SMN - Most Glaring Issues

[Angry_Evil]

If you go into an actual battle is wiser to start with miasma and bio rather than Tri disaster to have a consistent dos flow during the whole fight.

If that's how you usually "start with miasma and bio" https://www.fflogs.com/rankings/character/133917/15/, I don't see how you can tell people what is wiser or not...
For the actual guide, rotations, how to play as a summoner I suggest thoughts by Eirene Snow top tonberry summoner - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...QBPy1E/preview
Which is while being a good overview of SMN skills and flow, showed how poorly designed summoner is as a job.
Frankly after reading several threads about summoner here it seems to me that most glaring issue with it is bad players, who have no idea how to play. And pulling job even lower to the bottom with their constant whining on forums...

[Alisi]

Oh one more thing about Point 1. If you die, not only do you lose all your aetherflow/stacks, get weakness but your pet dies as well. Meaning you revive, and lose 20% more of your dps then any other class. 120 Sec punishment, + weakness + 20% damage loss till you spend 2400 mana to resummon your pet and however long that takes. Oh and your pet is also weakened from your death.

Yup. LOL. Have you experienced the fun of having your pet die right when you summon Bahamut? The animation takes long enough that it can happen and then you've just wasted a two minute set up. LOL. It's soul crushing to see the animation start and then ... go away. ;=; It's like "Imma gunna summon Baha -- oh wait, nevermind..."

I'm hearing that SMN's have a 4 minute rotation now? Seems like they're doing more work for a lesser reward. For that reason I just can't recommend this job now....

It's about 2 min 30 seconds but it can be less. Baha is summoned by using DWT twice and that requires consuming two full stacks of Aether (which has a minute CD to refresh) plus 15 seconds per DWT. It's less if you had previous stacks before the start of the fight.

[Gallus]

The amount of random suggestions that have absolutely no sense in this thread is very worrying...

SMN is perfectly fine. It could use a slight potency in some of its spells because of how punishing and complex it can get to do good damage with this class (as opposed to BLM and RDM which are more braindead, especially the latter).

Only issues I can agree with atm:

1 - Bahamut size. Just shrink it.
2 - Make the pet even more sturdy against AOEs and random mechanics.

[Delta041]

I have 3 main grievances with 4.0 SMN

1. Aetherflow and Aethertrail are now combined rather than being separate.
You will never convince me this is in any way, shape or form a good idea. SMN on the whole has become more obtuse since the systems it has to juggle (Aetherflow, Trail, Trance, Bahamut) constantly work against each other. However, it's especially egregious with Flow and Trail, since their tug of war can result in a SMN being penalized with the loss of up to 3 stacks of aetherflow and an entire Trance cycle. If they wanted to make trance stacks easier all they had to do was remove the timer. Even with the timer, SMN has effectively 90 seconds to enter dreadwyrm trance. That's a lifetime as far as regular encounters go. As it stands I've basically had to unlearn everything I learned in 3.0 to play what I consider an inferior version of the system as I can no longer have Aetherflow on cooldown while going through my trance.

2. Demi-Bahamut is too micro intensive
Stormblood was supposed to make jobs easier to play, yet here SMNs have been slapped with a micro management nightmare. Demi fires off Wyrmwaves every 1.5 seconds based on player actions. Players meanwhile are locked behind a 2.5 GCD. Demi then requires players to have at least 5 targeted off GCDs and very precise timing to be able to get the most out of their Demi's uptime. This decision however I can understand a bit. My though are that they wanted Ahk Morns to be more responsive than usual pet actions, so they bound Demi's auto attacks to player actions. In my opinion however this is far too strenuous on a class that already has 3 other now completely separate and competing mechanics to cycle though. Where it up to me, Demi would behave like a Rook auto turret, it would be summoned, stay in place, fire off its attacks on the last target its SMN attacked. This would likely result in Ahk Morn becoming more unresponsive (though I can't recall Wildfire having that issue) but I think it would be a worthy tradeoff.

3. Tri-Bind is still worthless
Why is this skill so bad? WHY? PvP and PvE actions are separate now, there is no reason why SMN should still continue to take this skill off their hotbars. Personally I love its cast animation but between the 3.0s cast time and worthless 30 potency damage, it simply not worth using in any situation. The skill needs to have its cast time knocked down to 2.5s and a potency boost. This would give SMN some much needed AoE sustain back while not touching SCH.

[Neela]

The amount of random suggestions that have absolutely no sense in this thread is very worrying...

SMN is perfectly fine. It could use a slight potency in some of its spells because of how punishing and complex it can get to do good damage with this class (as opposed to BLM and RDM which are more braindead, especially the latter).

Only issues I can agree with atm:

1 - Bahamut size. Just shrink it.
2 - Make the pet even more sturdy against AOEs and random mechanics.

but...Gallus... shrinking the legendary dragon lord.... just would make him laughable... I mean he's a god... a fucking god... give people the ability to toggle him of or to adjust his transparency.. idk BUT.... I as smn myself don't wanna run around with a cute, tiny Tabaluga instead... .______. '

[Xiozen]

5) There is little point for having a Tanking pet any more. He is designed to help you solo, but you can't keep Titan Egi up long enough in some cases. Physick heals for barely over 400 health. The Egi has a lot more health then that and mobs hit for more damage then you can heal. That means he dies and you are forced to re-summon which then the pet can't get aggro back and now you are being hit instead. I don't agree that Sustain coming back is the answer to this issue, but I also think leaving it as is for very long is going to be a good answer either. We need either tweaks to the Egi's or some way to keep them up as I doubt that most healers will/would. I could go on about why I am liking RDM over SMN right now, but that is neither here nor there because both have certain things I like and certain things I don't like. I just want to see these points addressed with SMN is all before I consider coming back.

This-----upon reading it I had to comment because as a career summoner myself and while I understand all of what you had pointed out in your post, to which it makes a lot of sense, I feel compelled to point out that the above change for me, as a solo summoner, is the most glaring and intrusive.

Not being able to play the job I pay monthly to look forward to playing the WAY I have always played it since early 2.x ARR days (even including and up to it's most recent transformation into SMN 4.0).... I tend to gravitate to RDM and AST to play content, although I HOLD OUT HOPE that SE will make the necessary changes to SMN to bring it back to its earlier days in of at least being able to SOMEWHAT reliable solo content if that is how the PLAYER wishes to USE his time.

I am a casual player---I work full time; so have VERY limited time to play this beloved game and to log in and NOT be able to play it as I had gotten use to playing it is EXTREMELY disheartening. SE needs to FIX THIS!

[Gallus]

but shrinking the legendary dragon lord.... just would make him laughable... I mean he's a god... a fucking god... give people the ability to toggle him of or to adjust his transparency.. idk BUT.... I as smn myself don't wanna run around with a cute, tiny Tabaluga instead... .______. '

We've been running around with potatoes as pets for 2 years. We'll be fine.

[Psycofang]

but...Gallus... shrinking the legendary dragon lord.... just would make him laughable... I mean he's a god... a fucking god...

A god that got BTFO twice before being able to do anything?

[Neela]

naaaahhh Carbis a cute and so yeah yeah... but they are to chibi if you are in a "I'm a summoner mood" instead. we are no pet groomers we are summoners – the egi size and poor textures bother me ever since : ((((

psy this one is not about efficiency - egi skins always were designed half-hearted. #makebahamutgreatagain

[Xiozen]

The amount of random suggestions that have absolutely no sense in this thread is very worrying...

SMN is perfectly fine. 1 - Bahamut size. Just shrink it.

Everyone has an opinion and yours is duly noted. I DISAGREE with shrinking Bahamut... While I concur that during specific content it can be very difficult for players to see mechanics and respond/react quickly enough if the Lord of Dragons is blocking their view---the answer of shrinking him down to size just doesn't seem like it fits. I would instead recommend either:

1. Providing players the option --assuming this option does not already exist--to turn off egi's so that they are not VISIBLE--similar to how other players/alliance players effects can be "turned off" so that you do not see them on your screen and they don't interfere with your FPS... 2. As such suggested, specific to Bahamut's summon only; when summoned by the SMN, have stay in one spot "X" # of yalms behind the player, so as not to interfere with others field of view...not really sure how this would play out in truly mobile parties when moving from one area to the next... 3. Have the option similar to #1, but allow the SMN the option of making Bahamut transparent when summoned--so default can be set in cases where you don't have a lot of people around you in either a 8man party setting or alliance content and you'd like to SEE his regular form, then when you are in content where his normal form may hinder others, the SMN can set Bahamut to transparency mode, so mechanics cannot be shielded from view.

But just blatantly shrinking the Lord of Dragons after we just received him as an immediate FIX.... I think NOT!