Why do all y'all want to change SMN so much?

Okay so I really don't get it. Every time I go to a SMN post looking for changes in terms of numbers and small things I always find that y'all want to change everything about the job from the ground up. It makes no sense to me that people want it remade to their personal standards rather than want to improve what we've got. Always with the FF11 comparison and the "I want big summons", and rarely any actual constructive criticism on where the job could go from here.

If anyone has some idea for improvements based on what we've got I'd love to hear it.

The problem is you can't "fix" the current state just with minor tweaks nor with pot buffs. That's why people talk about revamps, new mechanics and skilladjustments. And there are indeed some good ideas around... most of the "first wave" complainers already changed to Rdm or Blm - the ones which remain gave pretty serious feedback lately...

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Originally Posted by darcwizrd

Okay so I really don't get it. Every time I go to a SMN post looking for changes in terms of numbers and small things I always find that y'all want to change everything about the job from the ground up. It makes no sense to me that people want it remade to their personal standards rather than want to improve what we've got. Always with the FF11 comparison and the "I want big summons", and rarely any actual constructive criticism on where the job could go from here.

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What the... There are several threads with great constructive criticism and discussion already and not at all only "ff11 comparisons and I want big summons". Actually I barely saw any of that about 4.0 summoner...
How you can just go and disregard so many good posts and ideas is just ugh...

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Originally Posted by darcwizrd

If anyone has some idea for improvements based on what we've got I'd love to hear it.

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People already proposed a lot of things - returning to how aetherflow work so we won't need to skip dwt, boost of r3\dots potency or reworking how r1234 work altogether, returning of sustain, changes to devotion etc.
And while QoL changes and potency boosts will make SMN more desirable it won't fix its biggest core problems. That's why people also propose ground up rework.

Nah, SMN is perfectly fine the way it is. No reason to whine to make the job easier when it's already easy the way it is.

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

Nah, SMN is perfectly fine the way it is. No reason to whine to make the job easier when it's already easy the way it is.

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Nothing is fine about current summoner... NOTHING. Who's whining about making smn easier? What are you people even talking about lol...
Also I presume you can easily outDPS rdm with smn if smn is so easy to play?

I think the problem with smn is that it's a class that doesn't know what it wants to be. You have a dot class with weak summons that now mostly does weak fillers, and then has a slight damage boost during trance that ends in a big boom. Then, have to do trance twice to get a big summon that does the same boom as you a couple of times. Personally, I don't have a problem with the egis, but the damage is too locked behind Bahamut, so if you die, your damage is just gone. Also, the fillers are now so weak that it just feels awful to have to spam a pathetic potency ruin over and over. Also Ruin III does so little damage, that trance just seems totally pointless now. It just feels like they are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the SMN to see what sticks.

LOL. Summoners are so bad atm its pretty depressing. Kinda would like a mana reduction for ruin3 or they could revert ruin3 dmg to 200. Maybe make devotion an aoe buff ;_;.

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

Nah, SMN is perfectly fine the way it is. No reason to whine to make the job easier when it's already easy the way it is.

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Have you guys played smn in endgame competition at all? You won't even think about such a statement if you did ^^'

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Originally Posted by Neela

Have you guys played smn in endgame competition at all? You won't even think about such a statement if you did ^^'

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I'm letting people have a taste of their own medicine (please see below):

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Originally Posted by Pence

So....you want a BRD buff and make the job even easier to play?

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Originally Posted by Jilliebeans

Heck no.. BARD is PERFECTLY fine and it going to be PERFECTLY fine for a while , they don't need any buff or nerf. If anything they need to worry about is fixing MCH 1st before MAYBE even consider touching BRD.

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lol? you are spreading bs about another cls because you are unsatisfied with comments people made about your main? what kind of mindset is that?... btw i got a 70 Brd as well and trust me Brd playstyle, fun and potency is a real paradise compared to Smn. so even if its just about your ego... your attitude sucks hard.

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

I'm letting people have a taste of their own medicine (please see below):

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What the hell? THis people are not even in this thread ahahaha...

Smn discussions really attract the strangest audience huh

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Originally Posted by VorpalSpork

I think the problem with smn is that it's a class that doesn't know what it wants to be. You have a dot class with weak summons that now mostly does weak fillers, and then has a slight damage boost during trance that ends in a big boom. Then, have to do trance twice to get a big summon that does the same boom as you a couple of times. Personally, I don't have a problem with the egis, but the damage is too locked behind Bahamut, so if you die, your damage is just gone. Also, the fillers are now so weak that it just feels awful to have to spam a pathetic potency ruin over and over. Also Ruin III does so little damage, that trance just seems totally pointless now. It just feels like they are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the SMN to see what sticks.

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Yeah I feel like that too. It's really "jack of all trades" type of situation... Our DoTs are really weak too btw...
If they at least made 4.0 SMN with 3.0 aetherflow and balanced r3 mp requirements(it's like what? 20% weaker? no reason for it to cost old amount of mp then) I think I would manage without raging too much... But even then playing smn would not be exactly fun...

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

What the hell? THis people are not even in this thread ahahaha...

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because they're related to SMN (arcanist/scholar).

Nah, Sustain doesn't need to make a comeback. Just learn to Physick your own pets. If you can't even do that, you don't deserve a pet.

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

because they're related to SMN (arcanist/scholar)

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I hope you'll realize how silly you're acting right now...

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

P.S.: I stopped giving a damn since HW, when all the non-Bard players came into our thread and told us that the casting time was perfectly fine. Since people can do that, I believe I reserve the same rights.

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How exactly is this relevant to anything in this thread? Yeah it's not, you know it. I think you know what you should do next too.

can't just stop starring at your comments Fate... whats just wrong with you? .___.

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Originally Posted by Neela

can't just stop starring at your comments Fate... whats just wrong with you? .___.

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Bored at work + shitty day. Pardon me for my sudden fit. Taking my leave now *hats off*.

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

Nah, Sustain doesn't need to make a comeback. Just learn to Physick your own pets. If you can't even do that, you don't deserve a pet.

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What is this nonsense

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

What is this nonsense

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The kind of salt everybody loves. Let's face it, people come here for the salt. All threads ends up with everyone up in the throat with each other. I'm just casting Hastega here.

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Originally Posted by darcwizrd

Okay so I really don't get it. Every time I go to a SMN post looking for changes in terms of numbers and small things I always find that y'all want to change everything about the job from the ground up. It makes no sense to me that people want it remade to their personal standards rather than want to improve what we've got. Always with the FF11 comparison and the "I want big summons", and rarely any actual constructive criticism on where the job could go from here.

If anyone has some idea for improvements based on what we've got I'd love to hear it.

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I'll try to give you a complete answer. For that I quote myself from another thread:

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Originally Posted by -Yuuna-

After playing SMN for some weeks since 4.0 release and read a lot of threads about it, I got my own opinion. Bahamut, Devotion and Bane is a point any longer, but not the most important.

I really hate Bahamut, because of him I couldn't see every mechanics (like the cloud in Susano) and I wiped a party (yeah I wiped a party in Susano, because I saw the cloud too late, shame on me -_-). My problem at this point is: I have no chance to take him away, not so close to me and I'm really glad that they will add a function to reduce his size, I hope that solve the problem.
Devotion…what shall I say about Devotion? I cannot choose at the group list who should get the buff. I have to move my egi. Yeah…I’ll never move my egi again (if it’s not REALLY necessary). I tried it so many times and at the most tries some other player are moving and the buff never hit the person I wanted to get. It also needs a lot of time to place the egi. So they have two options to fix this: Let us choose the player at our group list or let Devotion be a group buff for everyone (with a higher cd or not so strong – if the developer think 5% at all is too strong).
Bane got a huge nerf, but at the moment we just need it in dungeons. So it will be fine, I think. Playing SMN in dungeons works. We can do enough damage to clear it fast. BLM has a better AOE damage, but that’s okay for me.
I want my pet heal back. They can delete Physick for that, this is a skill no one need it at SMN. I totally agree with Yoshi if he says: You wanna heal? Play RDM.

4.0 SMN feels like the developer team designed it for dungeon runs and maybe the 24 man raids – we will see it in the future. And I think they want that we cannot move very much with Bahamut at our side, to reduce the SMN movement.
The Aetherflow change yesterday is a step in the right direction. Good player will not see any difference, but for the others it is a big change. They didn’t need to wait a lot of time to get the stack back. Changes like this can reduce the cap between casuals and elite. That’s what SE want, right? But this change alone didn’t fix the class problems. In the last years SE told us that BRD and MCH have a lot of supporting skills, because of that they have not a big damage. We didn’t get a lot of supporting skills, so why is our damage worse?
If we didn’t have a lot of supporting skills and get a worse damage, the people see no reason to grab a SMN for raid. And this is a big problem. We all shall be able to use pf for raid, but a lot of players are not really enjoy a SMN in the party.

We cannot use Aetherflow abilities in trance, so it might be easier. I heard from SMN starters and ppl who didn’t play this class very often that they love the change, because the rotation feels more fluent and easier for them now.
SMN is very often declared as an easy job. I think that’s the problem here. The developers didn’t see that we have a higher effort to get good damage.

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So you can see that I have no problem with the old egis. At the first weeks I played SMN, I was really confused that so sweet carbuncles are replaced for Garuda, Ifrit and Titan (because they seems to be really ugly). But in the last years, I began to love my sweet little fly (Garuda). So I didn’t want to change it any longer. Titan looks like a big rock, in my eyes it fits with a giant rock what the normal Titan is for me. The only one I didn’t like is Ifrit and with the possibility to change the egi glamour that problem is fixed in my eyes.
I didn’t think that a lot of people want “really big” summons since Bahamut was add ingame. We all are able to see why the old egis with a smaller size are better and with more egi glamour, the most of the people should be satisfied.

Angry_Evil posted a good description why some changes at R3 are not really useful:

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

After clearing O1S and O2S I really feel that mp restrictions of ruin3 are not justified anymore with it being so weak. With r3 spam you can barely hold your 3.8k somewhat dps between bahamut bursts. Probably even if they make it free and let us spam it instantly instead of r2 DPS won't go up too much lol... cause we still need to deal with stupid lining up of everything... ugh. Also kinda sucks that nin does kinda more DPS than me while bringing much better utility and being if not easier to play then at least not as poorly designed.
Also with BLM buff smn rly became pointless weakest caster.
rip
PS
Delaying pulls after wipe cause you need to wait for aetherflow sucks... SE need to address this somehow...

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

because they're related to SMN (arcanist/scholar).

Nah, Sustain doesn't need to make a comeback. Just learn to Physick your own pets. If you can't even do that, you don't deserve a pet.

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Haha, you are really funny. We can see that you feel boring at work :D For the thread opener, I’ll describe why Physick need to be replaced: I can heal my pet with Physick for around 500-600 HP. But if it gets damage, it hits for more than 1000. So if you play with titan as a tank or your egi gets poison or you try to choose ifrit (it’s a melee, so it gets more damage) -> RIP egi.
If you need more information, please look into some other SMN threads. There are a lot of good ideas and critiques :)

Summoner doesn't play like a real summoner. Instead, it plays like a DoT mage. At this point, they should probably just drop the summons, focus on the damage over time skills, and just rename the class.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

Summoner doesn't play like a real summoner. Instead, it plays like a DoT mage. At this point, they should probably just drop the summons, focus on the damage over time skills, and just rename the class.

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Lol what? After they removed like 2 DoTs this patch? Now it's suddenly more like a DoT mage? sigh...
I hope naysayers will see this as another problem with summoner job - it's too much of everything and excels at nothing. Weak DoTs, unresponsive pets we barely can interact with, but also a burst phases that are clunky and lackluster too. It's like 3 different classes mashed together in some barely alive monster...

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

Summoner doesn't play like a real summoner. Instead, it plays like a DoT mage. At this point, they should probably just drop the summons, focus on the damage over time skills, and just rename the class.

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Hahaha, summoner WAS a dot mage from 2.0 on till 4.0. Now it's just a mage.... that RUINS everything....




:D

Man, it's very strange to just see people pouring more salt into the wounds of SMN players just for jollies...

I got quite used to SMN being what it was from start to Pre-4.0 with the Dots and the Pet egis and I enjoyed it for what it was. I get that people think it should be something else (past FFs or doing the Xelphatol like primal summons, etc.), but how it was before was super fun and flowed well with all of the abilities.

The changes just make SMN feel clunky and, honestly, kinda mashy to me. I used to have enough time to properly position or do things with my pet (as I have their actions on my bar) while weaving in Aetherflow abilities as the dots were ticking, much like playing an instrument. Now, SMN just feels like some crazy class where I'm supposed to be punching the keys on my keyboard and screaming "ORAORAORAORAORA" the entire while and there's just no flow.


Not to mention that Bahamut is just incredibly annoying to use. As others have mentioned, why is he so close when he can hit a mob in Othard from Eorzea? The Devs could make it so he spawns X amount of yalms from the SMN's back so he's not blocking anyone. But then again they're making him resizable so I guess that's a win...

He should autoattack with wyrmwave while he's out, the spamming of abilities and moves to include Addle at a time where it's not needed is odd by design. Just Wyrmwave until we have him cast Ahk Morn. But to that effect pets should just interrupt whatever they're doing to immediately cast what we command them to do, too as that'd help a lot.

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

Nah, Sustain doesn't need to make a comeback. Just learn to Physick your own pets. If you can't even do that, you don't deserve a pet.

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The problem with this is twofold. For one, Physick still scales with Mind for Arcanist and Summoner, so the amount of healing from casting Physick is abysmal (it's almost a wasted slot). For two, wasting multiple GCDs to heal a pet is a sizable DPS loss, but at the same time losing the pet is also a DPS loss (Pet's missing DPS + MP and time wasted resummoning).

It would really help if there was something there to help keep the pet alive. Perhaps Rouse could be given the effect of Sustain for its duration, so the pet has a nice auto-regen with about 33% up-time.

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Originally Posted by FateAudax

Nah, SMN is perfectly fine the way it is. No reason to whine to make the job easier when it's already easy the way it is.

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HAHAHAHAHA!!! Easy, you sure know how to make people laugh.

Why you guys bother with someone like FateAudax that does not have a smn @ 70, lol
Sure i do not either but least i can admit it ;)
I know plenty of people who have mained either smn or sch, and they are by no means "fine"

The class has no flow. Its core mechanics can clash with and even be detrimental to each other.

This is not a problem easily fixed by tuning some numbers. Tuning numbers might make Summoner more competent as far as DPS is concerned, but the way the class plays will still be fundamentally un-rewarding.

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Originally Posted by corey1

The class has no flow. Its core mechanics can clash with and even be detrimental to each other.

This is not a problem easily fixed by tuning some numbers. Tuning numbers might make Summoner more competent as far as DPS is concerned, but the way the class plays will still be fundamentally un-rewarding.

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I don't have much experience with Summoner. Could you go into more detail concerning what specific mechanics clash within the job?

why doesnt smn have a trait to upgrade physick into sustain not like physick is even useable

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Originally Posted by Pyitoechito

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One ex: DWT(Buff from using 3 aetherflow charges) gives a 10% damage buff, you can cast a nuke at the end of this buff but it removes the buff also. When you nuke, the buff you get a Bahamut charge (need 2 to summon bahamut). You are locked from using any of your really damaging nukes (aetherflow spells) while under DWT, so it really loses a ton of its potential. During your opener (other SMN correct me if im wrong, i havent played at 70 too much because i find the class too clunky), you want to just nuke to get to bahamut quicker.

It feels like having the 10% buff, but not being able to use any strong spells doesn't make sense, and its like they want you to burn the buff immediately anyway to get Bahamut out quicker. SMN doesn't really get any cool/unique spells from 60-70 besides Bahamat so that seems to be the focus of the class, but using Bahamut "optimally" forces you to spam a lower potency spell just to get Bahamut to attack faster.

If I had to name a problem with Summoner, it would be its lack of true interactivity with summoned pets. 3 Summons, each get 4 abilities and an "ultimate" ability, and then there is Bahamut. This amounts to not even half a Summoner's capabilities, and is hardly focused on. Square Enix can either try to revamp the class to do more summoning stuff or, as was said already, remove pets and change it to a job called Oracle or some other mage specialized in indirect dps, with a side of direct.

Beyond this I've no beef with the job, nor do I mind the removal of Sustain. I also know we more likely than not will not get Sustain back lol

I'll repeat what I said in a previous thread, because it applies here as well. The changes have not been rewarding, that's just the best way to put it. There are many ways they can work on altering the class to make it better, I hope they are thinking it over. Individually dotting and ruin spam is boring. I get the idea behind wanting to change the flow, and I do support that but in doing so it's got to keep some sort of clarity. I figure at best case we'll get a bandaid patch for the bleeding, but overall the class has a ways to go. To clarify, there is a wonderful thread in this forum about what feels off about smn, people are talking about it, and it's not aesthetics that is the problem (except for bahamut hiding raid markers).

All I can say, is I'm glad we got RDM when Stormblood released, because it is fun and rewarding and much less tedious and clunky than smn now feels. I'm a fan of SE, they put a lot of work into the game, but I'm still heartbroken over the new feel of smn.

I mainly want them to make bane not trash. When it's better to painflare multiple times and manually dot instead of using bane, you know there's a problem.

Change bane's drop off to 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%.

Let use choose our devotion target.

Give us sustain back.

Ruin III should go back to 200 potency and change Ruin IV to 250 potency

With all these changes then summoner would become quite good again. It would still be very punishing to die but their numbers in both aoe and single target would be much better.

I freely admit that I've never liked the job's focus on DoTs, Aetherflow, and Ruin spam. It doesn't feel like a summoner from FF games, it feels like an affliction warlock from World of Warcraft, right down to the "only one correct pet choice" and "soul shards = Aetherflow stacks". If I had my way, SMN would either be a more pet-oriented job with a lot more pet actions, commands etc. than the piddling pet bar, or they'd operate more in the trance route where you use a few smaller damage moves to "build up" to a big, flashy, summon spell. The pet-oriented job would be a nightmare to balance and I respect that, but I have no idea why the developers couldn't just make the class something like a combo mage, where you have to execute smaller elemental or themed spells in order to complete your big flashy summon finisher.

I feel like SMN's entire design was ruined by the branching jobs concept of ACN, tbh. DoTs and resource stacks feel a lot more suited to a tactician-themed job like SCH than they do a raw energy channeler like SMN.

It's too late to change the job that way. It is what it is. Trying to change it too much is just going to alienate summoner mains who enjoyed it. All they can do is try and fix it by making it on par with red mage and black mage.

You'll have to wait for a new job for a "proper" pet job.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

It's too late to change the job that way. It is what it is. Trying to change it too much is just going to alienate summoner mains who enjoyed it. All they can do is try and fix it by making it on par with red mage and black mage.

You'll have to wait for a new job for a "proper" pet job.

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It's not really "too late" to change it, but you're right, it's probably a really difficult metric for them to gauge on whether or not people like it the way it is or whether they'd prefer something else. It's the same with AST, though - in my anecdotal experience, I see a lot more people unhappy with the job's concept and design than those who actually like it. Your mileage may vary, of course.

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Originally Posted by tikiwiki

why doesnt smn have a trait to upgrade physick into sustain not like physick is even useable

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A number of us don't understand why Sustain was removed. SE says they thought nobody used it. Ha! Personally I think Physick should be changed to Sustain at level 30 when you chose the Summoner job path. It makes sense at that point as you are choosing a kind of pet class DPS so why have a gimpy player heal?