After years of playing Summoner, I'm shelving the job and here's why.

[Angry_Evil]

My goal is just for SMN to not be lagging behind in it's one key area, AoE.

What's your usual AoE dps let's say in 70lvl dungeons?

[TheLenrir]

Gotta admit, was painful reading that whole OP. Not because it was wrong but on how right it is.

I am working on a RDM but really the nail for me dropped when my SAM finally hit lvl70.

As I was playing my SAM, I was constantly screaming at myself at how the rotations reminded me much of how the HW SMN used to play as, as I persistently worked to ensure my rotations matched the length of my cooldowns or Higan DoT. This is helped further that by improving the rotation I saw a significant increase in my dps, motivating me to improve it further.

My SMN though? Improve the rotation, change some things up and my reward is like a paltry 5% increase in my dps. Lovely, magnificent, it really wasn't until I decided that demi-bahamut was not worth speed summoning that my dps actually Went Up.

Really? Are you kidding? My ultimate, numero uno lvl 70 skill is actually a dps loss than a dps improvement? Sure you use it but you are better off focusing your rotation on tri-disaster, rather than Bahamut. What a hoot, we truly are the Ruin Mage! It was really at this point I said 'screw it' and started levelling a RDM.

I switched to a SMN for second coil and, while it was ruin spam back then, it at least had a purpose, a future, in the hopes that one day this class will not be the ruin mage. We also can at least take comfort that many classes were still finding their feet. That future, of course, arrived with Heavensward. Suddenly the SMN was given a difficulty/skill boost, but in turn this reaped huge rewards. No longer we were simply ruin spamming but also managing DoT cooldowns and our aetherflows, giving a class but challenging but rewarding experience. Personally I actually thought the class was perfect as it is, maybe some adjustments here and there but honestly had a real want for nothing.

But unfortunately the devs decided we did want something and that came in the form of Stormblood. Suddenly we were getting changes we didn't really ask for and now we have what we have.

TLDR Just delete SMN already, at this point you might as well remake the class from the ground up.

[Angry_Evil]

it really wasn't until I decided that demi-bahamut was not worth speed summoning that my dps actually Went Up.

Really? Are you kidding? My ultimate, numero uno lvl 70 skill is actually a dps loss than a dps improvement? Sure you use it but you are better off focusing your rotation on tri-disaster, rather than Bahamut.

That's strange. If done right demi-bahamut should be around 400-500 dps boost.

[Neela]

Really? Are you kidding? My ultimate, numero uno lvl 70 skill is actually a dps loss than a dps improvement? Sure you use it but you are better off focusing your rotation on tri-disaster, rather than Bahamut.

How can 10-12 shockwaves and 2x Ahk Morn per Bahamut be a dps loss...? How does your Bahamut rota-part look like, if it feels like a loss to you? Actually its the only part of your rota which really make some serious dmg - forget the ruin3 spam... ruin 3 is more a filler skill than anything else nowadays... : /

That's strange. If done right demi-bahamut should be around 400-500 dps boost.

yeah if people do it right... ^^'

[Claviusnex]

.... What a hoot, we truly are the Ruin Mage! ....

I seem to recall one of the early leveling quests even admonishing us not to spam Ruin. My how things have changed.

[ThirdKeyOfSun]

yeah if people do it right... ^^'

Just to be clear we are talking about waiting for an additional aetherflow stack before summoning demi in order to push the waves right? If so I find it odd that the get max power we need 3 stacks of aether and not just the initial cost of 2 even though I don't argue the testing and math behind it. If anything that itself feels clunky. If we have the power to summon demi after 2 stacks we should be able to use the summon to its full ability at the 2 stack mark. If I am wrong in what you are inferring I would very much like someone to correct me though!

[Revanslave]

I'm updating what I said before in this thread since I've now cleared OS1 (havent moved on to the others yet). Sure, I didn't wow with DPS but I don't find this job bad enough to give it up. Never gonna leave Smn behond (:

[Neela]

Just to be clear we are talking about waiting for an additional aetherflow stack before summoning demi in order to push the waves right? If so I find it odd that the get max power we need 3 stacks of aether and not just the initial cost of 2 even though I don't argue the testing and math behind it. If anything that itself feels clunky. If we have the power to summon demi after 2 stacks we should be able to use the summon to its full ability at the 2 stack mark. If I am wrong in what you are inferring I would very much like someone to correct me though!

Even if you won't wait for the stacks it's just -3 shockwaves (and the skills itselves) - left 7-9 shockwaves + ruin4 procs which can weaved with swiftcast. Bahamut is your main dmg phase with or without the xtra stacks.

BRDs fe can use their 70 skill with or without barrage, with or without raging strike, ode, foe, etc... same shit but yeah it feels different on us you are right : /

Sadest thing after all is that pet-potency thingy... after building up 2 stances Ahk Morn itself feels weird week for a finisher...which is just bs.

[Angry_Evil]

I'm updating what I said before in this thread since I've now cleared OS1 (havent moved on to the others yet). Sure, I didn't wow with DPS but I don't find this job bad enough to give it up. Never gonna leave Smn behond (:

I cleared O1 and O2S with smn and it changes literally nothing that was said about how poorly designed smn is now...

Just to be clear we are talking about waiting for an additional aetherflow stack before summoning demi in order to push the waves right? If so I find it odd that the get max power we need 3 stacks of aether and not just the initial cost of 2 even though I don't argue the testing and math behind it. If anything that itself feels clunky. If we have the power to summon demi after 2 stacks we should be able to use the summon to its full ability at the 2 stack mark. If I am wrong in what you are inferring I would very much like someone to correct me though!

Even if you just r3 spam while bahamut is summoned it still should be dps boost. Other than that yeah it's pretty clunky and poorly implemented. It boggles my mind that we need 3 stacks 3d and ADDLE and ping(PING) to fully realize bahamut's potential. How ANYONE can think it's a good idea... And if it's not what SE intended then it's even worse design lol.

[ToasterMan]

I haven't seen a SMN or BLM in DF at all in a long time now. Been seeing plenty of RDM's though.