Why Summoner Needs Help

[EllieShadeflare]

Hiya! This is one of my first, and major topics on the forum, and although I've listed my concerns with many of the classes in Stormblood (primarily the caster and healer side of things), I felt that one job in particular needs help. One job in Stormblood that has always had an identity crisis and how some of its nerfs in Stormblood has only made things worse.

Yes, I'm talking about Summoner.

But what's wrong with SMN, you may ask? We finally have Bahamut! We can now give support from our pets! We get Bio III and Miasma III!


All of those are true... but are still... pyrrhic in their victories. This isn't coming from someone who tried to pick up the class in SB and found it lacking, this is coming from someone who had geared up SMN alongside Black Mage in Heavensward, and has actually refused to touch the job in its current state (in part because its sister job, Scholar has been so brutally nerfed but that's besides the point) So, to summarize, let me give some examples specifically with some of the new buffs:

Bio III, Miasma III and Tri-Disaster's changes don't make up for the loss of Bio in our arsenal: Something that'll become a theme in this post is that Summoner has to make up for a lot of its losses through buffs to other abilities/changes to abilities. Even in Heavensward, most of Summoner's changes felt like an expansion of our power rather than scrambling to make up! Instead, the loss of Bio in our rotation feels a lot more significant a loss than simply losing deadweight. Unfortunately, this is in part a lot to do with how Ruination only provides 20 potency more to Ruin spells, which granted can hit faster than your DoTs can tic, but all three debuffs, Bio III, Miasma III and Ruination only edge out slightly stronger than the original holy trinity of DoTs, but that's only a slight. Upgrades are generally supposed to feel harder, better, faster and stronger than your original abilities, but... not if it means you only edge out slightly.

Demi-Bahamut is significantly disappointing: We all had a collective fanboy moment when we saw that we would be getting Bahamut as a JoJo Bizarre Adventure Stand-styled (or Persona-styled) summon that attacked alongside us, and barfed out the REAL AKH MORN... but you soon begin to see the cracks with its power. Sure, Wyrmwave is indeed a big step up over Ifrit, since it works alongside your attacks and has 25 potency over Burning Strike's 135 (wait that actually doesn't sound that big now that I'm typing it) but the tooltip's depiction of Akh Morn's potency is rather decieving. While sure, Akh Morn has a potency of 680 when you compare it to other pet attacks, the problem is that its potency is based on the pet's potency, and not the caster's, and for an attack that happens only twice every 2 minutes, versus say Black Mage's Foul, which can be used once every 30 seconds and is 650... well, it's pretty bad. Especially when pet potency brings Akh Morn down to about 544 practical potency. Black Mage can get 2600 potency every two minutes, but Summoner, whose entire gameplay is about building up to a big hoorah, a brilliant finish... is relegated to a mere 1088 potency in two minutes, with Deathflare only providing 800 more in this time. For a job that used to be about causing giant tantrums of power and being the AoE king of mages, this is utterly disgraceful, and the nature of Foul, Akh Morn and Deathflare also affects our single target... which is still beaten out by Black Mage.

A solution I have is making Bahamut's entire potency based on our own rather than have any reduction period... but that doesn't fix our only getting 2,160 potency ever minute after the change. That's why I propose giving Akh Morn a full 1000 potency. This may sound extreme, but for an attack based off of a TANK BUSTER, it is more than fitting. Give it Flare's whole 15%, 30%, 45%, 60%, 70% drop-off if you feel it necessary, but we ought to be able to match or outdo Black Mage if we need a massive amount of time just to get to our highs, while Black Mage is constantly doing cocaine.

The support from our pets is simply not enough to justify any reduction to damage. Radiant Shield's boost is mighty fine, and Contagion isn't the worst change possible, but Aetherpact/Devotion is a rather pathetic support ability that won't even let us target other party members ourselves, and according to Gamerescape, was massively neutered versus its original form, which was applied to EVERYONE. At the very least, let Devotion be a party-wide ability.

So, the buffs have been essentially double-edged at best, minimal at worst. However, now we get into the outright nerfs.

Ruin III... what even happened to you. Ruin and Ruin II's buffs are great, but Ruin III is essentially on life-support outside of Dreadwyrm Trance. Its reduction to 150 potency doesn't make up for any increase that Ruination can give (simply buffing the increase to 50 would help immensely) but it's especially insulting when our new boost up and random upgrade... only gives 200 potency, the same potency of the original Ruin III! I know that it could have been nerfed all the way back to 120, but why'd you change Ruin III to 200 potency early on in HW only to nerf it back down? It doesn't even make sense!

Bye bye AoE! It's been said before, said again, and I'll also add to that chorus: Bane has been utterly butchered. You turned a powerful tool that helps our AoE DPS into a laughing stock, and this isn't even counting the removal of Miasma II or the insulting change of Shadow Flare only lasting half the time it used to for the same potency, but suddenly we now have to wait 45 seconds just to put it back up! As an insult to injury, Tri-Bind hasn't been buffed to compensate for any of the nerfs, and our only reliable tools are oGCDs, limited to either mechanics or three times a minute! JUST TO MATCH BLACK MAGE OR RED MAGE. Just un-nerf Bane (I don't care if you bring it to Heavensward or A Realm Reborn, having the worst dropoff is simply not okay), and double the duration of Shadow Flare, and that SHOULD fix some things. If you are insistent on keeping those abilities nerfed, then make Tri-bind not only have higher potency (maybe 75) but also benefit from Ruination... Speaking of, make Ruination spread by Bane to work with Tri-bind.

Bye bye Titan! Okay, so Titan should never be used in any group content, but he was a major part of how our solo content was possible. And then you took away Sustain, the only real way to maintain Titan's survival, which makes Tri-Bind's endurance in our arsenal FURTHER insulting! A simple solution would be to make Sustain a oGCD that could also double as a party-support tool (place it on a party member to heal 8% HP over 12s every 60s) and replace Physick. Or, you could just make Physick scale with Intelligence, though not as well as Vercure, if you want that full distinction. Just SOMETHING to make Titan survivable, and Physick's slot not be a waste.

Why the new Aethertrail Attunement is a Mistake: Firstly, the ability to have our Aethertrail no longer disappear when not taking advantage of it is a massive boon, thank you YoshiP. However, why on Hydaelyn did you choose to utterly cripple Aetherflow if we miss any abilities? A simple solution would simply make the slots have a transparent Aethertrail, such as... in this mockup:



As can be seen, it is still easy to tell that you have Aethertrail attunement, but it wouldn't override or be overriden by Aetherflow slots. This could also allow Aetherflow to be usable in Dreadwyrm Trance, making the DPS back to something familiar.

Please, I would love to be able to play Summoner with confidence again, but the changes make it nigh impossible to do so.

[OgruMogru]

Most importantly, why wasn't their [and Sch] damn UI element a book? Why?? Really puts the "we don't know anything about job identity" cherry on the cake.

[Ferrasper]

You said something which I have to correct you on. SMN are AOE kings. Yes, you were powerful at it during HW, but the first and only AOE king is BLM which started back in ARR and probably 1.0. SMN is not AOE king.

[EllieShadeflare]

You said something which I have to correct you on. SMN are AOE kings. Yes, you were powerful at it during HW, but the first and only AOE king is BLM which started back in ARR and probably 1.0. SMN is not AOE king.

While Black Mage's AOE effectiveness during HW was certainly only adjusted (Flare's dropoff saw to the end of its reign), Summoner gained a unique opportunity when Bane was buffed to apply to more than three targets, Shadow Flare being a powerful damage over time area, Miasma II was at least a fun tool, Enkindle's cooldown was shortened ever so slightly, and the addition of Painflare (a reliable 200 potency burst AoE) and Deathflare (a whopping 400 potency AoE without dropoff) all provided the tools for Summoner to become one of the most powerful AoE users in the whole game, with only Black Mage as a possible contender.

[Ferrasper]

While Black Mage's AOE effectiveness during HW was certainly only adjusted (Flare's dropoff saw to the end of its reign), Summoner gained a unique opportunity when Bane was buffed to apply to more than three targets, Shadow Flare being a powerful damage over time area, Miasma II was at least a fun tool, Enkindle's cooldown was shortened ever so slightly, and the addition of Painflare (a reliable 200 potency burst AoE) and Deathflare (a whopping 400 potency AoE without dropoff) all provided the tools for Summoner to become one of the most powerful AoE users in the whole game, with only Black Mage as a possible contender.

I know the history of it, but with SB, BLM has resumed it's rain of AOE king with T4, Foul, and quad flare. There is not a lot SMN can do to contend with that.

[EllieShadeflare]

I know the history of it, but with SB, BLM has resumed it's rain of AOE king with T4, Foul, and quad flare. There is not a lot SMN can do to contend with that.

Summoner doesn't actually have anything to contend with ANY aspect of Black Mage, single target, AoE or otherwise, and it is with this topic that I hope SOMETHING can be addressed.

[Ferrasper]

Summoner doesn't actually have anything to contend with ANY aspect of Black Mage, single target, AoE or otherwise, and it is with this topic that I hope SOMETHING can be addressed.

That is the issue with SMN. I think it should be compared with RDM more then BLM. BLM is supposed to be the pure dps caster which packs a punch in Aoes and single target because it doesn't have utility. RDM is your true challenger because both classes have it. The challenge is making both RDM and SMN on equal footing each offering different play-styles and buffs. May-hap make Devotion more powerful and target-able with magic buffs, while RDM focuses on the melee buffs.

[xNewbx]

Actually in HW, big trash pulls the BRD was just as good as the top AoE'ers. Usually you were able to get off a MINIMUM of a 350 potency AoE damage every GCD with no fall off to any of the AoE damage (often could get 500 potency per GCD though). It was just rare to see ones do it correctly lol.
SB though they're kinda gutted on it now though. If you ask me, all the great AoE classes got their AoE's gutted. So to ask for it back isn't going to happen. We all suffered the same fate in the AoE department.

[silentwindfr]

actually you can't be more wrong ferrasper. the black mage and the summoner are two pure dps caster... the only difference is the form the dps take. one is directly casting the damage, while the other relly on his pet and the dot for create a substain dps.
the trouble with smn, is the loose of the dot have affect too much them dps and lead them far behind. i feel they did hope that the ruin III will cover for this loose and the ruin buff too... sadly it's not enough. we can hope for the 4.05 a boost of the dot damage for cover this part.

[EllieShadeflare]

snip

You've hit the nail on the head, but the other problem is the new intended "identity" that I can see the team was trying to go for with Summoner in SB: They were trying to create a build-up mage, easily punishable but utterly deadly when it reaches its boiling point. Unfortunately, that payoff is decent at best, or outright crippling our standard arsenal at worst. With both Red Mages and Black Mages having far better build-up mechanics than Summoners do, it makes our struggle all the more irritating.