I Love 4.0 Summoner. A lot.

[Letz]

Red Mage has Embolden, which is a buff to all physical damage for 20 Seconds. Starts at 10% and dwindles down. Summoner brings 2% Physical damage increase with radiant shield, or contagion which is 10% magic damage increase for 10 seconds. You will hardly notice either buffs.

First off, Contagion is 15 seconds, not 10. Which means, 10% damage buff for 15 seconds is better than Embolden which starts at 10% and starts dwindling after just 4 secs. So if you hardly notice contagion, you certainly won't notice Embolden. Secondly, radiant shield is the only cd between RDM and SMN that will benefit the tanks and both mag/phys dps, since it adds the 50 potency counterattack for autos and raidwide aoe damage (which will proc for all kinds of damage beside darkness, btw). Aside from the 2% phys damage buff, RS counters can be seen in parses like this one:

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/JadQx...-done&source=9

[prophecy4seen]

First off, Contagion is 15 seconds, not 10. Which means, 10% damage buff for 15 seconds is better than Embolden which starts at 10% and starts dwindling after just 4 secs. So if you hardly notice contagion, you certainly won't notice Embolden. Secondly, radiant shield is the only cd between RDM and SMN that will benefit the tanks and both mag/phys dps, since it adds the 50 potency counterattack for autos and raidwide aoe damage (which will proc for all kinds of damage beside darkness, btw). Aside from the 2% phys damage buff, RS counters can be seen in parses like this one:

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/JadQx...-done&source=9

This is also a point i wanted to make in my post, but it was getting a bit lengthy. Contagion is actually huge. But most wont realize it because they dont run double caster groups.(dont forget healer dps)

[Letz]

So maybe the problem here is that Red Mage is overtuned, and is rewarding far too much dps for the effort. Currently, I have 96ish percentile on O2s on my Summoner for example. That number puts me ahead of the vast majority of Rdm's, but, therefore, if they increased Summoner's potential dps, that would be too high imo compared to blm and monk.

The issue is the average summoner can't keep up with the average Rdm when rdm is so much easier to play at a competitive level due to more straightforward job design.

[Ariomi]

First off, Contagion is 15 seconds, not 10. Which means, 10% damage buff for 15 seconds is better than Embolden which starts at 10% and starts dwindling after just 4 secs. So if you hardly notice contagion, you certainly won't notice Embolden.

Contagion is insignificant as magic damage is the lowest source of damage in most fights. With one caster, and 2 healers your buffing on average maybe 800 dps each from the healers, and the caster. With Embolden, You buff both tanks, the Red Mage, and every other physical dps. Trick attack buffs all damage by 10% for 10 seconds. Embolden only drops below 8% physical damage after 8 seconds. Brotherhood is a 5% physical dps that lasts for 15 seconds, and Embolden only drops under 6% after 12 seconds. For contagion to be as good as Embolden, it would either have to last longer, be a larger increase or include all damage.

Even if you are running a comp with 2 healers 2 casters 2 melee and 2 tanks, embolden still would be better as it buffs the red mage, both melee and the tanks. (Over half the group, and the most damage dealing member's of the party)

Lastly, both Contagion and Radiant will time up with TA and other 60 sec cd's. Tri-D, Aetherflow, one Akh Morn and Shadow Flare will too. So, points about RDM's increased utility are valid, but I'd it's at least even for both classes as far as synergy goes.

Synergy wise, Summoner isn't as friendly to the one caster Meta as Red Mage. You can switch between both pets to get radiant shield and contagion, but at the cost of mana to switch your pets. and at reduced personal dps from using your mana. Red Mage is more complex in summoner when it comes to positioning and movement. Rotation wise, they are about as equally complex when you factor in RNG and when Red Mage will get their melee combo. Summoner can just ruin 2 when they need to move, and you can hold or pop deathflare whenever you want without issue. While when I play Red Mage, I only have bursts of movement, and need to juggle movement and casting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Id6TH72Qk

[Letz]

Contagion is insignificant as magic damage is the lowest source of damage in most fights. With Embolden, You buff both tanks, the Red Mage, and every other physical dps. Embolden only drops below 8% physical damage after 8 seconds. Brotherhood is a 5% physical dps that lasts for 15 seconds, and Embolden only drops under 6% after 12 seconds. For contagion to be as good as Embolden, it would either have to last longer, be a larger increase or include all damage.

You're conveniently leaving out that Embolden is on a 120 cd while contagion is 60. Which means, if you're going to compare Embolden to Contagion, you can cut Embolden's potency increase in half. It's 20 second duration is already 5% buff on average, since it declines in potency, so cutting it in half again is 2.5 potency for 20 seconds per minute, compared to contagion's solid 10 for 15 seconds, every minute. Even if there are more physical dps in the party, Embolden still doesn't win.

[Ariomi]

You're conveniently leaving out that Embolden is on a 120 cd while contagion is 60.

Except that Contagion is only magical damage, and the healers may not get any benefit out of it, depending on the mechanics (As KarstenS pointed out). Secondly, I'm hard pressed to find a single fight, where Healers add more dps then the tanks do. Thirdly, Embolden stacks with Trick attack, Slashing and peircing and blunt damage Debuff, Brotherhood, Hypercharge and Foe Req, in a way that any physical dps class gets more damage out of it.

Speaking of FF logs, Did you notice how the 75th percentile tanks do right around 3k damage. (Anywhere from around 2700-3k dps) In the same boat, Healers are doing maybe half that. Astrologians are at 1000 dps, with whm and scholar at 1500 dps. Contagion adds 10% damage increase, to the role that does the least dps.... and Embolden is buffing the tanks who are doing 3x the damage as the astro and 2x the whm and scholar.

So not only does Embolden stack with more skills then contagion does, buffs more people in the team then contagion does, (buffs the red mage, and every physical damage source. In a two caster two melee group, both tanks, both melee and the red mage - 5 people buffed) but it buffs the half of the team that does the most damage.

To some of your side comments, Summoner has phases where there is a heavy incentive to use Ruin 2. Ruin2 being instant means easy staying mobile. Red Mage has to cast first then move, meaning a lot of Red Mage's will finish a cast in an aoe, then move to safety as they double cast. Summoner's skills are so quick, that the one skill that can be interrupted (ruin 3) can just be replaced by ruin2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Id6TH72Qk
At 20 seconds the Aoe pops. I backflip out of the aoe at the last moment to complete my cast, and swiftcast the next spell to get out of the second aoe and keep my damage up. Something a Summoner could just ruin 2, move ruin 2.

And the Smn parses aren't as wide, as only the best summoners in the better groups can get past O3s. Did you also forget to notice how few Summoner parses there are? There are 54 summoner parses for Neo Exdeath. the fewest of any class period. Black Mage has double the parses, (and much more damage) with Red Mage and Ninja having 10+ times more then Summoner.

[Letz]

Did you also forget to notice how few Summoner parses there are? There are 54 summoner parses for Neo Exdeath. the fewest of any class period. Black Mage has double the parses, (and much more damage) with Red Mage and Ninja having 10+ times more then Summoner.

Again (again), yes, Embolden buffs more people in the average party, and it's boosting more damge, but only for half the potency and half the frequency as Contagion(120 secs vs. 60, 5 average potency vs. 10).

Secondly, yes, there are way fewer Summoner parses because the class is more difficult to excel at and more complex than Red Mage. That's kind of been my point this whole time.

Finally, I'll just leave this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._poll_results/

Peace.

[Letz]

With one caster, and 2 healers your buffing on average maybe 800 dps each from the healers, and the caster.

Even if you are running a comp with 2 healers 2 casters 2 melee and 2 tanks, embolden still would be better as it buffs the red mage, both melee and the tanks. (Over half the group, and the most damage dealing member's of the party)

Btw, I don't know which healer's you've been running with but 800 dps per healer is way below the average. Any time spent scanning fflogs will show you that.

[KarstenS]

Btw, I don't know which healer's you've been running with but 800 dps per healer is way below the average. Any time spent scanning fflogs will show you that.

It depends. In O3S in most of the good SMN DPS windows there is alot of unavoidable damage incoming. So healers have much to heal while Contagion is up.

[NovaBismarck]

I've played SMN for many years and I'll be honest I am not particularly happy with the changes. Overall, the concept of the change is solid, but there are some application problems that tend to make me cringe. I've swapped to RDM for now until they fix the death penalty issue at the very least. Shadowflare, devotion, and bahamut death penalty and his clunkyness are issues for me. Learning savages would be a nightmare on SMN. At least I know with RDM, I can rebound from dying. It seems to me that you need to know a fight very well to play SMN, otherwise you get penalized for your phase issues, i.e. bringing bahamut out at the wrong time. I can feel my heart sink and damage plummet when I get targeted for AoEs at the wrong time. This is generally not as big an issue for many other classes.

Buffs need to be strong on SMN to replace the DoTs, like they were in FFXI. I'd probably take a buff increase over dps. One approach would be to: 1. Buff party well. 2. Contribute respectable damage. It'd be one way to may SMN better but there are other approaches as well.

While I know you can't compare apples to oranges, RDM is simple in execution, it is fluent in the new content. To me, it feels like SMN does more work for less payout. I'm not sure if it's coming off of 3.0 to 4.0. My damage was respectable with the DoT content. Now, I'm always fighting to keep it up. Granted a casual player like myself doesn't have the experience of some others, but playing SMN casually now feels a bit painful. It makes me sad because I love the class so much.