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

[Kalut]

TLDR Buffs pls, final coil is punishing to keep sustained at the cost of dps vs BLM and gear is just trash, make spellspeed useful

[Miotoss]

Utterly clueless. no one ruin 2 spams.

[Odowla]

Utterly clueless. no one ruin 2 spams.

They do if they want to do any respectable DPS.

EDIT - Adding in a post of mine from Reddit discussing other issues with SMN's that isnt just to the extent of MP only.

I think one of their issues isnt their damage, or their MP issues, its that they're trying to be bards, without having
A: utility to make up for low damage (like bards have songs, great burst damage, etc)
or
B: High damage with a bit of utility (like a Monk, with Dragon Kick and Mantra)
The problem with this is that all of their utility is already covered; Virus? ok, you have a Scholar anyways.
Eye for an Eye? Again, you have a Scholar.. the WHM can also cross class it.. so can the BLM, and all the trait does is reduce the cooldown.
Battle Raise? Please, this costs you literally 30% of your max MP. You SERIOUSLY want to use this? Ok, sure, enjoy the rest of the fight spamming Energy Drain.
Disease that stacks with Heavy? Again, Scholar, sure, they'll miss.. but they eventually will get it on the target.
So because of the relative low amount of utility they have, they need more damage. The number quoted on the removal of Thunder was 12% - That is exactly about right, and that is A LOT of damage - it's the biggest nerf to a classes' damage since release. I'm not asking for thunder back, what I'm trying to say about Thunder is that removing it was a HUGE nerf, such that it made them a lot easier to compete with in BCoB when the nerf happened, and since then most of the classes, except bard, have recieved buffs, which puts SMN in line with a Bard, essentially.
There ALSO was a stealth change to SMN in Patch 2.2. This change is unknown to a lot of people, but it is a change nonetheless that was pretty significant if you ask me: Pets no longer scaled on Spellspeed. This is huge for a SMN's DPS - what it meant is spellspeed no longer affected the DoT with the HIGHEST SINGLE TARGET DAMAGE that a SMN Dealt - Garuda's Wind Blade. Garuda's Wind Blade, over the course of a fight, deals the MOST damage out of all of our individual skills, so it scaling on spellspeed was HUGE. It would be like, for example, skillspeed affecting the speed on a Monk's Autoattacks. Autoattacks on a Monk at like 25% of their Total Damage, its the same idea with Garuda. It was huge, and it's been gone since 2.2, simply changing that back would make a huge difference, actually.
So what I'd propose as a "solution" to their problems, is rather than straight up buff them, make changes that also affect SCH, but less so.
1: We have this proc on our pet that increases the SMN's spellspeed by 30% - it's a low DPS increase, but a DPS increase nonetheless. The problem with THIS Proc, however, is it's a buff to our weakest secondary, that only really gives us 1 or 2 more ruins over the course of a fight. This Buff ALSO, back in 2.0-2.1, used to affect the pet, but with the change noted above, no longer does. (this wouldve been AMAZING - Garuda used to get to 2.3 GCD or so, which was sooo good), so a good change to this if it's not going to do anything to the pet, would be to refresh all DoT timers to their Maximum Value on Pet Crit, with a low % Proc rate (10? 20%?). This would affect Scholars, but this wouldnt really do much except to Scholar's damage. This "maximum value" would be even a non-Contagion'd Bio 2 will go to 45 seconds, Miasma 39, etc, which would allow a SMN to not have a recast again. This wouldnt just value Garuda, it would allow you to use other pets, as well, as they'd all have a chance to proc this, in fact Titan/Ifrit would benefit from this the most, as they have twicet he chances to crit with their autoattacks.
2: Higher Base Potency on Fester. Make Fester like a NUKE, like, Firestarter Proc crit, nuke. This would make them blow all their MP, but whilst doing so make them do SO MUCH DAMAGE during that time. 300 potency base -> 430 potency or so would be amazing, + 30% more on top of that, due to the trait.
3: This one a lot of people have commented on. WHY DOES ENKINDLE HAVE A 5:00 COOLDOWN. It doesnt do NEARLY as much damage to warrant a HALLOWED GROUND cooldown. Garuda's Enkindle is only 250 Potency. Want to know Garuda's Enkindle's Potency Per Second on a single target? 0.8 PPS. ON A 5 MINUTE COOLDOWN. Seriously, Miasma 2 does more Potency, more than FOUR TIMES more potency per second, and it's worse t han using ruin. 4.6 PPS on Miasma 2, and its the leazst efficent skill you can you. So there's options on a buff here; either increase the potency, or lower the cooldown to something more respectable, 5:00 is just too damn long for how weak it is in comparison to other classes' level 50 skills.

[Sunako]

Also one suggestion would be make ninjas goad increase mp instead tp. Goad is kinda useless if you need sing tp song after all for all melees.

[Andres_Lonegrief]

I dream of an egi's ability that increase DoT damage and a skill that allows you to move from an egi to another without using swiftcast.

Anyway, no official response yet? I guess SMN will stay like this at least until 3.0

[Odowla]

Also one suggestion would be make ninjas goad increase mp instead tp. Goad is kinda useless if you need sing tp song after all for all melees.

Everyone makes it out like Goad is useless.. lol, it's not, its the largest DPS increase another party member can give to anyone else, exempting paeon/foe's - it lets the other melee's use fracture (Which is HUGE, BTW), but I suppose that's an option, make it increase TP and MP regen.. but then ninja becomes equal to bard, so that's not a great solution either.

[ilmynasa]

Well, taking about new skills is pretty much useless at this point, unless its for 3.0, which is still months away.
Only thing devs can look into are changing specific traits that would lower or recover the smn's mana consumption without changing sch.
I personally vote for tri-disaster, since its a dead pve skill (its good in pvp). So maybe something like potency of 30, plus a mana drain debuff of 30 for 15s, then adding an anti-tri-disaster buff for 1min or something similar >_> (maybe decrease time to 9s for pvp)

[Sequora]

Also one suggestion would be make ninjas goad increase mp instead tp. Goad is kinda useless if you need sing tp song after all for all melees.

NIN has no use for MP. It really doesn't make sense in my eyes to give them an ability that restores MP, even if it is for party members. It would make it feel like a very tacked on ability.

[Sequora]

Honestly at this point I wouldn't expect any major changes until the expansion. SMNs were stating their arguments for buffs at the very beginning of 2.4. If something was going to be done I would expect it to have been done when they buffed DRGs in 2.45. FCoB is almost certainly going to be the hardest content until 3.0. 2.5 will bring the last piece of the crystal tower storyline. Yoshi P said that it will be in line with the difficulty of the previous two raids. There's a live letter this weekend, but I would assume its focus is going to be on either 3.0 and or 2.5.

[SummonerSenah]

My group's main blm hasn't been playing due to rl issues, so I've taken over in the meantime. I really dislike how little attention SE seems to be paying attention to how summoner plays. Like the fact that summoner needs flank accuracy instead of caster accuracy because of pets. There are several issues with summoner that I hope get addressed.