Summoner is doing too much in 5.10

[Zerathor]

Anywho, I'm wondering what happens in 5.11's patch. Do Summoners lose the Raise, or do Black Mages get 20 potency on Fire 4?

Taking wagers!

Going to pick a 3rd option and put $200 on squeenix doubling down on smn buffs, and buffing r3 and r2 by 20 potency

[Rika007]

Going to pick a 3rd option and put $200 on squeenix doubling down on smn buffs, and buffing r3 and r2 by 20 potency

And then nerfing Ranged physicals more.

[ForteNightshade]

No. I may call it reparations in jest, but there is a very real dps penalty that the Shadowbringers version of summoner incurs.

Consider a fight like ucob where the boss constantly disappears and becomes unattackable. If aetherflow came off cooldown just as it happened, you could still use it and just save your aetherflow charges and trances for when the fight resumed. Now think about what happens in the current system if something like firebird trance comes off cooldown at the same point. If you use it now, you'll basically waste it because there's nothing to hit, but if you hold it, you will delay all subsequent trances for the rest of the fight. This is a massive loss to flexibility and adaptive play and it has a real impact on dps. A summoner that got, say, 7 uses of dreadwyrm trance and bahamut in the old system, might only get 6 now in the same fight if timings are unkind. This is not about being petty or taking revenge, it's a real dps loss, how is the job being compensated for this?

If you slapped current potency numbers onto Stormblood summoner's rotation flow, oh boy then we'd all see what summoners outdamaging black mages really looks like. It'd be the seventh umbral calamity for blms all over again. If you don't like the idea of summoner putting out strong numbers, take solace in the fact that it's more like the other way around, their flawed design is keeping these numbers in check.

You're twisting my words with that last sentence. What I don't like is previously what I said in my original post: jobs being punished or deserving excessive buffs simply because of poor balance in the past. Summoner being inconsistent in some fights is a design flaw within the job itself. The solution isn't to compensate it with exaggerated numbers. All that accomplishes is making it flat better in fights where it's rotation isn't held back. You cite ucob, which has substantial downtime whereas most of the current Savage lacks said downtime. Therein lies the issue. Balancing jobs around flawed or straight up broken mechanics will inevitably cause far more harm than good.

The solution is to fix Summoner so it remains relatively consistent throughout each fight. Doing otherwise is repeats the mistakes which led to Summoner's insane overtuning in 4.1 or nonsense like the Bard/Machinist buff wars of Heavensward that outright killed the Casters. Just to name a couple examples where the devs made problems worse because they didn't address the actual issue but slap band-aids on it.

Anywho, I'm wondering what happens in 5.11's patch. Do Summoners lose the Raise, or do Black Mages get 20 potency on Fire 4?

Taking wagers!

I'll put my money on they do absolutely nothing and insist everything's fine because "all jobs can clear"

[Kabooa]

I'll put my money on they do absolutely nothing and insist everything's fine because "all jobs can clear"

Eh. I mean, it's technically true.

At least we're still good in speedruns?

[Nemekh]

snip

It was never said that this was a Summoner only problem, it was said that "Things like that are not fun for any job.". I focus on Summoner, however, and wrote many a detailed post, even a 26-minute video on how 5.0 release summoner faired especially in comparison to how it used to be, which is the topic of importance where steps backwards in design were taken, things that add to the "job stress" Yoshida is adamant about reducing. Please do not misconstrue this as anything BLM vs SMN.

Polyglot was brought up as an example of something that if it functioned like current Energy Drain it would be far, far worse. Just because it's on the GCD doesn't stop that it's a resource that cannot be expedited by speed and is on a hard 30s cd, just like ED, where the only thing that will drop the timer is losing Enochian and that only applies to the E1s cutscene in the current raid tier. Also, what you're talking about is the different nature of the caster models.

However, since we're talking caster, when I referred to measures in jobs to help make downtime more manageable an example of this would be Umbral Soul, or even now the current iteration of Reprise where RDMs having greater DPS positive control over their mana means they can sculpt their combo against awkward downtime and raid alignment better. These are positive changes and provide appreciable flexibility and ones Square Enix consciously are taking efforts towards all for the sake of "reducing job stress". It's not just about outright losses, but how things align with regards to said downtime. This is part of why, again, that Trances have had their cooldowns reduced to 55s despite the fact that Summoner still operates on a 2 minute cycle, it allows for some adjustments where before there were none. This still leaves ED as a point of irritation over SB era Aetherflow.

You don't appear to have that much experience of current era SMN having looked with a much greater emphasis in BLM play. If you want to better know the context, I recommend doing beyond e1s, be it Leviathan or Hades, especially getting your toes wet in ultimates older and soon new with the current incarnation of Summoner to know just how awkward the current design still is in 5.10. This is the better state of things after SE made adjustments to the job's mechanics. 5.0 was even worse, especially before the Fester Ruin removal. You know it also was the first time Yoshida has ever sincerely apologised for how messed up the devs had made an expansion release Summoner.

[Kabooa]

Please do not misconstrue this as anything BLM vs SMN.

My mistake.

Frankly I had no interest in summoner through every iteration. The only reason I took it into savage this time at all was because there was an extensive amount of negative reviews about it, and it's hard to offer suggestions to improve it if I haven't seen them first hand. I believe this was after the DoT Ruin interaction was removed, though I doubt it being in there still would have hampered my thoughts towards the job in general. Given my preferences it probably would have improved it.

[Myon88]

Just a weird distinction to make it sound like a Summoner only problem. Polyglot specifically mostly isn't comparable because everything a Black Mage does is tied to the GCD, so everything's relative strength is based on the average value of that GCD. I would think it more comparable to use AF/UI, because if we can't hit a thing, that hurts us much more directly given that everything is GCD based - Whether or not Polyglot stopped 'stacking' doesn't matter as much in this scenario. We're losing GCDs just like the Summoner loses potential Trance uses, but the difference is we can never get the GCD back, where as a Summoner both isn't always losing uses, and because it's OGCD, loses less for losing the GCDs since not everything is tied to it.

Funny you mention AF/UI, because it's also because of it that black mage benefits from downtime in a way summoner doesn't. The existence of AF and UI mean there is a distinction between which black mage gcds are strong and which are not, and as long as that distinction exists it can be exploited.

Take the fact that if they know a pause in combat is coming like maelstrom, saavy blms can time their rotation to end combat at the tail end of AF. Simply transpose and hit umbral soul and start building mp, hearts, and polyglot stacks while other jobs are twiddling their thumbs. When combat restarts, you begin again in AF with full resources. You've essentially chained two fire phases in a row, cut an ice phase out completely and raised the average value of your gcd in that fight.

It's a pretty good deal wouldn't you say? Sure you're 'not getting those gcds back', but you have the power to ensure the gcds you're throwing away are low value ice gcds you didn't care for anyway. This is like some company of fat cats making a big show of the donations they're providing, when it's actually being written off as a tax deductible behind the scenes. Don't make me laugh.

I really shouldn't have to be the one saying this considering I'm the newbie that learned black mage this tier. It's plain as day and immediately stands out as a strength of the job. Perhaps MP bars and enochian timers should be frozen when no target is present to foster more parity between toolkits. You might not understand the similarity between polyglot and aetherflow, but perhaps this one is more palatable to you.

[Lastelli]

Honestly, by looking at early statistics on the site that must not be named, smn doesn't seem all that op to me. It's neck and neck with blm in most fights, with the exception of e1s (that skews the aggregate statistics for all savage bosses), but that's a weird encounter because of downtime and adds padding. While I do agree that considering how mobile smn is and how it brings a raise it probably does a little bit too much, some blms here are overreacting. blm still is the undisputed king of casters in a full uptime scenario and it's in a way better spot than it was in past expansions.

[Rasikko]

SMN.. the one job yall been wanting to shine for so long and when you finally get a bone thrown at you...you want to throw it back..?

Are you people high?

[Shurrikhan]

SMN.. the one job yall been wanting to shine for so long and when you finally get a bone thrown at you...you want to throw it back..?

Are you people high?

During previous imbalance: "Could we balance this?"

During current imbalance: "Could we balance this?"

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