Why does no one complain about Summoners?

[GodzillaMagnum]

Honest question here. I know bards get a lot of hate for being better than melee but IMO from what I've seen in coil (and I've downed Twintania), Summoners CONSISTENTLY out damage every other class by a pretty big margin in every fight. They aren't affected as heavily by dodge mechanics like black mages because DoTs hit regardless, they have a pet, great aoe damage, AND they bring an instant cast battle res to the table. Not to mention in fights like Twintania they can easily bane their dots to conflags and dreadknights and fester for massive burst damage. Yet bards are the ones that get all the hate?

If you were making an optimal party comp you would probably just have 2 bards and 2 summoners... BLM/DRG/MNK really don't offer anything over them as far as damage or utility.

[Seezur_Undies]

*starts putting white out on the screen hoping SE doesnt read this* NUUUUUUUUU! Now they are going to nerf the Summoners *cries*

[NeoAmon]

I really never thought bards are op, nor do I think SMNs are OP. The thing is, I rather see jobs brought up to the best equivalent job type. They are doing the right thing with Warriors by bringing them up instead of bringing PLDs down. The shit storm that would come if PLDs get touched, not just from PLDs but from other jobs lol.

[Seezur_Undies]

Everything should be make to be the best at their job, if it means "buffing" a class, so be it, but taking mechanics that players have been playing since launch is BS

*contemplates starting a 'return bard to its former glory' petition*

[Babydoll]

Smn is fine as it is. Nerfing is going backwards and kind of asinine. I rather they buff other jobs instead of nerf one.

[Ardan]

There really isn't anything OP about SMN at all that you can call it out on. Everything SMN has is restricted one way or another. Fester needs our main 3 DoTs applied in order for it to work and an aetherflow charge to use and can only be used 3 times a minute. Enkindle is on a 5min timer, so it's a one-time use mostly on boss fights or a large group of enemies.

As far as AoE goes, SMN is king on 1-4 targets, but is beaten out by BLM, DRG and BRD on 5+ targets. Our burst isn't great too, since Fester (our burst ability) needs our main DoTs for it to work and this takes time to set up.

[Pentacus]

Honest question here. I know bards get a lot of hate for being better than melee but IMO from what I've seen in coil (and I've downed Twintania), Summoners CONSISTENTLY out damage every other class by a pretty big margin in every fight. They aren't affected as heavily by dodge mechanics like black mages because DoTs hit regardless, they have a pet, great aoe damage, AND they bring an instant cast battle res to the table. Not to mention in fights like Twintania they can easily bane their dots to conflags and dreadknights and fester for massive burst damage. Yet bards are the ones that get all the hate?

If you were making an optimal party comp you would probably just have 2 bards and 2 summoners... BLM/DRG/MNK really don't offer anything over them as far as damage or utility.

our DoTs hit for about the same as a BLM's spells except for one significant difference: Clipping

IIRC, an astral fire 3 buffed fire 1 hits for 240 potency, a Bio 1 hits for 240 total potency over 18 seconds.

therefore, fire 1 and bio 1 hit for the same amount of damage per cast.

HOWEVER

once bio is up, recasting bio will not add another 240 potency, it simply resets the timer on the DoT, but recasting fire DOES. as such, casting 4 fires results in 960 potency, casting 4 bios results in 360 potency (allowing the DoT to tick once between bios)

(think of it like this, fire + fire = 2*fire, bio + bio = bio + (bio - ticks remaining on old bio))

we don't "not lose DPS from movement", we just aren't penalized quite as extremely, but needing to refresh a DoT quickly becomes PAINFUL when moving, a BLM can make that back up with a few casts, a SMN can only have one instance of a DoT up at a time, so losing possible ticks hurts us just as much as losing a cast of fire1 (and as far as movement goes, SMN's get bio1 and ruin2, ruin 2 does 80 potency. BLMs get scathe, 120 potency with a 1/5 chance of doing 240 potency, as well as thunderhead procs)


for great AoE, that's not completely true, we have great cleavage (heh) but awful AoE, bane only hits a maximum of three enemies, and tri disaster and miasma 2 are pitiful (dat 30 potency/80 potency over 20ish seconds), so whilst we're AMAZING at 2-4 enemies, any more than that and we quickly fall behind, the only other AoE we have are based on the pet and have pairly nasty cooldowns. our level 50 abilities are on a 5 minute cooldown (enkindle, equivalent to flare) and the other is shadowflare (also equivalent to flare, except it happens over 30 seconds instead of 3, and only if EVERY tick happens, and we can only have one up at a time, so nowhere near as much damage as flare > convert > flare > x-ether > flare > transpose, or hell, holy > holy, the only thing it has over those two spells is that it's pretty mana efficient in comparison, and it applies slow)

our battle rez isn't instant cast, it's identical in every way to raise, the instantness is from swiftcast, a THM ability.

so whilst I can't speak for DRG, MNK or BRD, as far as your point about BLM's goes, they are MASSIVELY superior to SMNs in regards to potential damage, especially if theyre lucky, I don't think anything could possibly outdamage a BLM if they managed to get multiple firestarter and thunderhead procs in an astral phase.

as for why people don't complain about SMN, it's because playing one well is pretty difficult, it requires lots of split second decisions to be made since we have a priority list rather than a rotation (plus, being summoners, sometimes DPS isn't everything, eg, in garuda, I'm often asked to stop DPS after a jump, place down a shadowflare, and wait until she releases plumes so I can tri-disaster them (the shadowflare is there to give a little damage to the plumes in case someone AoEs and breaks them), whenever someone dies, I have to stop DPS to rez them, hell, in titan normal mode, I was once told to switch to topaz carbuncle after the tank somehow managed to eat a landslide), alongside micromanaging your pet and cooldowns, and surviving the encounter. And from what people have told me, they end up seeing a lot of bad summoners (using titan inappropriately, not setting pets to obey, managing dots badly, and worst of the lot: no dots, only ruin spam) , so they likely attribute a good summoner to actually being a good summoner, rather than the class being OP.

[Seobit]

Bad summoners are keeping us safe from the scorn of the masses.

[Madoka]

There aren't that many good summoners and we only excel at single target or up to 4 targets, and even the "up to 4" is minimal. At best we have 350 potency going off every 3 seconds excluding burst festers and that's only when all 4 DoTs are up, shadow flare is up, garuda is hitting the target and we're casting Ruin on it which is really for about 10-15 seconds in a normal rotation, and we can lengthen by another 15 if contagion is off CD and then we spend another 10-15 seconds re-applying DoTs and shadow flare. All on one target. 4 DoTs and shadow flare is 170 potency per tick, 145 if the enemy moves out of flare.

A BLM's infinite MP Blizzard is 150 potency, still infinite MP Blizz3 is 220. I'm not sure on the math but the MP sucking Fire is 200+ and I imagine Fire III and Flare are in the 400+ range. Which they can easily throw a couple out, transpose and throw some blizz3's that still deal great damage and jump right back into nuking after a couple of seconds. On more than 4 things

[Craiger]

I agree with others saying other classes should be buffed, instead of SMN being nerfed.

BLM might be as good or better than SMN, like have been mentioned, but DRG and MNK is behind them... MNK is getting some buff to dmg in 2.1, but we don't know how much that is... At the moment, MNK isn't much ahead of SMN and BLM when it comes to single-target DPS, and they are useless when it comes to AOE. DRG has some better AOE, but still not good, and they don't have as good single-target DPS.

BRD is needed for obvious reasons, and then the best option is BLM's and SMN's.