SMN changes

[CecMiller]

stuff

I already knew the aoe rotation! I main summoner too!

I wasn't talking about current pulls. I was commenting on what I've seen from clips. Most pulls seemed to be small with 3-4 mobs at max. We wont have blizz 2 or miasma 2. What you stated is what we currently use on large packs. Further, Ruin 3 was not pointless in a multi-target environment as you already pointed out as it still had its uses with 4 or less mobs. The current clips I've seen of the dungeons is exactly that: 4 or less mobs.

To quote my post:

Whilst Bane has been nerfed, I believe the nerf will mostly hit the dungeon aspect. From what we've seen from clips, there wasn't very many "large pulls". However, Bane is still useful. You will not be better off hard casting them in a large pack as those GCD's could be spent on casting ruin 3 in DWT.

I don't think there is cause for an alarm just yet. Bane was hit hard, but there is a chance this will be changed. And there may be bigger pulls in the dungeons than what we've seen so far. I like'd summoner for its deletion of trash mobs in dungeons too, but I hope its not hit that hard. I mainly enjoy summoner in raids and bane is almost meaningless in the current Savage Raid content as adds die too fast. I can see the concern if the adds take a LOT longer to kill.

[Silverquick]

I already knew the aoe rotation! I main summoner too!

I wasn't talking about current pulls. I was commenting on what I've seen from clips. .

Ahh You were talking about the videos...

Yeah those don't really represent how the game actually gets played... so yeah I see what you were saying.

Still yeah the current iteration of the BANE... is so weak its going to be pointless to use at all. Even on 3 or less mobs Hard Casting will probably be more effective than BANE.

I mean seriously the third target is only a 42 potency and the 4th target after that is even less. Thats like being back at level 10 Arcanist, even with Ruin 3 spam.

I seriously can't even recommend using BANE for that.

[Neela]

I for one am mostly disappointed in the shift of playstyle and lack of "challenge" the class brings. We've shifted away from managing 3 dots with varied uptime (30s, 24s and 18s respectively with a total of 110 potency every 3 seconds) to 2 dots that both last 30s (with a total of 80 potency over 3 seconds) removing most dot management to maximize dps. To maximize your damage in the current savage raid tier, you needed to be good at dot management and shadowflare uptime (which is now changed to once every 60s). There were more decisions to be made: Do I refresh bio? Do I refresh Miasma? Maybe the optimum strategy at a particular fight was to refresh bio but cast a ruin instead of refreshing miasma. They're on the fly decisions you had to make. Most of this comes with learning the fight, but now dot management difficulty has been significantly turned down and in turn makes the class seem a lot more boring.

I guess what I'm saying is, I don't see the challenge in SMN compared to say a melee class where positionals result in increased potency on your abilities or other effects. Instead, we get a "15% chance to cast Ruin 4". Whilst we may have cast Ruin 3/Ruin 2/Ruin 1 liberally in the current creator savage raid tier, in 4.0 casting ruin is most of what you will be doing. I just don't like how streamlined the job has become. Sure the damage might work out with number changes, but the playstyle seems incredibly boring. From initial impressions, there isn't a whole lot a player can do which separates a great summoner from a good summoner. Sure we will still see these differences, but I feel like tacking on the "15% chance to make your next Ruin 1/3 into Ruin 4" cheapens the experience. Bahamut is great and all, but dot management was part of the summoner parcel for me. Removing that aspect doesn't make me as interested in the class as I was before.

Further still, the Aetherial Attunement stacks lasting 30s was cool to manage at least for me personally. Casting painflare just before cruise chaser does limit cut so I have 3 stacks which last long enough for DWT when he becomes vulnerable again was pretty cool D: They're small but awesome tricks. However, I do feel with the current summoner changes, SE will have reduced the dps difference between a great summoner and an average summoner and that does make me a little sad if I'm honest. I cant argue that they've either achieved or have come close to achieving what they set out to do which is reducing the dps disparity between the a good SMN and an average SMN. Perhaps too much? I couldn't say until I get a chance to play it myself.

As a sidenote: After seeing the bard changes with the way songs are used, I thought it would have been cool if something similar could be applied to summoner. Perhaps there would be a use for summoning titan egi, then ifrit egi, then garuda egi for 30s each and at the end we're rewarded with demi-bahamut for 15 minutes (I would have said until combat ends but that'd be only good for raiding. 15 mins means it should be there for most of the dungeon.) or whatever. This makes use of the otherwise underutilised egi's in the raiding scene. Just thought it would have been cool when I saw how the new BRD songs worked D:

100% agree - dot and pet management was something I loved as well - no fix rota, situational prios and a mix of burst and ticks. although they pushed ruin for the primary rota, I think dots can still make the last xtra-% which make the difference ins mastering the changes in the end.

Whilst Bane has been nerfed, I believe the nerf will mostly hit the dungeon aspect. From what we've seen from clips, there wasn't very many "large pulls". However, Bane is still useful. You will not be better off hard casting them in a large pack as those GCD's could be spent on casting ruin 3 in DWT. Harder still is being able to identify which adds got the massive potency reduced dots. It would be more efficient to spam Painflare after 1 bane and then immediately getting DWT going and spamming Ruin 3. Don't get me wrong, Bane is much worse now, however, it will still be a gain and whilst I haven't done the math for it, I don't believe individually dotting mobs would be better. This would be dependant on the speed at which the mobs are dying at and the pack size tho.

However, keep in mind that they may yet change the values on bane. I think 80% is brutal. I think 50% at max would be more appropriate.

not only bane - I see way more skills in other cls' as well which most probably have to be balanced after a short SB-Testing phase. like after all big updates ^^

I already knew the aoe rotation! I main summoner too!

I wasn't talking about current pulls. I was commenting on what I've seen from clips. Most pulls seemed to be small with 3-4 mobs at max. We wont have blizz 2 or miasma 2. What you stated is what we currently use on large packs. Further, Ruin 3 was not pointless in a multi-target environment as you already pointed out as it still had its uses with 4 or less mobs. The current clips I've seen of the dungeons is exactly that: 4 or less mobs.

my advice don't even try to discuss things with "Trump" .____.

[Synestra]

Our AoE damage was really what this job had going for it...

AoE in general got nerfed hard in SB pretty much all AoE skills has that falloff thing now, to me it seems SMN damage focus has shifted from DoT's to actual summons/single target nuke.

[Silverquick]

AoE in general got nerfed hard in SB pretty much all AoE skills has that falloff thing now, to me it seems SMN damage focus has shifted from DoT's to actual summons/single target nuke.

Actually even that got nerfed.

The rest of it was thrown on RNG. So I can't even say that is true. That said it is likely in my eyes that the Fester thing was a bad tooltip, it makes no sense to have it nerfed to 200 potency.

But that's not even the biggest problem here... someone brought this one up to me.

What happens when you get level synced and have to go Tome diving?

That is going to be seriously painful to play.

They basically nerfed just about all your primary skills from lower level too.We have yet to guage actual pet damage so that's an unanswered question, but I don't see anything that's showing me a large enough improvement to overcome any of the nerfs.

And that doesn't get into Raid questions regarding movement, Boss mob invulnerability, and mechanics... and them nerfing your DPS outside of DWT and squeezing it all into DWT. That came back to bite BLMs hard with Enochian.

[ShaolinMike]

Actually even that got nerfed.

And that doesn't get into Raid questions regarding movement, Boss mob invulnerability, and mechanics... and them nerfing your DPS outside of DWT and squeezing it all into DWT. That came back to bite BLMs hard with Enochian.

Well, they don't tune jobs to level sync, they're turned to performance at level 70. It is what it is. Secondly, I don't think we can compare DWT >Bahamut Summons to Enochian, as the only thing that it's gated behind is essentially 6 uses of Aetherflow stacks, which seem to no longer be on a timer.

[Silverquick]

Well, they don't tune jobs to level sync, they're turned to performance at level 70. It is what it is

Yeah but it still gonna suck to do that...

Let alone level the thing from scratch if you can make it to 70th after the changes. At the very least leveling from Arcanist was viable... but I can't even guarantee that at this point.

Secondly, I don't think we can compare DWT >Bahamut Summons to Enochian, as the only thing that it's gated behind is essentially 6 uses of Aetherflow stacks, which seem to no longer be on a timer.

You're right... Enochian is not quite the same...

The reason I bring that up, is because a lot of the damage is based on that.

Prior your DoTs + Pet were ticking all the while, and you could throw some Ruin Spam to make up for any heavy mechanics or boss mob killing your DWT... so losing it didn't hurt overall DPS much. Yeah it stung to lose a Deathflare due to either mechanics or Boss Mob invulnerability, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't hurt you that bad...

But with our primary damage locked in with DWT... and the other stuff nerfed... and at lesser damage... how close are we to that?

[Kuponutz]

I'm really not sure where people are getting Fester being hard nerfed. Mr. Happy's video clearly shows Fester is doing like 3 times the Ruin spell and almost double Painflare.

From the tooltip that was shown by SE on the media tour. Mr. Happy isn't a dev so I'm going to go with what Yoshi showed over Mr. Happy.

[Feidam]

I'm not sure I like the new class idea. I played the summoner for the dot class aspect and it seems to have moved from the dot aspect to be more bursty and pet oriented. However, until I play it I'll never know.

[Neela]

We have yet to guage actual pet damage so that's an unanswered question, but I don't see anything that's showing me a large enough improvement to overcome any of the nerfs.

actually we don't know if and how the new Egi skills or current Egi-skill adjustments are look like, do we? Maybe they got a fix-line as well - at least they connected pet-related skills to your own skills which at least for me is an improvement to involve your pet to your identity a bit more (f.e. ruin mastery which can proc ruin in different lvls and decrease the enkindle cd).

After all we don't know why nearly every dd skill got nerfed in pot - but it's not that unusual to re-balance atk stats of skills instead raising the mob stats higher and higher... so if the new boss monster got equal or less LP compared to the current ones instead of getting higher and higher stats, the nerfs are just balancing in general... maybe this is one of the reasons nearly every skill is reduced in pot. we have to consider if we get more and more stronger skills with higher and higher pot.... we could eventually one-shot a primal like Ifrit or Shiva in 5.0 or 6.0... so they have to balance mobs and skills somehow. what doesn't mean that certain cls' get worthless at all if they lose some pot (in raw numbers).

im really looking for the new chaining-like battle system - at least on smns side. the com asks for more focus on pets and burst for a long time - SB will answer these demands. but now even before the release the com cry about DoTs... so what should SE do with us summoners? It's like you want something and if you get, its uninterested and you want the opposite. I doubt there is a way to please everyone with 100%...