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

[Sleigh]

My changes (which I'd like to clarify would be on SMN only if possible, SCH doesn't need one lick of help):

- Make Ruin free. Take away the element of running out of MP if you're playing properly, it doesn't work with the current BRD singing meta. Making Ruin free would make SMN only have MP issues on raising, severe multi-DoTs, and/or R2 spam, all of which give a legitimate reason for mana issues rather than the current confusing resource management where SMN is just going to end up without MP because he played normally.
- Make Ifrit do 15 more potency, Garuda do 20 more potency, Ruin/R2 do 10 more potency, up Miasma II to 90 potency (in line with buffed Ruin and more rewarding for the skillful SMN who makes his way to a boss and plan M2 for Contagion). SMN for sure needs a DPS boost to compete with BLM in virtually all content, mobile or immobile (and I'm not talking about crazy good procs on a BLM either, just in general). I'd prefer the boost to be on pet or Ruin/Fester as SMN multi-DoT damage is quite fine, it wouldn't need help in the DoT department necessarily. Single Target is now SMN's weakness, which is a U-turn from 2.0.

With these two changes, you'd keep the core SMN gameplay intact while making Ruin/Ruin II/DoTs an actual resource management game (good SMNs would strive to find a balance between Ruin and R2) rather than a ticking time bomb, while raising SMN damage levels to acceptable margins. Spell Speed would also be less hated as SMN if Ruin did a little more damage and casting faster wasn't just an MP death sentence. As I've mentioned, I have i135 book on SMN and i130 BLM staff and BLM wins so bad it's not even funny, ESPECIALLY in real content which is the strangest thing of all. SMN should be the consistent DPS caster, very methodical and scientific, hardly dampened by mechanics while bringing good numbers, in contrast to BLM's bursty, more intuitive gameplay that lives in the moment.

SMN vs BLM should be about consistency and multi-DoT vs AoE, not about a ticking time bomb of MP vs a far more damaging, resourceless class, and I say that as a BLM main. I can't use SMN right now, in a clear conscience, and it's just a crying shame.

[sackm]

I'm not sure why people think conserving mp is going to magically change SMN dps. I don't have any issues in FCob with mana... more mana isnt going to magically make our single target dps less garbage. A proper i130 weapon with DET on it would go further than any mp changes

[Ryuko]

Maybe it's literally decades of playing MMOs, but I'm sort of used to each class having its 'good' patches and its 'bad' patches. SMN aren't very good this patch (at least compared to how they used to be), because of previous issues mentioned -- long fights, coupled with an overload of SS and no real breaks for managain, leads to being manastarved, and thus not as efficient. The lack of crit/det and overload of SS on both poetics gear and dreadwyrm gear also means less damage in general. Even having a rotation memorized so you are almost *never* using Ruin 2 or casting anything more than you need to will not fix your mana issues in the FCoB. And to top it all off? Your damage just won't be as great even if you keep your mana up.

Buuuuuuut... there were patches in which other classes were deemed not as good. SMN was king in BCoB and SCoB, in both damage AND utility (everyone wanted a SMN kiter in T7)... and now we are a little weak. I'm not sure what 'fix' they will implement for this, if ever, but we may have a long wait. How long have dragoons been complaining about their issues before they finally got a fix? We may have a while to go, but... SMN was once the 'new' class, like ninja was. It was a little OP at first because SE didn't anticipate how well people would play it. Then they nerfed it, just as they did with ninja. "Full circle" is right, but full circle also means it doesn't end. Things will be adjusted. Perhaps they will consider this in the next patch they create. I just hope it's not too long of a wait... I enjoy playing SMN, and I'm lucky to have a static that's cool with it. There are a handful of useful situations for SMN in FCoB, such as casting Virus for Cloud in T11, and doing redfires in T12... but overall, we are lacking.

[SummonerSenah]

In the expansion we'll have new Egis to play with, too. It's possible they don't want to fix anything now because they anticipate having to rebalance anyway at some point after the expansion hits and don't want to do extra work.

[Xisin]

My changes (which I'd like to clarify would be on SMN only if possible, SCH doesn't need one lick of help):

- Make Ruin free. Take away the element of running out of MP if you're playing properly, it doesn't work with the current BRD singing meta. Making Ruin free would make SMN only have MP issues on raising, severe multi-DoTs, and/or R2 spam, all of which give a legitimate reason for mana issues rather than the current confusing resource management where SMN is just going to end up without MP because he played normally.
- Make Ifrit do 15 more potency, Garuda do 20 more potency, Ruin/R2 do 10 more potency, up Miasma II to 90 potency (in line with buffed Ruin and more rewarding for the skillful SMN who makes his way to a boss and plan M2 for Contagion). SMN for sure needs a DPS boost to compete with BLM in virtually all content, mobile or immobile (and I'm not talking about crazy good procs on a BLM either, just in general). I'd prefer the boost to be on pet or Ruin/Fester as SMN multi-DoT damage is quite fine, it wouldn't need help in the DoT department necessarily. Single Target is now SMN's weakness, which is a U-turn from 2.0.

With these two changes, you'd keep the core SMN gameplay intact while making Ruin/Ruin II/DoTs an actual resource management game (good SMNs would strive to find a balance between Ruin and R2) rather than a ticking time bomb, while raising SMN damage levels to acceptable margins. Spell Speed would also be less hated as SMN if Ruin did a little more damage and casting faster wasn't just an MP death sentence. As I've mentioned, I have i135 book on SMN and i130 BLM staff and BLM wins so bad it's not even funny, ESPECIALLY in real content which is the strangest thing of all. SMN should be the consistent DPS caster, very methodical and scientific, hardly dampened by mechanics while bringing good numbers, in contrast to BLM's bursty, more intuitive gameplay that lives in the moment.

SMN vs BLM should be about consistency and multi-DoT vs AoE, not about a ticking time bomb of MP vs a far more damaging, resourceless class, and I say that as a BLM main. I can't use SMN right now, in a clear conscience, and it's just a crying shame.

I can't agree with you that smn should be on par damage wise with a blm, mainly due to utility.

BLM
Eye for an Eye - 3 min recast
Apocatastasis - 3 min recastmagic damage reduction on a single target
Virus - STR/DEX version
Manaward - self preservation for survivability and continued up time
Manawall - self preservation for survivability continued up time
Lethargy - 20% Attack speed slow + heavy
Freeze - Aoe bind + small nuke
Blizz 2 shorter duration bind that puts blm at risk
sleep - works on nothing that matters
Aetherial manipulation - allows for dps uptime

VS.

Summoner

Eye for an eye @ 2mins - allows for larger up time on really good overall damage reduction
Virus STR/DEX/INT/MND way more useful than blm virus
Resurrect - primary reasons blm went out of business in 2.2 in progression
2nd body to divide damage on mechanics such as thermionic beam
Tri-Disaster provide bind
Miasma provide a heavy identical to blizzard
Shadow flare slows attacks speed (bennu phase)
much more mobile than blm ever will be due to dots+ ruin 2
uses raging strikes + pots far more efficiently than blm due to contagion and bane
the ability to keep damaging in most situations where damage is impossible to any other class (i.e off screen + mechanics such as bouquet)


Multi dotting vs aoe is situational

I do agree though that smn should be consistent, but sorry they should on a balance standpoint always be behind blm in terms of damage due to utility.

[Taban]

I think it's funny you pretty much say bard damage should be low due to utility in the main post, but completely ignore all the utility summoner brings. With goad from nin I would argue smn brings better support than bard in a lot of situations. That said, I'm of the school of thought that all dps classes should bring somewhat similar dps, with some doing better than others depending on player skill/the current fight.

[Sleigh]

I do agree though that smn should be consistent, but sorry they should on a balance standpoint always be behind blm in terms of damage due to utility.

Miasma's actually better than Blizzard because it stacks different while there are other forms of heavy that all stack. Sadly, SCH can and will use it if necessary.

In 2.2 I agreed with your reasoning that SMN's E4E + better Virus + raise + pet for stack mechanics were more useful (although there was no Apocatastasis back then as it is now) - in fact in 2.2 I fought for BLM needing more DPS than SMN on the reasoning that SMN had better utility. The tables have turned, IMO. Apocatastasis + Manaward/wall (more so than just shielding, you can bypass mechanics, ensuring survival and giving your healers room to focus elsewhere like in T12 final phase and T13) are more useful in both farm and progression T1-13 than anything SMN has right now, especially with how Antibody works with Virus (SCH Super-Virus + WHM Virus + BLM Virus is 99% of the time the same as having 3 Super-Viruses, with the rare exception). The only realistic CC casters can use thus far in Coil have been limited to Miasma and Blizzard being good against some adds mostly. I'd like to see some Sleep-able adds and some enemies who get affected more deeply by the things you mentioned, by both BLM and SMN, but it's seemingly against their design process.

I'd say it's mostly a better E4E and a battle res (which is usually not a priority for SMN to actually do, and often if it is, it's a wipe) in reality as the utility portion of SMN, at least so far in the game. For some reason they took away pet stacking in FC as a thing at all, an area they could have added for some survivability in T10. To me it's even more of a kick in the balls that BLM provides more SMN in raid survival when there are so many issues otherwise.

[sackm]

Battle Rez is so overrated. Stop saying it has utility. SCH is the first priority to raise someone and after that, well if you have 2 deaths in FCoB you might as well just run into the firewall. And virus does not justify a 50 dps gap on some turns.

[Alatarian]

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.

As a former FFXI SMN I feel your pain. Was so stoked for SMN this game but alas, it is in the dustbin for me >< I will stop now before I weep on what could've been.

[Minorinz]

After all the torture I went through to clear most of FCoB, it's been terrible on almost every encounter.
It was always mana management > DPS and then I had to optimize DPS after learning the mechanics while trying to keep my mana up. There is still no way a summoner can fully compete with other DPS classes especially when most of your party members are highly geared because that's how summoner is designed; the more DPS your party has the less time it takes for your dots to tick, of course if any of the adds can survive that long for dots to tick for their full potency... sure it's an "aoe" class but even bane is limited to 3 targets and it takes more mana to either dot the rest or wait for bane to get off CD which is a waste since fester is important to help get enemies down asap... u_u
SE designed this class and left it with so many flaws that are being highlighted in FCoB aka long fight duration and mechanics. Also for those who think that summoners are not optimizing movement and dps just like BLMs, well, you are terribly mistaken, even with that being done, mana is being drained like crazy. And sometimes there is none I can use to be able to res people so why bother give summoner a utility they have to suffer from? Oh and about Virus, let me remind you that antibodies debuff is there to make sure virus isn't used more than a minute and our SCH is doing all the virus timings perfectly that they don't even need mine since it's just a 90 secs CD and could be used 30 secs after antibodies wears off.

Like seriously SE do you even know how summoner works anymore? It amazes me how you can't even admit how unjust you are to summoners which is a difficult job to play anyway..