(Un)Official Arcanist/Summmoner Feedback Thread

[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.

[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.

[Seiko769]

That rotation was with shadowflare (notice the 25*1.5, since it seems to autocrit).

And SMNs actually run out of mana, period, as opposed to BLM.

With more and more targets SMN are more and more gimped in terms of AoE damage, as tri-disaster and miasmaII are completely laughable.

EDIT: also I didn't include in flare. For something ridiculous like 500 potency as the last attack.

I figure that balances having to use blizzard III once.

I don't run out of MP o.o. Maybe im not maximizing my dps but if I do bio miasma bio 2 fester miasma 2 shadow flare repeat minus shadow flare and than use drain instead of fester I usually have enough time off my Aetherflow timer to top my MP off and if not I can do 2-3 drains in 1 rotation. There isn't to much reason to run outta mp on SMN or SCH

[Crescent_Dusk]

I don't run out of MP o.o. Maybe im not maximizing my dps but if I do bio miasma bio 2 fester miasma 2 shadow flare repeat minus shadow flare and than use drain instead of fester I usually have enough time off my Aetherflow timer to top my MP off and if not I can do 2-3 drains in 1 rotation. There isn't to much reason to run outta mp on SMN or SCH

If you're multidotting more than 3 targets consistently without Bane you will run out of mana without manasong. You may delay it with energy drain, which you sacrifice Fester for, but it will happen.

It's extremely important that groups with summoners in them have tanks that understand this limitation and work with the summoner to encounter it as little as possible.

[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.

[Nohime]

Summoner class needs a better Limit Break.

(1) I don't know where I get the cane that do the Limit Break - The cane has nothing to do with summoner so far.

(2) It would be better if we can summon our pet to do a big Limit Break.

summoner in here not looks like summoner
the primal egi should've been more important in dmg terms, because its SUMMONER. (as in YUNA in FF X/X-2)
i choose summoner because i like to have primal as my pet. but what i get is some mini primal wanna be, titan egi looks worst,,, what the hell is with that clump of yellow balloon.

and its sad that the primal-egi are not functioning like what i expected!
but i still love my summoner
i hope SE can made summoner class, more summoner like

[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.

[pandabearcat]

Everyone is completely missing Kevee's point too, btw.

The point is, there has been no change to bane. It works exactly as it has worked before. This is a tooltip change.

So stop raging everywhere. You're making us look bad. You are just as effective as you were last week.

My argument was there is no reason to cap our bane, because it would just put us on equal footing with BLM (which, admittedly, does have the best sustained aoe bar none).

But obviously the devs think otherwise.

Oh well.

Guess you'll have to put your DL gear on your BLM if you want to speedrun WP faster, until the inevitable WP nerf.