Summoner has some real problems

[WindyGamer]

If all this has been covered before, then just leave a link in a reply and fine. But I didn't see anything covering these points. If this is all a duplication, then sorry.

I have played a few of the classes in the new expansion, and I love lots of them. [...] removed
So, about Summoner.

(1) The physick is either broken or at least it's no help at all from level 50ish. At level 10-15 ACN it does about a 20% of HP recovery with the quest gear. Nothing special just leveling up. That's very cool. No argument with that.

BUT at level 50 with Ironworks gear a SMN - and Physick still says 400 Heal Potency mind you - gives only 7%ish of HP. That's nonsense. That will not save you. I think you'll find that the recovery HP per tick, whatever that is, is more than that. Here's how I tested it so you can too. Go out in a low level area with your high level Summoner and synch to a low level fate - my test was a level 8 fate, which resulted in my having 315 HP. Then leave the fate and hit physick a few times. The heal will appear on the screen and float down. It's hard to see how much on the HP bar because it moves as it auto restores, but the value for the Physick alone appears on the screen and floats down. I got screen shots that show 460 as a typical number. Well my HP is 6652, and the Calculator says that's 6.9%. Did I do the math wrong? That's Ridiculous. If your HP is being trashed by some mobs [see next point] then you will not be able to recover with only a 7% heal no matter how many times you spam it.

(2) The pets [lets talk about Emerald Carby first] now do SHOT GUN or AOE spells rather than single target spells. This is really bad news for low level characters who are leveling. It used to be that an ACN out in the world could use their carby to help out until they got their Yellow Carby or their Titan. But now the Carby does not help, but hurts big time by causing more mobs to attack. It obviously does not tank - ok it never did - but this causes more mobs to be aggro'd to you because they were attacked by "you" ha ha joke is on you says the Carby.
I was a level 13-15 ACN doing fates and getting trashed by too many mobs jumping me until I shut down my Carby. Carby's didn't used to do this. They need to shoot ONE MOB not do an AOE bigger than a Megalocrab - yep I have pictures that show the radius of the AOE is slightly larger than a Megalocrab.

I have not tested my pets at level 50 or 70. I know they don't tank any more - I heard a rumor that they are all the same and only eyecandy for the changes. Not tested that yet. Shotgunning or AOE spells are not good for soloing with a ACN / SMN so that is a WAY BROKEN change if they are all the same. It does not matter in a dungeon or a raid. All fine there to be the way they are.

(3) Not having a TANK PET is a big problem.
This was TLTP too long to post sigh

[WindyGamer]

(3) Not having a TANK PET is a big problem. I'm sure there has been plenty of whining about this already. I'm just saying. Just to remind us. The reason that summoner was ever a job for leveling is that it had a tank pet. The Bird does something, but it's not as good - oh, at level 50 or level 70 - as a Titan Egi was and the Bird is not available in Solo Duties obviously. Please give me back my Tank Pet - whine whine.

I will have to level a DRK or GNB to do solo duties. At least they have armor and do a ton of damage and damage mitigation, which SMN lacks completely. Is this the goal of removing our SOLO Helper from SMN? So we solo with some other class?

So, did we not level an ACN/SMN from 0...50...60...70 with the new pets? I mean using MSQ and fates? Not POD? I know that's a lot of work. I know that SQE would have to farm that out. But it needed to be done. Just to remind us, you don't need to level a GNB or DNC through the MSQ from 1. Obviously. The starting jobs need to work well as solo jobs at lower / mid [50] levels.

Yeah yeah. TLDR, but if you made it here. Thanks for listening.

[Fellgon]

I understand your loss but the titan now have shields its help a buntch and you can cast twice, and if you solo something move aside so you dont get hit and dont pull more than 2 mobs, summoner have less HP than a Tank. I been playing in my SMN and i died just few times cause i pulled more than i could handle. and so far i never had to use pshysick, if you dodge and dont get hit, you wont need be healed...i been playing with any sort of potions so far, if you dont get hit you can get time, a few seconds to your hp go back a bit.

[WindyGamer]

So you think it is all good? Well I don't think a 7% heal is ok. And it sounds like a complicated way to get around a feature that was built in before. That's an odd change for SMN since in all the other jobs, they were simplified, not complexified. I'm not in favor of this change. The first time I saw this problem was as a level 70 doing a an MSQ with a purple circle on the ground. Out pops 3 mobs - sure that happens all the time. And after one shot from my Titan - my old go to - they all JUMPED ME not the Titan. Apparently the Titan auto attack spell was an AOE, so all of the MOBS jumped me. So I died.. No way to Heal by Physick is a No OP now at this level. So I died. And after some help from a Nobel Soul I got out my bird and finished the MSQ. I'm not a fan of potions. If you need more than one in a fight, the large ones have wayyy too long a CD.

My experience in PoD is that SCH is a powerful class. Even now. Broil burns things down pretty fast. And there are Dots and other things. Pets heal and don't AOE mobs around you. And the heals actually work, on you and others in your party or not. Maybe my real solution is to stop soloing with SMN and start using SCH. Who knew? Unintended consequences?

[Taranok]

My personal opinion is summoner doesn't need a tank pet, titan-egi always was a badly implemented pet, and the new implementation just further reinforces that Titan-Egi could be deleted and I doubt I'd care. Putting survival utility on a pet with a button that directly competes with doing more damage is already a bad enough idea, and the class has far bigger problems than not being able to solo mobs 100% safely like it could before. As for pets having aoes that can hit things around your target, it's entirely possible and reasonable to maneuver singular adds away from other adds, so I'm not sure this is actually a problem as long as you're patient enough to give the add enough time to move away from others. Hell, I've gone through all of ShB without my pet accidentally pulling anything that I wouldn't pull accidentally from Deathflare anyways.

Also, only the Faeries are the same. Ifrit is your single target damage pet, Garuda your aoe damage pet (ifrit does do aoe damage, but it's still primarily single target), and Titan is a noob trap since the shield is almost always the worst thing you can do in a given situation as it denies you both the damage from EA 1 and the ruin 4 charge.

[xXAzurePrimeXx]

I really dont understand this fascination people seem to have with Physick on Summoner. Why do you guys want Summoner to be a healer?

[Duskane]

I really dont understand this fascination people seem to have with Physick on Summoner. Why do you guys want Summoner to be a healer?

Red mage has a working heal SMN want there's fixed!

basically why

[Leidiriv]

Red mage has a working heal SMN want there's fixed!

basically why

The main thing there is that RDM mostly uses their heal to proc Dualcast while the boss is untargetable. Physick is just an unfortunate artifact of SMN and SCH both originating from ACN, which they seem to be loathe to remove from SMN for some reason, whereas RDM has traditionally had some healing ability.

[WindyGamer]

My personal opinion is summoner doesn't need a tank pet, titan-egi always was a badly implemented pet, and the new implementation just further reinforces that Titan-Egi could be deleted and I doubt I'd care. Putting survival utility on a pet with a button that directly competes with doing more damage is already a bad enough idea, and the class has far bigger problems than not being able to solo mobs 100% safely like it could before. As for pets having aoes that can hit things around your target, it's entirely possible and reasonable to maneuver singular adds away from other adds, so I'm not sure this is actually a problem as long as you're patient enough to give the add enough time to move away from others. Hell, I've gone through all of ShB without my pet accidentally pulling anything that I wouldn't pull accidentally from Deathflare anyways.

Also, only the Faeries are the same. Ifrit is your single target damage pet, Garuda your aoe damage pet (ifrit does do aoe damage, but it's still primarily single target), and Titan is a noob trap since the shield is almost always the worst thing you can do in a given situation as it denies you both the damage from EA 1 and the ruin 4 charge.

Not clear here. So Titan was broken, so remove it? Rather than fixing it?
Also, all those differences between Ifrit / Garuda/ Titan are now gone, right? They are all the same. Just Eye candy differences?
"Primarily Single Target?" I'm not clear on the distinction here. Either it aggros other stuff to come at you or it doesn't. There is no "partial" aggro, is there? "Don't come at me really hard, just softly?" That doesn't sound right. Once you are aggro'd then that's one more thing banging down your HP that you need to worry about.
I have more testing to do, I admit.

[KinkyJalepeno]

As a level 48 Summoner I feel the backside has been ripped out of the class with how pathetically similar the pets are now. I want my Tank, Melee and Ranged pets back - keep the abilities as they are now post patch, I like those changes but my god this class feels utter crap now.
At least fix Physick so it heals beyond a tickle.



Guess ill be playing Scholar now.