Why are summoners so neglected?

[Mhaeric]

No one is pointing at XI and calling it a "traditional summoner"

LMAO. Your blinders really are well fixed in place.

For the record I did indeed try it your way...

but had the problem of the DoTs dropping off shortly after that and losing major DPS because my DoTs dropped off and I was unable to get them back up due to dodging mechanics... and Tri-Disaster was on cooldown. I shortly discovered it has a full one minute cooldown and even with Contagion on the DoTs its only 30 seconds before you start to lose them.

Umm... okay? With your opening rotation, in which you use Tri-disaster later, you would be in the same spot but with even longer cooldown on the Tri-disaster.

Just to be sure we're actually on the same page:

My opener:
Swiftcast Shadowflare --> Bio II --> Miasma --> Bio --> Rouse --> Spur --> Ruin 3 --> Fester --> Enkindle --> Ruin 3 --> Painflare --> Ruin 3 --> Ruin 3 --> Fester --> Ruin 3 --> Raging Strikes --> Dreadwyrm Trance --> Ruin 3 --> Tri-disaster --> Ruin 3 --> Contagion --> Ruin 3 --> (Aetherflow if/when available) --> Ruin 3 --> Ruin 3 --> Ruin 3 (or Ruin 2 if less than 3 seconds left) --> Deathflare --> Fester (if Aetherflow was available) --> Shadowflare --> priority rotation

Total GCD's: 15
Remaining cd on Tri-disaster after Deathflare: ~45s
Remaining cd on Contagion after Deathflare: ~48s
Remaining duration of dots after Deathflare: ~30/24/18s (the last doesn't really matter to your argument since it's instant cast)
Total duration of buffed dots: 45/39/33s

Your opener:
Quick Cast + Shadowflare>Bio 2>Miasma>Bio>(Garuda) Contagion>Fester>Ruin 3>Ruin 3>Fester>Rouse + Spur + Enkindle (Aerial Blast)>Ruin 3>Fester>Dreadwyrm Trance>Ruin 3 (x4)>Tri-Disaster>Deathflare (aka TeraFlare).
Total GCD's: 11 as written, although actually 15 (You're missing either 2 ruin 3's or a ruin3+ruin2 in your trance, and there's dead space in between each of your festers which take at least 3 gcd between but you have less listed, so really your rotation has 15, same as mine.)
Remaining cd on Tri-disaster after Deathflare: ~60s
Remaining cd on Contagion after Deathflare: ~30s
Remaining duration of dots after Deathflare: ~30/24/18s (note that this is the same, so we both have 15gcd openers that have dots that linger the same amount of time)
Total duration of buffed dots: 30/24/18s (You are missing Raging Strikes in your list, so I assume you use it shortly before Dreadwyrm for the additional dps on both your Ruin3 spam and on your Tri-disaster.)

I.e. Both rotations would require hard cast refreshing dots at the same time, since both Tri-disaster and Contagion are on cooldown. The difference basically is that your opener trades 15s cooldown of Contagion for 15s of cooldown of Tri-disaster at a cost of losing an additional 30% dps on your dots for 15s. And my opener appears better set up to have Tri-disaster and Contagion always line up for ready application of long duration dots every trance, since the cooldowns are all lined up nicely.

And also for the record... you and I do see the SMN issues the same way.

Oh, I know. I was just was curious why you weren't using Contagion during the highest dot dps phase of the opener, since it's like an AST that uses a parser knowingly giving Balance to the lower DPS of the group.

[Ririta]

LMAO. Your blinders really are well fixed in place.

People really aren't though, I think everyone agrees that summoners fundamentally changed after FFIX, which means XI's isn't the "traditional" one

[Mhaeric]

People really aren't though, I think everyone agrees that summoners fundamentally changed after FFIX, which means XI's isn't the "traditional" one

And that's why almost all of the suggestions are along the lines of, "Make Summoner damage more summon based like it was in FFXI and other FF games" and "I'm not a summoner because I don't summon flashy things like in FFXI or other FF games."

You'll also notice that you were the one that made the association to FFXI in the context of my statement on the perception of traditional and true summoners, not me. I haven't used the term "FFXI" at all until this post.

[Silverquick]

Umm... okay? With your opening rotation, in which you use Tri-disaster later, you would be in the same spot but with even longer cooldown on the Tri-disaster.

Just to be sure we're actually on the same page:

Lol!!!

I KNEW you were going to start splitting hairs which is why I didn't get into it with you...
Honestly you're proving my point... that all looks great on paper... but theory and reality do not match up.

You want to count GCDs and split it into seconds... BUT in the end you're just putting things on paper.

And as I said above... 60 second cooldown, vs only 10% more damage... vs the risk of losing your DoTs entirely for 15 seconds... you're trying to split hairs without realizing you're only gain a little bit of damage, vs the possibility of losing a LOT of damage.

You ARE risking it the for only a hair more damage on the chance you won't get caught flat footed. While this MIGHT pay off... it also MIGHT NOT.

It's your decision, I won't judge you or anyone else... but it is a risk.

Never forget that.

Remember here... theory and reality are two different things. Never confuse what's on paper with what actually happens in the game.

(Its why we have all these people in this thread posting these pie in the sky ideas, when they have no clue how this thing actually plays and are quite literally proposing some ideas that will only wreck the SMN job entirely)

[basketofseals]

The summoner sucks crowd are a vocal minority. Are there things that might be improved, such as pet responsiveness and visual impact? Sure. But broken, the job is not.

I would argue that pet responsiveness is on the borderline of broken. I mean it's just really really awful. It's the epitome of why I normally hate pet classes. You could yank all of the abilities off of your pet and give them to your character, and you'd be better off for it.

Compare this to Eos/Selene. They're actually useful as a second entity. Healing targets out of reach, healing while in cleric stance, AoE placement, and tactical Deployment Tactics target. SMN pets just don't do anything useful.

[Mhaeric]

Lol!!!

I KNEW you were going to start splitting hairs which is why I didn't get into it with you...

It's not splitting hairs when I simply don't understand how you're even getting to your conclusion and am trying to figure it out. Your opener as written doesn't work the way you say it does where you are able to refresh your dots after it using Tri-disaster without requiring a hard cast refresh in there somewhere. Your rotation has exactly the same potential to lose dots, and for longer. But no matter. I was simply curious why you did it the way you did, because I thought there might be a valid reason that doing it that way would increase the dps of the opener, but that's clearly not the motivation or result, so I'm sticking with my higher dps opener. Cheers!

[Nerisu]

My opener is OP.

No, mine is better.

Both of you need to work more on those openers. :^)

And why are you guys even talking about who has the better opener when the topic is about whether SMN should focus more on pet interaction, focus more on trance, or be like Dissidia Yuna.

[Silverquick]

It's not splitting hairs when I simply don't understand how you're even getting to your conclusion and am trying to figure it out. Your opener as written doesn't work the way you say it does

... but that's clearly not the motivation or result, so I'm sticking with my higher dps opener. Cheers!

Well then go for it.

I'll keep my steady damage without risking getting caught flat footed later with Tri-Disaster on CD at the most inopportune time.... and dodging heavy mechanics, leaving me with no DoTs on the mob.

It's a choice either way, and a gamble... for both of us for that matter... and either scenario could and does... play itself out in the game.

That is reality.

[Ririta]

And that's why almost all of the suggestions are along the lines of, "Make Summoner damage more summon based like it was in FFXI and other FF games" and "I'm not a summoner because I don't summon flashy things like in FFXI or other FF games."

You'll also notice that you were the one that made the association to FFXI in the context of my statement on the perception of traditional and true summoners, not me. I haven't used the term "FFXI" at all until this post.

People mentioning XI as what they want from summoner doesn't means that they think that's the "classic summoner", most here agree that the classic summoner called them once for an attack and then vanished. So if even XI doesn't fits that criteria, why would XIV's?

In 2.0 that claim had some merit since smn was underwhelming with only dots and a couple of dot exploits, but 3.0 changed it into a more than viable job

Summoner was actually one of the strongest DPS in 2.0 and remained better than black mages until 2.3, over half of ARR's life. Nobody is contesting summoner's viability in meta raiding, people really need to stop mixing DPS numbers with class fantasy.

[Mhaeric]

I'll keep my steady damage without risking getting caught flat footed later with Tri-Disaster on CD at the most inopportune time.... and dodging heavy mechanics, leaving me with no DoTs on the mob. .

Which you still haven't actually explained how that works differently than for my set-up which ends up in exactly the same place with dot duration remaining after the same time spent but with less cd duration remaining and more dps outputted.
All I've got so far from you is a wishy-washy statement about fluidity later on that doesn't actually make sense in the context of comparing the two openers. My opener doesn't result in a longer time waiting for Tri-disaster and yours doesn't make it so that hard casting dots happens less frequently, so that's why I'm so confused about what you're trying to say, since your stated result doesn't actually follow from your set-up.

Both of you need to work more on those openers. :^)

Lol. I'm sure of that. And it certainly wasn't a pissing match about openers, at least from my standpoint. I in no way claim to be a hardcore top tier smn, hence why I legitimately had the question of why use contagion earlier rather than later. I received an answer which I felt was unsatisfactory in effectiveness, so I explained why. I based my opener mostly on this one which may or may not be out of date, but in practice works quite well regardless: https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...game_Rotations
Using potions is a bit too hardcore for me, so I just take them out, and using the extra Ruin 2's in there adds complication so I just stick with Ruin 3's except when near the end of a dreadwyrm trance if I can squeeze in a ruin 2 but not a ruin 3. Regardless, I do use a parser whenever I play dps solely to gauge how I'm doing since I hate being in the dark about whether I'm actually doing a good job at my role or not. Parser data has shown that I'm always doing well as a SMN so that's all that really matters to me. (Aside: I found out I really, really suck at MCH thanks to parser data, and that I'm not as good a BLM in 3.0 compared to 2.0 and vice versa for SMN. It's a wonderful tool that has the unfortunately ability to be used in a highly toxic way by a community at large. Ah well. Different thread.)

And why are you guys even talking about who has the better opener when the topic is about whether SMN should focus more on pet interaction, focus more on trance, or be like Dissidia Yuna.

Erm... keep it the way it is. Anything else is too much of an overhaul for something that isn't actually broken. Also, we've seen how much the addition of 5 abilities (or heck, even 1: hi WP Bards!) can change a class significantly from one expansion to the next, so it will be interesting to see what the next 5 abilities in SB will bring to SMN. I suspect something to make single target damage have a bit more oomph, like maybe a single target trance finisher option.