Summoner Needs to be buffed

[Delphinus]

I have been playing Red Mage and Summoner back to back using various ways to determine damage output and Summoner is pulling waaaaaay below Red Mage which offers far more raid utility. Summoner clearly needs to a buff or it will have no place in savage raiding, please make some potency adjustments.

[Madoka]

That's the cost of it becoming the simplest class to play in the game and gaining ranged DPS tax with all the instants.

[jadeblade]

I have been playing Red Mage and Summoner back to back using various ways to determine damage output and Summoner is pulling waaaaaay below Red Mage which offers far more raid utility. Summoner clearly needs to a buff or it will have no place in savage raiding, please make some potency adjustments.

I have bad news for you they will never buff SMN enough to surpass RDM, rdm rotation is harder so higher dps is warranted.

[rewd]

I have bad news for you they will never buff SMN enough to surpass RDM, rdm rotation is harder so higher dps is warranted.

They don't base potency values on difficulty because a) that's bad design, b) difficulty is also subjective.

[Lilyth]

b) difficulty is also subjective.

I normally take this stance as well... but in this case I have to say it's a very objective take that SMN's rotation is on pair in complexity with the Healers.

[Mysticunicycle]

I have bad news for you they will never buff SMN enough to surpass RDM, rdm rotation is harder so higher dps is warranted.

And this is why reaper does the most damage in the game? Because it's massive wrinkle brain rotation deserves it?

[dinnertime]

The "Ranged Tax" is a myth that needs to die because melees are capable of getting almost, if not a 100% uptime in fights and they have plenty of mobility tools to play with now.

Job difficulty shouldn't be a factor either.

[Shurrikhan]

The "Ranged Tax" is a myth that needs to die because melees are capable of getting almost, if not a 100% uptime in fights and they have plenty of mobility tools to play with now.

Job difficulty shouldn't be a factor either.

Let's say two jobs have equal skill ceilings and output ceilings. If one nonetheless can get to where they do 95% of the theoretical maximum of their job with a quarter of the effort required to do so one most others, all you've done is made the job OP for all must the very highest end of players.

To say that job difficulty shouldn't be a factor whatsoever is just to, in practice, make the easiest jobs obligatory. If SMN puts out as much rDPS as a BLM and RDM, then you'd simply find BLMs increasingly barred from the caster slot for the sake of reliability and RDMs still discouraged unless the party expects their less calculable utilities (Magic Barrier and more than one instant rez per minute) will be of use.

There is no case by which "all jobs are equally competitive" at every skill level. You balance their maximum DPS (aka, balance for 'Max', as opposed to the 95th, 90th, or 80th percentiles), sure, but for jobs with greater ease of average play, that last step towards mastery should also be that much more demanding and consequential.


"Mobility tax", on the other hand, is not worth thinking about unless an entire expansion's worth of encounters designs mechanics as to be necessarily rDPS-taxing to all but the most mobile jobs at the time (and even that would only either make them overpowered up to the point they are contextually useful, as to highly encourage their being taken for X slots, and highly discourage their being taken on fights without such contexts or in excess of that number).

Outside of that, having unfettered mobility is simply to have one fewer possible area of difficulty/complexity and ought follow the same rules in balancing for a given likely percentile.

[CKNovel]

Let's say two jobs have equal skill ceilings and output ceilings. If one nonetheless can get to where they do 95% of the theoretical maximum of their job with a quarter of the effort required to do so one most others, all you've done is made the job OP for all must the very highest end of players.

Reverse it, you're forcing a ceiling on others because it's harder for a group.
That logic is the same a putting a blindfold on everyone because there is someone blind in the group.
In time, the naturally blind will find its mark while the artificially blind will struggle far more.
Plus, the group will always find a way to accomodate everyone (Melee uptime strats that always exists).

Think about it, running is easy, everyone can do it. Put one foot in front of the other but very fast.
Racing is more complex, you need to care about wether and take care of your car.

Does that mean you replace Usain Bolts medal with silver and that you cannot win Gold medals in "easy categories", using the argument that everyone can run? No, because he excels at running, he remains a world top athlete.
Complexity has nothing to do with the reward, if you excel at your job you should be correctly rewarded.

Yes, ranged should be right behind melees. But even during prog, it's quite rare they are in front of melees. And when it's the case, the problems most often comes from the melee in question.
Also see the E5S-E8S argument where mobility tax was debunked, I've yet to see a counter argument to that.

[Shurrikhan]

Reverse it, you're forcing a ceiling on others because it's harder for a group.

If a job is tuned to be perfectly equal at the 95th percentile despite giving more for the same effort until that point, then unless you group is expecting you are a top 5%er, you will appear to be holding your group back by taking a harder job, since there is, until the very best of the best, no reward for doing so -- only penalty.