Conspiracy against SMN? Now content designed against SMN as well?

[Hiruke]

So, we started off 2.0 with SMN being top dps, then over time SMN was gently nerfed while most every other dps job other than BRD was significantly buffed.

Then in the 2.4 series of patches they gave us super bad secondary stat allocation on all our top gear, including, hilariously I might add, putting SPELL SPEED on both the dreadwyrm AND the ironworks books, despite SS being essentially a garbage stat for SMN. It's not bad enough I have to see a SS up buff due to my pet? What am I going to use that for?

And now it seems like all content is designed against SMN.

Pretty much all 3 dungeons have several points where you need to quickly burst down an enemy, something SMN is not particularly good at. I've never used Energy Drain so much. lol

Plus most of the new content (including both dungeons and trials) from 2.5 have annoying stuff that often kills pets, such as last boss of Keeper of the Lake. It was annoying enough to have to heavily micro-manage your pet in Shiva or accept its death, now it feels like everything is like that, plus you need to burst everything down quickly (flaming spears, little slimes that trap you, whatever).

BLM is both simply to play, easier to burst down things, will help immensely when your tank inevitably pulls 23098423094832 things every pull, and regardless does better dps in almost every situation than SMN, while SMN is far more difficult to play (well), has a lot more to worry about, can't burst, relies on pet that likes to suicide, involves hitting Contation and Enkindle 2309843209483 times hoping they go off, etc. etc.

If SE doesn't hate SMN, they are literally just really bad at designing content despite their stated aim of making sure all jobs are roughly equally viable for everything. Honestly, I can't think of anything from 2.4 or 2.5 that I'd prefer to take a SMN to instead of a BLM.

Sooo.

Thanks SE. Keep up the good work!

Oh, also, I love how if a SMN dies and Aetherflow isn't up, they are essentially USELESS. Think BLM has to deal with that? Or resummon a pet? No. They just keep smashing faces. No problem.

[Zenaku]

i enjoy playing smn back in turn 6-9 i was even useful for kiting. Now no one really wants a smn and MP is such a big issue in turn 10 alone. If i forget about Energy Drain and just focus dps and ask the bard to keep doing MP song i be top dps without issue. But then the rest of the party dps drops due to MNK not getting tp song or BLM getting foe. Even my DPS is lower due to the fact that i can do way more if i had foe up vs MP song.

When world of darkness came out i'm like ya maybe then i saw the gear. Everything is you guess it spell speed and crit o.o only the feet is worth my time. It's pretty lame they have not change the stats of coil gear they done it before don't see the issue now.

[mvenom]

I was also thinking about this when doing the new dungeons and thought "OK this is last time I play SMN on these new dungeons".
Pet dies constantly, burst sucks.

Think its safe to assume 2.51 will have Madain Sari, city of lost summoners or soemthing.

[Bigcat9715]

Yea it's starting to get to the point where I see few and few summoners running around. I really wish they would rework Arcanist to be more efficient at killing things a lot faster. The MP problem weights the class down, and enkindle is next to useless. I highly doubt they would put in much effort into reworking Arcanist unless summoner gets completely shut out of a Turn for not having the burst capabilities to complete a mechanic.

[Tex_Mex]

Ya it just seems to be getting worse. I gave up on my SMN (after putting 2.5k+ poetics into it) and switched over to DRG, which is better in every way possible....... RIP SMN, maybe I will see you again in 3.0

[Akiza]

Content isn't designed against the Summoner SE just wanted to make more challenging content. The new content revealed the broken design of the Summoner that people were complaining about since 2.0. Summoner is broken in these areas they lack sustain damage, burst and AoE damage. Summoner's also are harder to play because they have to micro manage DoTs and cool downs to maximize DPS while Black Mage are simple to play with a easy rotation. DoT classes are inherently broken as DPS and lack a lot of skills needed to be an effective DPS in challenging and hardcore end game content but they make great bubble healers.

[FranSeara]

I havnt had problems with the new Dfs on Smn. I've cleared Wp ex, Ak Ex and Shiva Ex without much problems other then running low on mp on Shiva ex rez'ing everyone. Maybe I'm not seeiing the problem here......

[Shikiseki]

I had to facepalm so hard on almost all new content, thinking I would be at least useful in new content.

The bosses have so much HP (especially the final boss at WoD and Keeper) that even make my mp go poof..
I always had to babysit my pet (prime example again - Keeper) and there are so many mini-hp burst phases (AK, WP, Keeper, WoD) it's not even fun anymore.

And I'm glad that I got used to BLM because honestly, SMN just makes your head hurt and you basically get only average results.

(...the pain when I looked at the new WoD caster gear... xd)

[ShaolinMike]

When world of darkness came out i'm like ya maybe then i saw the gear. Everything is you guess it spell speed and crit o.o only the feet is worth my time. It's pretty lame they have not change the stats of coil gear they done it before don't see the issue now.

I don't know about the rest of the caster gear, but the caster coat is all CRIT / DET. It's basically identical to the poetics coat except it has about 13 less CRIT and gives 31 DET INSTEAD of spellspeed.

[ShaolinMike]

Ya it just seems to be getting worse. I gave up on my SMN (after putting 2.5k+ poetics into it) and switched over to DRG, which is better in every way possible....... RIP SMN, maybe I will see you again in 3.0

Interesting. I'm contemplating this exact same move.