Would you SMNs prefer more DPS or more sustain?

[Skeith-Adeline]

Would you prefer:

Energy Drain buff
Piety on casting gear
Increased damage of Pets
Increased Damage on Spells


http://strawpoll.me/3294589


I'd choose increased Pet damage to make the pets more of a focal point.

[Sunako]

Energy Drain buff - What kind of buff? More damage or more mana? What ever it is it will affect SCH and they do not need any kind of buff.

Piety on casting gear - Piety on casting gear can be good at some point and depends on content, but if you have it too much it would mess our mana control at some point.

Increased damage of Pets - I personally think this is the best solution fix the job since that wont affect scholar in any way.

Increased Damage on Spells - most of our spells are shared with SCH and buffing our fester would give us pretty insane amount burst and it would mess our damage even more, if we will get the fights, that cost even more mana than current fights, because fester and energy drain is bonded together.

[Havenchild]

None of the above. Give a balanced MP resource in relation to every other class. Energy Drain is not a balanced resource unless it gives like triple the amount of mana it gives right now, worthy of using an Aetherflow stack on. They won't touch it either cause it's tied to scholar, so no direct buffs in potency of MP regeneration or Damage.

Damage will come naturally with simply giving us a renewable mp source so we can properly execute an optimal rotation. Considering SMN DPS over the course of a fight is entirely a negative correlation, the least they can do is help bring it closer to a curve where it eventually plateaus, actually becoming a sustainable DPS class.

Everything else at current is well balanced in terms of potency and should remain untouched. Adjusting potency for higher numbers would create an imbalance with BLM and will only make an artificial power creep we do not want.

[Shizuna]

Maybe if they adjust Energy Drain to restore the percentage of MP you are actually missing, instead of being a static 266 MP. I don't think that would affect SCH's too much. That's all I can think of right now (about to head to bed).

[Darkstride]

If Summoners want a new or added way for MP management, I would suggest something like Sublimination from FFXI's Scholar. It would slowly build a pool of MP while also slowly ticking away your health. You could offset the health loss with Regen or Stoneskin. Re-casting the ability would then restore your MP based on how much you had accumulated (it had a cap). After that it went on cooldown.

As for what I personally would want, I wouldn't like to see buffs, but rather have pets be more balanced with more useful and distinct abilities. With SMN being DoT focused, the pets should atleast have better interaction with them. Contagion is the only great damage ability for that reason. It would be nice if Ifrit, for instance, had an ability that set a debuff on the target increasing the potency of active DoTs. Or an additional DoT that could interact with Fester for more damage. Just throwing ideas out there.

I don't think a flat potency buff on anything is an answer.

[Sunako]

Only way how changing energy drain would be good(imo) if they build energy drain 2 for summoners that not cost aetherflow stacks, cost global cooldown and doing zero damage. Then u would lose only 80 potency compared using ruin instead losing 150 potency compared using fester.

[Zantusken]

An idea I had was to maybe add an additional effect to Fester so it would have a chance that the next Energy Drain didn't cost an aetherflow stack. Would have to be a pretty high chance to have an effect(50%+) but it would add a decent amount of DPS as well as somewhat offset MP issues. Just a thought.

[Lavieh]

Out of preference, if I had to choose one... Increased Pet damage. But If I could choose a few and not all :

Increased Pet damage
Increased Piety on class
Slightly Increased Ruin damage (For higher single target dps)

[Akiza]

Reducing Enkinndle's cool down to 60s will provide the extra 18-25 DPS which will make us on par with the Black Mage.

[Judge_Xero]

Would you prefer:

Energy Drain buff
Piety on casting gear
Increased damage of Pets
Increased Damage on Spells

Well, ED buff is out of the question due to being tied to SCH
Piety on Casting gear would be an unbelievable buff for BLM (So much extra time in Astral III ><)

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I would vote for Increased Damage on Spells. Something in the way of
- Bio - Potency 60 - 12s
- Miasma - Potency 50 - 18s
- Bio 2 - Potency 50 - 24s

Edited for wrong timer scale

Higher potency, less uptime and have Contagion attached to the Summoner instead of Garuda.
Edit: And have Contagion extend the dots longer (+18s vs 15s)