Summoner is doing too much in 5.10

[wereotter]

So I don’t have an issue per say with SMN but honestly the problem here in lies with BLM, it was just way too strong and they tried to compensate for that and the other half of the issue is RDM it’s just too damn weak. SMN being in the middle we keep getting this ping pong situation, this is why utility should have just been given to all dps.

Now we have the BLM becoming the SAM of the casters while RDM is still dragging the way back. SMN should have been on par with DRG but behind MNK allowing some middle ground but whatever I’m sick of it lol their balance issues reach further then a few classes but the whole dps role in general.

Summoner and Red Mage provide a comprable amount of utility, and so should be near each other in damage.

Everlasting Flight is the summoner equivalent to Vercure. It can't be used whenever you need it, but it is a passive part of your rotation and is a party-wide regen. Summoner is the only DPS with this ability.

Resurrection is the equivalent of Verraise. While you can't dual cast it whenever its needed, rarely should a raid need the summoner to raise multiple people back to back.

Devotion is the equivalent of Embolden. It's on a longer cooldown, but it boosts all magic damage as well as physical, making it potentially a stronger party buff.

Also now with the changes to Egi Assault, summoner has the potential to be much more mobile than red mage. I bring this up since in Heavensward, summoner mobility was used as a reason that black mage was supposed to do more damage as black mage was more or less completely immobile.

All that said, the developers really just need to figure out how they want casters in general to stack up against other roles, and commit to it. Previously it was the idea that if a caster didn't have to move, they should do more damage than a melee job, but now they don't seem to be abiding by that idea. They also over-tax some of the utility skills. Dragoon has a lot of utility, yet still gets to do high damage while jobs like red mage also have high utility and historically have done very low damage. Hopefully this balance is figures out sooner than later, like you said.

[Myon88]

Summoner and Red Mage provide a comprable amount of utility

It can't be used whenever you need it, but..

While you can't dual cast it whenever its needed..

It's on a longer cooldown, but..

I think you said it best yourself, there is no universe where the utility from summoner and red mage can be described as comparable. You clearly realize that the summoner 'versions' of these skills have conditionals attached to them, but I don't think you grasp just how significant of a penalty having these conditions are.

Everlasting flight is a gimmick that will only ever align with mechanics by chance, that's not something you want to count on. It's also ineffective against burst damage which constitutes the vast majority of dangerous mechanics in this game. Not only that, you would have to inform your healer beforehand lest they overheal and make it pointless (and that's assuming the amount it heals is even enough to save your healer a cast in the first place). It's an ability that exists more for flavour than anything else, because hey, a phoenix has to heal things right? (It's not like the phoenix in ucob gave you a damage buff or anything...)

You know, summoners were worried when we saw this ability back during fanfest for this exact reason. Because it was clearly meant as a joke, but eventually someone would take it seriously and cite it as a reason to reduce summoner's power elsewhere. Well, here's the punchline I guess, it's not funny. Did you know, everlasting flight is probably actually making summoners lose damage? It's theorized that the need for phoenix to 'cast' everlasting flight is freezing it up for a brief moment after summoning and making it unable to cast scarlet flame. It makes gcd/ogcd sequencing very awkward as a result, and is something they fixed for bahamut in 5.1 (From the patch notes: Summon Bahamut Wyrmwave can now be executed immediately after being summoned.)

Embolden's actually a good deal stronger than devotion too, now that we have rdps calculations, you can check this for yourself right now. Go find some high ranking speedruns featuring summoners and red mages (you have to scroll down pretty far though cause it's all black mages ha ha ha). Mouseover their 'damage done' and see how much credit they got for their buffs respectively.

Verraise is on a completely different level to resurrection. I really shouldn't need to explain why, anyone who has done serious progression raiding will agree. There is a massive, massive difference between a raise that only needs 2.5 seconds of hardcasting to prep, and one that requires you to stand still for 8 seconds. You've some experience in eden right? You try standing still for 8 seconds when Leviathan is casting temporary current or you're running from adds or the big hand in Voidwalker.

All things considered, I think the gap between smn and rdm dps is now far more representative of the differences in their utility than it was in 5.0.

[wereotter]

snip.

Everlasting Flight is a passive buff that actually do more healing than any red mage vercure will do in an 8-man raid scenario since the red mage has to stop DPS entirely to use their skill while summoner can use their as just part of summoning Phoenix. That healing may or may not ever be valuable depending on the phase its used in, but it's a raid utility skill that exists outside of having any impact on the ability of the summoner to do damage.

Verraise is in a similar situation (yes, I've done Eden savage) when you're in progression, you can be smart and just know you might need to save swiftcast to use resurrection than use it as a DPS skill. Yes, that's not optimal usage of swiftcast, but we all know that caster raises are primarily for progression not for farming.

I haven't looked into embolden vs devotion in logs yet, so only the comparison is from the fact that devotion buffs all damage while embolden only buffs physical. Though if there's massive difference between the two this might be a reason to have summoners slightly higher.

[Myon88]

Everlasting Flight is a passive buff that actually do more healing

Not good enough, you don't look solely at pure throughput to determine the effectiveness of a heal. Vercure is not only targeted but also on demand which puts a massive premium on it. If you're on fire, you don't put it out by standing in a drizzle, you need someone with a hose. Take ucob for example, with vercure you can spot heal people that the healers might've missed and save them from the upcoming gigaflare. This is one the most common gimmicks in the entire fight and vercure pulls its weight every time. Erase, that tiny ogcd heal role action that most people probably already forgot existed, was a more effective summoner healing tool than everlasting flight.

Swiftcast is wholly insufficient to compensate for what dualcast can do. People die frequently or in multiples all the time when learning a fight, far more than the minute's cooldown on swiftcast can keep up with.

You're welcome to value summoner's utility tools however you like, but I venture I've more experience in high stakes raiding than you, so I trust my judgment far more. In fact, when alex comes out next week, I'm going to be heading in as rdm until we near the enrage - as I imagine the casters of most good groups will be doing.

[wereotter]

You're welcome to value summoner's utility tools however you like, but I venture I've more experience in high stakes raiding than you, so I trust my judgment far more. In fact, when alex comes out next week, I'm going to be heading in as rdm until we near the enrage - as I imagine the casters of most good groups will be doing.

tl/dr

"I think I'm better than you, so without making any evaluation on you, and without knowing you at all, I'm going to assume you're wrong"

Also high end raiding doesn't always mean you're right about certain skills or abilities, especially when those things have just all changed. I can admit that I might be mistaken about the value of some skills over others, but that doesn't also mean that I'm wrong about them all either.

Also.... I loved erase. I want it back

[Myon88]

"I think I'm better than you, so without making any evaluation on you, and without knowing you at all, I'm going to assume you're wrong"

I'm not better than you, I just have more firsthand experience, and that's important when we're trying to uncover the facts of the situation.

I even provided explicit examples of why you'd prefer on demand utility like vercure, can you do the same? Anyone who has progged ucob on red mage can attest to that. Or we can just wait till ultimate comes out in a week and compare notes, everyone will be starting from an even playing field then. I encourage everyone to try it. It's easy to make judgment calls from a position of comfort, but some insights into job design can only be gleaned when you push them to their limit.

[Akiudo]

snip

funny thing is while you allways quoted the drawback he stated you never quoted him fully, he literally pointed out positives/advantages the summoner version has in 2 out of the 3 aspects he covered in addition to its drawbacks and while yes, the dualcast/verraise point indeed is true, redmage has an easier time rezzing him pointing out that having to raise twice in quick succession, espacially in a try where it matters still holds true, especially as rezzing multiple times in a row still will completly tank a redmages mana, but just for funsies let me do it again for you

"1. summoner heal indeed only happens when well, it happens, you don't control it. if it aligns correctly its also vastly more powerfull than redmages heal will ever be and doesn't even cost the summoner dps to do, realistically both are functionally worthless 95% of the time

2 embolden indeed is a lot stronger than devotion, still worth mentioning that it hits everyone, something embolden doesn't and which actually would be somewhat relevant in a dual caster situation, especially if smn came out as meta as embolden would be quite a bit weaker with a second caster, a drawback devotion doesn't have, also and heres the kicker, it adds up to their respective raid dps so what does it matter which is stronger ? you really want to say if summoner and redmage were functionally equal in every way, just that smn deals 2000 dps more (lets say devotion doesn't exist for this scenario) and redmage gets embolden buffing the group for 900 dps than that would be balanced ? it is raid dps, plain and simple, summoner allready gets compensated with extra personal dps because its dps buff is weaker, just that right now the extra dps smn has on rdm goes far and beyond that. embolden being stronger should mean nothing for raid dps, heck if anything at the absolute top end it should push rdm ahead if anything because paying more personal dps than a raidbuff offers factually defeats its purpose.

3. the rezz i'll give you is superior in redmages case, however lets be real here,
you really think the fact rdm can multy rezz is worth a 1000 dps~ summoner lead on redmage ? because if thats your honest opinion than blackmage really should smoke summoner in a pipe, the chance a single rezz in a fight actually saves a try is probably a lot higher than that a try where a redmage has to rezz his 5th person will end in anything but an enrage. yes, it may still be incredibly usefull for learning fights if you are a serious progression raider, but could we just maybe stop making a class suck for 99% of the playerbase because of the 1% competing for world first ? espacially as these in particular are the guys that will just take redmage to learn the fight anyways, even if its damage was cut by 50% just to than switch for the kill and never go back ?

[Myon88]

funny thing is while you allways quoted the drawback he stated you never quoted him fully, he literally pointed out positives/advantages the summoner version has

The advantages are irrelevant if they are dwarfed by the downsides to a massive extent. Healing throughput is less valuable than the control you have over it, especially when you as the dps are not the primary source of healing.

embolden indeed is a lot stronger than devotion, still worth mentioning that it hits everyone, something embolden doesn't and which actually would be somewhat relevant in a dual caster situation, especially if smn came out as meta as embolden would be quite a bit weaker with a second caster, a drawback devotion doesn't have

It's stronger even after considering the fact that it only affects melee. Rdps doesn't care about damage types. Embolden just buffs people so hard (or devotion is so weak) that even buffing only physical it still contributes way more dps.

also and heres the kicker, it adds up to their respective raid dps so what does it matter which is stronger

I don't know, you tell me. I'm not the one nitpicking the differences in raid utility between jobs and trying to spin it in a way that makes summoner look overpowered. If summoner is strong, everyone benefits right? Yeah I'm in total agreement.

the rezz i'll give you is superior in redmages case, however lets be real here,
if you really think the fact rdm can multy rezz is worth a 1000 dps~ lead on redmage ? because if thats your honest opinion than blackmage really should smoke summoner in a pipe,

Yes, it's worth that much, and yes, black mage is still 'smoking' summoner so I see nothing to be worried about.

[RadicalPesto]

Embolden being stronger than Devotion is laughably irrelevant when Summoner still brings several hundred more rDPS than RDM, and brings higher rDPS than BLM at most percentiles while having Resurrection. Myon88 seems like they're consistently moving the goalposts after their attempt to frame this current unbalance as "reparations" was not taken seriously.

[Akiudo]

The advantages are irrelevant if they are dwarfed by the downsides to a massive extent. Healing throughput is less valuable than the control you have over it, especially when you as the dps are not the primary source of healing.

see, i agree with you that advantages are irrelevant if the are dwarfed by disadvantages, where i don't agree (in a general setting) is that this is the case. in specific cases such as the one you cited? fair, the fact you got vercure when you need it, on whom you need it and you can actually freely control it is totally great and makes it really useful in such a case were you can make use of it, just that this comes back to my last point i made later on, not everyone and everything is progression raiding, if anything the vast majority is not, and as it stands not only is that a really small part of the playerbase, but that really small part of the player base isn't even held back by it. you said it yourself, you're going redmage to learn the fight before switching back. everyone thats not trying to push ultimate or wants the final savage turn down in 2 weeks top gets fucked over as it stands because you try to apply a value it may very well have for a specific scenario to the general playerbase thats as far from this scenario as the sun is from the earth and it doesn't even do its job, its not stopping the most hardcore of hardcore from (ab)using redmage to learn fights, it just punishes everyone else.

It's stronger even after considering the fact that it only affects melee. Rdps doesn't care about damage types. Embolden just buffs people so hard (or devotion is so weak) that even buffing only physical it still contributes way more dps.

I don't know, you tell me. I'm not the one nitpicking the differences in raid utility between jobs and trying to spin it in a way that makes summoner look

while you weren't the one starting the argument you did indeed smack it down with "embolden is way stronger" , not with "it doesn't matter as its raid dps either way" so yes, i'm telling you, embolden being way stronger (which it is) doesn't matter squat as it all comes down as "raid dps" either way, now the fact it only affect physicals is a different story as that does make a difference because assuming smn and rdm were perfectly balanced aside from buffs(thats not about numbers being equal or rezz being "x-good" or whatever, lets just say there balance is "perfect" doesn't matter what this means to anyone in particular for this) in a regular composition it would still mean redmage loses out the moment they get paired with a second caster

If summoner is strong, everyone benefits right? Yeah I'm in total agreement.

see, saying everyone benefits is an assumption at best, i certainly did not say that and i also won't agree with it, i don't want a weak summoner, but the stronger one class is the weaker the rest are in comparison which in turn effects raidbalance and what having an optimal/suboptimal group composition means to people.

Yes, it's worth that much, and yes, black mage is still 'smoking' summoner so I see nothing to be worried about.

for whom is it worth that much ? for a progression raider ? for those it would be worth 5 times as much, again as you yourself said, your going rdm to learn the fight and than switch right back. multy rezz will allways be worth it for the most hardcore to learn a fight no matter the dps deficiency they hand out to redmage, for everyone else ? a typical group won't do shit with the ability to rezz 5 times in a row aside from delaying their wipe 30 seconds while having learned nothing. (and seeing how many players actually raid/how many of those actually clear the raid even a 50% group clearing titan ex is allready in the top 5% of the playerbase, and yes, not every great player raids and not every terrible player didn't still manage to get carried by a competent group, but most people that don't even try to enter a raid ever are not the top performing bunch)

also you seem to be having a funny definition of "blackmage smoking summoner" considering summoner is outperforming blackmage on basically every percentile, its great that blackmage has a higher max if you just let him soak everything and let others deal with mechanics or whatever, doesn't mean the fact summoner is beating out blackmage at every percentile up to 95% is irrelevant