Can you Devs please pay close attention to pvp dps

[RiceisNice]

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BRD and MCH hits for wet noodles in melee range. If the two were dog fighting, it's the SMN's best get to close the gap, assuming no one else is coming in. If I get caught by surprise, I can't set up my prep and set up sweet spot burst and BtE. Not in the 4-5 second window that you mentioned anyway. Especially when the SMN can sprint and has purify themselves.

It's not feasible for me to dogfight a SMN unless I'm the one starting the fight from max range (and even then I'll probably need to sprint + tp skiill, so thats a huge investment) because I need to prepare my 1-2-1 shot, the first two probably without GB so it can be done on the move. By that time, I'm hitting them for wet noodle damage and they probably get the idea that I'm setting up something big. Which comes back to the same scenario, are you willing to bail out against fighting a machinist who has the jump on you?

It's really not that black and white, and it's mostly in the same realm of circumstances when it comes to getting jumped or doing the jump against someone else. But outside of that circumstance, summoners are generally more versatile in the realm of damage (whether it be killing off runners through DoTs, harassing, or defending a strategic point), especially with a caster LB which gives them another edge over ranged for defending strategic points or bottlenecks. As a MCH, I cant defend high ground that well because of range penalty, the best I can do is harass casters and healers (unless it's an astro) which SMN can also do.

[Aphel]

I don't understand why you need so much time to set up for a MCH kill. Rapid fire, reload and quick reload is your friend, use them wisely and don't waste them on just any random target. They are the bread-and-butter of our burst.

I don't run around with Gauss Barrel attached 24/7. I let it stay off if I require mobility or to easily keep my Hot Shot buff on without having to be a silly stationary target. When it's time to burst (aka kill), I put it on. If I've got the Reload buff on, I hit the first shot to get the proc, then put on Gauss Barrel and the rest is history. If it doesn't lead to a kill, I retreat and wait for CDs, and every class does that. Why would you need to prepare 1-2-1 shots? In case you're not convinced, here are some vids of my MCH gameplay.

https://youtu.be/KZJdpUJu2Y0?t=8s (This was BEFORE the MCH/BRD boost in damage. Granted the SMN had about 80% health but I didn't use my Reload at all. That would have been a quick 1-2-3 extra damage)

https://youtu.be/KZJdpUJu2Y0?t=5m17s (Same vid but I was totally caught by surprise by an enemy SMN, without purify and with a DRG to help me. If I had Purify up, no DRG, no Battle Fever, I would still be able to put up a decent fight.)

https://youtu.be/cD2v3PHILiM?t=4m11s (Different vid. This SMN has apparently used up his burst and was just free-kill and even if he did, a good Purify takes away quite a bit of his damage. Silence ensured he couldn't get his bind off).

Sure it's a lot harder to pull off than a SMN's burst, but it can be powerful and sure as hell ain't a wet noodle. We've got our Reloaded 1-2-3(Crit) + Gauss Round + Ricochet + Headgraze (100 potency Silence) + Bind/Snipe Combo + Heartbreak, all are instant if you have as little as 2 bullets. From experience, no SMN has ever survived to take all of those abilities (half of them near sweetspot) and still live unless he has a healer with him.

I record a lot of videos so if you need more confirmation just gimme a holler.

We MCHs are not weak, we aren't meant to be in melee range. SMN coming to melee range? Then he best be prepared to eat a pushback or Stungun, extra damage on him while you're moving away.

It takes quite a bit of skill to master it but once you have it down, you get Battle Highs almost every battle. The extra damage boost you get is just obscene and all you have to do is stay alive. And you'll end up with Fever in half of those Highs. Once the SMN burst is over, THEY are the ones who hit like wet noodles.

MCH were already powerful before SE boosted our damage, it's just that everyone wanted to keep it a secret and leverage for nerfs (selfish reasons), or that players just couldn't be bothered pressing so many buttons to get a kill, or that players haven't fully explored the potential of MCHs in PvP. I see a lot of MCHs use all their instant abilities at the start of a fight, often on tanks, which makes no sense to me because they've just traded their most precious CDs for a single enemy Cure 2/lustrate. If you want to blow all your CDs, make sure the enemy's health drop so fast that his healer cannot react in time.

Side note: Why is sprint + TP skill a huge investment? It's a staple for chasing down fleeing foes and we have 2 of them (Invigorate + Enliven). It's not my nature to bail out when someone has the jump on me, unless it's a WAR with Push Back + Vengeance or a melee who uses Fetter Ward. Picking fights with those is like taking an express train to hell. Oh yes they're in my vids. I love to challenge myself and see how far I can go but NOPE, I can't outlast a 12 second fetter ward/ 15 sec pushback-vengeance combo.

[RiceisNice]

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1. Instant cast GB. This is after the damage buff. If you're talking about the recent change, then it didn't buff our damage, it reduced the damage penalty when attacking from further than 15 yalms and nothing else beyond that from my experience; I still get a 20-50% damage penalty if they're closer than the 15-yalms.

2. I'm not sure what to make of that first video. The SMN not finish their burst, and they ran into your sweetspot range. By all means he could've put up much more of a fight if they had hugged them the entire time.

3. Second video, same thing. If the DRG hadn't come in, it could have been either way. You had no purify so DoTs would've been a problem even after recoup. They were also staying near your sweet spot range rather than hugging you. Without the DRG assistance you would've probably died to the deathflare that would've soon followed and make for a loss in trade even if the SMN died afterwards because of DoT damage.

It's a wet noodle when you're in melee range, I'm sure you know this. My dogfights, when they do occur, is a mix bag. I have my times that I'm fighting a SMN that feels the need to stay in my sweet spot range, while others are perfectly aware of my damage penalty and stay to me. You could stun gun (though I'd rather save that for melee LBs or a group) and blank them, but it's still not a perfect setup as you'd like it to be since that sets up for purify.

When it comes to using rapid fire, you either use it to set up the burst, or use it to speed up the burst (the latter being my preferred if they're in a group since it minimizes the window of opportunity for them to get healed), and you only really need to get a 1-2-1 shot with reload in before it's ready to go, which can be done outside of GB.

The sprint +TP is not a huge investment when it comes to that fight, but I'm speaking in general, because unless the summoner is quite literally by themselves, there could be a melee right around the corner with weapon throw. A staple doesn't change the fact that it's still investing one of two skills that have a relatively long cooldown, and it can also be used for getting out of a unfavorable fight/situation.

I'm not saying MCH is weak; I play one myself and I regularly score kills on other summoners and battlefevers, but speaking from a general standpoint they're not quite as versatile or anti-situational as a summoner, and the 1v1 scenarios that we're on can go either way depending on the environment and circumstances behind it.

[Aphel]

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2. It's not that the SMN didn't finish the burst, I purified them away and even if he followed up with pain/deathflare I've got Recouperate to answer to that. I mean the SMN would have thrown his best combo at me, I can't expect to take 0 damage right?

It's a MCH/BRD's job to keep enemies in sweetspot range, you don't seem to realize that even in the 2nd video after getting jumped on I was moving backwards and trying my best. It's not as if I couldn't move or enemies just randomly run into my sweetspot, you always move in response to what the enemy does. In that 2nd vid I was still slowly getting used to MCH and pretty shaken and all I could think of was to get my Rapid Fire + Gauss Barrel on. But that was about a month ago and it's different now. He comes in close? Use your two abilities to get away. There's no luxury to save up an ability just in case a wandering melee comes around, in 5-6 seconds you'll be dead if you don't do something!

I do agree the SMN burst fits all sorts of roles (team fights/solo fights/healer pressure) and in that respect makes it versatile and user-friendly. But if we were to talk about strictly 1v1, all CDs are up and where there's no outside influence (not that you'll have the leeway to even be considering that since it's either you or him that dies in a few seconds), all the melee with Fetter Ward (except Nin) + Purify, BRD/MCH who can just simply click Purify + Recouperate will own a SMN. WARs will eat SMNs alive.

And so they have to hide behind their human shields and shine in group fights. I do a lot of PvP per week, you can check it out on the lodestone. From experience there's only a few SMNs who willingly get into melee range, most either end up dead or sent running away instead. If a DRG/MNK is right beside me with Fetter Ward up in a 1v1, then most of the time it was my carelessness and I deserved to be killed, simple as that. Even if our damage is 100% at melee range, there's little you can do to a raging melee who can stun/pacify and burst better than a MCH/BRD.

[RiceisNice]

It's a MCH/BRD's job to keep enemies in sweetspot range. It's not as if I couldn't move or enemies just randomly run into my sweetspot, you always move in response to what the enemy does. He comes in close? Use your two abilities to get away. There's no luxury to save up an ability just in case a wandering melee comes around, in 5-6 seconds you'll be dead if you don't do something!

You move in response, it doesn't change the fact that they would be hugging you with the same/higher movement speed and make maintaining/getting that sweetspot range all the harder. And by saving stun gun for melee, I meant using supressive fire then using a blank afterwards to regain my positioning. But both aren't totally failsafe, and speaking from my end, latency usually sends them flying in wild directions when I do use a blank.

I do agree the SMN burst fits all sorts of roles (team fights/solo fights/healer pressure) and in that respect makes it versatile and user-friendly.

This is more or less what I'm trying to get at. The topic was mostly a general discussion and how SMN in particular is stronger than the others in the aspect of damage (which is still a big factor in winning objective fights like seal rock) and they don't particularly have any outstanding weaknesses that are exclusive to them.

[Tsuole]

I have been working on the sample size, and you can now see that the summoner, bard and (almost) the black mage information has been fully filled out. For those of you DOUBTFUL because of the small sample size previously, I can assure you that the disparity has only grown larger. Because somebody clearly did not read previously: DPM and HPM are measured per minute of the game.

SMN
AVG Kills 4.59
AVG Deaths 1.96
MAX DMG 21,200.00
MIN DMG 923.08
MEAN DMG 9,781.51
MEAN HPM 13.84

BLM
AVG Kills 1.94
AVG Deaths 2.40
MAX DMG 11,470.59
MIN DMG 785.71
MEAN DMG 4,464.84
MEAN HPM 3.53

BRD
AVG Kills 2.55
AVG Deaths 2.35
MAX DMG 10,000.00
MIN DMG 933.33
MEAN DMG 5,033.28
MEAN HPM 11.82

[Tsuole]

We can clearly see here that SMNs do double the other two ranged classes. And I think it is safe to assume that it is not because of the caster Limit Break since the Black Mage DPS is scarcely able to compare.

You can also notice that the average kill to death ratio for summoners is almost 2:1 whereas blackmages and bards are at something like 1:1

To support the validity of the information, the fact that both the MAX damage AND the AVERAGE damage are around the same multiple (double) the other two classes shown, suggests the information is more or less correctly scaled.

[RiceisNice]

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You can't really take damage values at face value, because there's a difference between effective damage and damage dealt, especially in the case of deathflare which is an AoE skill that doesn't have diminishing returns on multiple targets. That being said though, their kill count does support the general census: Summoners are overall more versatile and less anti-situational when it comes to their bursts and kill sniping, in regards to who (class and armor scaling) and where (high ground, dog fighting) and when (strategic defense or assault)

[Fyce]

But the power and versatility given by their burst combo is all they have going for them.
Remove or lower it and SMN won't be picked anymore.

I mean, if you go 1v1 again any other job and just lose everytime because your combo isn't enough to kill them, well, you'd be better rolling MCH or WAR.
Killing only low HP targets during a teamfight only goes that far (and that's what they are already doing).

[Kapiz]

there we go with the 1v1 scenario again the best kind of scenario that happens a lot of times, amirite?