SMN "Woes" (Debuff Cap & More)

Now, this should be taken with a grain of salt I suppose as I'm only just as of last night a newly minted 50 SMN, but I've made some observations that are quite frankly, a little troubling.


First is the debuff cap. This isn't *that* big a deal during 4-man or sometimes even 8-man instances, but during FATE and especially the upcoming Crystal Tower which will be 24-man this is going to prove a massive thorn in our side. As a majority of SMN's damage comes from DoT ticks, the debuff cap basically sets an arbitrary limit and if there are too many SMN (or just too many debuffs in general from all players involved) it's going to absolutely destroy our dps and people will naturally (and rightly, can't blame 'em) shun SMN from participating. This has got to be addressed ASAP.

The second thing I've noticed, is Enkindle is utter garbage and an insult to the fans. Now I understand that YP doesn't want us being able to wield the full power of the Primals except when a FC takes them on and wins the right to summon them (which I'm assuming is what the new "Extreme" mode rewards are going to be) but even still the damage done is pretty lackluster, especially for a 5-minute recast. It has *nothing* on Astral Flow from FFXI, which leads me into my final point;

Summoner as a whole feels... wrong. I was extremely excited when it was announced and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Having gone through the entire story with it and tried my absolute best to make the most out of it on my way up, I have to say it really leaves me wanting. It feels more like a bastardized Red Mage with pets than the traditional FF Summoner.

Where is the utility, or the big flashy AoE's that change the flow of battle? For as badly designed as it was in FFXI, at least in that game SMN had a wide variety of skills thanks to each avatar having unique blood pacts. The shared timer was a nuisance but we made it work. Even for just 3 Eggi the lack of variety is appalling. Again, in XI Ifrit could at least use a Warcry-like buff.


http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Blood_Pact


So much utility on 1 class. I like that it's been re-focused as a DD primarily in ARR, however the staggering loss of utility and AoE damage confounds me. Why were BLM & SMN's roles reversed? BLM is supposed to be the class with better MP efficiency for cutting down single targets and crippling enemies with dark magic, while SMN offers a plethora of battle-changing abilities and wide-area damage but at an unsustainable MP cost (basically using the right summon/skill for the task at hand rather than overwhelming the enemy with a constant barrage of magical death, which again is rightly BLM's domain).


YP Talked a LOT about making this game more like a traditional FF. The devs have succeeded in this to a fair degree, but the ball was dropped pretty hard on SMN & SCH as far as I'm concerned.


Thoughts?

AGREED 100%

think of enkindle as an AoE fester it's "meh" to weak on single target, but it's really powerful as a burst aoe tool, though the 5 minute cd is really pushing it.

There is no debuff cap. It is a visual thing only. They fixed this by making your dots always appear on the left of the top row so you will always see your dots now no matter what so it won't look as confusing as it did before.

Don't really have a comment on the rest of it because I enjoy the class compared to my dragoon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Regis

There is no debuff cap. It is a visual thing only. They fixed this by making your dots always appear on the left of the top row so you will always see your dots now no matter what so it won't look as confusing as it did before.

Don't really have a comment on the rest of it because I enjoy the class compared to my dragoon.

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This is certainly not true, as anyone who's put up a full rack of dots on Odin then festered for 0-200 damage will tell you.

This isn't even a summoner problem, this is a problem for EVERYONE.

Monks have 2(3) dots, and a debuff, putting them at 4, DRGs are exactly the same. BRDs lose a decent chunk of dps and also BL procs.

Missing any of those is just as devestating to them too.

Its pretty awful for everyone involved.

The thing with Fester though is I can use it far more frequently, and often for devastating damage if it Crits (I surprised myself last night when I whacked Ultima Weapon twice in a row with a crit for nearly 1k damage - not bad for an AF summoner :P )


The other thing about having all these DoT on SMN is, by nature SMN is a job that should already have a fair bit of micro-management via our summons - was it really necessary to make it the DoT-spammer on top of that? SCH is especially frustrating as the Faerie AI is quite awful at times and practically requires manual control. I know I made this about SMN but I'm not happy with SCH either (again, I think the FFXI model was done far better with stratagems and switching between modes.)


I'm really just not as happy with SMN as I was hoping to be, and it's a little soul-crushing. It's one of my favorite jobs in the series (alongside Mystic Knight (or "RUN" in FFXI), DRG, RDM & NIN) and I'm not sure anymore if I want to pursue my Relic weapon for it. As bad as XI was in terms of basic gameplay/UI, I did enjoy having to use the right BPs in each situation, using MP recovery to cheat out more Astral Flow abilities etc. Which reminds me, again with the DoT micro-management, it's really annoying trying to keep up a DoT cycle to max out damage while simultaneously making sure my Eggi isn't spamming AoE (so that means using Obey over Sic) to wake sleeping mobs or standing in the way of devastating TP attacks that may kill it, which means a lot of wasted time & MP getting the summon back out.


All that *might* be forgiveable if at the very least it retained the "WOW!" factor of the past, but nope. No summoning Odin to 1-shot a group of mobs, or Alexander to shield the party from nearly all damage/status effects, or even just good old Hellfire/Diamond Dust to blast the crap out of everything in a last-ditch effort. Or Phoenix to AoE Fire, Raise & Heal. All of the allure or the job is seriously lacking in XIV and I have to wonder what the devs were thinking. I don't know if it's just a limitation of the armory system (which pretty much rules out jobs like BST and BLU sadly) , a desire to take it in a strange new direction, or simply just plain old fear that they may end up making the job too powerful, which was the long-standing excuse for SMN's lackluster overall power in XI.


I'm not saying SMN is useless, it's certainly a capable DD - I just don't really think it's the SMN we all know and love, or wanted.

I wish there was a bane/fester combo lmao, 3 stacks for all dots spread + big boom...a boy can dream.

would you be happy with like, removing the pet altogether and just have the damage loss put to elsewhere like temporary summons?

like example. garuda egi does 4100 damage per minute (without crits), but instead of having a pet, have a big flashy summon cooldown 30 seconds that deals 2050 damage, or whatever that will equate of the garuda pet's total per minute. and just have contagion as a staple summoner spell. and have different types of cds, like offense,defense, party buff or etc.

I honestly don't have a problem with this lol, but cant say really, pretty satisfied with smn right now.

I'm so confused.

Anyway thematic concerns I won't address, cause there is no point arguing someone's interpretation of the class.

I will address the pet managing though.

Isn't that what people wanted? Esp with the pet control buff, and hopefully pet macros in the future, having tighter control of your pets is amazing and essentially nets you 4 additional skills (well, closer to 3 for SMN, since their "autoattack" is pretty much autocast).

I LOVE SCH and managing the pet...its great to have filler heals on the tank while you mouseover heal the raid, etc. Fantastic. Plus Eos's healing buff is essentially Avenging Wrath, and whispering dawn is a great Medica II like effect that lasts a LONG time.

Selene's buffs need to be tweaked higher (maybe 100% of base SS bonus, or a flat 15-20% GCD reduction), but its fun to chain them together to always have a half-bloodlust for the group. Its good!

For SMN pets, we kinda get screwed and it would be nice to have more...but theres no reason they can't add more.

We have some of the best utility ever, swiftcasting res is great, on demand slow, on demand healing debuff (btw, does this work on garuda?), slow, etc.

Having Obey over Sic is...hitting one button, once, at the beginning of the dungeon, or whenever it dies. Its not a big deal.

Did you want to just summon a pet and forget about it? Our pets are a huge part of our damage and managing them seems like what summoners should do. If anything placing them is more thematically appropriate than the other things we do.

I feel exactly the same as you NefGP. I was a summoner main in XI and the whole reason I bought XIV was so to be SMN again. The class is a very capable DD (Does more damage than my relic Bard), but it just doesn't feel like a summoner. Feels more like a Beastmaster from XI.
I wish they would just scrap the DoT's all together and give our pet bar more abilities for each summon. We would basically be the weak summoner relying on micro management of our summon to do damage/survive. I think that gives you a real feel of the summoner class because your summon is important, you rely on it. As is I can still do awesome damage without Garuda, and often times don't realize she is even dead until I go to use contagion.
Glim's idea is pretty cool too and one that I had not thought of. It would be more like summons from the early final fantasy's, where the summon swoops in, does damage, then leaves.

And PLEASE do something about the Egi's appearance. They look so awful.....

^ that's pretty much what I was getting at. Lose all the DoT bullcrap (bio is more of a RDM/DRK/BLM thing anyway) and have us focus more on the pets.

It's not the micro-management of the pets itself that bugs me, again I played FFXI for *9* years and while I hated how bad it was for a long time, I still loved SMN to death and managing their actions (not just BPs);



It's the stupid cycle of debuffs on top of that, coupled with truly underwhelming pets. Even though he pretty much sucked against NMs, I still crapped my pants in joy when I first got Odin and used him to lay waste to a horde of regular mobs. And I had lots of fun simply just idling with Fenrir out. (I miss fennykins...)


I don't get that same feeling of awesomeness in this game. As I said, it feels much more like I'm playing RDM but with the added frustration of also managing a pet at the same time. I would far rather have the emphasis shifted to controlling my summons and making appropriate use of their abilities. For example, Enkindle would be far more fantastic under the older version of "Super Abilities" in 1.0 - Big, powerful effect but can only be used sparringly (in 1.0 it was 15 minutes) but can potentially shift the outcome of a battle. To be perfectly honest the only jobs I feel that were really done right in this are DRG, WHM, MNK & possibly WAR though I liked WAR a lot better in 1.0 when it doubled as a potent crit-based DD; Being able to tank and simultaneously smack mobs down with steel cyclone was awesome. I'm not a fan of managing wrath or the damage penalty from defiance in exchange for more HP. But this is about SMN so...

For now I think I'm likely just going to change to DRG, since I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out (especially the gorgeous AF) and it's a fairly solid class + an old favorite until... well, until SMN actually looks appealing again, which may be never. Going back to XI really isn't an option for a lot of reasons, nor do I particularly want to anyway. I'm just very sad with how SMN turned out and lately I find myself wondering if they would have been far better off just scrapping the armory system entirely in favor of a more traditional job system, but rather than rehashing FFXI's maybe more of an FF5/FFT style which would still closely resemble this game's system but without as many restrictions - both creatively (Class design) and functionally (game balance).


I really hate this, because I still like the game and have been excited for it ever since it was announced, but lately when I log in I just don't feel all that great or excited anymore :/

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Originally Posted by NeonC

I wish there was a bane/fester combo lmao, 3 stacks for all dots spread + big boom...a boy can dream.

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Instant wanted XD

But I think that would be too overpowered though.