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

[Lavieh]

Indeed. Reading that reddit thread, giving SMNs back Thunder and lowering Ruin's MP cost seem to be relatively easy fixes. And throwing them a bone with the poetics trash too.

This is the easiest solution, while boring it would be effective.

Thunder would give SMNs roughly a 10% increase in DPS, lowering Ruin's MP cost would make their DPS fall off less and even switching a single piece of Dreadwyrm gear to something like Crit/Det would be a nice buff. This would easily close the gap that other DPS's have on them.

[niwaar]

Since SE has nerfed my ability to post long posts:
^^^ This is essentially a TL;DR Version.

Unfortunately, not posting the entire well thought out thread you posted on Reddit is a disservice. They say they read those other "forums" but not to have it all on the official forums makes it feel like we aren't saying what needs to be said.

The problem really is, that this has been a known issue since the start of 2.4 more than a month ago. They saw fit to nerf one class introduced last month and prop up another. All without saying anything about SMN. If the difference between SMN and the rest of the pack was not significant (and only grows to be a wider gap as we gear up) then we would not be here talking about it. But the DPS Gap is immediately felt in Turn 10. Its not something that is hidden at all. Unlike the OP I do not want to be forced into another class. I love being ranged. I can not swap to BLM, so I am left with having to be the guinea pig forced to play monk if I choose to change. I don't want to. I want YoshiP&Co. to get their heads out of the clouds and fix this situation instead of forcing me into a class I didnt really enjoy when I leveled it up.

[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.

[Orrias]

• (A) Increase the potency and mana return on Energy Drain.
• (B) Increase the amount of Aetheryte stacks up from 3 to X amount.
• (C) Lower the duration on the CD for Aetherflow.

[Jacost]

Perhaps change the pet proc to give an extra Aether stack instead of a useless Spell Speed boost? Or guaruntee a crit on the next ability; combine with Energy Drain and we're in business (and SCHs will also appreciate the Adlo boost).

[Edeline]

How about increasing MP recovery added to Aetherdam III trait. Current Aetherflow recovers 20% MP, that trait could give it a 20% extra, making it 40% (technically the same as Envigorate restoring 400/1000 (40%) TP and 500 for DRGs) and reducing Ruin MP cost from 79 to 59. Just some suggestions @.@

[TattoedEnigma]

I read the entire reddit post abd couldn't agree more

[Xisin]

Here is what I'd change:

- Correct egi accuracy to the SMN's accuracy requirement, it makes no sense to have a different accuracy cap for a pet.
- Energy drain mp returns should scale with the damage dealt like the hp drain component does instead of a flat amount.
- Energy Drain potency up by 50 (summoner only trait)
- Miasma II mp reduced by 30
- Ruin mp reduced by 10
- Tri Disaster rework - (and renamed) next spell cast cost 0 mp 90 sec cd

That should do it.

[MartaDemireux]

They've already said that with the level cap increase come 3.0 we will be seeing new egis and current egis will be rebalanced. That's likely where they're going to have SMN make up their DPS. Or perhaps SMN will see itself shift on the DPS wheel to be more of a support DPS like BRD. Their shortcomings would be fine in my opinion if it was balanced with some added support.

[Lame_Marine]

A hard part about buffing Summoner is that if you buff it in certain ways, you are also giving Scholars a buff too which might throw off any DPS balance between healers and further ingrain the idea that Scholar is DPS first, backup healer second. Unfortunately SE put themselves in this position when they made Arcanist, Scholar and Summoner so now it's up to them to bring Summoners back up to speed without making Scholars too overpowered.