Summoner Over-Nered (and A few other Problems)

[Ariomi]

When you posted those numbers you said nothing of the sort about that context, all I see still are numbers and jobs in that post. The burden of proof is on you if you're going to pull numbers out and try to prove a point, all I'm saying. It's like saying this game is dying by cherry-picking pop numbers taken at daytime pop 3.0 (sam with 100% enhanced balance) vs. night-time pop 3.5 (SMN with no cards). If the SMN and SAM both had enhanced balance with 50% uptime cool, your numbers actually mean something.

On the other hand Susano is an extremely melee high-uptime fight if you don't have to do mechanics and aoe are baited well, and high-uptime have always been SMN's weakness because of the nature of dots.
I think SAM being so high is more worrisome than SMN being so "low".

Well ease your fears, the numbers are off the same fight with around the same time of balance (53% smn vs 56% Samurai) And is the same fight (Susano Ex) With the top dps parse in each category, showcasing what the current strongest parse of each job is capable of. Susano is extremely high uptime for Smn as no matter what the mechanic, A summoner can throw on their dots, or ruin 2. The only positive change from the summoner rework is how mobile it is. Only dot you have to worry about casting ever is Miasma 3. If you have to cross the middle, you can slide cast miasma 3, use ruin 2, tri disaster, fester, shadow flare, without a problem at all. Even if a Summoner is trapped within the fetter rocks the Dots, and our pet can still deal damage. And Summoner being low is much more concerning then Samurai being high. So Susano being a high uptime boss has no effect on summoner unless it's a high uptime on melee and low uptime on casters.

Samurai is just dps. Offers nothing to the team but high dps. Now Ninja on the other hand, offers good dps, a raid wide 10% dps increase, inherent aggro management. Take away Samurai's high dps and it has nothing to offer. Can't buff the team in any way that a ninja couldnt do better.

[Ariomi]

Arcanist has healing skill for a reason but they should scale it to INT so it would be fair to support ur pet for a bit. Also smn are able to use res too. Its fun that smn are able to support party members with raise. So why not physick

Red mage has dual cast as well. Which vastly outperforms Summoner's rez. A red mage can cast vercure on themselves then instantly cast rez.

Summoner has to either use a swiftcast or hard rez when a red mage can do it almost instantly

[Soko90]

Ill start off by saying Im not defending all the changes to SMN because I dont agree with alot of the changes, simply cause some of them come off as clunky, such as.

Being able to activate aetherflow even if you already have max aethertrail stacks. This essentially results in a wasted aetherflow and a major set back in dps.

On the same topic, not being able to aetherflow while you are using dreadwyrm feels odd, and it means you have to wait for dread to end before using aether flow again, meaning you lose out on precious seconds of cool down time.

No sustain, it does have its purpose.

Aether pact feels slow and doesnt always work.

And all the nerfs to aoe seems excessive compared to my blm friend, plus with the removal of blizz II, there is NOTHING to do during aoe heavy dungeon runs after your dots are baned and shadow flare applied other then throw out single target dps or a painflare, spamming ruin during dreadwyrm when there is 9 enemies in the pull makes me feel like I'm not doin anything.

BUT while everyone here seems to be completely focused on the negative changes there are some finer details that improve SMN DPS and compensate for alot of these nerfs that nobody seems to be talking about.

For instance:

Dreadwyrm resets tri-disaster, done right I've only found myself casting dots once every couple minutes.

Not only are DOT application instant when using tri, but the change from 3 dots to 2 means less time applying 3 dots, and thus freeing up 1 global cool down for ruinl-lV when you actually have to apply dots manually. It also shifts smn away from relying heavily on a dot tick for dmg and just putting some of that more directly on the enemy through a ruin.

Tri applies ruination, increasing potency of ruins by 20 for 15 seconds, so since you are spamming ruin III mostly during dreadwyrm anyway it's 170 potency when it counts, they also compensated with the addition of ruin IV which can potentially be thrown out for almost no mp even when you aren't in dreadwyrm, on top of that ruin base potency is 80->100, so there is also 20 more potency there aswell.

Contagion, 10% more magic damage FOR EVERYONE. Since smn no longer needs to reapply dots manually as much, this change is big, this makes everything casters do better and for those unaware Foe req is no longer a thing for casters, it's 3% dmg for everyone and battle voice doesn't effect it, so contagion adding 10% dmg for casters and healers to capitalize on is a decent increase.

Shadow flare was made a cool down, while technically a dps loss in the long run, it condensed all the dps into 15 seconds instead of 30 so you had a better chance of getting it's full potency, also since it's a CD you get that extra ruin in again instead of casting shadow flare.

So from my experience SMN can hold their own with other DPS just fine, the true problem is how HARD it is to get good potential out of SMN.

In comparison, managing dots, aetherflow/trail/demi bahamut, ruin IV procs, tri disaster cool downs, Enkindle, ruination, contagion, and your pets position and health is alot more daunting then your typical rdm rotation, smn is far more punishing if you mess up and they have to stay really on top of their game just to stay on the same level as rdm.

[Ariomi]

Aether pact feels slow and doesnt always work.
right I've only found myself casting dots once every couple minutes.

Not only are DOT application instant when using tri, but the change from 3 dots to 2 means less time applying 3 dots, and thus freeing up 1 global cool down for ruinl-lV when you actually have to apply dots manually. It also shifts smn away from relying heavily on a dot tick for dmg and just putting some of that more directly on the enemy through a ruin.

Contagion, 10% more magic damage FOR EVERYONE. Since smn no longer needs to reapply dots manually as much, this change is big, this makes everything casters do better and for those unaware Foe req is no longer a thing for casters, it's 3% dmg for everyone and battle voice doesn't effect it, so contagion adding 10% dmg for casters and healers to capitalize on is a decent increase.

A few things I'd like to add.
Nobody talks about the summoner buffs cause they don't quite make up for the changes.

loss of Spur - Effectively 40% damage decrease to Enkindle - 140 potency loss minimum on enkindle. Wyrmwave makes up for loss of Spur on your pet's auto attacks. (Both lasting 20 seconds)
50 potency loss per ruin 3
30 potency loss per tick in dots (This is effectively 30 potency loss per three second loss for the majority of the fight)
70 potency loss tri disaster - Potency made up by ruin buff
560 potency loss contagion - Using contagion before dreadwyrm trance is a 244 potency boost. (88 from tri disaster + 112 from 6 ruin 3's at 170 potency each and 44 from deathflare. Contagion being a group magic damage increase requires your team to make up the difference.


The only change that compensates for the nerf is the Tri-Disaster buff increasing Ruin spells. (assuming you get atleast four ruin spells off during that 15 seconds and Wyrmwave basically acting like Spur on your pet's auto attacks. Everything else is a flat out nerf. And don't get me started about the Aoes.

In heavensward, Using dreadwyrm trance, Tri-Disaster and contagion would put up 870 potency worth of dots then extend them to 1440 potency and but that by 10-32% (Depending if you used Dreadwyrm and raging strikes together.)
Using Tri-disaster and contagion now buff Tri-Disaster from 800 potency to 880. 80 Potency increase vs Heavensward's 870 to 1440 potency increase. (560 potency gain.)

While other classes got potency buffs before 70, Summoner is a flat out nerf until bahamut.

[Johaandr]

Dont you think i already know that. Did not mention rdm at all.
Just talked about what Smn can do. Outperforms or no... They still got access to it.

[TristanBlane]

There are some things that I like about the changes to SMN. Such as the Tri-disaster change and the Ruin 4 buff which makes it really fun. I am just so bummed about Shadowflare and bane nerfs. Though I still feel like I do pretty good AOE damage? I still feel very clunky, I got really use to SMN 3.0 and loved it a lot. I actually felt like it was smooth and fun to play and very active. Now I feel like I spend a lot of time twiddling my thumbs waiting for aetherflow stacks and stressing to make sure I don't mess up and waste a stack.


Does any one else feel like they spend some time waiting for aetherfloew to be off cooldown? Am I not maximixing my time in Dreadwyrm trance? I find myself often low on mana with no stacks and resorting to spamming Ruin 1.

Still only a 69 SMN tho. Excited to see how the gameplay changes when I get bahamut.

[Dualgunner]

There are only really two massive flaws I could notice with the job. One is that lack of Sustain, which is sort of okay when that pet dies and you have that extra MP from not having a third dot to re-summon it, but it gets far too rough in regard to solo play when Titan-egi can only take so much before it goes from nugget to pancake. The other massive flaw is what makes RDM vastly more superior to SMN: support function. Where Resurrection costs just over a quarter of a SMN's max MP and is only instant once every minute or so, Verraise costs far cheaper and is an instant-cast whenever that RDM feels like it. Where Physick is still a Mind-based relic of the past (which might be hard-coded in), Vercure is int-based, making it vastly superior not just in terms of emergency heals, but also in terms of solo gameplay.

Not gonna argue how bad SMN's support is in comparison to RDM, but "far cheaper" is 2% because Verraise costs exactly 25% of the mp pool.

[Tsukino]

Does any one else feel like they spend some time waiting for aetherfloew to be off cooldown? Am I not maximixing my time in Dreadwyrm trance? I find myself often low on mana with no stacks and resorting to spamming Ruin 1.

Still only a 69 SMN tho. Excited to see how the gameplay changes when I get bahamut.

It has nothing to do with Dreadwyrm Trance - the cooldowns for the Aetherflow-based abilities were all reduced quite a bit, and so you can easily run through all three in only a few seconds if that's what you want to do. This is generally a good thing because it allows you to choose when to do that damage, instead of being a slave to the cooldown rotation, but it feels super awkward if you played a lot during 3.x. One thing to keep in mind beyond this though, just in case, is that because you can't use Aetherflow with full Aethertrail or during Dreadwyrm Trance, if you're not going into Trance around 16s before Aetherflow is up to make sure to do that.

Demi-Bahamut is...overall pretty great. You can use Aetherflow with it (like we used to be able to do during Dreadwyrm Trance) and so you kind of regain your ability to use a bunch of more interesting things and stop spamming Ruin for a bit, and the slight bit of extra freedom means during trash in dungeons or invincible parts of boss fights you can save it to unload when next able. However, because of its cost (two complete Dreadwyrm Trances) it creates an even bigger problem with having to build up than Dreadwyrm Trance ever did on its own. That is to say, if you die right before getting to summon Demi-Bahamut, you're going to feel incredibly useless tossing out some random Ruins while everything is on cooldown and you're two full Aetherflow rotations away from Bahamut again.

[Dualgunner]

Red mage has dual cast as well. Which vastly outperforms Summoner's rez. A red mage can cast vercure on themselves then instantly cast rez.

Summoner has to either use a swiftcast or hard rez when a red mage can do it almost instantly

In the event someone dies, RDM is in one of two situations:

1) You just cast jolt/verfire/verstone and have dualcast up, in which case you can burn 25% of your MP pool and kerfuffle your flow to pop them back up. Sure it's easy and you can but damned if I'm maybe a bit salty because that means I have to start back from Impact/Jolt again and get my manas back in balance.

2) You do not have dualcast up, in which case you would swiftcast rez anyway because vercure is still a ~2 second cast time and swift is a faster goto.

If enough people have been getting shrekt that dualcast rez swiftcast rez is needed...well, smack the healers and kiss your MP pool goodbye lol

.

I'm not against SMN getting sustain *and* a physick equivalent to vercure. There are a lot of advantages to having a RDM over a SMN and not losing a chunk of our dps when our unhealable pet dies is one of them.

The thing to realize about the dual cast raise is, let's say you pop cure for it. A 3600 mp spell to raise now needed a 600 mp preempt to it. RDM also has only 1 mp refresh at all, compared to SMN's (admittedly nerfed so I hear) aetherflow and Lucid.

RDM's real advantage is dualcast raise swiftcast raise. If it comes to that though that's ~7800 mp and some tears if Lucid isn't up. I've been in this position too often in Susan Extreme learning parties. And to add to the fun I also had healers demanding me to Mana Shift them after raising them as if I had MP for days.

Also I'm no expert of summoner but shouldn't you not be casting ruin 3 outside of dwt?

[LunarEmerald]

From Susano ex

Job - 50th / 75th / 95th percentile
MNK - 3207 / 3498 / 3823
NIN - 3202 / 3437 / 3694
DRG - 2958 / 3227 / 3514
SAM - 3472 / 3764 / 4167
BLM - 2823 / 3138 / 3514
SMN - 2919 / 3245 / 3554
RDM - 3193 / 3467 / 3776
BRD - 2941 / 3176 / 3472
MCH - 2885 / 3108 / 3370
PLD - 1697 / 2133 / 2624
WAR - 1819 / 2098 / 2508
DRK - 1752 / 2091 / 2500
WHM - 665 / 1106 / 1616
SCH - 951 / 1284 / 1696
AST - 581 / 868 / 1271

Summoner is fine. They could use a slight boost to push them over Red Mage but that's about it.