(Un)Official Arcanist/Summmoner Feedback Thread

[T0rin]

My main gripe/issue with playing summoner:
"quick kill or wipe!" multiple scattered 'soft' adds... too soft to justify DoTing up, and yet, ruin/ruin2 is like throwing pillows at them...

The only thing I can think of that you would be referring to are razor plumes on Ex Garuda? Just use Blizzard II. Assuming you aren't the only DPS out of 4 doing some kind of damage, it will be plenty.

The only other 'kill or wipe' adds I can think of are Gaols (Bio1 + Ruin is sufficient) and Conflags (Bane + Ruin for slow, Bane + Fester + Ruin for fast), and we definitely have sufficient burst for those.

it's a major gap in the summoner's capability. We're "damage over TIME", so adds that aren't sturdy enough to use dots on, but are sturdy enough to laugh at our ruin casts (and pet attacks macro'd to our target), are a real problem.

Really the only problem is this... that the devs have designed 1/2-2/3 of endgame content with these squishy adds that you must kill quickly or cause a team wipe... even though there's a dps class which gradually winds up to maximum dps and has no real 'burst damage' (and NO! Fester/Bane are not "burst damage", they are things you take time setting up, and then they help to pay you back for the time you spent doing poor dps while gradually stacking up your DoT's).

Giving "quick-kill" adds more health (and equally more time to kill) would fix summoner.

We have burst damage when it matters. Planning for burst damage to be effective is a major reason I like the class. It is not a a 'derp derp FLARE' on-demand burst like BLM, it takes some thinking and planning. I like that. And really, the lack of on-demand burst is one of the _only_ thing that balances SMN in the bigger picture.

Oh, also pet control could be sharped up (a lot)
- Heel should automatically apply Steady, so that the pet doesn't just turn towards you, then turn around and go back to fighting.

Why not just make a Heel/Steady macro, then?

- pets should be summoned in the Obey condition by default

Agreed, but it's not super hard to press 1 button after summoning a pet for the entire life of the pet.

- manually triggering a pet ability should IMMEDIATELY override whatever the pet wants to do, and FORCE it to do what you've told it to. (i've seen Contagion take 7-8s to go off, it's kinda absurd).

Use Steady first. Steady > Contagion, etc. Macro it if you can't press two buttons in quick succession.

- when you Place a pet, it should go there, and continue to go to that location, even if it's *also* ordered to attack. (Place should override attacking, or the pet should continue to move between attacks).

It does. Are you talking about Placing a pet THEN telling it to attack, and asking why it stops to attack? Otherwise, if you place it while it is attacking, it will move to that spot before resuming the attack.

Oh, and both Tri-Disaster and Miasma II... are just a slap in the face. A 3-second cast to do bad aoe damage, on an anchor target which will by then have moved to a disadvantageous position? gee wow. How about a damage potency 10 (ten? really?) PBAoE DoT which we will NEVER EVER choose over a cross-classed Blizard II? Seriously? These powers don't have to be OP, just... "usable" would be nice.
On the bright side, those two powers are saving some much needed space on my action bar by not being there

Tri-Disaster is utility and safe AoE DPS. Before we got Blizzard II, we used Tri-Disaster. Now, it is the 'safe' option when you can't/don't want to get into melee range to use B2. It is also an AoE bind, which is great in some dungeons where you might want to hold 10 things in place while you lock them out, etc. It is also good in PvP.

Miasma II can be contagion'd, making it even worth using during ST DPS. Against a group, it is still worth casting, as it deals 70 potency in full, whereas Blizzard II only hits for 50.

[NekoMancer]

there are plenty of fights with quick-kill add situations. over-gearing the problem away doesn't make summoner fundamentally any good at them.

"we have burst damage when it matters ... the lack of on demand burst balances our class.." except, we often need burst on demand, yay.

I have a heel/steady macro, it requires a 'wait' clause to function right. which makes it sluggish. And being able to fix it with a macro doesn't mean heel shouldn't cause steady by default.

steady-contagion... good idea, i will try that out. (although, it would still be 'better' if commands were coded with priority in the first place).

Place: say you want it to go someplace, halfway there you want contagion. it will just sit at that halfway spot now, and not continue to the desired location after contagion. just an example. are you suggesting they should not tweak pet control so that it works smoother/better?

[T0rin]

there are plenty of fights with quick-kill add situations. over-gearing the problem away doesn't make summoner fundamentally any good at them.

Name some then. I can only think of one fight where there are multiple 'soft' adds that need to be killed or something bad happens. Ex Garuda is the only one I can remotely justify as 'kill or die' with multiple adds.

"we have burst damage when it matters ... the lack of on demand burst balances our class.." except, we often need burst on demand, yay.

Again, for what? Need burst on demand for conflag? Bane > Fester. What's the issue, really?

I have a heel/steady macro, it requires a 'wait' clause to function right. which makes it sluggish. And being able to fix it with a macro doesn't mean heel shouldn't cause steady by default.

No it doesn't, you just need to hit it twice. But that's the thing, Heel shouldn't cause Steady by default. What if I want to Heel my pet out of some ADS add (like the one that shoots a big flame DoT thing) red zone, but want it to keep shooting after it gets to me? I just hit Heel, thank goodness it doesn't automatically go into Steady. Heel is just a command to 'come to me'. If you want a command for 'come to me and stop doing everything' you could hit Steady (assuming it wasn't placed) or make a macro (that you hit twice) for Steady, Heel.

Place: say you want it to go someplace, halfway there you want contagion. it will just sit at that halfway spot now, and not continue to the desired location after contagion. just an example. are you suggesting they should not tweak pet control so that it works smoother/better?

So you want all commands given to the pet to be queued? Sounds gnarly. What if I want my pet to stop and cast Contagion immediately, but told him to move from one side of the arena to the other? Sounds like you want less control of your pet to make it even easier to micro? Sounds like an overall loss of control, if anything.

Personally, I think pet control works fine, given the very narrow scope of what pets can actually do. The only quirk I think they need to work out is the manual command (like Contagion) during an existing ability (Wind Slash) CD, where you might either need to spam Contagion or Steady first, to ensure it goes out promptly. But outside of that, I think a 'command queue' would be a bad idea, it would remove the ability to precisely stop/start specific things when I want (or need) them immediately.

[PatchKnowl]

Name some then. I can only think of one fight where there are multiple 'soft' adds that need to be killed or something bad happens. Ex Garuda is the only one I can remotely justify as 'kill or die' with multiple adds.

I just entered Pharos Sirius for the first time today through DR. Both DPS were SMN, and the last boss was definitely a situation difficult to handle with two SMN, when the minions need to be killed asap. After about ten wipes we gave up, and I suspect that with two of us, it made the battle way more difficult than, say, with a BRD or a BLM.

Of course it's a question of balance, but honestly in certain situations, especially in four ppl dungeons, the dps both being summoners can be a real pain, and a clear disadvantage compared to other party settings. Considering that DR is used by most players if not all (and thus random pt), I think that party setting should not make so big a difference in front of a boss, or maybe dungeons like this one should not be in DR (I already regret unlocking it).

And if most dungeons are easy compared to Pharos, there are still many bosses spawing adds that need to be killed asap with burst damage preferably, and even if it's still easily doable with two SMN, it's really tedious.