SMN - Most Glaring Issues

[Vallhallix]

I use to be able to recommend SMN as a job. It was fun and though it didn't real like a full blown summoner like some people wanted it was still fun and had an interesting twist of the summoner using the powers of the summons themselves.

Reapplying dots, using one pet and ruining was an interesting twist?

I feel like some complaints have merit and some are just complaining just to complain. Faster gameplay is somehow less fun? Before DWT came along, playing a SMN in general was like running sub 50 dungeons repeatedly. Most of the classes are very simple now and RDM is just as simplistic if not more than the other casters. People keep bringing up this ''one mistake'' business. Simply don't make the mistake, honestly you have to try very hard not to actually land your stacks. SMN is not hard lol.

Also idunno what you're talking about with bahamut, he reacts to your casting, even when you move any time you're using a spell he will cancel his movement animation to still hit the target. As long as you are casting he is hitting regardless of movement.

[Draxxion]

Reapplying dots, using one pet and ruining was an interesting twist?

I feel like some complaints have merit and some are just complaining just to complain. Faster gameplay is somehow less fun? Before DWT came along, playing a SMN in general was like running sub 50 dungeons repeatedly. Most of the classes are very simple now and RDM is just as simplistic if not more than the other casters. People keep bringing up this ''one mistake'' business. Simply don't make the mistake, honestly you have to try very hard not to actually land your stacks. SMN is not hard lol.

Also idunno what you're talking about with bahamut, he reacts to your casting, even when you move any time you're using a spell he will cancel his movement animation to still hit the target. As long as you are casting he is hitting regardless of movement.

Let me explain my point of view on this better so then maybe you can understand what I am getting at instead of quoting out of context.

1) I did not mention anything about the rotation. I have no issue with SMN rotation being simpler or faster. In fact I actually like the more simplified rotation and less dots to worry about. Fester and Painflaire are quicker and you get into DWT a lot quicker. All pluses in my book. Even Ruin IV I have no issue with and the nerf to Ruin III is ok. The issue I have with is when it comes to mechanics outside of your control. Mob seems close enough to get hit by a Bane? Nope because the game doesn't register it close enough or it just moves right then as the tank moved. Guess what? You no longer have an aetherflow. It is on cooldown and now you have to wait. Festering a target with no dots or dying is the fault of the SMN which I will agree with, but Bane is the issue I have with.

2) The point that others have brought up that I will also bring up with aetherflow is before you could Tri-Disaster while in DWT and then Bane that to other targets. Now on trash pulls if you have DWT ready you can't just follow it up with an aeitherflow, Bane, and continue DWT. You have to end DWT early, aetherflow, and then Bane. At lower levels you don't have the benefit of Bahamut which is a plus for ending DWT early at higher levels if you have the aetherflow ready. On top of that if you don't have Aetherflow ready at that point you have to single target or tab dot as many mobs as you can till the end of DWT. They may have done some effort to reduce the number of mobs a tank are pulling as try to stop big pulls this expansion, but lets face the facts that once the tanks get enough gear they will go right back to big pulling all over again. That means dishing out as much AOE damage as quickly as possible. Can't do that if 2 of the 4 AOE spells (personal AOE abilities. Not counting Pet abilities) are stuck behind Aetherflow, 1 stuck in DWT, and the other on a 60 second cooldown.

3) The interesting twist was in HW with DWT. You don't need a big summon to be a summoner was the theme that Square was getting at and I found it quite interesting and fun. The idea of channeling the powers of the summon through the summoner was an interesting twist in my book and something I loved. Pre HW I can see where you are getting and yes it was quite boring as it was just as you described DOT management, your pet, and casting ruin.

4) The Bahamut issue is two parts. 1- He is what Square was warning about when they said summons being large would cause problems. People are complaining already heavily about him blocking sight for mechanics when he is out. But, if you make him smaller then those who want a traditional summoner would go bat crazy on the forums about it. 2- He has a 100y range on all of his abilities. Why does he need to follow you around? Why? He can already hit things for double if not triple the distance then most combat areas you are fighting in/on. Why does he have to follow you around? He can stop and cast all he wants, but he can just as equally stay where he is summoned and still hit the target because of his range. Now if you take those two facts together a solution would just to simply have him summon and stay where he is summoned. If you place Garuda at a point, eventually summon Bahamut, he should stay at that point. There is no need for him to move as again he can still hit everything on the battlefield. The only time he would have to move is if you are out of range of him.

5) There is little point for having a Tanking pet any more. He is designed to help you solo, but you can't keep Titan Egi up long enough in some cases. Physick heals for barely over 400 health. The Egi has a lot more health then that and mobs hit for more damage then you can heal. That means he dies and you are forced to resummon which then the pet can't get aggro back and now you are being hit instead. I don't agree that Sustain coming back is the answer to this issue, but I also think leaving it as is for very long is going to be a good answer either. We need either tweaks to the Egi's or some way to keep them up as I doubt that most healers will/would.

6) Devotion is a terrible ability mechanically. You have no choice in the target. It can go to the healer just as much as a dps. It can't buff you as a SMN at all making it useless for solo activities. It also isn't going to make much of a difference mathematically in a fight if you use it or not. Raids are not going to take it even into consideration because of its random nature. If it was a buff to the whole group and can buff you as well then I could see it being considered or if you can choose your target then we can talk, but right now mechanically it is a filler ability at best in my opinion.

I could go on about why I am liking RDM over SMN right now, but that is neither here nor there because both have certain things I like and certain things I don't like. I just want to see these points addressed with SMN is all before I consider coming back.

[Killerwing]

I'm a player that joined back when Heavensward came out, and I just fell in love with Arcanist and Summoner, mainly because of the Carbuncles. But I still loved the idea of Summoners. I really liked the way it played in Heavensward, with the use of Dreadwyrm Trance.
I was absolutely hyped with the upcoming changes for Summoner in Stormblood, but as much as I love Summoner, I do have to agree with pretty much everything that was said by the opening post(s).

While Summoner is apparently decent in terms of its power, it is at the moment, the hardest DPS class to play, because it's punishing beyond belief. There are like, so many things we now have to watch out for, like trying to use every single abilties from our pets to try and proc as many Ruin 4 as possible, or trying to time Contagion before using DWT Tri-Disaster(which is a hard habit to break from using it AFTER Tri-Disaster). And there's also having to weave in as many OGDs as possible in-between abilities when Bahamut is out in order to attempt to maximize his DPS.

Not to mention that if you miss an Aetherflow by failing to Bane multiple adds or use Fester on a target with DoTs(if Square-Enix was able to make it so that Bane can't be used on a target that has no DoTs, why couldn't they do the same for Fester?), it seriously cripples the overall DPS rotation of the Summoner.

And of course, Physick being useless. I know Square-Enix wanted to remove useless skills, but Sustain was a very useful ability. (Tri-Bind on the other hand...) And if they removed Sustain, making Physick stronger would have been a good replacement.
And it's not because 'SMN and SCH share that spell' that they can't do it. They also share the same attack spells before they all get upgraded based on each job, and both jobs have their abilities using either Mind or Intelligence to calculate damage.

I love Summoner, and I don't mind the overall changes they did to to use Bahamut in the mix, but seriously, that job is way harder to play now.

[Dyvid]

K, I'll reply for each number:

1) Very frustrating but I can understand they why. Imagine this, you have 3 stacks of aethertrail and 3 stacks of aetherflow. You could DWT > ED, PF, Fest > DWT > DB within a few seconds. I'm guessing SE wanted it to be a slow build up rather than fast burst dps

2) Demi-Bahamut: Like I've said before, Give Demi-Bahamut Garuda's AI in which he'll stay where he was summoned and cast from there rather than follow the SMN around. In this way you can sit him off to the side somewhere out of everyone ways with needing to make toggles, shrinking, transparent, or anything that would take away from what we have.

3) Lack of AoE in DWT: Interesting thought. I suppose it could be possible for SE to change DWT Ruin I or III to be AoE base with diminished effects: 20%, 30%, 40%, etc...

4) Ruin III/IV spam machine: Blame everyone that used Garuda for Contagion on this on. They basically told SE that they don't want to manage DoTs and would rather spend their time spamming ruin, the play style we have now.

5) Pet maintenance: Agree. I hate having Ifrit die simple because I don't have a way to heal him. It was dumb to remove it and it's a mana and dps loss to resummon him for reason beyond my control. Give us back Sustain.

[PotatoTree]

I'm getting used to the new SMN now and I've gotten used to the AF during DWT lockout. I have no issue with losing sustain as I never use it during raid.

However, what is still annoying is the unresponsiveness of the pet (which for a pet job is unacceptable), and how badly punished SMN is from dying. I mean SMN has zero self defense buffs. Other jobs either have a good self heal or a good self shield, or at least a jump/moment ability. Summoner has nothing from all 3 areas, so SMN should be the glass cannon dps. However, it's raw numbers do not match up with the risk. Nor does SMN offer much support, I mean RDM offers way more support for more DPS. SMN also consumes resources, as in it consumes a virus that if the person was playing a different caster, they could use freely, but the SMN needs it for Bahamut for the additional hit. SMN also consumes MP, as in you can't manashift from a SMN or else your dps is going down the drain. And don't get me started on devotion in a raid setting. It's basically just for fishing r4 procs. So basically it's extremely fragile and clunky to play, but doesn't bring the dps numbers or support to compensate.

[Mature]

The 2 min rotation is for the dummy

If you want to break the susano ex dummy you have to blow as many Tri disasters as possible to achieve at least 4100k+ DPS without pots.

If you go into an actual battle is wiser to start with miasma and bio rather than Tri disaster to have a consistent dos flow during the whole fight.

[Mature]

When I use bahamut I usually just go at the back to spawn it so there's not much to block.

But yes I think Bahamut should spawn at the back by default. And stay there. There's no need to follow me around

[Neela]

I'm hearing that SMN's have a 4 minute rotation now? Seems like they're doing more work for a lesser reward. For that reason I just can't recommend this job now....

This is a half empty opinion.

The half full opinion could state that smns rotation is actually one of the less things in SB which needs some more practice and timing than most other cls which are to easy or not challenging at all. Although the reward in mastering the timing on smn is kinda unsatisfying... true.

Closing the cap between casuals and veterans skill level is still a thing I do not understand... after my own hype of SB release started to vanish... I noticed that it brought nearly nothing to challenge or goals to master... everything like rotation/gear gathering/ex-primales and even Omega is waaaaay to easy... maybe I take a look at MCH next, cause after all I read it seems one of the less cls aside of smn which is challenging you a bit in the end. : /

is something like Rdm which is easy and forgiven by mistakes with op output or an ex-primal which you can clear on your first 1-3 runs really the definition of "fun" in a long term... questionable...

[Vallhallix]

-snip.

I have no clue why you brought up points that I did not even argue about but one thing; Devotion does need to be changed but it is not entirely random it will land on the closest person to it especially if they are seperated from everyone else eg most healers or ranged dps. I have directed Garuda towards the healer for an entire boss fight to have it land on them every time, the same for a BLM once. I ultimately agree with a lot of things you've said, however those points were not at all what I argued.

I also don't see how #2 is a problem for any content 69+. If anything SMN is at it's worst now in lower level content. I've had zero problems with the new aoe rotation on mobs in higher level. It's superior to what we had. You can still use aetherflow stacks while bahamut is already out, getting 3 stacks ahead of time prepping him up to be used again swiftly. The ability to just hold onto him for the next pull trumps what we had before. You should never be in DWT for a new pull, even in 3.0, more often than not your DWT would be wasted before you even get to the next mob.

#5 Something should be done about Titan, delete or replace him for sure. But he's not going to change much either way. Titan was always useless for anything other than low level PvE content (mainly boss fates). Even then he was kinda bad without a healer. On some of the more difficult PvE bosses he could be 1-5 shotted in many cases and the healing from sustain did not react fast enough to heal him in those cases. The fate boss near the Coerthas crystal for one example, absolutely melts Titan. I always felt Titan needed a boost to his tanking abilities, I always thought he was too squishy to be relevant. In all other content it was always Garuda or Ifrit, if someone in a dungeon saw titan for one second ''REMOVE TITAN NOW!!!'', square saw this, and now he's more useless. See square does pay attention, it's just that people can never seem to make up their minds about what they want SMN to be. Personally, I preferred to always use Garuda/Ifrit in PvE MSQ content. You should be able to burn everything in the MSQ down before significant damage can be done to either of them. I should know, I didn't use titan at all in the MSQ or the SMN questline.

[NoxLumina]

Transparent, no shrinkerino.