Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[CecMiller]

K, but a lot change between 4.5 and 5.0 in terms of Dungeons. A lot of the DPS finally got good AoE to deal with trash mobs. DPS are no longer restricted by TP to use their AoE. Besides, the true measuring stick for DPS has always been trial and raids, not dungeons.

You can check the EX raid statistics too. This is Titania.

That said, I would like an explanation as to why a class who was previously stronger or equal to that of Blackmage's AOE prowess is now almost rock bottom? Its the biggest drop I have observed to date. There is FAR more setup required to deal good aoe dps on SMN than is required for other jobs who simply press 1-2 button combos for MORE dps. This should be a genuine concern.

https://imgur.com/a/hPKAwBx

I'll also make it clear that these EX fights are not kind to melee. They lose uptime in a myriad of ways. So their DPS will just get better if they are allowed full uptime.

[Gallus]

Yeah no, I don't care how they do it at this point, but they need to do two things with SMN asap:

1 - Buff their damage (those numbers are atrocious and devotion doesn't make up for bs).

2 - Make the class more simple and straightforward to play.

[Taranok]

Yeah no, I don't care how they do it at this point, but they need to do two things with SMN asap:

1 - Buff their damage (those numbers are atrocious and devotion doesn't make up for bs).

2 - Make the class more simple and straightforward to play.

If the devs want to keep egis, just straight up rip aetherflow out as a mechanic for Summoner and transfer all of that damage to the egis and egi assault, possibly taking some and throwing it into Ruin, and possibly give SMN a charge mechanic on Enkindle so it's easier to use it at the correct time in a rotation.

We can keep a weirdtiming on boss fights with not being able to trance, just as long as it stops breaking the rest of the rotation. And the easiest way to do that is to delete aetherflow and merge the potency into the pets and summoner elsewhere.

[Dyvid]

That said, I would like an explanation as to why a class who was previously stronger or equal to that of Blackmage's AOE prowess is now almost rock bottom? Its the biggest drop I have observed to date. There is FAR more setup required to deal good aoe dps on SMN than is required for other jobs who simply press 1-2 button combos for MORE dps. This should be a genuine concern.

Okay, then start digging into the numbers. Like I said, they buff all AoE in 5.0 so SMN isn't the king anymore. The jobs at the top have strong AoE skills now which is placing them higher. But putting all that aside, use this data to figure out what part of SMN is lacking and what needs to be buffed for 5.1

[CecMiller]

Okay, then start digging into the numbers. Like I said, they buff all AoE in 5.0 so SMN isn't the king anymore. The jobs at the top have strong AoE skills now which is placing them higher. But putting all that aside, use this data to figure out what part of SMN is lacking and what needs to be buffed for 5.1

You don't have to start looking too hard really.

1) We cannot use Energy Drain without a target or outside of combat when we previously been able to before. If we instead had old aetherflow with 4 stacks, we would more readily be able to use 4 painflares for DPS without losing uses to dumb things like mobs dying or tanks taking too long between pulls.

2) We are forced to delay our cycle between pulls to to the changes with to DWT/FBT now being the abilities which continue our cycle as you wouldn't use FBT as a pack of mobs were about to die or are dead. Previously, we could continue to "hold" FBT/DWT when Aetherflow was the only ability that decided our cycle.

2) Painflare numbers were reduced by 30 potency. 180 -> 150. AOE nerf here.

3) Deathflare was nerfed by 40 potency and changed to a flat 50% potency for all other targets instead of 10, 20, 30 less for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th targets and so on capping at 50% for all remaining. Further still, DWT magic bonus was removed so our outbursts actually did more inside DWT previously (not counting ruination). Another AOE nerf here.

4) Akhmorn was nerfed by 30 potency (not exact potency as it was pet potency). It was give 50% flat fall off when it was before the same as deathflare. Yet another AOE nerf.

5) Our dots were nerfed from 40 potency each for a total of 80 instead of 50 potency each for a 100. This means spreading them with bane is worse. That said, Bane is now stronger when you have a lot of enemies as it no longer falls off by 80%. It now falls off by 60% for all targets. However, if you have around 1-7 mobs, you will be worse off with the new Bane (I'm not counting the fact that the new Bane is free as this obviously makes it better!). Another AOE nerf - there seems to be a trend.

6) The other jobs were given boosts to all their AOE with many receiving easy to use or simple and straight foward AOE combos. However, SMN's strongest AOEs are locked behind 60s cooldowns which we can now no longer use as much due to the change listed in 2). Further still, many of the "strong" AOE moves for classes such as Dragoon have no such AOE fall off for Nastrond/Geirskogul. Their new AOE move only has 30% fall off for example. BLM's AOE hardly got touched and in some ways, got better (15% enochian, Freeze being useful, no Foul AOE drop off changes, 2 polygot stacks for up to 3 consecutive fouls etc)

7) SMN needs to meet a lot more pre-requisities than other jobs to get out maximum AOE damage.

Consider:

Garuda egi must be used with both pet actions also being used. Slipstream (pet shadowflare) is unreliable. We cannot weave these with Outburst, our aoe spell, as it is not instant and so we are forced to use Ruin 2 a single target spell to weave them (outside of trances).

Tri-Disaster Ruination must be spread onto the targets which will boost Outburst by 20 potency. However, this is not always up.

One of DWT + Bahamut/FBT must be up with the latter. Delaying either of these between pulls means we lose uses over the course of fights/dungeon runs.

We must use "Energy Siphon", the move that exists to give us 40 potency vs. all enemies when refreshing Aetherflow. This move plain sucks, but yeah.

We must take into account mob pull timings and where we are in our rotation to maximize our damage and we easily lose uses in comparison to other classes who have straight forward 1-2 buttons.

Our "burst" AOE dps is not there and is considerably weaker than other jobs without our DWT/FBT.

There are situations where we have neither ruination, FBT or DWT/Bahamut up. Leading to us only putting out 70 AOE per GCD and however much bane does in conjuction with garuda as our best effort.

8) Brand of purgatory does 350 to the first target and 50% less to all others. It is only available every other GCD meaning it is a small upgrade to outburst compared to what it could be.

If summoner was to get all the abovee changes, it would be exceedingly strong again. It may not need all of them, but I am in full belief it does need some of them.

My top 2 choices to be fixed are 1) and 2) and then go from there. The same 2 changes that would improve our single target dps too as stated in the opening post. I cannot stress enough how much power we get from having flexible trance timings - especially when we didnt have to pause our rotational clock everytime they were ready to use.

[Angry_Evil]

[B]3)Deathflare was nerfed by 40 potency and changed to a flat 50% potency for all other targets instead of 10, 20, 30 less for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th targets and so on capping at 50% for all remaining.
4)Akhmorn was nerfed by 30 potency (not exact potency as it was pet potency). It was give 50% flat fall off when it was before the same as deathflaree.

Yeah with how much dps SMN does(assuming it's calculated correctly) I don;t really see why akhmorn and deathflare should've been nerfed...
Also... thinking about dots for buff ruins mechanic... It is literally pointless. Why not just give us full potency r3? You'll be casting it mostly on DOTed targets anyway. Yeah if you screw up it's DPS loss so what? It's just pointless busywork

[CecMiller]

Yeah wit hhow much dps SMN does(assuming it's calculated correctly) I don;t really see why akhmorn and deathflare should've been nerfed...
Also... thinking about dots for buff ruins mechanic... It is literally pointless. Why not just give us full potency r3? You'll be casting it mostly on DOTed targets anyway. Yeah if you screw up it's DPS loss so what? It's just pointless busywork

You're absolutely right. I don't like the fact that they toned down deathflare and akhmorn either.

Further, the bonus potency on Ruins via dots is just another area that punishes us. There is no beneficial scenario. I presume they wanted to make losing dots more punishing and yet they invented away for us to lose dot ticks. Furthermore, any time there is a low hp add to kill, are are immediately at a disadvantage as anny attempt to dot will cost us GCDs that could have been used to deal more potency before the add dies.

[Dyvid]

Snip

Hang on, Hang on. Are we discussion SMN overall DPS or just it's AoE? As I said earlier, dungeon run aren't really the measure stick for job performance. By looking at the numbers, it's clear to me Egi's and their abilities need a buff all around; Ifrit and Garuda. The Enkindle is laughable and ranks the lowest on the DPS scale compared to what it is suppose to be. EA1 and EA2 aren't fair much better, they need to be doubled or even tripled to make an impactful contribution. This is what sticks out to me anyway.

[CecMiller]

Hang on, Hang on. Are we discussion SMN overall DPS or just it's AoE? As I said earlier, dungeon run aren't really the measure stick for job performance. By looking at the numbers, it's clear to me Egi's and their abilities need a buff all around; Ifrit and Garuda. The Enkindle is laughable and ranks the lowest on the DPS scale compared to what it is suppose to be. EA1 and EA2 aren't fair much better, they need to be doubled or even tripled to make an impactful contribution. This is what sticks out to me anyway.

The changes to the rotation cycle is impacting both perfomances. In commenting on our contribution for AOE dps and the reasons for it, we can see those same reasons as to why we lack in the single target department. Further, my post was in response to your comment about our AOE relative to other jobs. I wanted to clarify further the changes that had occured to cause this extremely large drop. If you've been reading since earlier, I've already commented on our pitfalls in titania EX and I am no slouch when it comes to SMN both in 4.0 and 5.0 so i can readily discern the areas it is weak when we compare it to how the cycle was managed in 4.0:

New EX Primals: https://imgur.com/a/hbCXbD1

I am well aware of what is the measuring stick for job performance, but that doesn't mean its not worth highlighting regardless. Losing so much AOE damage when you consider everything we have to do to pull it off is not encouraging and is another talking point as we need to be buffed with regards to single target and AOE.

It doesn't really matter what they buff as you could simply buff single target damage on Ruin 3 and Ruin 2 potency and the single target numbers go up regardless. You can give general potency adjustments to whatever you feel like giving it too - whether its making Egi Assaults or Enkindle impactful, buffing fester damage or even our GCD/Dot damage. Buffing Egi assaults would make them feel better but the same change could be achieved via buffing the base GCD potency - that is my point. In the bigger picture, its the denial of aetherflow without a target and being in combat and the fact that our rotation is paused the minute DWT/FBT are active that is causing us to lose a lot of our dps and feel worse than any egi assaults or enkindle currently does though I do agree that they should be more impactful then their current incarnation.

The thing that sticks out to me, massively, is being denied in our ability to continue or cycle anytime there is downtime or being unable to refresh aetherflow without a target. It was a big optimizing feature of 4.0 SMN, knowing when to rush and hold aetherflow stacks and trances/demin summons. Fix this and our dps will shoot up in all areas of content.

My overall point for this thread was to point out areas in which SMN was lacking or felt bad. I leave the actual numbers game to Square Enix. However, if you are interested in looking at numbers, I point you into the direction of my old thread where I discussed some such changes to Enkindle and other abilities:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5016801