Can someone give me an in-depth explanation why Summoner is arguably the worst DPS?

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Ouch, that direct assault on a poster, rather than the topic without proper elaboration. So since you asked for it, here it is:

BLM:
manaward - very meh only reduces damage by negligible amount, by comparison second wind destroys it and it is only applied to the BLM so not a party utility.

You compared it to Second wind in one post and in another post you're saying it's useless because 7 out of 8 still take damage. With the previous argument you provided: All melees and bards (and even warrior) could just use Second wind. In this case, up to 5 players will take virtually no damage here by your logic. That equals 5 players having a useless cross class skill. By the logic you provided anyway. That's not a really good argument to elaborate the usefulness or utility of an ability.

Additionally, second wind destroys it? A cross-classed second wind heals for somewhere between 400 and 900 HP, depending on gear. While on a low level black mage, Manaward blocks off 1000 damage with a 3000 HP pool.

Manawall - alot better then manaward as you can use it for earthshockers etc but same as above helpful but any other dps can deal with the mechanics with heals or good timing e.g. titan LB on adds etc

It's interesting how you bring up T13 mechanics as an example for manawall, but not for manaward. Manaward could save your own life for multiple scenario's. Especially for those where weakness is a factor. Sure, you could argue that no one should be dying in the first place. But one death does not equal instant failure.

And oh hey, surprisingly mana ward -could- save you from potential deaths where second wind cannot - Specifically for rage of bahamut or marked megaflares+tower combo.

Lethargy - works on little where it matters usually overshadowed by miasma

Where lethargy won't work, the disease debuff usually won't work either. Please don't forget about that. They're not even the same thing. Lethargy gives the target a heavy and slow effect while Miasma (II) gives them a disease effect instead.
Also, miasma itself doesn't reduce the healing or movement speed. It's the disease!

Stun - its a stun nothing more needed.
Blind - its a blind nothing more needed.
knock back- " "
DPS without having to target - on fights like levi, t5 etc the DOTs still tick when you are unable to target them.
Tri - Disaster - the more useful of the useless binds

Stun is not a very good argument here. Most targets where no stun-control is required is immune to stun and on targets who do require stun-control you may not stun either way.
Blind is hardly effective at all on 99% of the targets where it matters. Immunity towards it is build rather quickly too - Same with Diseases.
Knockback usually causes more harm than good. In cases where it can cause no harm the target is immune to knockback.
The DPS thing is the only one in this list that's somewhat correct.
Not that bind is a very useful utility at all, but it's not like Tri-disaster is that much better than freeze - Neither get used in practice anyway.

I'm also not sure why you think an arcanist eye for an eye is superior than a cross classed one. Or the very least you are making the impression it's superior. It has the same effect, with or without passive. The only difference is the recast duration.

PS. I don't recall doing anything ever with you

[ViviAnimus]

ok thats cool, but 7/8 people still take damage, so you have just taken 0 damage in the event AOE healing will still be necessary. What is the benefit ? what is the benefit to the raid group?
If we were talking about solo utility, BLM would win with self damage mitigation but I was under the impression we were talking about raid utility.
But then again if we want to talk about solo utility titan egi will beat out every single solo utility there is in the game par SCH, ACN.

The amount of times Manaward saved my ass in T13, though. Also pretty useful on T12 because I switch the flame with a healer. On T10 it's pretty sweet for the charge. T11 for nerve cloud, especially when you fucked up your movement in the last phase. Manaward is pretty sweet to be fair.

So on T10, it's a pretty much safe I will be surviving with manaward
T11 don't need stoneskin for nerve cloud. Don't know if you can stand still in a gas attack and do more DPS - Also rewarding for the raid
T12 very nice that I can use it to mitigate damage, especially when benu's are up. Greatly relieves healers from stress. Also prevented me from dying a couple of times when I wasn't really topped up when Phoenix does his big flame attack in the last phase into dodge bit.
T13. Can take two stacks without having to worry about dying, at all. Pretty sweet. Can use it on megaflare when there is no dome up. Can use it for megaflare during divebombs. It really saved me more times than I can count. Prevention off dying is the best raid utility

[ViviAnimus]

Xisin

Short term fights, there you have it. Final coil isn't short term and BLM outperforms it on every turn. BLM is better on like 80% of coil. T1,2,4,5,6,8,10,11,12,13.
To say BLM DPS is dependent on Selene is not entirely true. It gets a huge boost from it, but it is not dependent on it. Black Mage is the only class able to benefit from it, there you have another perspective.
Getting to move or moves being interrupted is a DPS loss but it is also quite recoverable. On T13, I easily get 510 DPS (unmerged) while having to deal with three+ earth shakers throughout the fight, moving for megaflares...
I don't see why Summoner should have less DPS and more utility. Why?
BLM also has manawall and manaward, thank you. Both very good moves and useful ones. You might as well delete Battle res from SMN, because it's pointless. The enhanced virus is also pointless because whenever you have to use it, a SCH does it.

Difficulty might be subjective, but BLM is piss easy

[Sleigh]

Difficulty might be subjective, but BLM is piss easy

I find I have to think more to do well on SMN, but I have to know more to do well on BLM.

[Xisin]

actually every class but smn benefits from selene its quite easy to observe... well maybe not bard since they sing more paeon then lol but skill speed is not entirely useless and is actually weighted not terribly. but you saying fcob isnt short term is simply repeating what I said in my post. My point with interrupting thunder 2/3 is simple though when it happens blm drops to 0 dps flat, I do believe that never happens to summoner.

I find the variance in your numbers hard to believe, for someone claiming that you cant go over 470 in turn 10 but can pop over 500+ on t13, either you suck really bad at 10 or you are fudging your numbers. Also just 5-6 days ago you claimed 460 on t13. Were you dead?

you saying its easy proves my point quite well, it makes it moot to discuss difficulty. All jobs in this game require little mechanical skill to begin with, they're all relatively easy... Thus why I say difficulty does not matter, and how its completely incorrect to base balance on it.

Summoners should still stick with one or two threads like most jobs have done in the past. It's a little obnoxious. As of now there are 6 threads about the same thing on the front page of the dps forums, and if I bothered to look at general I could probably find one too, is that necessary?

one last edit though: if meteor didn't exist and the cube in t11 didn't exist would groups bother with a caster at all? I don't think so. The only redeeming factos casters have currently is they are good at add phases, which blm has locked down pretty tight in the aoe department, despite that solid melee dps players are still enough to bypass any aoe phase fcob throws at them, this means smn does well too. in actuality during burst aoe phases melees can adequately keep up, I know of a drg and nin who can chase my 900-1000 dps on shiva adds with 700-800+ of their own during the phase, all the drg requires is a goad and the nin can do it solo. The only unfortunate things about smn is mp issues and that they scale negatively with group strength due to the nature of dots. Then again its the same thing as a blm flaring a 1k hp target for 4k, the difference is that the parser credits the blm for the 3k worthless damage applied there.

[ViviAnimus]

Indeed, Summoner doesn't. Spell speed scales for 0.098 INT or something. The Dreadwyrm Book has SS and on top of that Summoner gets three to four imperative pieces that have spell speed on them. Summoners have perhaps 60-80 Spell speed that is absolutely useless. Considering Crit and DET scale for at least 0.25, that is worth 15-20 INT which basically translates in an equal amount of DPS.
The raw damage on Summoner is a lot lower than it is on Black Mage. Also Summoner DPS is not nearly as sustained as a BLM. A simple test on a dummy proves this. Well, multiple tests.
I did 470 in T10 with 120 weapon and ilvl 119. Now I am ilvl 126 with 130 weapon and I push nearly 500 DPS on every turn expect T11 where I simply stick at 480 for some reason. (SCH uses Eos on final phase) Also do mind that it's unmerged. So on T13 that's 480 DPS. Merged it can vary from 500 to 510 easily.
And there really is an objective way to say that Black Mage is by far the easiest class to achieve high DPS. But difficulty doesn't really matter indeed. If we dismiss difficulty, than SMN should at least be on equal footing. It does not need more utility, it needs less. Actually, just delete the Battle Raise and up their DPS, it's that simple.
The fact that there are a multitude of threads doesn't bother me and has no influence over the glaring issues with Summoner at the moment.

[Xisin]

I agree with itemization, it sucks balls for summoner. However what happens if the next patch all gear comes back with crit/det and the best gcd blm can muster is 2.38 or so? Should I beg for buffs?

I've always been in agreement with summoner buffs. What I disagree with however is that they need potency buffs, they do not. They need sustain buffs, they also need pet accuracy to match caster accuracy, that's bullshit.. BLM should out dps a smn, smn should bring more utility, everytime they've edged blm out in the past its been due to utility. Quite honestly from the sounds of things you may get some bis for damage gear from the new crystal tower based raid. This is seen with the shiva bracelet on blm.

[ViviAnimus]

Crit / DET is good for BLM. The scaling of CRIT, DET and SS have minimal differences. And no, that isn't a reason to beg for buffs. They indeed need more Sustain and as I said, I wouldn't mind them outdpsing BLM. At least ST. Because right now, BLM is ST champ and AoE champ and you can't have that with two Casters. And please the utility argument is just so boring and overused. Apoc, Manaward and Manawall literally shits on anything Summoner has because it is unique.
The battle Raise is just a no go. If you have to raise as a Summoner, you might as well wipe in Final Coil. It also absolutely destroys your MP, making your DPS suffer greatly which in turn makes you a hinderance instead of that almighty raising saviour. It shouldn't be up to DPS to raise and it should be deleted. Eye4anEye is alright, I guess. But it hold no great importance, at all. (CON)

[ViviAnimus]

The supervirus can be pretty sweet. But then again, the moments where it needs to be used, the SCH can just do it. There is no need for a Summoner to use the supervirus unless the SCH is dead. It's therefore not utility, but more of an expeptional situation.
So, from the way I see it:

- Delete battle raise
- Give more ST damage than BLM by upping the potency of pets and Fester. Not by a lot though.
- More sustained DPS

[Sleigh]

one last edit though: if meteor didn't exist and the cube in t11 didn't exist would groups bother with a caster at all? I don't think so.

I agree, this is pretty much it in a nutshell. Fortunately Meteor does exist and is invaluable in T10 (something like 150-200 DPS IIRC from LB3), and the cube's 50% physical resistance makes a caster worthwhile, and in T12 I think caster is legit top DPS because of add phase and in that sense it's not padding since it is an add phase you can skip through.

Pretty pointless T13 in current gear, definitely. Unfortunately none of my non-casters can compete with my casters gear wise so I'm stuck as being a DPS who looks good on a parse but doesn't contribute as much.