 dps for the remainder of fight.

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Originally Posted by Akiza

If we did twice the damage as a Black Mage in the firsts five minutes it will make up for our dps drastically dropping off to 185 dps for the remainder of fight.

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But it would unbalance the 5 minute fights. Better solution would be to make it so SMN dps doesn't drop so dramatically.

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Originally Posted by Orrias

As for Energy Drain, because BRD's won't sing ballads for SMNs only in FCoB (as it's a dps loss), a SMN has to resort to either mp pots or Energy Drain. If you were to use Energy Drain instead of Fester, then you've lost a huge chunk of damage, and, the mp returns on its use are meager (e.g. ~250-275 mp when it doesn't crit, and ~400-430 on a crit, and Energy Drain hardly ever crits). It is essentially a waste of Aetherflow stacks for a SMN and should have the Aetherlfow stack requirement removed from it and it's potency increased to improve mp returns.

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Energy Drain restores a fixed amount of MP regardless of damage done; the HP restoration is what's based on damage.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

But it would unbalance the 5 minute fights. Better solution would be to make it so SMN dps doesn't drop so dramatically.

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The Final Fantasy Tactics Summoner was AoE nuke with friendly fire and Pets provide AoE nukes, Crowd Control, Support, Tanking and Heals. That's a good solution for Summoner since Black Mage is sustained dps already.

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Originally Posted by Akiza

The Final Fantasy Tactics Summoner was AoE nuke with friendly fire and Pets provide AoE nukes, Crowd Control, Support, Tanking and Heals. That's a good solution for Summoner since Black Mage is sustained dps already.

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I don't know what FFT has to do with the topic. I mean, it's probably my favorite FF, but it has no bearing on FFXIV. I'm not really sure what the rest of your post is supposed to be saying.

I hope they respond soon. I hate that I have spent so much time working on my summoner relic and so much poetry gearing up summoner but will probably have to switch to something else. At least the gear isn't too bad because I can run as blm instead, but summoner really is in a position where it needs to be looked at and fixed.

Just bumping this and agreeing with it. Smn mana needs sorting. I had to switch to Monk for final coil. Smn mana right now is not viable. Hope SE looks into it. A 400mp would be ideal.

It's funny because Warlocks are facing similar issues in WoW and ACN/SMN were pretty much poorly retrofitted into ARR's version of Warlock, seeing how this game loves taking a lot from it. Well not funny for people maining Summoner of course, they could really use some buffs and a fix to their MP issues, hopefully before 3.0 and also hoping Heavensward will revamp it properly.

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Originally Posted by Mature

Just bumping this and agreeing with it. Smn mana needs sorting. I had to switch to Monk for final coil. Smn mana right now is not viable. Hope SE looks into it. A 400mp would be ideal.

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Curious to hear if any other SMNs have swapped mains. A guy in one of our server's first T13-clearing groups swapped to NIN partway through the raidcycle. I haven't YET, but BRD is looking pretty tempting right now since our group doesn't currently have one.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Curious to hear if any other SMNs have swapped mains. A guy in one of our server's first T13-clearing groups swapped to NIN partway through the raidcycle. I haven't YET, but BRD is looking pretty tempting right now since our group doesn't currently have one.

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I swapped out of spite once I saw the gear that was datamined in 2.4.... That and I wanted to give ninja a shot.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Curious to hear if any other SMNs have swapped mains. A guy in one of our server's first T13-clearing groups swapped to NIN partway through the raidcycle. I haven't YET, but BRD is looking pretty tempting right now since our group doesn't currently have one.

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I have started working on my BLM and almost to lvl 40 with it. It is sad cause I do like the SMN but I feel currently I would be better use to a party with another job atm :/

WoW never was able to fix the Warlock since Cataclysm and the solution was to let them die off. Arcanist/Summoner is in danger of dying off right no and like Blizzard SE has no choice but either overhaul the Summoner or let them die off.

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Originally Posted by Akiza

WoW never was able to fix the Warlock since Cataclysm and the solution was to let them die off. Arcanist/Summoner is in danger of dying off right no and like Blizzard SE has no choice but either overhaul the Summoner or let them die off.

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I see no reason why an "overhaul" is needed. This isn't the Apocalypse of SMN. Don't get me wrong, they aren't a dead class they are just weaker in comparison to others.

Anyone serious about endgame raiding will switch, though, whether they decide themselves or are asked to by their raid leaders. Why would you take a summoner when pretty much every other DPS will be better? And especially why smn over blm when blm has the advantage, and they share gear so if you also have blm at 50 it's very easy to go with blm instead. This is the same issue that dragoons were having and they got buffed so they wouldn't be excluded from endgame in favor of monk and ninjas. Now it's summoner in that position.

Just giving the topic another bump with a few more thoughts brewing in my head on how to get SMN outta its existing MP situation without touching the SCH side of things:


(1) A direct boost to Fester's damage, giving SMN more spike potential and being able to use Energy Drain with less DPS loss due to Fester's increased potency. I dunno how much increased potency, but this would work towards teaching SMNs how to manage resources and balance between Energy Drain and Fester for resources. Of course I imagine a change like this would make SMNs single target damage in any non-end game run to hit some pretty insane levels since they have no MP issues there.

(2) Change Fester to have the following additional effect:
"Gives a 25% chance that your next energy will not require an Aetherflow charge for 10 seconds for each DoT applied to the target". Free MP + damage, gooo~

(3) Modify Tri-Disaster to be an oGCD ability that casts for free, instant, has a 30 second cool down, single target spell with the potency of Ruin that has a 50% chance of restoring a stack of Aetherflow to the SMN

/2gil

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

(3) Modify Tri-Disaster to be an oGCD ability that casts for free, instant, has a 30 second cool down, single target spell with the potency of Ruin that has a 50% chance of restoring a stack of Aetherflow to the SMN
/2gil

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Your other ideas are fine, but no to this. I use Tri-disaster a lot in PvP already. And when the level cap is raised, when we're fighting things much higher level than we are, Tri-disaster will come into use as a very important kiting tool.

Just look at the numbers, it's the least played class right now. Either it dies like WoW Warlock or they fix them like they did for Dragoon. To let them die off would be a shame when Summoner is one of the standard FF jobs.

Very specific issues across the board for the class but the MP one is definitely the dominate problem.

There are a few avenues they could take to change Summoner but NOT Scholar.

1) Add Energy Drains affect to Fester. Keep Fester the exact same just simply add in Energy Drains MP Regeneration affect at the very least 266MP like current, to Fester. SMNs already for the most part choose to not sacrifice a Fester for a Energy Drain because the returns on Energy Drain are so small. This fix, affects Summoner only and alleviates to some degree the MP issue. (Solid Solution)

2) Change Enkindle. Instead of simply doing damage, keep a 4-5m GCD (I think 4m cause 5ms is a bit to long for Enkindle anyway regardless) on it, and make it so it full restores all of a SMNs MP. Considering a SMN goes OOM at about 4-5 mins performing optimally this is a clever balance to it. Essentially this brings the class up to par with BLM (Infinite MP) which is fair considering the damage BLM is capable of doing at current. No potencys would need changing, exclusive to SMN. (Solid Solution)

PS: Every other DoW or DoM class at current has a solid MP/TP regeneration aspect thats well balanced for the class. BRD/NIN/DRG/MNK all have Invigorate (400 TP). BLM, Infinite MP via Umbral Ice (part of their core rotation)
SMN has Energy Drain (266MP), tied directly to their DPS (Fester substitution; No other class has this), and it only allows you to cast 2 skills, where as Invigorate gives you much more then 2 skills on any other class, how is that balanced?

Other avenues that would affect both:

3) Increase the influence Magic Damage and INT have on DoTs. (This, however would effect SCH as well also doesn't solve the MP issue, just increases DPS over a fight.)

4) Spellspeed Influencing DoT tick occurence. This would also affect SCH ( Ideally being coded to not affect healing spells from Eos) but it would also validate SS on SMN class. (Same as the last one, only DPS increase but harder to balance vs BLM.)

I love playing with smn but this mana business has forced me to swap classes for final coil I don't want my group to feel they carrying dead weight.

Tri disaster should make a damage like Holy and the SOUL STONE should be giving an extra 1k mp

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Originally Posted by Mature

I love playing with smn but this mana business has forced me to swap classes for final coil I don't want my group to feel they carrying dead weight.

Tri disaster should make a damage like Holy and the SOUL STONE should be giving an extra 1k mp

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you not being able to clear fcob turn 1 isnt a smn issue. their only real big smn issue is mp and itemization, nothing else, potency is fine.. maybe up potency on miasma 2 but if you go down to less lengthy fights summoner still does fine.

Caster as an archetype is lagging behind melee dps though.

Having low mp is a big hit on dps but it's not the main issue for Summoners. Summoner's aren't sustained like everyone says they have a slow ramp up period oom then decline and sit at their minimum levels then repeat. Black Mage dps is sustained they start at a high level go into their mp regen phase with umbra ice losing little dps then they are their high point again in dps with umbra fire phase and repeat.

And that's it really, egis are so normalized, their auto-attacks are too generic. I would love to see an egi that could chain multiple DPS skills instead of the regular auto-skill. The way egis act is either stupid (letting them use all skills) or boring and low damage (controlling them). Why can't they have 5 purely DPS skills for them to chain and then the few big skills that we tell them to use?

How about give ACN a trait that gives a Shroud-like regen to MP when at 3 Aetherflow stacks and get rid of Energy Drain?

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Originally Posted by Numenor1379

How about give ACN a trait that gives a Shroud-like regen to MP when at 3 Aetherflow stacks and get rid of Energy Drain?

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No SMN would be sat on 3 aether stacks for longer than 20 seconds at the absolute maximum so it would not be particularly useful. A better idea would be for SMNs to have a unique job trait that passively generates a single stack of aetherflow periodically, in addition to the usual 3 stacks every cooldown.

And now we just cross our fingers and hope that 2.5 brings us some sort of buffs.

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Originally Posted by Lavieh

And now we just cross our fingers and hope that 2.5 brings us some sort of buffs.

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*Fingers crossed*

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Originally Posted by Atomnium

*Fingers crossed*

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I'm crossing my fingers too, but we SE hasn't made ANY acknowledgement about there being any problems with the class after countless posts on NA/EU/JP forums. We'll see though.

I lean in favor of giving an extra Piety Bonus to the Summoner soulstone that puts SMN MP level with that of BLM and SCH. First, it avoids the pitfalls of giving BLM an extra advantage or giving SCH an extra advantage over WHM. Second, I wouldn't believe it is something that would take a long time in implementing.

Egi combo attacks sounds intriguing, but I'd like it to be something the egis can perform on their own. Manual controls in something like EX primal fights would make for hairy situations.

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Originally Posted by Sequora

I'm crossing my fingers too, but we SE hasn't made ANY acknowledgement about there being any problems with the class after countless posts on NA/EU/JP forums. We'll see though.

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I'm not really sure, they have avoid the SMN issue like a plague. Let's just have faith that they have listened to the community. I'm not entirely concerned about /what/ buffs they give us SMN lovers but as long as they buff us that will show that they acknowledged the problem.

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Originally Posted by Lavieh

I'm not really sure, they have avoid the SMN issue like a plague. Let's just have faith that they have listened to the community. I'm not entirely concerned about /what/ buffs they give us SMN lovers but as long as they buff us that will show that they acknowledged the problem.

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SMN is a bit harder to balance for because its regarded as being more technical than the other DPS classes. The DPS gap from min-max DPS is fairly large, I'd imagine since you can have someone at peak performance and then someone who... only knows how to use Ruin / Ruin II..

As such, I expect a lot more thought has to be put into HOW to change SMN versus doing direct potency/TP changes like for DRG/NIN/BLM, etc. I'll need to go through the history, but it would be interesting to see how long the time frame was when S-E said they would begin changing WAR before and then actually enacting their massive WAR overhaul back in the 2.0/2.1 era.

[EDIT] Just going through dev tracker history with WAR changes being indicated back in October 30th, 2013. A more detailed explanation was given on November 20th, 2013 and the patch went live December 14th, 2013 for the WAR overhaul. Given the potential magnitude of changes needed for SMN, I'm personally not expecting a change until expansion now, but will gladly eat my shoe if that happens to be different.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

SMN is a bit harder to balance for because its regarded as being more technical than the other DPS classes. The DPS gap from min-max DPS is fairly large, I'd imagine since you can have someone at peak performance and then someone who... only knows how to use Ruin / Ruin II..

As such, I expect a lot more thought has to be put into HOW to change SMN versus doing direct potency/TP changes like for DRG/NIN/BLM, etc. I'll need to go through the history, but it would be interesting to see how long the time frame was when S-E said they would begin changing WAR before and then actually enacting their massive WAR overhaul back in the 2.0/2.1 era.

[EDIT] Just going through dev tracker history with WAR changes being indicated back in October 30th, 2013. A more detailed explanation was given on November 20th, 2013 and the patch went live December 14th, 2013 for the WAR overhaul. Given the potential magnitude of changes needed for SMN, I'm personally not expecting a change until expansion now, but will gladly eat my shoe if that happens to be different.

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To be fair givin the current circumastances , "They dont give a shit" just look at how fast they magically buffed dragoon, and look again at what they said ages ago about SMN pets adjustments. Incase you dont remember they said that they wanted SMNs to use Ifrit too in raids and tried to buff him, what did they do? they kept "Radiant Shield" which is a BS excuse for an ability considering only a tiny portion of Bosses use frontal cone attacks (physical ones) and the fact that even if the SMN decided to throw it in and gamble on Ifrit , he would simply and most likely die in 1 hit, what did they change instead? his AoE damage . . . . . . .

But again that doesnt mean we should give up on SMN or WAIT untill Expansion because it would be absurd as the Job will just die even after the expansion because no one is taking SMNs into Raids (which seems the general conclusion of what I see and hear), SE and Yoshi-P need to fix it too before they even think about "BLM revamp".

No surprise but it drives me nuts, their silence is deafening ; ;

Bumping this just so SE doesn't think we forgot all about it.

We may get new gear that fit our class better like 130 crit/det rings from odin and maybe 120 ilvl det/crit chest from that new 24 man instance. Also if we get new lvl 120 pvp items, those can be better than some 130 spell speed pieces. Every piece we can reduce our spell speed is directly buff our job.