Why Summoner Needs Help

[Gallus]

The only thing I agree about SMN is the fact that it's too hard to pull good DPS with it.

How to make it less punishing:

DWT - Change it so instead of a stance that lasts 15 seconds, it allows for the next 6 Ruin III to cost no mana. Deathflare still finishes the stance. Remove the 10% damage bonus from DWT and slightly buff the base damage of either Bio III and Miasma III or Ruin/Ruin II/Ruin III (or else this new stance could be used to spam indefinite Ruins I with 10% damage bonus). I'd really like this change because clipping your Ruins III in the middle of DWT with enkindle, rouse, aetherpact and shadow flare is clunky as hell and makes me mad every time. You have to either give up on one or two Ruins III or let those buffs sit until your DWT is over.

Bahamut - Just make it AA like the pet independently. Saving your whole arsenal for this thing (which is what you are forced to do now) turns SMN into a "Gonna summon Baha now hopefully nothing screws me over for the next 20 seconds or I'm gonna meet the very bottom of the parser at the speed of the light.

Do this and SMN is automatically on par with SAM and RDM in terms of being zero punishing (in fact, even with these changes SMN would still be slightly more punishing due to having stuff like Shadow Flare, Rouse or Bahamut which can be derp casted in a phase which is either not required or right before a downtime).

[Angry_Evil]

DWT - Change it so instead of a stance that lasts 15 seconds, it allows for the next 6 Ruin III to cost no mana. Deathflare still finishes the stance. Remove the 10% damage bonus from DWT and slightly buff the base damage of either Bio III and Miasma III or Ruin/Ruin II/Ruin III (or else this new stance could be used to spam indefinite Ruins I with 10% damage bonus). I'd really like this change because clipping your Ruins III in the middle of DWT with enkindle, rouse, aetherpact and shadow flare is clunky as hell and makes me mad every time. You have to either give up on one or two Ruins III or let those buffs sit until your DWT is over.

This is pure nonsense. Are you one of this summoners who almost never use ruin 3 outside of dwt?
Punishment everybody is talking about on smn goes from wasting your atherflow stacks - huge punish, losing your bahamut buildup and stacks on death = even more punish, mana problems when after death u need to resummon garuda etc, and if u died with everything on CD- your dps is done for. Reworking of dwt won't help with any punishment mechanics SMN has now....

[Gallus]

This is pure nonsense. Are you one of this summoners who almost never use ruin 3 outside of dwt?

I'm not sure from where you gather I don't cast Ruin III outside of DWT. The 6 next Ruin III costing no mana instead of DWT being a 15 second stance is because the latter makes SMN more vulnerable to random mechanics, disables, phases where movement is required and random screw ups in general.

[Angry_Evil]

I'm not sure from where you gather I don't cast Ruin III outside of DWT. The 6 next Ruin III costing no mana instead of DWT being a 15 second stance is because the latter makes SMN more vulnerable to random mechanics, disables, phases where movement is required and random screw ups in general.

Just a thought. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The 6 next Ruin III costing no mana instead of DWT being a 15 second stance is because the latter makes SMN more vulnerable to random mechanics, disables, phases where movement is required and random screw ups in general.

Sorry but this just doesn't make any sense to me. Sure DWT makes u stay in place and cast ruin3 without moving. But changing r3 to r2 once in dwt for movement etc. is not the end of the world. And certainly not something that makes other summoners uderperform in 4.0 or cry about punishment on forums. You lose your stack before dwt - and your build up and dps screwed for 60+ seconds. Still punishing af

Bahamut - Just make it AA like the pet independently.

I wonder about that tho... I don't dislike idea behind bahamut, how he does something only when we do it. But implementation is problematic. So it's a dilemma do we really need to dumb down bahamut? SO he would do 12 wirmwaves automatically - this certainly will raise summoners significantly, but leave job even more brain dead than it is now. Or should we just say "git gud" to summoners and make them learn how to properly manage bahamut?(then tho smn needs boost anyway cause your efforts are not properly rewarded in this case)

Saving your whole arsenal for this thing (which is what you are forced to do now) turns SMN into a "Gonna summon Baha now hopefully nothing screws me over for the next 20 seconds or I'm gonna meet the very bottom of the parser at the speed of the light.

hmm I don't know how you're playing summoner but it certainly not that punishing for me. Screwing something when u summon bahamut making him cast less wyrmwaves still means you used 3 festers and 2 akh morns giving you decent dps boost. I rarely find myself in the very bottom of the parses if I don't die anyway. Not much people know how to properly play their classes in this game, even if it's "easy" class like RDM...

[Gallus]

This is pure nonsense. Are you one of this summoners who almost never use ruin 3 outside of dwt?
Punishment everybody is talking about on smn goes from wasting your atherflow stacks - huge punish, losing your bahamut buildup and stacks on death = even more punish, mana problems when after death u need to resummon garuda etc, and if u died with everything on CD- your dps is done for. Reworking of dwt won't help with any punishment mechanics SMN has now....

Wasting an aetherflow stack shouldn't be anyone's concern, yes, it punishes you to insane levels, but come on...festering a boss without dots or casting bane on mobs that are far from each other? Talk about failing...
Now, I don't mind even this being changed, make it so that fester does base damage and does increased damage for each dot you have. Bane...just give it something like 20 potency in AOE so that the spell never fails.
You do that and SMN is still hard as f*** to do good DPS with.
On my other reply I was addressing the real stuff that would make SMN less punishing. Not these little irrelevant things like "no longer sustain!" some people like to go over and over...