SMN...and SCH broken

[Cupcakesu]

Summoner seems fine to me. Scholar feels like it's mechanically/conceptually on the right path, but they HEAVILY undertuned the numbers or tacked on unnecessary gates and negatives. It feels sort of like release-Astrologian. They had a goal in mind, overnerfed things to achieve that goal, and then left all of the new stuff too weak or restricted. For example, does the Fairy really need to be unable to move while executing Fey Union? Chain Stratagem lasts 15s and has a 2 minute CD, and thus might as well not even exist considering it's essentially just a crit chance increase. Excogitation is barely stronger than Lustrate, has the same Aetherflow cost, and will often do absolutely nothing because tanks don't often drop below 50% in duo-Healer situations. All of these issues can be fixed, but the ideas behind SCH's kit seem acceptable.

Or perhaps I'm just disillusioned by comparing it to WHM, which has a TERRIBLE concept and mechanic. (Note- WHM is actually better off than SCH and can perform better in content, but their new mechanics are simply trash and boring)

[PotatoTree]

Hitting something that doesn't fight back isn't a good measure for damage as there will be mechanics that force you out of position. Dummies are there for practicing your rotation and nothing else really.

Also I'd like to add that SMN dummy parses do a rotation that is not used in a normal fight. You have to rush your trances and wyrms to squeeze extra ones in, but in a real fight your next 2 minutes after the dummy rotation would be like a wet noodle.

[SmallHobbit]

summoner is very strong right now , maybe even a little op

i play my self SMN and this is not true! have you see fflogs already? SMN in a real fights is one of the weakest dps now near DRG.

regards hobbit

[Komaku]

Sigh even now after 4.06 summoner is still broken. Yeah, they gave us 10 more potency for Bio III and Miasma III BUT THAT WASNT THE PROBLEM! Ugh, the biggest and I mean the BIGGEST issue with summoner is how aetherflow is used now. It has a long cooldown and on top of that once you use the three charges you have your locked out of using it until you're done with dread wyrm trance, One of the easiest fixes they could do that would please us summoners would be to not lock us out of our aetherflow and reduce its cooldown just a little bit.

[Ftail]

Can we just stop for a second and talk about how we can no longer heal our pets? wtf? As a sch it's not much of an issue.. just party member #5. But as smn you have no more options.
Also is it just me or are the pets being hit way more by boss mechanics compared to before? I end up just using swiftcast for raising my pet now Oo

I'd say it's just as much of an issue on SCH, sure the Fairy can heal itself when it's damaged, but that's the main issue for SCH's. If I could just tell that little shit to stop spamming embrace on itself and cast whispering dawn instead of having to wait for the perfect moment in between embrace casts it wouldn't be so frustrating manually controlling my little shit, I mean fairy.

[paoweeotter]

Hey guys! What kind of opener do you guys do when the PUG group doesnt wait for your aetherflow to come off cooldown after a wipe?

http://ffxivrotations.com/tg3

this one won't work. and i can't get the timing of rouse right because of it.

[Ariomi]

summoner is very strong right now , maybe even a little op

they do more damage than melee classes except SAM according to the new stone sky sea dummy hp
and they have strong utility as they can buff physical and magical damage

Stone Sky Sea Dummies are a terrible indication of how strong a class is.

Machinist dummies required more dps then a bard dummy, despite Machinist having terrible dps. Only took doubling some of Machinist's potencies, like their 400 potency attack to 800 potency, doubling the damage increase from overheating and buffing the duration of their self buff to be a minute long for it to be good.

[EvilJoshy]

IMO dummies are really bad for seeing what a DPS can do. They get you raw numbers if you are doing "nothing" else but dmg. In raid content you are not doing just dmg. There are several variables that a dummy can not account for. Having to stop what your doing to move out of an aoe, deal with a mechanic, the boss is off screen/invulnerable and can't be targeted for a time, adds, someone dies and needs a rez, "you" die and need a rez.
SMN is not OP. I wouldn't go as far as say broken but we need some work.
Pets are clunky and unresponsive
Sustain was removed and if our pets are taking dmg we may have to resmn them
Bahamut is cool but he can block the screen and you can get clipped by an aoe
Bahamut prioritizes moving instead of attacking
Bahamut has a lot of range but he insists on being latched to your backside
If a smn dies we lose all our stacks for aetherflow, DWT and bahamut. That is like 2 mins of work down the drain and we have to start over.
Devotion is a cool buff but it only targets one person and that's the person closest to our pet. If we got ifrit and everyone is stacked on the boss's butt there's no telling who will get the buff. RDM's buff is party wide. I don't need to do that math to tell you 8 people getting a buff is more value than one person getting a buff.
Shadowflare is instant which is good but it's on a longer CD. Less forgiving if the boss has to move. Example, when Halicarnassus decides to jump to a tile and do a mechanic.

This is just me and my static so not a representation of all SMNs place in the DPS kingdom. On savage 1-3. I have been using this link as a guide https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...d3LQBPy1E/edit. I am not doing the perfect rotation all the time but if I don't die or have to rez someone I tend to get anywhere from 3400-3800. Our blm gets 3800-4200 every fight. He even swaps to RDM once in awhile and his dmg is almost the same with a weaker weapon. He has the augmented tomestone weapon for BLM, susano's weapons for RDM.

[Gumbercules]

I am in a weird place with SMN cuz I started to level it cuz of all the complaining, and i actually ended up enjoying the job. In HW I just got it to 60 and shelved it cuz I did not enjoy its class mechanics and synergy. That said alot of the complaints seem to be about "muh deeps" and since I am used to bard, I just see SMN as a dps with good damage and good group synergy (using my bard as an example that would be great group synergy with ok damage) Ironically one of the "insults" ive seen chucked at MMO class design is the "need" to make every class pull the same numbers some devs (wow cough wow) opt for, and imo FF 14 atm is doing a good job of creating group synergies around a "support" structure vs DPS. Issue is i guess that everyone just wants to be "big $%#^" DPS ing it :P

The people trying to convince me "balance" was a mess directed me to the FFLOGs site and that gives a pretty good correlation of performance to "class identity" in actual situations. Quite frankly the balancing is freakishly good if you go by the logs. ( i strongly advice you "look" before reacting to seeing them and make sure you are seeing the actual numbers not the percentiles alone)

[ArcanoJones]

I have no problem with Summoner. They seem OP to me. He kills things faster than my Red Mage..and is a lot less squishy because of its pet.