Curious on opinion. Smn or Mch. Which would you pick?

[Greywolfamakir]

If You like to support your party, SMN is better right now.
MCH can bring TP/MP regen, but at the same time You are gonna do less damage, I mean, You are helping with TP/MP regen, but You are not helping doing the worst DPS of the party in a DPS slot.
SMN can raise in combat + Virus + worth DPS slot, I mean, like SMN you can not bring TP/MP regen, but You can Raise, making healers dont spend a lot of mana, Virus in high damage phases and finally You are a real DPS, You are using a DPS slot, and You are doing DPS.

If You don't care how useful are or are not in the party, You should play what do You enjoy, however, If you care to be useful, SMN is the right answer.

[AskaRay]

If You like to support your party, SMN is better right now.
MCH can bring TP/MP regen, but at the same time You are gonna do less damage, I mean, You are helping with TP/MP regen, but You are not helping doing the worst DPS of the party in a DPS slot.
SMN can raise in combat + Virus + worth DPS slot, I mean, like SMN you can not bring TP/MP regen, but You can Raise, making healers dont spend a lot of mana, Virus in high damage phases and finally You are a real DPS, You are using a DPS slot, and You are doing DPS.

If You don't care how useful are or are not in the party, You should play what do You enjoy, however, If you care to be useful, SMN is the right answer.

You are also forgetting MCH's Physical and Magical 5% resistance debuff every two minutes, and to mention their Attack/Magical damage down debuff every two minutes.
Adds up, you know.

[Sen_Terrechant]

You are also forgetting MCH's Physical and Magical 5% resistance debuff every two minutes, and to mention their Attack/Magical damage down debuff every two minutes.
Adds up, you know.

Shh dont tell them that. Everyone on these forums is convinced BRD/MCH is terrrrrribleee. Just let them think that, and not understand what a supportdps (im doing it as one word, so people cant take it out of context) is.

[FreeLancer4]

I personally have leveled and actively play both. Both have high skill ceilings, however MCH would have to be the more APM intensive of the two, meaning it'll require some dexterity from the player to be optimal. I can't comment for other classes, but MCH have a rather ludicrous amount of oGCDs that need to be weaved in constantly to perform at maximum. You'll also need some extra awareness, reason being you'll have a cast bar 52+ and a turret that is like to be knocked around depending on the encounter requiring re-positioning. Add to the fact that your also support you'll have to be mindful of MP bars and those cries for TP.

SMN was in 2.0 very much lackluster, mostly from the lack of burst, AoE or otherwise and the limit cap of bane. With both of these issues resolved their AoE is now very likely the strongest and with the introduction of Astrologian their support abilities are now a little more relevant depending on the party setup. The reasons for this are larger MP pull means raise is more viable without going OOM, all mages had access to E4E and a STR version of Virus and lastly SCH had Super Virus. It was very much unlikely that you would not find a PT without a SCH in it for endgame (2.0), and one Super Virus was all that was ever needed and thus it was more practical to take a BLM that could hand out the deeps more efficiently. If WHM/AST become the norm then SMNs support abilities will shine much more.

It's safe to say that any lingering stigma for SMN is likely gone, however being a great SMN will take skill, patience and awareness. You have a pet that may need to be moved occasionally from danger, dots to constantly keep track of and now Aethertrail stacks that will require you to also be mindful of as timing and use of abilities will vary greatly on the encounter.

[Ryaz]

The problem with MCH utility is that none of it is really needed right now. Unless you've got a really bad healer overhealing like crazy, MP/TP regen isn't needed. The damage debuff either. None of my utility abilities have they saved us from a wipe or really helped anyone else. Yes, I can give that DRG doing who ran out of TP some regen to keep going, but at the cost of my turret damage which ends up not being a huge gain as it should be because you're giving up a good 13-15% of your dps to do it. I've seen SMN battle Rez used much more.

And the whole "supportdps" (not sure what making it one word is supposed to actually accomplish) argument is still lame. Other classes also bring a good amount of buffs and debuffs for the party that are arguably more useful.

[Greywolfamakir]

The problem with MCH utility is that none of it is really needed right now. Unless you've got a really bad healer overhealing like crazy, MP/TP regen isn't needed. The damage debuff either. None of my utility abilities have they saved us from a wipe or really helped anyone else. Yes, I can give that DRG doing who ran out of TP some regen to keep going, but at the cost of my turret damage which ends up not being a huge gain as it should be because you're giving up a good 13-15% of your dps to do it. I've seen SMN battle Rez used much more.

And the whole "supportdps" (not sure what making it one word is supposed to actually accomplish) argument is still lame. Other classes also bring a good amount of buffs and debuffs for the party that are arguably more useful.

I could not write it better
I totally agree with You.

[Ruri]

I myself prefer MCH but SMN does more damage. Play whichever is more fun to you.

[Ryaz]

I could not write it better
I totally agree with You.

The thing is, I don't think we're in horrible shape. I feel we're a bit too cooldown reliant. If you make a mistake with your buffs or even worse, something like Quarantine happens, it's extremely hard to recover from that because we don't have the tools to just jump back in. Our main burst opener and our burst every minute and a half thereafter is what keeps us even the slightest bit competitive. Something goes wrong there, you will easily see yourself dps drop horribly.

And it also begs the question: if our abilities are useful during progression content, what happens after that? When new content becomes farm content suddenly MCH/BRD are just holding the group back. It's not like our 2 minute cooldown 5% damage increase will make up for someone who actually brings a lot of dps. Especially something like a Ninja that can give a 10% debuff on a lower cooldown and still do damage. A good support class should have abilities that are useful all the time, not just in a few select situations. If we did really have support that was always helpful, I wouldn't be so against the idea. If MCH/BRD could give regen without losing our own dps? That's useful all the time. Giving up 15%? Situational. If our 5% damage debuff was something we could keep up constantly? That's useful all the time and makes healing easier. On a 90 second cooldown? Situational. A 5% damage boost for the whole party constantly? Always useful. Once every 2 minutes? Situational (and more for our own benefit).

I have nothing against the idea of a support class. But if I'm going to support the party, let me support them at all times, not just occasionally.

[SovereignAegis]

Shh dont tell them that. Everyone on these forums is convinced BRD/MCH is terrrrrribleee. Just let them think that, and not understand what a supportdps (im doing it as one word, so people cant take it out of context) is.

And then someone who uses numbers and not fancy flashywords informs everyone that the damage decrease is 5% only for 10 seconds and on a 90second cooldown timer that is shared. Oh and it's EITHER ONE OR THE OTHER of physical or magical damage. Not both.

And that the physical/magical damage increase debuff is limited to physical or magical damage and is tied to the same skill as your "battle voice" ability. Sure, pop that. But when an accident happens and a healer dies and you need to explain why your healer never got mana back and your raid wipes I am confident that the raid will collectively inform you to just hold onto the ability.

[Minorinz]

I would recommend you watch a video of some machinist gameplay on challenging content and do the same for summoner. If you are planning to do Alex HM or savage then tp/mp will be needed there for sure, don't worry about the dps because if you love a job you will definitely excel at it.