I fear for Summoner

[Lavieh]

Yes I agree, I hate that our big dps numbers are linked to festers which are in turn linked to our mana regen.

SE needs to address this and I would suggest ramping up DOT potencys a little.

Most classes spike whenever they have their buffs up again. All of their buffs effect all of their skills whilst RoS only effects the SMN and Spur/Rouse only effect the pet. We don't see big spikes we don't have forced spikes throughout our damage. I think RoS, food and Int pots should effect the pet and that would easily balance out SMN DPS. Putting Enkindle on a 60 second would be interesting as well.

DoT Potencies would effect SMN's AoE and right now SMN has really good AoE. They have the strongest AoE in certain situations (4 or less mobs that are alive for 30 seconds).

[Sequora]

Most classes spike whenever they have their buffs up again. All of their buffs effect all of their skills whilst RoS only effects the SMN and Spur/Rouse only effect the pet. We don't see big spikes we don't have forced spikes throughout our damage. I think RoS, food and Int pots should effect the pet and that would easily balance out SMN DPS. Putting Enkindle on a 60 second would be interesting as well.

DoT Potencies would effect SMN's AoE and right now SMN has really good AoE. They have the strongest AoE in certain situations (4 or less mobs that are alive for 30 seconds).

Your description of SMN AoE is spot on. It's also a very specific niche type of "best damage". As to the OP about arcanist being a beautiful class with it's disease/pet combo, I couldn't really disagree more. Summoner has always been my favorite final fantasy job throughout the series. Having the bulk of our damage come from disease spells feels very out of place to me.

[Lavieh]

Your description of SMN AoE is spot on. It's also a very specific niche type of "best damage". As to the OP about arcanist being a beautiful class with it's disease/pet combo, I couldn't really disagree more. Summoner has always been my favorite final fantasy job throughout the series. Having the bulk of our damage come from disease spells feels very out of place to me.

I think the best way to look at it, is that Arcanist is spot on with how they are in the game. The Summoner is just the job that route from Arcanist and in its Root, a SMN still functions pretty close to how a SMN should function. With the coming patch we will grow more into SMN and most likely more away from Arcanist.

[FrejyaAthenes]

Having the bulk of our damage come from disease spells feels very out of place to me.

This is where my issue with Summoner comes from. Hell, the proof's right here in these topics. Whenever someone talks about what's good about SMN, 9 times outta 10 it's about the DoTs (the other 1 time is battle rez), never the actual summons. I know that there's no perfect class or ironclad rule of class creating, and yes I'll even admit that every major summoner in past FFs have been a hybrid of that and another class (Rydia and Seymour were BLM/SMN, Dagger, Eiko and Yuna were WHM/SMN*), but even then, at least being a summoner was intrical to their characters. Here it's just...there. I have actually gone through entire battles where my pet died and A) no one even noticed and B) the battle was not affected in any way, so what's the point?

TBC

[FrejyaAthenes]

A common counter arguement I hear is that having a purely pet-based class A) makes you vulnerable/useless without said pet and B) makes you feel less important since you're not the main one dealing the damage. And while I can understand the sentiment, I don't get the reasoning. Summons should stand out if one is a summoner, that's kind of their thing. It's like being the coach or manager to a boxer or fighter. Yeah, you're not the one punching Bahamut in the face, but again, there are already other classes that do that and your summon can only do it with your power and guidance. My point is, summon and summoner should be partners and ideally one shouldn't overshadow the other. Sure, maybe in XI the summoner was basically just the cheerleader for the summon she sent at an enemy, but having the summon be an afterthought to the WoW warlock with a horn isn't much better.

*As an aside, where are the good guy male summoners? Even in this game the dude summoner's an antagonist.

[Brianmj]

Your description of SMN AoE is spot on. It's also a very specific niche type of "best damage". As to the OP about arcanist being a beautiful class with it's disease/pet combo, I couldn't really disagree more. Summoner has always been my favorite final fantasy job throughout the series. Having the bulk of our damage come from disease spells feels very out of place to me.

Yes, it doesn't make much sense for a Summoner to be casting disease spells. It makes a lot of sense for Arcanist, especially if you've played Bravely Default. But since Arcanist is the only pet class in the game, it's kind of fitting for Summoner to be derived from it. Summoner inheriting the disease aspect of Arcanist... I'm still working on trying to figure that out. The way I see it, each FF is new way to explore how jobs function; I'm not so entrenched in the Final Fantasy series, so I guess it easier for me to deal with a Summoner using debilitating spells.

[Akiza]

The Pet Caster Archetypes in MMORPS are Necromancer and Summoner. Necromancer has power over life and death which both the Scholar and Summoner fill but the Scholar is just better in the Necromancer role. SE should move the Summoner into the Summoning role where it belongs.

[Sanguisio]

Ok just me 2cents and I've most probably changed my view since last post.
-I guess you could understand SMN to be able to use the disease component lore wise due to the fact they have the ability to give life and manipulate aether into life forms. So it would make sense they would have the ability to corrupt it; which when you think about it that's all a disease is (ish).

[Dagny]

I don't really mind how the class is set up at this point. The whole 'true summoner' debate is whatever to me, would I like some more involvement with my pets? Definitely, but I'm more concerned with how viable we are and will be in the future.

I'm more concerned about our resource management since the other caster option in a raid setting has infinite MP resources. I'm not saying change BLM's resource management, I just feel that ours should be more viable. True, I'm starting to run low on MP when my static's melee are running low on TP, but paoen is always going to have priority over my ballad. How does SE fix this? I've heard putting piety on our books like healers get acc to their gear, but for it to make a difference, I feel like we'd need 40+ piety tacked on, which honestly feels ridiculous.

The only thing I can think of is decreasing the MP costs for most of our spells, or increasing the MP returns from Energy Drain, or having Fester add a MP gain element. (1/2)

[Dagny]

I'd also like spell speed to be viable instead of a junk stat, which Yoshi-P basically admitted it was in a previous live letter/interview. Have it linked to our pets, or our DoT ticks, or something. I wouldn't mind it so much if it added something useful to SMN besides 'oh this ruin is gonna go out a little faster'.

I'm concerned about SE's silence about SMN though. Are they listening to the community at all? BLM's changes came in 2.3 after it was commented on heavily how they were less favored in 2.2. We should be expecting them in 2.5 with that pattern, but I'd expect to get a peep from somewhere. Is SE going to make us wait until expansion? (2/2)