Job Adjustments: Summoner (03/10/2006)

[Aodh]

Problem is that if you're not main healing you're pretty much dead weight. The damage output from an avatar meleeing + bloodpact damage is much less than a single meleer, at BEST half per fight, but over the long term you're probably doing 1/4 to 1/3 of a melee's damage while doing 0 healing. I've been fortunate to have a static to do my SMN in and we have a PL and people parsing and SMN as DD in XP are pure and total shit. I really get a kick out of people saying how wonderful SMN are when they parse out as less than half a dragoon.

People generally forget about melee DoT when they're trying to assess their SMN self worth. They see the BPs for 800-1500 or whatever when a DRG may WS for 500-800 and think that they must be doing more damage. But in that 45sec most melees can make up for the damage, and if the BP misses the comparison gets screwed for a minute.

With this patch it allows SMN to add more to the party than just the damage. To 'Fix' SMN they either need to make avatars free or very close to it because their melee damage is too low to justify leaving them out, or leave perp costs as is and adjust the STR/Atk/Acc to make them on par with an average melee.

[Spungy]

There's two things funny about the torque situation on midgardsormr. One is that they seem to be the ONLY server where a torque sells for more than 20k. The other is that there are now 20 torques up for sale.

You are right. I just browsed all the other servers and Midgard and Carby are the only ones that blew up all stupid. Cerburus, Ifrit and Titan are about half as bad, but only a few up. Most others havent changed a bit. To be fair I was the last one to put it up for 500k.

[Faranim]

Personally, I would love to see them increase perpetuation cost and allow the SMN to /heal with an Avatar out, such that the perpetuation cost and MP recovered from /heal virtually cancel out. We'd still be limited by the BP timer, and by our MP, but at least we wouldn't be releasing the Avatar constantly.

[Khamsin]

I'd rather they just turn Carbuncle into a summonable ridill WAR so FFXIFlux will stop complaining about how weak SMN is.

[Dbill]

I'd rather they just turn Carbuncle into a summonable ridill WAR so FFXIFlux will stop complaining about how weak SMN is.

How about a 100-fist Carby.

[Scythiroth]

I'd rather they just turn Carbuncle into a summonable ridill WAR so FFXIFlux will stop complaining about how weak SMN is.

How about a 100-fist Carby.

With a K-Club equipped?!?!

[Dbill]

Dbill wrote:
Quote:
I'd rather they just turn Carbuncle into a summonable ridill WAR so FFXIFlux will stop complaining about how weak SMN is.


How about a 100-fist Carby.

With a K-Club equipped?!?!

Duel Wielding K-clubs

[Khamsin]

Dbill wrote:
Quote:
I'd rather they just turn Carbuncle into a summonable ridill WAR so FFXIFlux will stop complaining about how weak SMN is.


How about a 100-fist Carby.

With a K-Club equipped?!?!

Duel Wielding K-clubs

and subbing DRK.

[Dbill]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dbill wrote:
Quote:
Dbill wrote:
Quote:
I'd rather they just turn Carbuncle into a summonable ridill WAR so FFXIFlux will stop complaining about how weak SMN is.


How about a 100-fist Carby.

With a K-Club equipped?!?!


Duel Wielding K-clubs


and subbing DRK.

/sub drk gives ability to use said jobs two hr as well.

and ffxiflux doesn't know how to play the job of smn because frankly they are powerful as is now, in situations.

[FFXIFlux]

and ffxiflux doesn't know how to play the job of smn because frankly they are powerful as is now, in situations.

I parse SMN as being low damage in XP so I don't know how to play SMN? How about you back that shit you're talking up? Show me a parse of me being wrong, I'd love to see how somehow your avatar is better than mine... oh I know how you can do it, give your melee level 1 weapons, no food, no buffs and have them engage the mob 3 minutes after it enters camp like YOUR typical parties.

If you think SMN are powerful in FFXI you're fucking delusional, it's that simple. 2 years ago maybe they had their place, back before there was flash and enough enmity gear so that a paladin can scratch their ass and pull agro. But Predator Claws today is essentially the same as it was 2 years ago, back when Kirin died in 2 hours instead of 8 minutes.

If Nether Blast was upgraded to do 2x the damage it does now, would things change? No, we'd still melee Kirin. We'd still not use SMN for jack all but wyrms and the fight would still take a ridiculous amount of time because sumoner's DPS would STILL be low. And SMN damage in XP parties would still be substandard. Think about it.

[Crosis]

Problem is that if you're not main healing you're pretty much dead weight. The damage output from an avatar meleeing + bloodpact damage is much less than a single meleer, at BEST half per fight, but over the long term you're probably doing 1/4 to 1/3 of a melee's damage while doing 0 healing. I've been fortunate to have a static to do my SMN in and we have a PL and people parsing and SMN as DD in XP are pure and total shit. I really get a kick out of people saying how wonderful SMN are when they parse out as less than half a dragoon.

This is true, which is why I'm the party leader :D

But past 60 if your using Tier IV nukes having a Bard is key. Threnody the mob and nukes 95% of the time wont be resisted, and can burst for a little over 600.

Past 64 you can sub RDM, for Dispel and Dia 2, which can save your other healer tons of mp to be used on Haste/Flash/Debuffs.

SMN doesn't excel at anything low level, but they can heal, play a bit of support, and do some damage with proper setups.

[FFXIFlux]

But past 60 if your using Tier IV nukes having a Bard is key. Threnody the mob and nukes 95% of the time wont be resisted, and can burst for a little over 600.

My party pretty much just spams, or the SAM will occasionaly close random things. Chain damage usually doesn't amount to enough to save TP for. As for the IVs I find Meteor to give fairly reliable damage without holding your BP for chains, Same with Ecliptic Bite which can break 600 without burst. But by that point your compeating with things like blade jin and gekko and 600 isn't anything special when you have a bard.

[Samhain]

Truthfully i think the only real way to fix smn to leave the avatars out isn't to lower the perp cost as smn is most likely changing avatars for bp's anyways. But to increase the avatars melee att, acc, and speed of attacks.
This would make the avatar much more worth while to keep one out as they could add more to the overall dmg of the party then simply one good BP per fight. Also changing the whole tp effects BP should be considered instead of having tp play a big part in only magical bp's they should make the magical ones more of a set amount barring resist and such, and make tp be more beneficial for physical bp's. But this is all just my point of view so take it with a grain of salt.

[Dbill]

Show me a parse of me being wrong, I'd love to see how somehow your avatar is better than mine... oh I know how you can do it, give your melee level 1 weapons, no food, no buffs and have them engage the mob 3 minutes after it enters camp like YOUR typical parties.

Lol you found me out, but my avatar eats spinich so they do more damage.

[Crosis]

My party pretty much just spams, or the SAM will occasionaly close random things. Chain damage usually doesn't amount to enough to save TP for. As for the VIs I find Meteor to give fairly reliable damage without holding your BP for chains, Same with Ecliptic Bite which can break 600 without burst. But by that point your compeating with things like blade jin and gekko and 600 isn't anything special.

Yeah Meteorite is definitely more reliable if you can't get a Bard for threnody. Though Nether Blast > at 65. Wasnt a fan of Eclipse Bite even with Dia 2 on a VT Eruca after leaving Fenrir out after a Howl, damage didn't seem good enough or was too static.

I've never asked melee to chain for my SMN, though they would eventually do it, see the MB, and keep chaining which was always nice. It won't compete with another melees damage for sure, but the extra support for a WHM/RDM and melee is decent.

[Vivel]

While FFXIflux's posts did annoy me a little at first, I've realized how futile it is in comparison to real Summoners.

From my point of view, Summoner has never been one of those e-penis jobs that obsesses over parsers, HQ gear, and superiority complexes. I never liked involving Summoner in those XXX job vs XXX job arguments either. But as people began to really use it for endgame and it developed a purpose, along came a band of players that hate the job for one reason or another.

Me, I just love Summoner. It was the first job I took past level 30, and my first 75 job. As stupid as it sounds, I play the job because it's pretty damn cool. I like the way to avatars are designed, the concept of the job, and the rich backstory on it as well.

So this update is really only an improvement. As I'm always looking to better myself, it doesn't matter if another job is still better than me. There is no negative conclusion that can be drawn from this. Summoner is getting some much-needed depth and versatility.

[HAcoreRD]

There's two things funny about the torque situation on midgardsormr. One is that they seem to be the ONLY server where a torque sells for more than 20k. The other is that there are now 20 torques up for sale.

You are right. I just browsed all the other servers and Midgard and Carby are the only ones that blew up all stupid. Cerburus, Ifrit and Titan are about half as bad, but only a few up. Most others havent changed a bit. To be fair I was the last one to put it up for 500k.

Idiots are undercutting badly to 500k. Such greed before the SMN torque craze dies.

[Eltia]

Usually I play SMN when there is a specific purpose in mind. i.e. usually with a specific PT formation or objective in mind before I decide to get into my SMN gear. Most of the time in the game, some jobs are more versatile and/or needed than SMN, like tanks, refreshers and WHM.

With the above being said, I don't think it is fair to judge performance of SMN on parsing results, because we are never meant to be DD jobs only. We are a little like jack-of-all-trade, except most of our tasks are carried out on a PT basis with the use of avatars. DD is just one of the things we can do (and under the right circumstances, can do pretty well).

Support wise, I am sure people can cite a lot of bad examples for useless SMN support. This is to be expected, because of variation in PT formation and skills in cited examples. If you look at the bright side, SMN could accomplish some good results when they can focus on a clear purpose. :D

[Priran]

SE needs to beef up SMN main Auto-Refresh or something, the biggest problem I had leveling SMN as a sub was that I was always resting for MP. I never once thought to myself, "Damn I wish I could confuse Qufim noobs about what element enfeebles are TWICE AS OFTEN".

When you steal an effect on THF or Trunk it on BLU (they need to make that an instant cast -.-) you're actually stealing the already calculated effect. i.e. If you have 400 ATK and Warcry adds 15%, then if you receive the effect you would get 460 ATK. Now the mob has 800 ATK, and uses Warcry, it would receive an 120 bonus bringing it's attack to 920 ATK. If you Steal/Trunk, you're taking the +120 ATK effect, not a fresh calculated one, so you'd end up with 520 ATK.

wrong

every crawler's Cocoon I've trunked doubled my defense, exactly.

[Blinkwise]

with our smn mp pool, i think they just need to give us more clear minds. I mean, we are "masters of our mp pool" b/c we have a 1 tic refresh? wtf are paladins then?

if they fixed that i would be happy.

Im pretty much totally pissed about this update cause it dosnt do what it should have done, defined smn as a job. Not a oh shit theres no whm rdm or blu around job.

literally unless your a taru smn, a taru rdm/whm can do a better job then you in parties.

What they gave us with this update is just an empty mp pool.

Unless people invited us as a buff/dmg job, there is no way we can DD, Heal, and cure all at the same time. Why dosnt SE just give us Voke too so we can tank as well. hmmm thats next smn update in a year