Summoner got destroyed this patch

[Spellbinder]

We don't. SE most definitely do. And I'm personally much more inclined to believing the devs who actually know how the game calculates damage and have ways to monitor these things than the masses fumbling around and running dysfunctional parsers.

I'm not saying they're wrong, but I find it unsettling to have no way of seeing it for myself. (i.e. DoTs are invisible in the battle log)

Let's not forget Yoshi-P's original claim that Warriors were perfectly fine, and that everyone was simply using them incorrectly. But lo and behold, they're getting heavily boosted because they weren't up to snuff.

[Shamirah]

I'm not saying they're wrong, but I find it unsettling to have no way of seeing it for myself. (i.e. DoTs are invisible in the battle log)

Let's not forget Yoshi-P's original claim that Warriors were perfectly fine, and that everyone was simply using them incorrectly. But lo and behold, they're getting heavily boosted because they weren't up to snuff.

Well, I always thought Warrior were good. They didn't have the powerful CDs that Paladin have but they had much better dps and aoe tanking ability.

[Seobit]

I'm not saying they're wrong, but I find it unsettling to have no way of seeing it for myself. (i.e. DoTs are invisible in the battle log)

Let's not forget Yoshi-P's original claim that Warriors were perfectly fine, and that everyone was simply using them incorrectly. But lo and behold, they're getting heavily boosted because they weren't up to snuff.

Warriors were perfectly fine, but the paladin toolset allowed them to deal with boss mechanics in ways the devs hadn't anticipated and instead of nerfing paladins they decided to give warriors more tools. That's not really the place to discuss this though.

It is unfortunate we can't see for ourselves the actual numbers, but considering that parsers had a tendency to underevaluate the damage of summoners by a fairly large margin, I'm not surprised to hear summoners were and are still considered top dps.

[Zorzi]

According to YoshiP SMN are still top DPS even with the removal of Thunder. They decided it was better to remove an additional skill rather than nerf Summoner DOTs.

This bothers me a lot. I would rather just have our numbers toned down instead of dumbing down the job as a whole. Instead of managing more dots, we now get to spam more ruin? Or spam Blizz II in aoe? I like managing dots, that's why I play SMN.

[Kevee]

This bothers me a lot. I would rather just have our numbers toned down instead of dumbing down the job as a whole. Instead of managing more dots, we now get to spam more ruin? Or spam Blizz II in aoe? I like managing dots, that's why I play SMN.

This.

I've said it multiple times, but we could have used our numbers adjusted down.

Dumbing down the class is not how you should do it, though. I'd much rather have some of the potencies lowered, because the THM class is just as much a part of SMN as SMN is--After all, SMN is just an add-on to ACN.

[Seobit]

Losing one dot when I already have 4 or 5 others really won't reduce the fun factor in any way for me. Maybe I'm weird.

[OmegaNovaios]

I'm glad we have Blizzard II over Thunder. It will boost our AOE burst on 2+ mobs and improve our AOE DPS on 5+ mobs. IMO that's better than keeping the same setup but equivalent in DMG loss to gaining a more useful tool to cover our weaknesses at the same time.

Reached my daily post limit so this is my last.

It's better to get nerferd and get something in return than to get a straight global DMG nerf. Taking Thunder away is about -6% DPS. Reducing all DMG by -6% has the same effect. Getting Blizzard II in return to help alleviate our weakness is better that nothing.

[T0rin]

Now that the boots issue has been fixed, this is my major gripe with the patch. I've always held that SMN has been top DPS by a fairly good margin. This could be proven out to a good extent with parser data combined with verifiable HP checks combined with theorycrafted damage math. I knew that when we lost Thunder, and did the calculations on how much that would impact our DPS, I wasn't worried about not being the top dog anymore. (at least on T5)

But, they took a skill away from us that we used very frequently, and replaced it with a skill we would only use as a filler in a small amount of situations. They made the class easier to play the vast majority of the time. They gave us a minor AoE damage upgrade. I too, like SMN mainly because of all the stuff there is to do. The big caps in potential play skill, and the reward that comes with it. All they did was dumb down the SMN. You no longer have to consider whether it is worthwhile to multi-DoT with Thunder. You have an even easier time of managing mana, if you even have to bother at all now. You have 1 less thing to keep track of. And in trade? We get a skill that you might spam 2-3 times against a group of 10 mobs. B2 will see some use in WPSR and similar grindy content, it'll see a _little_ use in T4, but otherwise will go un-used. Thunder got used a whole lot, and it is a shame that SMN was dumbed down a little to 'fix' the DPS.

[Kevee]

I'm glad we have Blizzard II over Thunder. It will boost our AOE burst on 2+ mobs and improve our AOE DPS on 5+ mobs. IMO that's better than keeping the same setup but equivalent in DMG loss to gaining a more useful tool to cover our weaknesses at the same time.

Blizzard II is barely an increase over Tri-Disaster. It's 20 potency more/cast.

It's not something to be happy gaining over Thunder, at all, especially because there is no real functional use of AoEing 5+ mobs besides 2 phases in T4. Everywhere else, Thunder was superior. Both for AoE, and ST, and it rewarded skillfull play.

Why do you think there's a lot of people in these topics that have popped up saying SMN is bad? Both people who play SMN, and bystanders.

It's because there's an exceptional few who knew what they were doing, and they knew how strong they were. Did you know standing in melee and auto attacking will give you ~5-7 more DPS? I always stand in melee, always.

How many other summoners can you say do that?

[T0rin]

Long story short on the 2.1 SMN changes: Dumbed down the class by taking away an integral piece of our DoT rotation, added in a mostly useless AoE filler skill. SMN deserved an ST nerf, there were just better ways to accomplish it, and Yoshi apparently wanted a way that didn't involve changing core ACN skills, which left Thunder. Life will go on.