(Un)Official Arcanist/Summmoner Feedback Thread

[SirDiscoFrog]

That would explain a lot. There are so many times I just thought Bane was not getting everything I wanted to. It would be nice to up the cap a bit though. Maybe to 5 or 6? It should def prioritize monsters without DoTs on them though. I'm more concerned with the egis than the summoner abilities though honestly. I wish the had more punch to them (aesthetically and ability wise). Seeing the differences between the egis and carbuncles side by side does disappoint me.

What I do find wrong about a lot of posts in this thread, are the following:

1. Tri-Disaster is way underrated, especially in WPSR.
2. You don't need Ballad to keep DPS going, it is more a factor of having good companion AoE DPS and a tank who won't put you into situations where you need to waste mana.
3. You don't need Energy Drain to keep DPSing in long boss fights.

So many people dont get how awesome Tri-Disaster can be with Swiftcast, even if its situational. I primarily use it when i notice a tank is not keeping aggro on a whole mob and something goes after a WHM, but i end up needing it in a good amount of dungeons i go in, but only once has anyone noticed it.

Also if you keep up with Aetherflow and are using your stacks/re applying it correctly I dont see how any SMN could run out of mana. I typically dont run out unless I am just not paying attention and I am using Ruin II instead of Ruin I as a filler spell. I dont see SMN AoE dmg as being as bad as it seems people are saying. SMN do things better over time and are more mobile(which is especially helpful in fights like the Taulard fight where you have to constantly be dodging). BLM have more bursty AoE. Just because one is faster doesnt mean the other is not viable. I personally dont mind this trade off, I just want the egis to get some more love.

[AdvisorX]

Just one question. Why is whm holy stronger than ours. Don forget. Their holy can stun too.

[Crescent_Dusk]

I love how Kevee is schooling other people on BLM after having been caught not understanding how Astral Fire actually works before.

[Kevee]

I love how Kevee is schooling other people on BLM after having been caught not understanding how Astral Fire actually works before.

I had made an assumption that I thought I remembered, and that was that AF increased the cast time of Fire, and UI increased the cast time of blizzard, which I corrected less than 2 posts later after I went to test if my memory was correct, or not, after someone said, "No, you're wrong."

That had nothing to do with the rotation, it was under the pps calculations.

Kevee you appear to be arguing like you've got hard numbers to backup your one-man crusade as to why this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Frankly I'd love to have a parser that works, but currently to the best of my knowledge (and anyone else's) this doesn't exist for DoT's. Combat log limitations and all that.

Just look at potency for 2-4 targets.

And lol... Are you familiar with a "true" WPSR? It sure as hell doesn't involve a summoner. The party is BLM, WHM, PLD, and BRD. The WHM probably out-damages SMN's in these setups as well, nor could you really bring a SMN as the ramp up time is far too long, etc etc. If you're saying DoT's have enough time to tick and therefore "will" out-damage instead of simply "can," please watch a few video's of people running with that party above. DoT's wouldn't tick for even half duration as the mobs would be 1/2 dead by the time everything was fully rolling. The DoT's might have a chance to fully tick if the SMN is the AoE lol... It's that bad.

Uh, yeah? Not once have I said SMN is better on 5+ targets. I have repeatedly stated that it's not. That would only be the case if Bane hit all targets. What I have said is that we're not as far behind as people think we are, and certainly this non-change(it's just a tooltip fix) to Bane doesn't deserve this kind of uproar.

Please do not misunderstand my stance on mass AoE: It needs caps. Because I lack experience with any other game that's done so, I'm going to cite WoW's way of doing it where one spell could do so much damage, regardless of how many things it was hitting. CURRENTLY this doesn't exist and we have a HUGE discrepancy between "cleave" DPS vs mass AoE. I'm all about classes maintaining flavor in terms of how they accomplish goals, but I draw the line when particular make-ups dwarf everything else by a tremendous margin. In the instance of those WPSR's, they can clear that place almost 5 minutes faster than any other combination.

More like ~3 minutes for fully optimized/geared groups, not including BLM. I'm fine with this. Classes/Jobs have different mechanics, and small differences leading to them being better in very specific situations is fine.

Frankly our cleave DPS is probably too high. I'd much rather have that reduced in some fashion than this target limit in the name of "fair is fair."

Nah, I'd rather be king/queen of cleave and not that far behind for 5+ AoE, since 5+ AoE doesn't have any real purpose. At least, not right now. Even in the future, I've seen way more "cleave" fight mechanics than "5+ target" mechanics over multiple MMOs. This is opinion v. opinion, though, and anecdotal evidence on my part.

[Trihuuger]

Kevee you appear to be arguing like you've got hard numbers to backup your one-man crusade as to why this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Frankly I'd love to have a parser that works, but currently to the best of my knowledge (and anyone else's) this doesn't exist for DoT's. Combat log limitations and all that.

And lol... Are you familiar with a "true" WPSR? It sure as hell doesn't involve a summoner. The party is BLM, WHM, PLD, and BRD. The WHM probably out-damages SMN's in these setups as well, nor could you really bring a SMN as the ramp up time is far too long, etc etc. If you're saying DoT's have enough time to tick and therefore "will" out-damage instead of simply "can," please watch a few video's of people running with that party above. DoT's wouldn't tick for even half duration as the mobs would be 1/2 dead by the time everything was fully rolling. The DoT's might have a chance to fully tick if the SMN is the AoE lol... It's that bad.

Please do not misunderstand my stance on mass AoE: It needs caps. Because I lack experience with any other game that's done so, I'm going to cite WoW's way of doing it where one spell could do so much damage, regardless of how many things it was hitting. CURRENTLY this doesn't exist and we have a HUGE discrepancy between "cleave" DPS vs mass AoE. I'm all about classes maintaining flavor in terms of how they accomplish goals, but I draw the line when particular make-ups dwarf everything else by a tremendous margin. In the instance of those WPSR's, they can clear that place almost 5 minutes faster than any other combination.

Frankly our cleave DPS is probably too high. I'd much rather have that reduced in some fashion than this target limit in the name of "fair is fair."

[T0rin]

And lol... Are you familiar with a "true" WPSR? It sure as hell doesn't involve a summoner. The party is BLM, WHM, PLD, and BRD. The WHM probably out-damages SMN's in these setups as well, nor could you really bring a SMN as the ramp up time is far too long, etc etc. If you're saying DoT's have enough time to tick and therefore "will" out-damage instead of simply "can," please watch a few video's of people running with that party above. DoT's wouldn't tick for even half duration as the mobs would be 1/2 dead by the time everything was fully rolling. The DoT's might have a chance to fully tick if the SMN is the AoE lol... It's that bad.

This, I think is the only legitimate reason why SMN could get an uncapped target Bane and have it legitimized. Right now, in a PLD+WHM+BRD+BLM group, it takes ~25 seconds to down everything. If you swapped out the BLM for an SMN, the only way you could maintain those times is if you had an uncapped Bane, so you could hit 7-10 targets at once. You have just enough time to get the vast majority of your DoT out by teh time everything is dead, if you have a WHM casting Holy. As is, all you can do is apply 90% dot damage to 4 targets, and maybe 40% dot damage to 4 more. This is just sub-par compared to BLM, which hits everything.

But, if you uncapped Bane to make SMN on par with BLM in short term AoE dps, then you'd end up with a situation where SMN can easily out-damage BLM in situations where everything doesn't die in 25 seconds or less.

Plus, it would give SMN a sizable AoE dps advantage before the end-game, where BLM hasn't ramped up in power yet. (mainly lack of Flare)

In the vast majority of situations (sub-9 min WPSRs are NOT the norm by any means), the average WPSR is more in the 10-11 min range, and AoE encounters last long enough that the line between BLM and SMN in those groups is more easily blurred. But, when you only have a 25 second window to do your damage, and you require 5 seconds of ramp-up time followed by 20-25 seconds of DoT time, SMN is simply outclassed by BLM's ability to have peak DPS practically from the start. (after Fire 3 hits)

Sadly, the most potential in WPSRs comes from BRD/WHM combo, and there is finite group comp potential when you HAVE to build around that.

[Griddamus]

Isn't the whole point of different classes in the game that they can do different things?

Anyway, my feedback of SMN:

1. Increase Bane effect distance to 10 yalms, and the newly initiated dots start from their original default timespan (even if contagion is active)
2. Remove the Aetherflow requirement for Bane.
3. Make Garuda-Egis Contagion skill a core SMN ability that requires Aetherflow charges, that boosts duration of all active Miasma, Bio II and Bio.
4. Reskill Ifrit-Egi and Garuda-Egi (Tian-Egi is fine) to make them equally viable. Maybe have Ifrit concentrate on melee AoE damage skills and Garuda as ranged damage single target pet?
5. Add another pet that is a buffer/debuffer. Think a damage orientated Selene fae.
6. Make tri-disaster a 1 second cast and either lower mana cost or boost damage.

Other than that I'm happy with the way SMN plays. Sure I thought I was getting a more pet focused class but it's a lot of fun how it is now too.

[pandabearcat]

I disagree on the WoW comparison.

They put that cap in but then immediately realized everyone hated it.

They relaxed the cap so much that people can still easily pull 5-10x AoE dps vs single target (see surv hunters and their 3 million dps).

This is a GOOD thing.

Mass AoE has proven again and again fun for players. What they should do is make it so AoE isn't an afterthought and make everyone's AoEs awesome.

[HamHam]

This thread has make me realized that I made a mistake in making SMN my main class. I should have stuck with BLM or WAR. I have come to realized I can't compete against the damage a BLM puts out and as for WAR, I'm just having a blast with it.

It is true what the OP said, as far as using flare vs enkindle. It's just dissappointing. Specially, in a fight where speed is essential. It takes more time to put all the dots and then Fester, than what it takes a BLM to do Fire III > Fire > possible proc > Fire III, keep in mind a blm can keep doing none stop, while a summoner has to wait for aetherflow to be ready in order to use Fester. Not to mention a BLM can use back to back Flare and still get mp back fast enough to go back to a Fire rotation.

For example: BLM and BRD are sought out to do WP because their aeo dmg output is faster than of a SMN. The reason is mainly for what I mentioned above. SMN can't do a lot of dmg at the same speed that a BLM can, not in a short fight.

[paradigmfellow]

Can we get Belial-Egi? Make it a lvl 60 (gear wise) quest.