opinions needed. smn or brd

[Qualaz]

Ok so my main is a paladin now I want a dps class. Now I like smn and brd but I can\\'t decide between the two and I don\\'t want to roll both as that just feels dumb.

Smn: pro: battle rez ( useful in every way as healers are often too busy to deal with dropped people), aoe lb ( yeah no need for explanation), dots seem pretty strong when used correctly.

Con: pets are hard to micro manage, in large Groups dots do not stack therefore damage is way low, most groups find them undesirable.

Brd: pro: can move and attack with no sacrifices, high damage in both aoe and single target, has lots of utility through songs and skills, in demand for almost every fight.

Con: everyone is rolling one, lb while useful in some situations healers have it and allot of fights need a damaging lb, Most believe A big Nerf is coming for them .

Please tell me your opinion on which is better and for what reasons BC these are mine and I\\'m at a stalemate.

[WaRBeaST]

I leveled a summoner to 50 (my first main). When I got to AK and was supposed to "burst down" the adds on the 2nd boss fight I was like ummmm. I decided I needed a ranged DPS that was good on burst. I gave up my damage LB and combat rezz for a bard. I just got him to 50 tonight. 50 instances are cake. I ran CM and AK and saw a huge difference with damage output. Dont make the mistake I did. Roll bard. When i see a summoner in my group I think oh great crap dps and that used to be me.

[razorpakk]

I will second that, as soon as I got my SMN to 50 I felt inadequate for some of the content and leveled the BLM, wich I also find more fun to play.

[glim]

oh you guys, clueless kiddies ^.^

summoner dps is so high, you are always equal or higher in threat meters vs other dps that has similar gear, and you have a pet, which is 20-30% of your damage. you are at least 20% stronger than any of the classes.

people also say that summoners have no burst, this is false, there is no in demand nuke to kill low hp mobs sure, but there is a huge burst on your first 1 minute, you have 3 free aetherflows, 2 festers which will benefit from raging strikes and empowered dots that benefits from raging strikes as well + contagioned empowered dots, yes, raging strikes will last 40 seconds on your dots even when the tooltip only says 20 seconds, because of snapshotting, and also, who kills ads on AK nowadays? people ignore all ads on all bosses on AK runs.

EDIT: but do not worry, I actually cherish people who think SMNs are weak, it buffers the inevitable nerfs, the same thing could not be said in the jap forums, they know SMNs are strong, they are informed. the only thing I hate about this is people with uninformed opinions try not to bring SMNs in the group because they think they are 'weak' LOL.

[Karnage720]

snip

Shhhhhh.....let people say SMN sucks so that we are the last to get nerfed.

[Geographer]

I can\\'t decide between the two and I don\\'t want to roll both as that just feels dumb.

Why would playing both be dumb? You'd have more experience in different class playstyles. Both classes are quite viable and valuable, so having both will give you the flexibility when the situation calls for it.

It really comes down to: play what you think is the most fun. The 'fun' factor is the only thing that will outweigh anything that nerfs, buffs, fotms, expansions etc throw at a class. And rolling a class solely on damage numbers is the best way to find yourself screwed when a nerfbat comes.

[Noctrin]

Having leveld both in tandem. I can say that the dps is tipped on summoner side. Our 4 dots tick for 145 potency every 3 seconds, on top of off gcd festers, ruin, pet and other more situational attacks. Class needs to be played properly, but the damage output is quite large. You don't see big number because it's constant steady damage from multiple sources. But they add up. Comes down to preference I guess.

On top of that we get virus, eye for eye, heals and an instant battle res.

[pandabearcat]

I got both to 50 and geared, and here are my thoughts.

DPS wise : don't kid yourself, and don't worry about it. Both are solid.
Bard: the most boring class ever. Just, so boring T.T
Summoner: Sucks butt when in a group with other summoners. You will kill your eyes looking for your dots, but experience will go a long way alleviating dot annoyance. You get used to it

Utility: manasong + rain of death vs instares + eye/virus + aoe LB
Kinda a toss up. Bard is boring utility, summoner is more reactive fun utility. Bard also goes out of TP quickly keeping up rain of death. Needs another bard to TP song.

Mobility: bard is still king here. Summoner loses SOME, but a very small margin, at the tradeoff of mana use, when on the move. Not a big issue for either.

AoE: Summoner has much better AoE and AoE utility (bind), along with the ability to do 100% dps to the boss while still pumping out their AoE dps. Not shabby at all. Bards can AoE 8 times before they're complete out of TP. Realistically, that means 4-6 times, minus procs.

Final thoughts: People will ask for bard more often than summoner, because manasong is very nice. However, super unbelievably boring. Summoners are fine dpswise and utilitywise, and more people are wising up to the fact that they're a great class.

[mountaindew]

Alot of Summoners are clueless about their rotations... thus they cannot down demon wall fast enough.

I play both a bard and summoner to 50.

I believe Summoners do out dps bard's in boss fights (i.e. demon wall), when paired with another dps besides another Summoner in AK we can down demon wall before the bee's spawn most times.

In saying that though, Bards do deal very consistent damage at all times and do offer very useful songs. They may be just a tiny bit lower in dps than Summoners but they make up for it with utility songs.

My personal opinion, I find Summoner more challenging and fun to play as you need to monitor DoT's, time the aether flow to cycle at the right time, time the fester and mana tap, viruses and on top of all that do some pet management as well. Whereas Bard you would just apply your 2 DoTs and pew pew away.

[Risbyn]

I would say go Bard, right now Summoner is enjoying riding the FFXIV App Parser because of a DoT bug in the program. This isn't to say that Summoner is weak, quite the opposite, it's quite strong, just not as strong as people are suggesting it is such as people claiming they're outdpsing Black Mages with relic +1/Darklight in AK gear (which is quite provably false). In current content, Bard brings more to the table with songs as well as their DPS on the move.

However, if you don't enjoy silence rotations, do Summoner.