SMN changes

[ShariusTC]

I wonder how much physick will heal now. Seeing that the red mage can heal close to 6k health, if we can do the same that will explain why sustain is gone.
Also this makes me a bit salty.
https://gfycat.com/InbornAppropriateDwarfrabbit

Wow, if that a battle raise then rdm can even do it better than healer, but if not battle raise then it just some fancy gimmick tho

[Senliten]

I'm really not sure where people are getting Fester being hard nerfed. Mr. Happy's video clearly shows Fester is doing like 3 times the Ruin spell and almost double Painflare.

Think this is why

Considering he had ilvl 290 gear there, the fact that fester was doing the same damage as we do now at ilvl 270 was not comforting

Which honestly..... it might sound bout right.. With the current BIS/melds it wouldn't surprise me, anyone care to confirm seeing i'm kinda only hitting random 3.2-4ks from being a lazy 258 with crap for a relic XD. Where as he was hitting 5599 straight base with fester

[Sunako]

I believe that is tooltip bug, test realms always have some errors in my exp. 150/300 fester potency would make more logic than 150/200. I hope that bane damage is not gonna be 80% damage reduced as well. It become really bad if it that weak. Black mages get new ability with 650 potency aoe with almost zero mana cost so it would be no reason nerf summoners aoe that hard.

Seems like summoner gonna be changer for more ruin spam than dot management. Every dot is gonna be 30 sec duration so you barely even need cast them anymore. You can put first dots with tri-disaster, you can put second dots with tri disaster and third dots with tri disaster because of how aetherflow and dread stance works. Aetherflow have tooltip that says you can not use it during dreadwyrm stance? Does that mean you can not use any aetherflow based abilities during dread stance or you can not just activate aetherflow during stance? Healers mana management skill is now usable for even summoners so i guess spamming ruin 3 outside stance gonna be even more common in the expansion. Not sure will it become boring class because ruin gameplay may ruin everything.

[Dyvid]

After watching different SMN videos I believe Fester is a tooltip mistake. Ruin III landed for around 3300ish and Fester was hitting for 5500ish.

Honestly the overall changes aren't that different from how the community plays now. They use Garuda specifically to extend DoTs so they spam more ruin. 4.0 gives a hard 30s DoT rotation with easier management so you can spam ruin. The key thing though is SE is quietly trying to nerf speed runs again. SMN saw a huge buff to Bane from infecting only 3 target (remember those day) to infecting everything. Now they are swinging back the other way and wanting to nerf dungeon runs again.

[Neela]

I'm honestly looking forward to playing Summoner again in 4.0

oh me too - I kinda like the evolution of this cls. just missing pet skills after all. : /

SMN's damage will come mostly from Bahamut and using correctly DwT and DaT.
Yes, bane got nerfed but who cares? Single target damaged got drastically increased thanks to Bahamut and now we Devotion, which will be a very welcome addition to raids.

You guys are crying over nothing, pretty much.

yeppo +1

Actually no... it will be even WORSE for Raids...

...

Thank you Yoshida, my Titan is finally DEAD. How do am i suposed to tank with titan now??? Psysick? Are you kidding? GG solo content, now we have only 2 egis.

Hmm yeah this is something what they seem to forget at all...

[Alisi]

^THIS^ Without dots what are we?

We'll have our DoTs. DoTs and Ruin are really the only things we can do as the aether flow spells are off limit while we're in DWT. T^T Tri-disaster one the main and dot up the rest, while Bahamut actually does our DPS.

[CecMiller]

I for one am mostly disappointed in the shift of playstyle and lack of "challenge" the class brings. We've shifted away from managing 3 dots with varied uptime (30s, 24s and 18s respectively with a total of 110 potency every 3 seconds) to 2 dots that both last 30s (with a total of 80 potency over 3 seconds) removing most dot management to maximize dps. To maximize your damage in the current savage raid tier, you needed to be good at dot management and shadowflare uptime (which is now changed to once every 60s). There were more decisions to be made: Do I refresh bio? Do I refresh Miasma? Maybe the optimum strategy at a particular fight was to refresh bio but cast a ruin instead of refreshing miasma. They're on the fly decisions you had to make. Most of this comes with learning the fight, but now dot management difficulty has been significantly turned down and in turn makes the class seem a lot more boring.

I guess what I'm saying is, I don't see the challenge in SMN compared to say a melee class where positionals result in increased potency on your abilities or other effects. Instead, we get a "15% chance to cast Ruin 4". Whilst we may have cast Ruin 3/Ruin 2/Ruin 1 liberally in the current creator savage raid tier, in 4.0 casting ruin is most of what you will be doing. I just don't like how streamlined the job has become. Sure the damage might work out with number changes, but the playstyle seems incredibly boring. From initial impressions, there isn't a whole lot a player can do which separates a great summoner from a good summoner. Sure we will still see these differences, but I feel like tacking on the "15% chance to make your next Ruin 1/3 into Ruin 4" cheapens the experience. Bahamut is great and all, but dot management was part of the summoner parcel for me. Removing that aspect doesn't make me as interested in the class as I was before.

Further still, the Aetherial Attunement stacks lasting 30s was cool to manage at least for me personally. Casting painflare just before cruise chaser does limit cut so I have 3 stacks which last long enough for DWT when he becomes vulnerable again was pretty cool D: They're small but awesome tricks. However, I do feel with the current summoner changes, SE will have reduced the dps difference between a great summoner and an average summoner and that does make me a little sad if I'm honest. I cant argue that they've either achieved or have come close to achieving what they set out to do which is reducing the dps disparity between the a good SMN and an average SMN. Perhaps too much? I couldn't say until I get a chance to play it myself.

As a sidenote: After seeing the bard changes with the way songs are used, I thought it would have been cool if something similar could be applied to summoner. Perhaps there would be a use for summoning titan egi, then ifrit egi, then garuda egi for 30s each and at the end we're rewarded with demi-bahamut for 15 minutes (I would have said until combat ends but that'd be only good for raiding. 15 mins means it should be there for most of the dungeon.) or whatever. This makes use of the otherwise underutilised egi's in the raiding scene. Just thought it would have been cool when I saw how the new BRD songs worked D:

[Silverquick]

I believe that is tooltip bug, test realms always have some errors in my exp. 150/300 fester potency would make more logic than 150/200. I hope that bane damage is not gonna be 80% damage reduced as well. It become really bad if it that weak. Black mages get new ability with 650 potency aoe with almost zero mana cost so it would be no reason nerf summoners aoe that hard..

Yeah seriously...I mean right now the potency on the DoTs is 110 per tick in a normal Tri-Disaster.

The DoTs in the changed version are at 70 potency (Bio 2 + Miasma 2)... so that's a nerf in and of itself.

Use BANE on that and it becomes.....

70 potency per tick on the first target
56 potency per tick on the second target
42 potency per tick on the third target

Its so weak its questionable as to whether its even usable or not.

Want to know the damage the 3rd target is getting? Go out and throw ONLY a current BIO on a mob... and watch it tick.... that's 40 potency right there...

That's what BANE will now be worth.

You can skip BANE entirely and just hard cast them and be better off.

They could just as well remove the thing entirely at this point... that's what its worth after this.

If they wanted to Nerf it... just dropping the potency to 70 per tick would have been enough... but then throwing the -20% per target just nerfed it into the ground to the point of almost uselessness.

Its what you call overnerfing something.

[CecMiller]

Whilst Bane has been nerfed, I believe the nerf will mostly hit the dungeon aspect. From what we've seen from clips, there wasn't very many "large pulls". However, Bane is still useful. You will not be better off hard casting them in a large pack as those GCD's could be spent on casting ruin 3 in DWT. Harder still is being able to identify which adds got the massive potency reduced dots. It would be more efficient to spam Painflare after 1 bane and then immediately getting DWT going and spamming Ruin 3. Don't get me wrong, Bane is much worse now, however, it will still be a gain and whilst I haven't done the math for it, I don't believe individually dotting mobs would be better. This would be dependant on the speed at which the mobs are dying at and the pack size tho.

However, keep in mind that they may yet change the values on bane. I think 80% is brutal. I think 50% at max would be more appropriate.

[Silverquick]

Whilst Bane has been nerfed, I believe the nerf will mostly hit the dungeon aspect. From what we've seen from clips, there wasn't very many "large pulls". However, Bane is still useful. You will not be better off hard casting them in a large pack as those GCD's could be spent on casting ruin 3 in DWT. Harder still is being able to identify which adds got the massive potency reduced dots. It would be more efficient to spam Painflare after 1 bane and then immediately getting DWT going and spamming Ruin 3. Don't get me wrong, Bane is much worse now, however, it will still be a gain and whilst I haven't done the math for it, I don't believe individually dotting mobs would be better. This would be dependant on the speed at which the mobs are dying at and the pack size tho.

However, keep in mind that they may yet change the values on bane. I think 80% is brutal. I think 50% at max would be more appropriate.

Yeah.... but Ruin 3 spam is pointless in a multi-target environment and not even used.

Given the current tactics on Mobs in an AoE situation... here's how it actually works and how SMNs destroy mob packs in the current version.

Tri-Disaster>Painflare>Contagion>Bane>Miasma II>Painflare>DWT>Deathflare
Sometimes a Aerial Blast (Garuda Enkindle)

There is no Ruin 3 spamming because its pointless in a 6-10 mob spread. You use that AFTERwards to wipe out what's left after all that. Which is usually only 1-3 stronger targets that are now very weak. Sometimes its not quite enough and the mobs still have a sliver of health left so you'd move in and Spam a couple of Bliz 2's to finish them off.. and then Ruin 3 on the couple of stronger targets that are almost dead...

Ruin 3 spamming isn't used until afterwards... I don't expect that tactic to change at all... mostly because single target damage is pointless in a multi-target environment.