We have finally come full circle, SMN's need help!

[Atomnium]

Mana issue, egis' accuracy problem (and food buff effect on egis), and spell speed overflow.

I have never felt so disappointed in any patch note than 2.45, since for the longest time smn have been complaining and SE has made no effort to fix it.
I shouldn't be melee acc capped (without food too), hugging bosses' butts for auto-attacks as a caster class. Might as well make a new lv55 skill called book smack with 300 potency on a 5min CD.

My feeling as well, the mana management is just horrible in fcob that I have to actually nerf myself if I feel the will to Ruin II to not loose dps on movements, had to find tricks to compensate this but it's not always working.
I'm not getting fun anymore to play smn lately because of the said reasons and I'm not even talking about how hard is to handle the huge adds phase in turn 13 without totally exploding my mps, meanwhile the blms army is like "infinite mps" "infinite dps" "infinite and huge aoe damages" they don't have anything to worry about and just zerg without thinking at what is going to happen next.

I loved smn job and I'm playing it since 2.0 but I will likely change to the gun job (if it is a dps) at 3.0, because... I'm tired.

[SongJoohee]

blms army is like "infinite mps" "infinite dps" "infinite and huge aoe damages" they don't have anything to worry about and just zerg without thinking at what is going to happen next.

Please Flare, I know you, I know you're smarter than this, and you know that is not true, and almost the exact opposite. Every single good Black Mage, and honestly - every good player in the game - should know exactly what bosses are going to do next. Black Mage especially as they want to minimize movement as much as they possibly can to maximize damage output.

Summoners do fine up until the moment they run out of MP. That's their one and only problem abilities wise. Which could easily be solved by making Aetherflow and Energy Drains give more mana and raising the mana cost of Scholars spells a little bit to make up for the increased mana. Perhaps lowering egi accuracy to caster would be a decent buff to, too give them a slightly better set variety in gear.

[Atomnium]

Please Flare, I know you, I know you're smarter than this, and you know that is not true, and almost the exact opposite. Every single good Black Mage, and honestly - every good player in the game - should know exactly what bosses are going to do next. Black Mage especially as they want to minimize movement as much as they possibly can to maximize damage output.

Summoners do fine up until the moment they run out of MP. That's their one and only problem abilities wise. Which could easily be solved by making Aetherflow and Energy Drains give more mana and raising the mana cost of Scholars spells a little bit to make up for the increased mana. Perhaps lowering egi accuracy to caster would be a decent buff to, too give them a slightly better set variety in gear.

I think you misunderstood my quote, I'm sorry. I wasn't stating that blm can be totally "brainless" against any fight, my comment was directly pointing to blm mps management, which doesn't exist at all.
As a blm and like any other jobs in fcob you will care about your movements and what is going to happen next, it is obvious, meanwhile as a "stress-factor-bonus" for smn you have to perpetually think about your decisions on your mps management and it is somehow doable... Till it's no longer the case and no matter what you do, when the mp factory is out of order and your Aetherflow still got 30 secs before being ready......... This is what I feel :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa95vyjloDM

[Rgaze]

The only real issues here are mp management and spell speed. Summoners are not inherently weak (SE removed thunder for a reason), because we can stay mobile and keep almost 100% uptime on the boss, as well as dot up multiple enemies all over the map. Even in fights like t8 mnk is the only job that truly "crushes" us as OP states. Playing in many statics with skilled players I found myself on par with all other jobs in t8. Even in fcob if the bard has to throw out mana song for a healer I can see the improvement in my dps and easily keep it up to par with other jobs. It's just compared to blm with it's infinite resources, or the multiple jobs that use TP and therefore need a bard's paeon, mana is a very real issue in fcob and can take it's toll. Avoiding ruin II helps some but the lack of mana greatly increases the skill floor required to be on par with other jobs.

So please SE, let us have more base mana to allow us to continue milking the job for what it's truly worth.

[Clarkamite]

I spent a couple hours one night talking to the SMN in our static about where SMN currently stands. I can say as a BLM main that SMN definitely feels sort of gimped at the moment. It feels like SMN is almost balanced around having a Foe Rec singing bard in the group whereas a BLM is just going to do some sick DPS with or without one.

My one question I have is if you are saying anything about DPS numbers being too low for a SMN, where are you getting the numbers? From everything I've heard any and all parses on SMN are inaccurate. How inaccurate I don't know but from what I've heard the parsing of dots is an estimate and there are certain things it just doesn't register at all.

I do feel like SMN is slightly less useful than a BLM at this point in coil but at the same time I don't know how much of a buff they would need. I doubt that anything will change with the current classes until expansion. Unless there is some glaring thing brought to SE's attention. It's too close for the jobs to be changing anyways for it to really matter. Yes they would probably benefit from some sort of a buff and it's also probably needed but at the same time where they stand right now isn't in a horrible place either. They're useful, they do solid DPS, and they do offer valuable utility. I don't know of any group that is excluding SMN's at this point.

EDIT: One thing I will point out is that I see a lot of discussion about SMN's having mana issues now with this Final Coil. I'll have to pay more attention but in the past our SMN has NEVER even come close to running out of mana and he's also not holding off on using Ruin 2 or Shadow Flare. I've watched some gameplay videos he's put up and it does look like at times maybe he's not going all out blasting things as hard as possible but at the same time he's always hovering anywhere from 360-400 DPS depending on the turn. How much more DPS does he really need to be doing? It does suck to not be able to just constantly nuke all the time like some jobs but I think part of that is unless you're trying to progress and squeeze that lemon as hard as you can, there's no real need to blast away until your mana starved once you have content on farm. That's usually when my group eases up and starts just worrying about opening chests and hoping for the loot we will never see.

[Shizuna]

I cleared FCOB as a SMN, I didn't switch to BLM but it still took quite the effort to do so...
It's ok though spellspeed helped!! /sarcasm

lol, I'm on the verge of getting to clear t13 and I have a load of sps (to be exact 495 sps)...

Imo, Energy Drain should have it's Aetherstack requirement removed, and placed on its own CD, separate from Fester. Let Fester be the nuke, and Energy Drain just an oGCD ability akin to Jugulate, Mug, etc.

That kind of suggestion would directly buff SCH, so I don't think this should be done. Anything that a SCH and SMN share in skill and traits would affect each other, which is why SMN is limited for now.

snip

Well, I'm not sure if I'm doing any better either, but I do around an average of 410-430 dps in t10-12 (likely low for my ilvl), while my static BLM is doing 460-480 dps. And we both have about equal average ilvl. Most SMN's will energy drain under 1k MP to not go completely oom, but they lose out on a bit of dps because of that.

[Sleigh]

EDIT: One thing I will point out is that I see a lot of discussion about SMN's having mana issues now with this Final Coil. I'll have to pay more attention but in the past our SMN has NEVER even come close to running out of mana and he's also not holding off on using Ruin 2 or Shadow Flare. I've watched some gameplay videos he's put up and it does look like at times maybe he's not going all out blasting things as hard as possible but at the same time he's always hovering anywhere from 360-400 DPS depending on the turn. How much more DPS does he really need to be doing? It does suck to not be able to just constantly nuke all the time like some jobs but I think part of that is unless you're trying to progress and squeeze that lemon as hard as you can, there's no real need to blast away until your mana starved once you have content on farm. That's usually when my group eases up and starts just worrying about opening chests and hoping for the loot we will never see.

360-400 is really bad for every turn, no offense to your SMN.

This topic was never about if SMN can complete content, meet enrage timers, kill adds in time, etc. It sure can, especially once your group gets the content in question on farm. The issue is it's just a worse DPS than the others, and in the MMO community it's a legitimate issue when the job you gear up (based on weekly lockouts, no less) and specialize in is not wanted and shunned by people in the know.

[loreleidiangelo]

360-400 is really bad for every turn, no offense to your SMN.

This topic was never about if SMN can complete content, meet enrage timers, kill adds in time, etc. It sure can, especially once your group gets the content in question on farm. The issue is it's just a worse DPS than the others, and in the MMO community it's a legitimate issue when the job you gear up (based on weekly lockouts, no less) and specialize in is not wanted and shunned by people in the know.

Do you mean that those numbers are bad in comparison to other DPS jobs, or bad for a SMN specifically? If it's the latter, knowing gear/ilevel might change that.

[ShinryuReishiki]

From everything I've heard any and all parses on SMN are inaccurate. How inaccurate I don't know but from what I've heard the parsing of dots is an estimate and there are certain things it just doesn't register at all

They certainly aren't 100% accurate due to the way DoT damage is registered in game, but as of recent updates, it's generally within +/-1% of the actual damage.

Do you mean that those numbers are bad in comparison to other DPS jobs, or bad for a SMN specifically? If it's the latter, knowing gear/ilevel might change that.

Both, I'd imagine. 450-480 is where I'm at on SMN, depending on the Turn. If well-played and in equivalent gear, MNK, DRG, NIN, and BLM would all be close to/exceeding 500. BRD is the only DPS that would be under SMN, but if they have a DRG and Ballad is not needed, BRD would edge out SMN as well.

[Judge_Xero]

Looking at new Monk vids i125+ with single target numbers in the low 600's (very nice) it shows that the rate at which SMN damage increases is low.

I would attribute it to the stat weights more than gear and/or MP conservation especially against Melee classes.

Given SMN's low Magic Damage weight 6.57 (20-40% lower than other classes) and the rate that secondary stats increase 7-10% per 10 iLvls there is a stat scaling balance issue.

At low iLvl's where the secondary stats started relatively high compared to Weapon/Main stats, SMN did competitively well. But due to the rate that the main stats increase VS secondary stats, and how SMN skill potency was balanced against other classes on release, each update in gear will see a reduced increase in SMN damage.

Comparison to BLM

@ ~3 MD per 10 iLVL's BLM will accelerate past SMN at a Rate of 4 INT per MD. This doesn't include the low Secondary stat gain on SMN, especially Spell Speed.

i135 Weapon
BLM 656 Main Hand value - INT
SMN 539 Main Hand value - INT
Difference 117 INT

i70 Weapon
BLM 504 Main Hand Value - INT
SMN 413 Main Hand Value - INT
Difference 91 INT

The newest set of gear makes this very noticeable due to the amount of Spell Speed on the mage gear and how it scales with Summoner Damage. I haven't done the math but given BLM VS SMN BiS + the difference on scaling with WD/secondary stats we are probably looking at a difference of 40-60 INT. ~10% + on gear alone.

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I can see why they would take this approach since currently the pet scales off WD and INT at a higher rate than SMN (almost double, but it doesn't scale off Secondary Stats as a trade off) but the lesser increase on secondary stats causes SMN to fall behind. This appears to be an attempt to balance the Ratio of SMN to Pet damage on top of balancing SMN to all other classes.

My only guess to balance this would be to increase the damage scaling of pets from MD/INT (eventually pets will become a high % of overall SMN Damage though)

OR

Boost the weight of secondary stats for summoner - not ideal due to the non-static nature of gear secondary stats

OR

Most ideal IMO - Increase the Weight of MD for SMN and have the pet scale the same as SMN for all stats, including Spell Speed. In order to balance Magic Pets VS Melee pets, have DET scale the same way as it does for Melee and AA Damage.

I.E. - Garuda 2.4 GCD VS Ifrit 2.4 GCD for Flame Crush + DET Bonus for AA Damage, since AA doesn't scale off Spell Speed/Skill Speed
(to prevent SS from being too ideal for the use of Garuda over Ifrit)

This would just make pet damage an extension of the SMN (balanced as Raw Potency) instead of having to balance the pet on top of how the SMN performs. I.E. (A + B = C instead of A + B^2-(D+F))

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Because of this, I don't think SMN damage is being effected by a single issue.
It appears to be a combination of
- Gear/Stat Weights
- MP Management in long fights

I'm not convinced that MP management is the main issue that is reducing SMN potential over other classes, but rather a by-product of players trying to push every ounce of damage out of it to remain competitive with other classes. (Fester VS Energy Drain is such a miniscule portion of overall damage)

Patching SMN with potency increases will not address the gear scaling issues compared to other classes.
Increasing MP recovery/reducing spell cost will not address the damage difference to other classes approaching ilvl 131

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Does this mean that SMN is not good in current endgame content? No. But it does take a highly skilled SMN to push high enough numbers to compete with currently average players of other DPS classes (not including Bard).

Dummy Comparison iLVL 131

Estimated (Edited to bring DPS values to a less simulated amount)

SMN Single Target Damage @ i131 - 525 DPS (390 SMN + 135 PET) - Garuda
Melee 625
BRD 540
BLM 585
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Final Thoughts

Increase Summoner MD weight to around 7.5 - reduce how much the pet is effected by MD and INT and allow them to be effected by secondary stats.