Thread: Summoner's in 4.4 PVP and beyond.

Damage as SMN is in an okay spot, the issue is the pressure and utility isn't necessarily there. I don't play Bard because I want to, I play it because I have a root and a silence as well as troubadour. I don't need the MS effect from Miasma when BRD pressure is simply that good. If Feast games were slower, a bit longer and the meta wasn't trying to 100-0 someone after a 5 second countdown, SMN would be far stronger. But even little things like not being able to peel sucks.

Don't forget the lack of defensive utility. Even when Energy Drain was a thing (the short recast let you spam it to recover HP while running away and taking damage), it made you sacrifice your burst for a small increase in survivability. RDM and BLM have movement abilities that let them quickly reposition out of range as well as CC abilities.

Another issue is Bahamut, being a separate entity means you need to maintain line of site twice (for you and for bahamut) for your burst. This is troublesome for a player, terrible for NPC AI. Bahamut should use player line of sight or ignore barriers altogether imo.

I feel like the pressure / AoE dmg thing Summoner does well is irrelevant given how important burst is nowadays. Games are shorter so pushing enemy healer MP is less impactful. Healers having a shorter CD on muse and other ways of recovering MP also make this aspect of Summoner worse.

Summoner's win condition is bringing the game to culling time. In Season 1 of the Feast, my whole strategy against BRD/MCH insta-kill CDs was to use notify my team and Virus on their burst (effectively negating one of their major damage buffs they waited for when bursting). This prevented deaths and stretched the game. Back then, there was no culling and it just created a disparity between healer MP, with the Summoner's healer MP usually being higher as the SMN was able to output a lot of AoE DMG.

Nowadays, SMN is able to push enemy healer MP and do significant AoE damage that is compounded in culling time. Enemy healer will fall behind and a kill will happen because the healer only has so many CDs and spread damage is un-healable damage due to low MP and increased damage taken. Unfortunately, this requires the enemy team to be unable to kill (especially a SMN who has poor defenses) and you as the SMN to be much better by avoiding dmg through positioning alone. It doesn't feel well-balanced, and I'm not sure what direction the team will take PVP SMN.

Very well said Nirokun. I agree with every point.

Spot on Nirokun, the thing is SMN is technically unique and strong, but the meta doesn't allow for it because kills are gained by 100-0ing things, not by pressure and rotting. And the more ahead you are, the weaker SMN gets because the burst is nothing to write home about especially with wither needing melee range and the ED nerfs. If you try to maintain that kind of pressure throughout a game you'll be OOM for the whole thing. With AST being able to spam abridged this does us no favors either. Currently the only chance you have as SMN in a competitive match like league is to delay and pressure until culling time and then go for a multikill with the healer, assuming you get it before your own healer dies to a single LB with 2-3 stacks. We have the right toolkit, it's just not strong enough.

So it looks like the 4.41 changes brought some improvements for summoner. Wither isn't a bad skill and now the CD is shorter which is the obvious one.

It looks like a few pseudobuffs for summoner though (and other casters to an extent). Shorter tank LB means you get at least 5 seconds of cometeor vulnerability instead of basically exchanging LB with enemy tank always.

Warrior holmgang synergize with wither and they both go great with cometeor. White mage assize also will synergize well with deathflare/akh morn/wither (especially if you can dot and wither two targets). Drk increased healing debuff will also make it harder for enemy healer when paired with a summoner using miasma.

Maybe I'm being too generous by saying these changes are all good for summoner, but in my opinion summoner is still very strong. Usually what holds back the summoner is melee who can't do any damage outside of burst. Summoner can still maintain very high damage and pressure the entire match and has a strong enough burst to force kills.

So smn is still in a bad spot. The reason why it’s bad is because of how clunky it is.

Bahamut still has a delay which leads to inconsistent burst and no cc at all. Every other role has some sort of cc and smn have nothing.

If they made Bahamut burst actually instant and gave us tribind back smn would be in a much better spot. But instead is still inconsistent therefore is pretty garbage in the current meta.

Summoner could really use some form of crowd control back.

buff summoner, we alsways lose when with a summoner, blm does nonstop barrage and rains fire while mch headshots everyone leading to ohk. like please... SE... please.