SMN - knowing the class (part 1)

[Aladiah]

Summoner is a joke.

Wait and see

[Nux]

Well there's some utility in SMN like crimson cyclone or landslide which can be used to interrupt most of channeling spells in dungeon. that was the case but,

the most frustrating thing for me as a summoner was the casting mechanics which prevent SMN/SCH to issue any order to the pet while channeling theirr spells. for instance when i cast bio II and all of sudden the boss/mobs start to channel spell which can be prevented (by ordering ifrit/titan to stun), guess what ? we can't do it easily because we need to interrupt our channel sequence and then gave order which in turn takes extra time to interrupt any channeling spells, in addition the summon seems to take a bit time before executing a given order. They need to fix this mechanic since it blunting the edge SMN has
Note: warr/lnc can easily switch their attack to stun in middle of animation while summoner can't (because we can freely issue an order) which i consider ridiculous

it was quite surprising that not many people complaining about this, all they care was the damage potency.

[nimuniverse]

One thing I noticed was people seem to be complaining about Garuda's feather duty and that SMN have no burst to take them down. I find it to be so easy. I had enough time to cast misama, bio ii and bio before Garuda summons feather then I cast Bane to spread them all to feathers. 2-3 ticks they all dead. No need to even chase them. Just need to pay attention and cast it right.

[glim]

^lol, feather duty, we are the best for garuda hard fight, do this, shadowflare at garuda before she teleports to AoE us, after AoE, recast full dots, when feathers spawn cast bane, then go a bit closer to miasma II them all. they're below half hp even before they reach the rocks, and that's only on one summoner.

few ticks from shadowflare, full duration of dots + miasma 2 on almost all the feathers.

[nimuniverse]

I know. People complain without learning the class. They expect SMN to be like BLM, a straight up spell caster. We are not. We are DoT. Granted pet control should be better and that there are skills like an eye for an eye, which kind of sucks since I don't really use it. People these days don't think and they just want to press a button and when they can't, they complain. I am glad some of them rerolled BLM. Don't want sucky SMN pulling the class down.

[Kevee]

snip

I can't agree more.

I carried an AV run yesterday(trying to get a better weapon than my 44 GC before I run endgame stuff..) with another SMN. It took roughly 40 minutes, so that is "okay" for a pug.

I don't have any idea how the SMN thought they were playing correctly, but it just reminded me of this forum and how I imagine most of the posters play.

The person would use Bio II and then Bane on trash packs, and then spam ruin. When asked why, they said "Trash mobs die too fast to keep other DoTs up."

They kept Garuda-Egi out on Sic so it would randomly KB mobs that I pulled aggro from.

Never used Miasma II.

Never kept DoTs up on bosses, just kind of applied them when they felt like it. I didn't really see any CDs used, and certainly not Raging Strikes.

Meanwhile, here I am doing ~3-4 times their damage and pulling aggro off the tank on bosses, and single-handedly carrying the whole instance. Miser? Not a problem. Just need to pay attention to what mobs your DoTs get spread to when you bane.


It just..boggles my mind.



Edit: SMN is probably the least casual-friendly class in the game, and it really needs a strict rotation and proper timing to be done properly. That's where I think all the complaints are coming from.

[Dixa]

We are DoT. .

which is why unless yo uare in a full group you will never do better than bronze on the large fates like odin, svara and behemoth and why the class will be outright shut out unless you are a scholar when it comes to 24 man raiding. debuff limit appears to be about 35-40 and every class brings 3-4 debuffs. each.

it baffles the mind that square is this stupid, to make the same mistake blizzard made that turned warlocks into nothing but stamina bots in vanilla wow. a mistake made nearly 9 years ago.

[jayquik03]

Summoner is a support class and now you know. /end thread.

[tn2389]

One of the strengths of a summoner is in their ability to use cross class abilities. There are three which are very beneficial. Thunder, Aero, and Raging Strikes. The only ability I have in my current parses is Thunder which is doing 22 DPS across the entire fight. Aero would do another 15 DPS and Raging Strikes would give two entire dot cycles an extra 20% damage. That would probably be around a 5 DPS increase. So on average if I added in Aero and Raging Strikes I would be doing around 185 DPS.

Do other classes do more? Maybe. But a good summoner is definitely capable of pulling their own weight in a group.

[Ribbon]

One of the strengths of a summoner is in their ability to use cross class abilities. There are three which are very beneficial. Thunder, Aero, and Raging Strikes. The only ability I have in my current parses is Thunder which is doing 22 DPS across the entire fight. Aero would do another 15 DPS and Raging Strikes would give two entire dot cycles an extra 20% damage. That would probably be around a 5 DPS increase. So on average if I added in Aero and Raging Strikes I would be doing around 185 DPS.

Do other classes do more? Maybe. But a good summoner is definitely capable of pulling their own weight in a group.

Are you sure you're playing a Summoner and not the base Arcanist?