Regarding SMN's current condition

Now that the class has had some tweaks and I'm glad to hear a lot of Summoners are having a better time, let's hope they continue to make a effort to make the class a little smoother to play. I'm especially hoping they will rework pets soon and ease the interaction with them.



BLM like SMN is a caster DPS, they both bring the great tools from their cross-roles.
However one is blatantly superior than the other when it comes to personal DPS and raid DPS.

It makes little sense to me that a class(in some cases two) that brings nothing but its own personal DPS should be outshone by some other class that bringers greater personal and raid dps, it's pretty high up there and I was wondering how the community would propose a change.

I'd like to add, if you think this is an attack on your class then please post somewhere else because this isn't the place for you.
Also I don't think having a raise (especially in this case, seeing how it's usually gated behind a swiftcast) should impact someone's DPS negatively.

So wait is this a thread about SMN or BLM?

It's mainly about SMN's change and how it has impacted its stance but while writing BLM ended up being in the topic a little more than I thought, but it's a good comparison because one class brings nothing but damage while the other brings more damage and more raid dps.

I thought it was pretty clear.

I don't play BLM enough to say this with 100% certainty, but I think 4.1 is SMN's turn to be top caster DPS.

Summoner is insanely powerful now. It is lamentable that the real issues (single target) with the class weren't addressed with the recent changes (Bahamut during movement/forcibly using ruin II/"requiring" using Addle for it, the "dump" nature of the opener, etc), but it is still insanely strong.

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Originally Posted by ShaolinMike

I don't play BLM enough to say this with 100% certainty, but I think 4.1 is SMN's turn to be top caster DPS.

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This thinking is not really beneficial to the game at all but rather strive to make all classes perform equally as possible through a combination of of their dps/rdps and while I don't agree 100% with the next statement as it's pretty finicky, subtracting some damage in favour of utility.

It shouldn't be anyone's "turn" to be the best.

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Originally Posted by Krisom

This thinking is not really beneficial to the game at all but rather strive to make all classes perform equally as possible through a combination of of their dps/rdps and while I don't agree 100% with the next statement as it's pretty finicky, subtracting some damage in favour of utility.

It shouldn't be anyone's "turn" to be the best.

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I agree, but we've all seen how inept SE can be at times at maintaining a proper balance.

Good luck is all I can to SE on balancing any of the jobs. Look at WOW. They have been trying to keep everything balanced for years and to this day there are still ups and downs for every class/spec.

As for the topic at hand, I feel that SMN is in a good place now and actually feeling fun again. The only fixes are with the AI of Bahamut I feel. We really don't need any more dps increases and should look at quality of life things.

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Originally Posted by Draxxion

Good luck is all I can to SE on balancing any of the jobs. Look at WOW. They have been trying to keep everything balanced for years and to this day there are still ups and downs for every class/spec.

As for the topic at hand, I feel that SMN is in a good place now and actually feeling fun again. The only fixes are with the AI of Bahamut I feel. We really don't need any more dps increases and should look at quality of life things.

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Yes, but generally every spec is bringing something that keeps it desirable in a raid setting.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Yes, but generally every spec is bringing something that keeps it desirable in a raid setting.

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Not really since class stacking is a real deal in wow

Summoner dps is same than before 4.1. Now it is just easier use. Changes was mainly qol. That devotion is not even 100 raid dps if you think summoner utility is that superior. Biggest impact was that 10 more dot potency during 4.06, that was around 200 more dps boost for us.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Yes, but generally every spec is bringing something that keeps it desirable in a raid setting.

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Not really. Even in that game there were glaring cases of where raids would only bring a certain spec of a class and that is it. Rogues are a big example of this. Ret Paladins too ebbed and flowed for being viable to unwanted and then back again. It has been that way even into the latest expansion. This goes for both games that yes you can play what you want, but the raid leader and group comp is always going to play a factor in what is brought. Even at its worse you could have even taken a MCH to a raid in FF14, but would you be the quickest or have the easiest time? No. That is why there is a thing called a meta. Thus players will forever flock to it claiming things are unbalanced. Which is why I say best of luck to Square Enix as you will never make it perfect. It impossible to do.

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Originally Posted by Draxxion

Which is why I say best of luck to Square Enix as you will never make it perfect. It impossible to do.

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Admittedly my WOW info has been out of date (I generally speak from BC/WOTLK experience).

It may not be perfect, but the glaring issues being presented are why it gets called into question.

If every DPS job was doing within 2-3% of each other, that's fine so long as each job brings a set of tools valuable to the party. We're pretty close to those numbers, but pretty far from the toolkit.

In light of Summoner updates, I think it's fair time to return the potency of Fire IV and Blizzard IV to 280. And if that's too low, 300.

A buff to a job has to take into account its strengths, weaknesses and identity, and the SMN's solid damage with decent support has finally been realized. However, as its damage now overtakes Black Mage, it may be worth boosting the Mhachi incinerator's damage.

And no, adding support to Black Mage is not the solution. All THAT would do is cause issues with the BLM identity.

That said, some of BLM's "low damage" problems will also solve themselves as crit becomes easier to get.

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

And no, adding support to Black Mage is not the solution. All THAT would do is cause issues with the BLM identity.

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Sorry to have to disagree with you quite so strongly, but the issue is that the "identity of BLM" as far as SE is concerned is extremely flawed. Raw damage will never ever equal party damage when it comes to party play, period. That is, unless they completely break the class for solo/light party play.

No one wants to be shunned/locked out because their job offers nothing for the party (Yes, -nothing-. Once again, utility means damage. Battle Litany is damage, Trick attack is damage, Hypercharge is damage.).

There is 3 type of damage dealers utility wise

No utility = BLM, SAM offer 0 party dps
Minor utility = MNK, RDM, SMN offer around 200 party dps
major utility = NIN, DRG, MCH, BRD offer 400+ party dps

RDM is imo even worse spot damage wise than blm right now because embolden not really offer that much damage. Monk brotherhood should be changed because it encourage players play full physical party. BLM damage should be same level than samurai- RDM, SMN, MNK should be somewhat same level of damage and rest classes should be heavily bottom of personal dps. Problem with dragoon is that if you nerf their damage, they become bad at normal comb where you dont have two physical ranged. Best solution would be doing something with piercing buff.

I don't disagree with the list but RDM is kinda of a wild card since they have tools that for the actual content were useful during progression (we honestly don't know if they'll add again gimmick where diying is disasterrific)
Although we could say that a strong SMN can be beneficial to a BLM to a certain extent, but problems remains in many other places that actually do not allow a caster comp

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Sorry to have to disagree with you quite so strongly, but the issue is that the "identity of BLM" as far as SE is concerned is extremely flawed. Raw damage will never ever equal party damage when it comes to party play, period. That is, unless they completely break the class for solo/light party play.

No one wants to be shunned/locked out because their job offers nothing for the party (Yes, -nothing-. Once again, utility means damage. Battle Litany is damage, Trick attack is damage, Hypercharge is damage.).

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You know what''s also damage? That whopping 494 potency from Fire IV, that 650-715 potency from Foul, 710-781 from Thundercloud, the 342 potency of Fire, the increased cast speed provided by Ley Lines... basically, everythig Black Mage does is pure damage... that gets further increased by party buffs.

Trouble is, your logic is flawed because no support class beyond Dragoon, Monk or Summoner has damage capable of matching their support. Most really good support DPS completely lack the stopping power behind their attacks like SAM, SMN, DRG, MNK and BLM do. The quad Support group (DRG+MCH+BRD+NIN) only has a single source of damage, but even THAT isn't the best damage. And currently, the fastest party on fflogs has two pure DPS, SAM and SMN.

BLM can and will benefit from a potency boost, though crit and DH will also make uo the difference as our numbers get higher.

RDM is the easiest job to play, so would not be fair if they'd be dealing more damage with little effort. I think they're just fine and tuning a little potency buff to BLM is also a good idea since with all that mechanics moving around. Its much harder to pull something off than RDM or the new SMN

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Originally Posted by schulz8

RDM is the easiest job to play, so would not be fair if they'd be dealing more damage with little effort. I think they're just fine and tuning a little potency buff to BLM is also a good idea since with all that mechanics moving around. Its much harder to pull something off than RDM or the new SMN

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Q5. It was explained that in Patch 4.0 the focus was to reduce the large DPS disparity, but certain jobs feel more reliant on player skill than others. Are certain jobs intended to maintain that difference?

A5. One of the main concepts of FFXIV is that “when playing a job, you experience the uniqueness of that job.”
Due to this, there is a difference in difficulty between the jobs, and it used to be that higher difficulty meant more DPS. We will be scaling down this factor.

Why do i keep having to remind people of this.

BLM can have utility as long as it's selfish. Think of stuff like Brotherhood's proc, but it charges Foul. Or a self-only raise that puts you to full with no weakness and with AF3/Enochian up, but it kills you again if you drop Enochian. That's the kind of stuff BLM can have.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

BLM can have utility as long as it's selfish. Think of stuff like Brotherhood's proc, but it charges Foul. Or a self-only raise that puts you to full with no weakness and with AF3/Enochian up, but it kills you again if you drop Enochian. That's the kind of stuff BLM can have.

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Rezzes aren't neccessary as a BLM, but selfish buffs could be interesting.

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Originally Posted by schulz8

RDM is the easiest job to play, so would not be fair if they'd be dealing more damage with little effort. I think they're just fine and tuning a little potency buff to BLM is also a good idea since with all that mechanics moving around. Its much harder to pull something off than RDM or the new SMN

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I won't argue it's simplicity again; it has nuances that people don't pay attention to because "lulz rdm is easy", and it becomes painfully obvious who understands those nuances vs those who don't--but I remember 2.0 BLM, and I remember how it was even easier than current RDM, and I remember it being competitive DPS against SMN.

BLM like SMN is a caster DPS, they both bring the great tools from their cross-roles.
However one is blatantly superior than the other when it comes to personal DPS and raid DPS.

It makes little sense to me that a class(in some cases two) that brings nothing but its own personal DPS should be outshone by some other class that bringers greater personal and raid dps, it's pretty high up there and I was wondering how the community would propose a change.

I'd like to add, if you think this is an attack on your class then please post somewhere else because this isn't the place for you.
Also I don't think having a raise (especially in this case, seeing how it's usually gated behind a swiftcast) should impact someone's DPS negatively.[/QUOTE]

I'm really not seeing this, all the hunts and raids I've been on, its a blm at the top of the dps and by quite a large margin too, at least 1-2k ahead of the next person sometimes.

Anecdotal evidence takes a back seat to hard data, though hard data needs to take context into account.

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Originally Posted by EllieShadeflare

And currently, the fastest party on fflogs has two pure DPS, SAM and SMN.

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I see nothing but MCH/NIN/BRD/DRG as the fastest setup on fflogs.

It is a well known fact that this group beats out the raw power groups. It might change in the future but it hasn't yet.

Meh. I want my [Ramuh, Sephirot, Shiva, Leviathan, Sophia, Fenrir] egis and better glamour stuff because the casting stuff is most of the time FUGLY.

BLM actually have lots of selfish utility. AM, BtL and Manaward are them. But they don't translate into direct damage. So having something else would actually be very interesting. Extending the idea of selfishness like MNK's Brotherhood procs.

I hope we can get some new egi glam or demi summons at some point. Bahamut was a STEP in the right direction, but not even close enough to making me feel like a true SMN.

Honestly I think the dps line for casters should be;
BLM - No utility, pure dps
RDM - Minor utility
SMN - Most utility of caster thanks to 4.0 egi love

Saying that I can see SE nerfing DoTs from 50 to 45, but really BLM and RDM need some buffing. It would be nice to see new egi glamour and changes to D-Bahamut, even though I have my rotation down solid now.

Physick ... Why I still have this spell in my power list ??? ^^ :p

I had a long post on reddit about SMN and balance, but to make it super short...

Living in a world where BRD/NIN/DRG/MCH exists, SMN's current dps looks pretty silly but only barely makes it a class worth bringing now in terms of the '''meta'''. By that I mean people fighting for Ultimate clears are trying it out here and there over MCH.

Personally speaking I think that if SMN still is < MCH (and the new raid tier's data will tell us what's what) then it's probably about balanced at its current state, despite how high its current DPS is.

So speaking of BLM, if they really want to make it more competitive with SMN they should probably look into some 500 DPS (super rough number, but whatever) buffs to even things out a bit to at least help out with its case of pDPS. (whether this comes from straight potency buffs or fixes to mobility is kinda important, though it'd probably need to be a combination of the two)

Tbh I've seen more MCH+SMN than SMN+BRD in ultimate

While balancing jobs can be hard and fine tuning all those numbers, I think it's a no-brainer that your jobs without utility / raid DPS buffs and only really bring their damage as an asset (BLM and SAM) shouldn't be outdamaged by jobs that have utility / raid DPS buffs. It was apparent before those SMN buffs that BLM needed love and that even SAM wasn't far enough ahead of the other jobs in DPS to justify its lack of utility / raid DPS buffs. I don't even know how you get to a point where SMN is doing the things it's doing while BLM and SAM damage outputs aren't addressed.

It's possible they overbuffed SMN to make it more popular, just like how they did to AST in 3.4, remember ferom 3.2 AST was already meta but the majority of ppl only started following that path after the 3.4 balance buff and now they reverted that change since AST place in the healer balance is fixed (and you could say healer balance does wotk atm)

And they might buff MCH again. They have a really bad habit of overbuffing stuff.

That's why I think it's a strategy, there class adjustments seems inconsistent since they are capable of preicision balance sometimes while doing some blatant things in other occasions.
Which leads me to believe they are idd using our egos of liking OPness to restore popularity to some jobs and then returning them to a more balanced state when necessary.
It seems to be effective because honestly no matter what they did on AST to keep it in a balanced state seemed to work and only when balance become 20% rather than 10% ppl started to really embrace them despite the fact that they were already meta since 3.2 as I said.

That said it's also true that they cave too much to buffing requests especially from support type jobs, honestly they should draw a line and stop this, if a support-type job feel underwhelming they should buff something else instead of their dmg