Summoner or Blackmage

[HexWeaver]

Nerf BLM, problem solved.

[rawker]

i play smn so i am biased to it. my opinion to it is that whatever smn may lack in the burst damage area is compensated by being the only dps class that can battle res. also, an idle smn is still doing damage through their egis, which blms cannot afford to do so... although i am not saying that you be an afk smn in raids or whatever content. my only wish is that future content will focus more on the egis rather than giving the job more dots.

[nbiscuitz]

i just got smn to 50 as my caster of choice before expansion, since no new caster is coming. Also that lvl60 smn af gear looks beautiful, long white pointy horn, and that garuda wing book O.o

so far my impressions are that fester is cool, its like setting up charges (dots) then fester to blow it up, sucks that miasma2 doesn't count. Enkindle seems weak as for it's recast. Only 2 useful cross class skills (swift, raging). bio2 cast a bit too long.

[Akiza]

Black Mage all the way when you hit that triple Flare you'll never look back to Summoner.

[AboHitham]

I start the game as BLM and after got my atma relic (before nerf), I changed to SMN and I like it and now I have my Zeta.

BLM has more WOW factor by doing BIG numbers and kill fast, But it's boring and feel very slow to me, Unlike SMN u can move and dodge freely while doing dps via dot and pet, As SMN res died peoples is very fun, I saved my party from wipe many times when healers dies.

I am feel SMN has more room to improve in future by add more pets and abilities, For me SMN just need making Tri-disaster more useful like increase Potency to 100 and Radius to 5y or so after testing balance, And lowering Enkindle CD to 120s.

I hope SE on 3.0 focus on improve pet ability to make it more useful as support like party buff to compete BRD.

[Bigcat9715]

Nerf BLM, problem solved.

I lol'd they would never do that. Yoshi-P mains BLM anyway, so it's only going to get buffs.

[Sanguisio]

You can play both, both can down all the content out at the moment without an issue.

Both push decent numbers, I will admit SMN you do need to be more aware of mechanics e.g making sure you DOTs arent going to fall off during earthshakers or knowing where to place pet.

This close to the expansion I would suggest getting the cross class skills such as raging strikes, virus, switfcast (BLM), quelling strikes E4AE.

[Maero]

Nerf BLM, problem solved.

umm no, this would lead to other issues. Besides blm had been nerfed before and then changed again, nerfing would be a very poor solution
Summoner itself needs to be reworked not nerfing classes again

[Iromi]

You could always play both! They share gear for now for the most part..hehe only thing that would be different is maybe few pieces here and there, and the weapon

Although skill/spell speed is changing in the expansion.

[Sanguisio]

I would also warn you about the mis information about SMNs on these forums.

I hate to say it but alot of people dont get that instant gratification from SMN and call it out for being a puny class.

As a SMN your damage comes in 3 parts
-DOTs which partly the bulk of damage which is why its important to learning timing buffs, communicate with the BRD for foes while applying etc. These also need to be ticking at all times and on as many things as possible, which is also the grace of the SMN you can do DPS all over the map, where as BLM is localized to its target.
-Pets - learn when to use ifrit and when to use garuda. Ifrit does more raw dmg but garuda extends buffed DOTs. If you can, learn when to switch them to max dps.
-Ruin/festers - apply the same approach as BLM - always be casting, but make sure you are casting the right things at the right time. E.g is pointless to be using ruin when your miasma counter is at 2 seconds, it is very unlikely you will be able to reapply miasma before the next global dot/hot tick which will be a loss of DPS, but you also need to make full use of your stacks and weave them in when you can, preferably when buffed, because if you have 2-3 stacks and aetherflow is ready to be used its a waste of DPS because you are losing stacks for the duration of the fight which means less festers/EDs.

sorry if it didnt make sense