SMN Plea

[KenjiMuyo]

You're missing the point of what he's saying. Currently a mch/brd can literally 100 - 0 someone in a stun. That kind of burst shouldn't be happening period. It doesn't make for good game play to suddenly vanish from one source of damage. Throw in melee and warrior focus fire and the damage is unhealable with minimal coordination.

The problem with SMN damage in pvp isn't cause painflare/deathflare don't hit as hard, it's that the bulk of summoner burst is tied to 2 conditions, having full dots on a target and having 3 stacks of aetherflow/trance. Both are painfully obvious and can be countered much more easily than mnk/drg/mch/brd burst.

The SMN toolkit in general requires too many stars to align to be able to output the kind of dmg that other classes do and that's not something that can be easily fixed just by giving a potency buff here or there.

[Nirokun]

I'm the second highest SMN on the primal leaderboard (the first is a guy with a curiously high win rate >_>) and I have struggled a lot just to get there. If we assume BRD/MCH are unlike BLM/SMN, having burst as their "thing", blm and smn don't really have a similar role. BLM will try to CC you, melt you, or fool you into attacking them (they're super tank-y). SMN will try to burst you, CC you only if we are being focused (or stalling at the end), or spread dmg and pressure the healer. I try to do all of those things, while using status effects to drag a fight out and pressure healer's MP/cooldowns, but I cannot at all carry because it requires a team that is otherwise self-sufficient. I cannot burst down another player like BRD/MCH to create breathing room for my team, nor can I repeatedly CC them to create that room. I have to apply constant pressure, try to stay alive, and hope the healer is messy with their MP and suffering enough to make mistakes.

[Dimitrii]

I'm the second highest SMN on the primal leaderboard (the first is a guy with a curiously high win rate >_>)

I assume you mean #21. I have played with and against that guy he's a beast and his ranking is legit as far as I could tell playing against him. The guy never seems to put out less than 200k dmg in feast on smn and constantly applies a ton of pressure on opposing heals. That being said he is an outlier and (while an excellent example of what smn can still do I suppose) is definitely not the prototypical example of the avg summoner atm since I have seen no other smn play at that high a lvl in feast. So the job could still use a buff imo.

[Nirokun]

I assume you mean #21.

Yes, thanks that makes me feel better. Obviously as ranged I don't play with other ranged, only against them, and I haven't seen him in any of my matches. But yeah, that's how it should be played (making people cry "padded numbers!" that still require healer to choose costly AoE heals when dmg is spread among 4 instead of 8). The only other SMN that I have seen play aggressively with bane usage was Vivi Ornitier. But really anyone can bane, it's often the pushback I/we get about not focusing damage that makes people give up when they don't even understand that it's the best thing for SMN to do most of the time. I feel as though people think that we're using Bane because we don't know how to focus dmg, and I'm always trying to set up for easy bursting and healer pressure (and using every tool skill available to leverage a win).

[Dimitrii]

Yeah normally if it were a summoner in frontline doing 200k dmg I'd be like so what. The dots are much more easily handled and healed through because of the presence of more healers usually. But in feast there is only the one heal and if you keep on dishing out party wide dmg like that you will severely tax the opponent healer who is probably already under pressure by tank and/or melee and cause them to expend massive amounts of resources to try to keep the party alive nevermind topped off. This is an especially nightmarish scenario for Noct ast heals. Even if the dots don't outright kill the opponents the pressure on and expenditure of resources by the healer to keep party up will inevitably lead to a death as bursting someone becomes easier under those circumstances.

[Nakanishi]

I rarely see SMNs use all of their skills or their pets and just rely on Tri-Disaster>F>P>E>Deathflare. SMNs should practice their Tri-Disaster + Contagion timing, with Bane if available. Make intelligent uses of their Healing Down. Use Wither and Aetheric Burst in their Burst. Use Buffed Garuda/Ifrit in their burst, Enkindle if available. Keep the AOE damage pressure up.

SMN's advantage is that a lot of their burst is AOE. When being targeted, try to bait people into each other then burst them all down. SMN can also virus BRD/MCH burst too and blind melees. Friend of mine gets multi-kills consistently in Shatter with AOE burst, no LB. In Feast, has even ended game(s) swiftly with just SMN aoe burst.

SMN should be balanced around its potential, not the mediocrity of its users. (not all of them are mediocre)

[NoelNoel]

Sure it's good for pressure, at some point a NOCT AST or a SCH will crumble from having their team being baned, still, without a very good melee landing kills is difficult for a SMN. When I tried it in the Feast I had average melees playing with me and my burst sure wasn't enough to go through people. Not gonna say I'm the best SMN out there but I'm decent. People sure like to cry for nerfs though it's really annoying. A BRD can certainly drop you dead in 3 skills but not only is it rather easy to counter, but only the players who make the best use of the 15 yalms thing do well on MCH/BRD.
Reading about SMN burst/max dmg needing too many stars to align is laughable, the requirements are low. MCH needs a lot more things to align and some awareness to burst. Let's not talk about BLM which is even worse.
The accessibility of their burst certainly isn't the issue, it's just that's it's downright too weak.

[Nakanishi]

Would you say that, "MCH burst has strict CC requirements!"?

[Nirokun]

Even if the dots don't outright kill the opponents the pressure on and expenditure of resources by the healer to keep party up will inevitably lead to a death as bursting someone becomes easier under those circumstances.

This is the correct way to play SMN. The caveat exists though, that if your healer is in any way insufficient, you cannot maintain pressure and you certainly cannot generate kills to make it easier for your healer. MCH/BRD can do that. I can't say for BLM, they're usually bad but really scary if they're good.

Make intelligent uses of their Healing Down.

SMN's advantage is that a lot of their burst is AOE. When being targeted, try to bait people into each other then burst them all down. SMN can also virus BRD/MCH burst too and blind melees.

SMN should be balanced around its potential, not the mediocrity of its users. (not all of them are mediocre)

Shh! You're giving away all of my secrets!

Healing down with marker and <call> into party chat is very useful for coordinating burst (because I cannot kill anyone myself if the enemy healer is paying attention).

As far as baiting, it's not just waiting to be targeted, it's making yourself look like a tasty target, load them up with DoTs and have them chase you back to their team. They think they're corralling you into a death trap, and you press bane, swiftcast tri-bind/blizzard2, LB to show them that chasing you is bad.

But yes, nobody except you has said anything about Virus. I really think it's the only thing that can be leveraged against MCH/BRD, when your job is very clearly labeled "BURST", to Virus that burst is very destructive and makes their burst survivable. That being said, one--and only one--MCH was sneaky enough to counter that. So it's not unbeatable.

I don't really know about blind, I'm casting puny Ruin II's as I'm being chased, usually I'm recasting DoTs because the duration is much lower now.

[Nakanishi]

As a melee, blind is one of the more cancerous debuffs. Missing breaks combo, and missing big hits Full Thrust/Jump/Forbidden Chakra makes you want to commit a felony.