A little worried, not about servers though, about Summoner!

[ZyloWolfBane]

The class is great, it does great damage and brings unique support no other DPS can bring, having 1 summoner for 8 mans is incredibly nice for learning new counters because it's the only DPS that can res healers.

Problem is healers shouldn't be dying, having one of us to pick them back up with our overly long cast time (Which is easily interrupted by boss mechanics and could easily result in us dying too) isn't going to fix a bad group. That's the problem.

And any other DPS can provide much more damage, much more quickly. Not to mention a lot of our best skills are dependent on aetherflow, use them at the wrong time and you won't have a quick way to regain MP or have enough stacks to use during a burn/AoE phase.

Whereas if you brought a Bard or Black Mage you get more damage, quicker AoE, and in the bard's case better support with the MP restoration.

[Sardoni]

Was this the Marlboro dungeon? The one with the poisonous yellow water? Whatever its called I can't remember. Summoner/Scholar are the absolute worst fighting that malboro beast and I can see exactly where they're coming from. That dungeon relies heavily on AoE and smn doesnt provide. I don't think its even possible to complete without atleast one BLM.

Summoners are fine. The pets die easily on two boss fights in that dungeon but if you get thau to 26 you get swift cast which can be used to quickly summon your pet or your battle rez. The debuffs need to be removed from the pet at the same time they are removed from me and that dungeon will be fine.

The final fight you make sure that your dots are on the boss and spread them to the seedlings because with proper aether flow management we can also spread dots between targets... so there's that aoe effect. You could also rely on that other DPS slot the might be burst to nearly one shot those seedlings before they hatch as well.

The few times I've done that with other summoners they were happy to let their pet sit in the yellow poison and die instead of using the place command and putting them somewhere not bad.



Also, full darklight minus my chest and I'm able to do AK just fine as my SMN with PLD/WHM/MNK. I find the place dull but able to do it fine. The demon wall fight is actually makes it simpler for us because if you use Garuda you time your extended dot duration buff to ensure you're keeping DPS on the wall while still able to hit the bees.

The only issue I run into in longer fights in the 8 mans is that multiple crits on dots seem to spike aggro. I can be sixth on threat and then jump up to 2nd instantly when I haven't even cast anything. That being said my pet could also have crit and we share an aggro table somehow. So even though I don't have spike burst I can spike aggro. Been trying to reverse engineer it to give feedback but ultimately it hasn't negatively impacted the tank or healer as they can recover quickly and I slow dot application for a bit to let things simmer.

tl;dr Summoner is fine if anything we seem to lack noticeable changes with gear improvements. Like my Ruin does 164 (I think) and before darklight I think it did maybe 140? Compared to the WHM where Cure I goes from ~600 to 900 healing. So Piety has better scaling (as it should) for a WHM compared to Determination/Intelligence for a SMN. (Those are rough numbers as game is down. The main point is I saw my buddy grow as a WHM and it was very noticeable but the SMN seems to be more subtle :P)

[charlemagne]

I shouldn't worry too much about it. New classes are often unbalanced in MMOs, we'll likely see some adjustments in time.

[Evangela]

ugh... just lost to Garuda as a lv45 summoner and I think of this thread.

a dragoon in my party said I can't do enough damage and I agree.

holy s.... what a lame DPS it is? doing 70 damage per second (Ruin II) at level 45, No AoE attack skill, Ifrit-Egi is nothing but a useless toy. having low defense, low HP, can't cast stoneskin can't do anything.

[Virgal]

SMN is a great job and so is SCH, problem is some people are to set in there way or to lazy to develop Strategy that involves using them.

personally i like the class/jobs and will be willing to make as many strategy's as it takes so that people can use them in all situations because i believe that doing what you enjoy in a game is important and that the game stops being fun when people tell you what you can and cannot do.

[RileySantara]

Me and my summoner friend do ifrit hardmode runs (i'm a white mage) and he got some kinda dps parser running, needless to say assuming the dps is kinda accuarate, we've only had 2 or 3 people out dps him, one was another summoner, and the other was a dragoon.

[Nocte]

I find that stacking d.o.t's and using that Aether-required burst whenever possible, as well as using Ruin II right after Ruin inflicts reasonable DPS when the cycle is generally not interrupted.

Summoner's have more utility than (most) other DPS classes, capable of debuffing with Virus (it has a long cooldown, but combined with Virus' from other classes can help) as well as utilizing that raid-saving combo of Swiftcast (which literally every SMN should attain at some point as a lv26 BLM) and Resurrection. Their burst though against multiple targets is pathetic, I admit it, even with the Aether-required d.o.t-aoe spreader, but hey at least they have an aoe (as well as Miasma II and Tri-Disaster; unlike 'some' DPS classes...), and their LB most certainly compensates for this (especially in those HM Ifrit and Garuda instances where there's no BLM present).

[Evangela]

they need to let us write AIs for our Egis. I'm sick of them, having to order them manually to do something properly.

[RyuShikari1]

Summoner is fine, honestly.

The damage ramp-up is pretty terrible, yeah, but the consistent damage throughout is what makes us shine.

If you need burst, and you're expecting it, save your 3 aetherflows for weaving Energy Drain in between a Bio cast and two Ruin IIs.

For AoE you have Miasma II, Tri-disaster and Shadow Flare(?) alongside Bane'ing DoTs from a target. Again, I understand this kind of ramp-up takes a while, but it will become so powerful within a raid setting where you can actually get all these things ticking at the same time.

Also, if burst AoE dps is required, that's where you use a limit break.