Why does summoner even have Physick anymore?

[MVX21]

I'm all for either getting rid of it altogether or giving it a trait that evolves it into "summon moogle" or something similar. Put it on a 60s cd and make it a decent aoe heal for emergencies. It's honestly not a problem, it's just kind of a peculiarity that they have such a pointless skill when they've been mostly trying to prune out extra buttons. Then again I feel like whoever was in charge of SMN for the expansion didn't get that memo about button bloat.

[Zyneste]

Delete Physick. Put Sleep as a role skill. Doesn't add to BLM's Button bloat and if a BLM can solo with just manaward + sleep, a smn can solo with Earthen Ward + sleep.

If SMN was going to get a survivability boost in the open world, this is where I'd put it. Anything else is going to affect raid settings.

[Archwizard]

Unpopular opinion, but I think each caster DPS should have two survivability tools.

One, an emergency tool that comes at no damage loss but is not always available -- Manaward for instance. Equivalents to Bloodbath, like Necrogenesis. Even with a good healer covering you, it's a tool for when you know a raid-wide hit is coming or you just need to soak a pillar; in RDM's case I'd also argue on the grounds of use covering their low survivability during their melee phase.

The other, an on-demand tool, always available and reliable but comes at a damage loss. Use for leveling, soloing, spots when the healer is down or struggling. Consider for instance MNK's Fists of Earth here. RDM has Vercure, the former Energy Drain for SMN counted too (kinda). This is where I would argue for BLM to gain a buffed version of Drain to supplement Manaward. Since the tool comes at a loss and would be less efficient than a healer's own abilities, much as a healer's damage is less effective than a DPS, you would still defer to a healer instead of using these tools except in clutch situations.

Now, if I were to apply my philosophy then we end up in a predicament, in that even in a world where Physick granted a worthwhile amount of healing to the caster, SMN ends up with two high-frequency survivability tools that each amount to a damage loss.
Now, in the personal interest of not homogenizing each job (and just preferring the old school flavor of summoning what you need), I would be more willing to argue for the retention of SMN's Earthen Ward, but then we still face the issues that Physick bloats the kit. Meanwhile if we argue for buffing Physick on the grounds we already have it, Earthen Ward is not only somewhat redundant but also a bigger damage loss than Physick, since you have to spend two GCDs swapping summons and spend a cooldown rather than just one GCD on a heal.

But, this is all just armchair deving on my part.

[Zyneste]

Meanwhile if we argue for buffing Physick on the grounds we already have it, Earthen Ward is not only somewhat redundant but also a bigger damage loss than Physick, since you have to spend two GCDs swapping summons and spend a cooldown rather than just one GCD on a heal.

But, this is all just armchair deving on my part.

Summoner summons are ogcd now. Smn loses an auto attack from ifrit and ifrits egi assault. Much less damage loss than spending a gcd on healing. [Even though physick is 1.5 seconds now so you can partially weave with it. ]

[Rongway]

my lv60 RDM heals for 3500-4000 single heals not counting the dual cast.

Just to be clear, what I'm posting right now is not to argue in either way about whether SMN should have a functioning heal.

But! I feel it's important that we're all clear about something: dualcast doesn't factor into "but RDM healing potency" arguments at all, ever. The second heal still costs a full GCD. Dualcast does not make RDM able to cast two spells in one GCD. Any arguments involving RDM need to treat Vercure as a single 350 potency heal, and not as a 700 potency heal.

This is not an indictment of you specifically! It's just whenever we have the Physick discussion, invariably someone eventually compares Vercure to Cure II.

[Nalien]

Change Physick on Summoner to an oGCD Dissipation style ability; Kills your pet and restores respectable HP. Functions as an ohshi- button, and if you're swapping to Titan anyway in that scenario, might as well get some HP out of it too.

Alternatively, just delete it entirely, because there is really no point to such a weak skill... If they're worried about stepping into Vercure territory... IDK, maybe make it a Regen instead of direct heal... Fits with Everlasting Flight at least... If we're going that route though, I'd say change it to Sustain as well, just so that animation lives on somehow...

[JordieYG]

am i missing something? im almost postive that smn does not have physick. it's sch only. just because you have an ability on your hotbar doesn't mean that the job necessarily can use that action. pre shb it did, but not anymore. maybe it's just leftover on your bar from pre shb. you can take WAR's Inner Release and slap it on your WHM hotbar, doesn't mean WHM has Inner Release

[Kurando]

snip

Yes it's just you. Open your SMN Actions & Traits menu and you'll see Physick there. The funny thing is, SCH has it under Job now and not Class as it was before, so why wasn't it removed for SMN, hmm who knows...

[Sinh119]

It's just for 1-50 content. Gives you some early game survivability. While it becomes exponentially less useful the higher level you get, I'm against removing abilities that are situationally useful like that in general. It's meant to fulfill a specific niche and it does that fine.

[Hasrat]

Yes it's just you. Open your SMN Actions & Traits menu and you'll see Physick there. The funny thing is, SCH has it under Job now and not Class as it was before, so why wasn't it removed for SMN, hmm who knows...

From the looks of things, it sorta feels like they're genuinely getting close to breaking SCH off from this forced dependency on ACN. Physick and two Maim and Mend traits are all it has carried over. Makes me think they might try making it a classless job like everything post-ARR in the next expansion or two, maybe finally giving them a little more freedom to work with things on both SCH and SMN.

Or maybe I'm just being optimistic.