Test Server Findings

[Deader2818]

SMN still serves the purpose it was designed to do. The problem is SE fails at making content that takes advantage of that.

[Nightfyre]

EDIT: nvm, not going to bother

[Draylo]

SMN sucks and definitely needs an update. Being useful in one event that consists of zombing isn't really an indicator that a job is just fine as is.

[noodles355]

Kinda late, but that untranslated knife is triple attack +5%.

Legion Knife 2
D37 Delay150 Triple attack+5%
Lv99 THF, BRD, DNC

Posted that a page back.

Dmg37 Delay150 Triple Attack+5%, just incase anyone was wondering

[Mahoro]

Except it's perfectly relevant because it explains why giving us a retarded sidegrade is not worth the pain in the ass it will be to get it, thus throwing out your argument.

1) You have no idea how hard the piece will be to get till Legion goes live and people explore it.
2) Labeling the earring and gloves as "sidegrades" is debatable. The earring at least has no adequate comparison except for xpac add-on augmented earrings.
3) Even if they were sidegrades, if you only do events in FF for items you don't consider to be sidegrades, you probably barely come out of your Mog House.

[Deader2818]

.

[Mahoro]

SMN is by far the most fucked job at the moment. The job needs to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to fix the massive problems that it faces. Removing BP recast entirely would probably work too, not like you don't get limited by MP anyways.

Agreed. SMN BP damage is actually good (assuming a well-geared, high SMN-skilled, non-WoE burned SMN). The magical BP's I tossed out used to compare to well-geared BLM nukes at level 75, and even beat some of those nukes. SMN is great on some of the hardest VW fights like Botulus Rex. The biggest difference in endgame now is that BLM's get access to innumerable temps/MP restore items/enmity decrease tools, and thus can more or less spam spells with little to no consequence. But the BP timer has kept SMN twiddling its thumbs for 45 seconds between moves. The timer cap needs to be reduced to 30 seconds or lower, or tossed out entirely.

[macross]

Don't even think you can get to -30 even if you had all the -bp gear.

[NynJa]

yes you can

as it stands right now, all you need to cap BP timer is -15, because of the 25% gear haste cap. Yet, theres a metric ton of -BP gear:
staves -12
head: AF2 -3, Accord Hat -4, AF2+2 -5
Ear: Caller's Ear -1
Body: YYR -5, AF2+2 -6
Hands: AF2 -2, AF2+2 -4
Back: Tiresias -3
Legs: AF2 -2, AF2+2 -4
Feet: AF2 -2, AF2+2 -4

Not including the AF2+2, which on its own greatly exceeds BP cap, you still have -30 in BP gear, of which only 15 is available.

[Greatguardian]

Reducing BP timer down to 30 seconds increases WS phase damage (aka BP) by the equivalent of 50% Haste without touching white damage. It will not come close to melees who are able to shit out 80% Haste that affects both WS and TP phase damage, with significantly more powerful white damage and comparable per-WS damage in many/most cases.

Fucking truthbomb, per-WS damage doesn't mean jack shit. It doesn't matter how awesome you make each BP if they sit on a 45 second timer and you do practically no damage in the interim. Changing the BP timer to 30 seconds is a 50% increase in total BP damage but who cares? Multiplying shit by 1.5x doesn't make it any less shitty.

Summoner has only ever been comparable on the DD scale to B-tier melees who are not getting any marches, any sambas, or even Magic Haste. Forcing Avatars to rely exclusively on a job ability for 95%+ of their damage was a horrendous and shortsighted design decision. It restricts Summoners to a static damage output. If they make that output too high, it would be god tier solo and wreck everything else in that department. If they left it reasonable for solo/unbuffed situations, it would be shat on by any job with dynamic damage output that is able to take advantage of buffs.

The whole BP system needs to be scrapped if Summoner is ever going to be worthwhile as a damage dealer. Support's another story, but I can think of a whole 0 Summoners who want the job to go that route.

[Yugl]

Welcome to being a DD. 99 problems but WAR ain't one of them~

[Mahoro]

Reducing BP timer down to 30 seconds increases WS phase damage (aka BP) by the equivalent of 50% Haste without touching white damage. It will not come close to melees who are able to shit out 80% Haste that affects both WS and TP phase damage, with significantly more powerful white damage and comparable per-WS damage in many/most cases.

Fucking truthbomb, per-WS damage doesn't mean jack shit. It doesn't matter how awesome you make each BP if they sit on a 45 second timer and you do practically no damage in the interim. Changing the BP timer to 30 seconds is a 50% increase in total BP damage but who cares? Multiplying shit by 1.5x doesn't make it any less shitty.

Summoner has only ever been comparable on the DD scale to B-tier melees who are not getting any marches, any sambas, or even Magic Haste. Forcing Avatars to rely exclusively on a job ability for 95%+ of their damage was a horrendous and shortsighted design decision. It restricts Summoners to a static damage output. If they make that output too high, it would be god tier solo and wreck everything else in that department. If they left it reasonable for solo/unbuffed situations, it would be shat on by any job with dynamic damage output that is able to take advantage of buffs.

The whole BP system needs to be scrapped if Summoner is ever going to be worthwhile as a damage dealer. Support's another story, but I can think of a whole 0 Summoners who want the job to go that route.

I don't think anybody expects SE to put SMN on the level of a 99 buffed Emp melee. SE probably intends SMN to be a tradeoff, i.e., you exchange higher melee dps for the ability to use ranged damage on bad AOE fights and support your party with things like Hastega/EA/etc. It will never rise above a B-tier melee damage level, and I don't think any SMN are naive to think it will. What I do expect though, is not being hamstrung from acting every 45 seconds like no other job is, especially BLM, which we used to keep pace with on magical BP's. And until that is fixed I will still love the job but consider it flawed. I agree with the thrust of your argument that it was a bad design decision to force avatars to rely exclusively on JA.

[Neisan]

And to think Smn used to be even worse, where you just had 1 Bloodpact every 45 seconds at best.

[Byrthnoth]

Avatars set the baseline for a damage source on any fight because they can be used anywhere at the same rate regardless of how difficult the enemy is or what particular characteristics it possesses. If something had a 100HP/tick Bio Aura and regularly spammed 1k AoEs, you could still throw Avatars at it and do about the same damage as ever.

This is mostly due to how disposable avatars are, which also represents their abuse potential. It is not particularly dangerous these days to have an avatar equal a mediocre melee in melee damage in terms of damage potential, but if you consider that six summoners could pull out pets and throw mediocre melees at enemies indefinitely you can see the potential for abuse. You could probably literally write a script to kill most NMs for you if you six-boxed summoners and avatars were capable of reliably pulling hate through melee damage.

[Colenzo]

Avatars set the baseline for a damage source on any fight because they can be used anywhere at the same rate regardless of how difficult the enemy is or what particular characteristics it possesses. If something had a 100HP/tick Bio Aura and regularly spammed 1k AoEs, you could still throw Avatars at it and do about the same damage as ever.

This is mostly due to how disposable avatars are, which also represents their abuse potential. It is not particularly dangerous these days to have an avatar equal a mediocre melee in melee damage in terms of damage potential, but if you consider that six summoners could pull out pets and throw mediocre melees at enemies indefinitely you can see the potential for abuse. You could probably literally write a script to kill most NMs for you if you six-boxed summoners and avatars were capable of reliably pulling hate through melee damage.

I think that summoners are the way of the future for spamming VW personally. Especially if they do this whole starting the fights off with capped lights thing.

[Darkmagi]

Troll post I hope? SMN will be out damaged by more or less anything, probably even a melee RDM or WHM in VW.

[macross]

Well if they reduce aoe dmg to non target then smn zerg could be viable sure. Not on the hard stuff but lowman easy shit why not.
Forgot about magian staves for delay, was just looking at gear. But why not remove the damn 45 sec cap, pointless in making a 12 delay staff.

[Byrthnoth]

I meant "If they are going to adjust summoner's damage potential in some way as we have been discussing, it would not be somehow broken to have them be as good as a mediocre melee. We wouldn't kill things any faster."

Also, I'm guessing you guys haven't been reading the posts from people fighting HQ Diaboloses or new Voidwatch monsters where they talk about holding them until everyone unweakens with only three summoners.

[Colenzo]

pretty sure rex would melt if you threw an alliance full of summoners at it

[Darkmagi]

SMN will never the the most efficient way to kill anything that doesn't require you to zombie or utilize low enmity damage that generates no TP. Replace SMN with BLM maybe.