Shadow Flare needs a new effect.

[Bigcat9715]

Shadow flare has a nice animation and it covers a wide range, but it's near useless when it comes to battle. To the normal enemies it's fine the damage is barely noticeable, but at least the slow effect works until you get to the boss, then it becomes a unless ability. I haven't ran pass T5, so I don't know if it works in SCoB or FCoB. Would it be broke if Shadow flare had a weak version of vulnerability up?

[Ricdeau]

I'd recommend not thinking about Shadowflare as a utility ability, but rather a damage dealing ability with builtin utility. It's useful when that part of it works, but the damage on Shadowflare is very valuable on both Summoner and Scholar. Also if they changed the debuff to vulnerability it would be overpowered unless they put a cooldown on it which would potentially make the arcanist crowd unhappy.

Edit - I should probably elaborate a bit further. I view Shadowflare similarly to stuff like Steel Peak and Spinshatter Drive. Both of these moves stun, but for the most part you can't stun anything important so they are just used as damage dealing abilities for Monk and Dragoon. The bit of utility on them comes in useful every now and then typically in dungeons, but not much else.

[Bigcat9715]

I'd recommend not thinking about Shadowflare as a utility ability, but rather a damage dealing ability with builtin utility. It's useful when that part of it works, but the damage on Shadowflare is very valuable on both Summoner and Scholar. Also if they changed the debuff to vulnerability it would be overpowered unless they put a cooldown on it which would potentially make the arcanist crowd unhappy.

Maybe it's just me, because I play both SMN and BLM, so I see Smn underwhelming. SMN abilities like Miasma 2 and Shadowflare has such a low potency that the only way to make them good is if you have them up all the time. Hell I barely see other Smns use miasma 2 when I'm running dungeons.

[Viridiana]

Maybe it's just me, because I play both SMN and BLM, so I see Smn underwhelming. SMN abilities like Miasma 2 and Shadowflare has such a low potency that the only way to make them good is if you have them up all the time. Hell I barely see other Smns use miasma 2 when I'm running dungeons.

Shadowflare has 250 potency. That's not a low potency.

[Ricdeau]

Maybe it's just me, because I play both SMN and BLM, so I see Smn underwhelming. SMN abilities like Miasma 2 and Shadowflare has such a low potency that the only way to make them good is if you have them up all the time. Hell I barely see other Smns use miasma 2 when I'm running dungeons.

I don't play casters so I can't comment too much. I understand Summoner is not in the best position right now, and we are expecting some tweaks come expansion. However, what are you finding underwhelming about it? Is it just DOTs vs high damage nuking that you find underwhelming? Potency over time attacks are generally some of the strongest abilities in the game (especially ones that can AoE).

Shadowflare has 250 potency. That's not a low potency.

Not to mention each tick has it's own chance to crit.

[Bigcat9715]

Not to mention each tick has it's own chance to crit.

https://m.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comment...w_discoveries/
Apparently Shadow flare doesn't crit it's on a different formula.

[Viridiana]

https://m.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comment...w_discoveries/
Apparently Shadow flare doesn't crit it's on a different formula.

That was a post from a year and a half ago. At the time Shadow Flare was bugged to 100% crit, which has since been fixed.

[Ricdeau]

https://m.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comment...w_discoveries/
Apparently Shadow flare doesn't crit it's on a different formula.

This was a bug that was fixed in patch 2.1. It is undocumented in the patch notes, but you can read here for updates to what are you seeing in your previous link:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen..._lower_damage/

[Malevicton]

has such a low potency that the only way to make them good is if you have them up all the time.

[Zamii]

Hell I barely see other Smns use miasma 2 when I'm running dungeons.

since no one else seems to have pointed this out i guess i will.
Miasma II, including its full DoT duration, has a potency of 70 (not including contagion), which is lower than that of the potency of ruin which is 80, essentially your causing yourself a dps loss to keep it up 100% of the time, if your going to use it at all, it should only be with contagion (although personally i find it to MP inefficient, similar case to monks using fracture) or to AoE multiple mobs