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

[Ghishlain]

Just giving the topic another bump with a few more thoughts brewing in my head on how to get SMN outta its existing MP situation without touching the SCH side of things:


(1) A direct boost to Fester's damage, giving SMN more spike potential and being able to use Energy Drain with less DPS loss due to Fester's increased potency. I dunno how much increased potency, but this would work towards teaching SMNs how to manage resources and balance between Energy Drain and Fester for resources. Of course I imagine a change like this would make SMNs single target damage in any non-end game run to hit some pretty insane levels since they have no MP issues there.

(2) Change Fester to have the following additional effect:
"Gives a 25% chance that your next energy will not require an Aetherflow charge for 10 seconds for each DoT applied to the target". Free MP + damage, gooo~

(3) Modify Tri-Disaster to be an oGCD ability that casts for free, instant, has a 30 second cool down, single target spell with the potency of Ruin that has a 50% chance of restoring a stack of Aetherflow to the SMN

/2gil

[Brianmj]

(3) Modify Tri-Disaster to be an oGCD ability that casts for free, instant, has a 30 second cool down, single target spell with the potency of Ruin that has a 50% chance of restoring a stack of Aetherflow to the SMN
/2gil

Your other ideas are fine, but no to this. I use Tri-disaster a lot in PvP already. And when the level cap is raised, when we're fighting things much higher level than we are, Tri-disaster will come into use as a very important kiting tool.

[Ghastly]

Just look at the numbers, it's the least played class right now. Either it dies like WoW Warlock or they fix them like they did for Dragoon. To let them die off would be a shame when Summoner is one of the standard FF jobs.

[Havenchild]

Very specific issues across the board for the class but the MP one is definitely the dominate problem.

There are a few avenues they could take to change Summoner but NOT Scholar.

1) Add Energy Drains affect to Fester. Keep Fester the exact same just simply add in Energy Drains MP Regeneration affect at the very least 266MP like current, to Fester. SMNs already for the most part choose to not sacrifice a Fester for a Energy Drain because the returns on Energy Drain are so small. This fix, affects Summoner only and alleviates to some degree the MP issue. (Solid Solution)

2) Change Enkindle. Instead of simply doing damage, keep a 4-5m GCD (I think 4m cause 5ms is a bit to long for Enkindle anyway regardless) on it, and make it so it full restores all of a SMNs MP. Considering a SMN goes OOM at about 4-5 mins performing optimally this is a clever balance to it. Essentially this brings the class up to par with BLM (Infinite MP) which is fair considering the damage BLM is capable of doing at current. No potencys would need changing, exclusive to SMN. (Solid Solution)

PS: Every other DoW or DoM class at current has a solid MP/TP regeneration aspect thats well balanced for the class. BRD/NIN/DRG/MNK all have Invigorate (400 TP). BLM, Infinite MP via Umbral Ice (part of their core rotation)
SMN has Energy Drain (266MP), tied directly to their DPS (Fester substitution; No other class has this), and it only allows you to cast 2 skills, where as Invigorate gives you much more then 2 skills on any other class, how is that balanced?

Other avenues that would affect both:

3) Increase the influence Magic Damage and INT have on DoTs. (This, however would effect SCH as well also doesn't solve the MP issue, just increases DPS over a fight.)

4) Spellspeed Influencing DoT tick occurence. This would also affect SCH ( Ideally being coded to not affect healing spells from Eos) but it would also validate SS on SMN class. (Same as the last one, only DPS increase but harder to balance vs BLM.)

[Mature]

I love playing with smn but this mana business has forced me to swap classes for final coil I don't want my group to feel they carrying dead weight.

Tri disaster should make a damage like Holy and the SOUL STONE should be giving an extra 1k mp

[Xisin]

I love playing with smn but this mana business has forced me to swap classes for final coil I don't want my group to feel they carrying dead weight.

Tri disaster should make a damage like Holy and the SOUL STONE should be giving an extra 1k mp

you not being able to clear fcob turn 1 isnt a smn issue. their only real big smn issue is mp and itemization, nothing else, potency is fine.. maybe up potency on miasma 2 but if you go down to less lengthy fights summoner still does fine.

Caster as an archetype is lagging behind melee dps though.

[Akiza]

Having low mp is a big hit on dps but it's not the main issue for Summoners. Summoner's aren't sustained like everyone says they have a slow ramp up period oom then decline and sit at their minimum levels then repeat. Black Mage dps is sustained they start at a high level go into their mp regen phase with umbra ice losing little dps then they are their high point again in dps with umbra fire phase and repeat.

[Ghastly]

And that's it really, egis are so normalized, their auto-attacks are too generic. I would love to see an egi that could chain multiple DPS skills instead of the regular auto-skill. The way egis act is either stupid (letting them use all skills) or boring and low damage (controlling them). Why can't they have 5 purely DPS skills for them to chain and then the few big skills that we tell them to use?

[Numenor1379]

How about give ACN a trait that gives a Shroud-like regen to MP when at 3 Aetherflow stacks and get rid of Energy Drain?

[Alberel]

How about give ACN a trait that gives a Shroud-like regen to MP when at 3 Aetherflow stacks and get rid of Energy Drain?

No SMN would be sat on 3 aether stacks for longer than 20 seconds at the absolute maximum so it would not be particularly useful. A better idea would be for SMNs to have a unique job trait that passively generates a single stack of aetherflow periodically, in addition to the usual 3 stacks every cooldown.