Kuno's awesome SMN post

[Kaylia]

It's one thing for a job to have a bunch of useless spells that were useful at one time. It's completely another to have a bunch of useless spells that have never been useful, especially if they eat your mp away. The only thing spirits (besides light and then only marginally) are good for at the moment is Elemental Siphon.

Do you really want me to write down a list of "forever useless" spell? SMN isnt the only class that suffer from this problem.

[Tachi]

Honestly, I hardly understand why people are so disappointed by our merits pacts. Sure with 1 merit they barely does more than a tier IV pact (something like 80~100 more dmg... yea very useless for the cost when we have Nether Blast) but it's very different once maxed at lvl 5.
Some exemples :
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q52/papesse/geo.jpg
Call me a liar but this is what my Titan does 90%~ of time on these foes and many, many other (I BP with 320~ smn skill, 2 merits in Avatar Mag Acc, 3 in Mag atk). That's certainly more impressive than the average's Predator Claw (but not on Jorm or Proto-Omega in 2 legs mode)
Resists are (at least to me) very low. Even against AV, over 5 Geocrush only one was resisted and by 1/4 (to compare, Spinning Dive inflicts less than 200 dmg...). I'm not sure but maybe that each merit is accompagned by some Mag acc bonus.

[Kaylia]

Those number are pretty good if you can hit for this much once per minute. Didnt know those pact could go that high.

[Kairos]

I'm not sure but maybe that each merit is accompagned by some Mag acc bonus.

I'm pretty sure it isn't. All tests that were done point to the merit pacts as being strictly tp added to the initial (0tp) damage. The difference with your merit pacts and those that complain about how terrible they are is your magic accuracy merits. Magic acc makes a huge difference when it comes to landing avatar nukes and enfeebles. I also suspect that the likelyhood of bloodpact additional effects landing (grav on tail whip, bind on mountain buster, etc) is dependent on the magic acc of the avatar. Not sure how i would go about testing that though. My 2 5/5 merit pacts usually land for 1024 if unresisted (and mob has no magic damage reduction) which is a majority of the time. I have 5/5 magic acc merits though.


I think they just appear to suck because smns in general level up learning to ignore their magic pacts and focus on the physical ones. So by the time you get to merit level, everyone has put all their eggs into the avatar attk/acc basket and as a result have to rely on netherblast for magic because all their other magic pacts are highly resisted. You're a smart summoner to be so well rounded. Most summoners laugh at the idea of meriting anything other than full acc/attk, which is very marginal even at max from my experience (especially with the amount of avatar acc/attk boosting items in the game and the skill = acc update).

spirits, a couple of weeks ago we were doing the limbus run with the three gigas, magic immune, ra immune and phys immune and got stuck with killing phys immune(chronos?) for the next level. i set ice spirit, matched with day, astral flowed, wearing full +skill gear at him just to see if he could land even remotely decent numbers... i got two resisted debuffs and a freeze for 56... with 342 summoning magic. switched over to my regular avatars and my merited pacts were reaching around the low 300s. it was just one of the many instances i felt like there just wasn't a single goddamn thing to do since all my options just did shitty output for horrible MP waste.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say again here, the problem is the avatar's lack of magic acc (and the lack of items smn can use to increase avatar magical prowess). When i did that floor as smn i did 75 pact > spirit T4 >AM >T4 > burn. If anything, spirits just lack magic attack bonus and magic acc. They get far more of a boost from perpetuation gear than avatars do, because if you keep them casting -perpetuation gear translates to mp efficiency. I think all they need is a boost of +10/15 to magic acc/attk, and i'm pretty sure SE will want to keep the randomness for balance's sake. I became very familiar with the limits/abilities of elemental spirits when I was contributing to the projects spirits thread on KI a some years ago.

And since I don't want to be the ass that just types stuff and doesn't show anything...
Some old screenshots from when i did heavy spirit testing:

Project spirit thread images i posted long ago are surprisingly still up and being hosted from somewhere (where i have no idea). I could have sworn i deleted half of them from my photobucket. All my screenshots of magic bursted merit pacts are on my old computer which is out of commission right now >_<.

http://killingifrit.com/forums/index...ic=75469&st=40

[Acturus]

Something I've said for a while is that Summoner enhancements need to START with a potency upgrade. Avatar attack and accuracy for melee and physical BPs as well as Magic Attack and Accuracy for magical BPs. At the time they were introduced, the Tier 1 merits were smart money, but the game has scaled since then, and an introduction of Accuracy and Attack job traits for the SMN staggered through the leveling process would go a LONG way towards improving the usefulness of the job.

Summoner does a lot of different things, but we fall behind in all of them. Everyone recognizes SMN for its support capabilities, but short of large-scale events where Time is not a large issue, SMN damage is underutilized and underappreciated. Even a mild pre-merit increase to accuracy and attack for both the physical and magical sides would be a large improvement towards getting more for the MP spent.

It just floors me that my Tier IV nukes fail way more often than they succeed, and that it takes a level 5 upgrade in a T2 BP to even begin to be useful because Avatar physical accuracy when meleeing is a little under 75% on merit mobs.

[Spira]

geez. I'd dismissed this thread from the time i posted on page 3 saying that Kuno's ideas were all wrong.. Never did expect this to spawn into a 10 page discussion..

didn't read everything but thought I'd put my thoughts out on this too.

Summoner does not need a bottom up revamp. The job itself is mostly fine. Its not bad to the extent that its not playable, or to the extent that SE would need to entirely remove a part of the job (perpetuation cost) - not that they would either... they've already come so far with the system. Changing perp cost would involve changing gear, meris, etc.. so really, that is out of the picture from both business-oriented and (the developer's) practical points of view.

SMN is a job that excels with hate-free/consequence-free damage, as well as damage that doesn't feed the mob with TP. Both points are often overlooked by players and are of no practical use when it comes to EXP parties nowadays. This would become SMNs biggest drawback - EXP parties. However, for end-game and events, SMN's ability to offer a wide range of mediocre abilities can be something of an asset. Whilst many of these devices won't be used until ohshit situations, they are also useful if your party/ally/group/LS knows how to take advantage of these tools before they are forced into it.

The most obvious problems with the job:

The job does not scale well. It has far more problems functioning as a 'Summoner' job in EXP parties than at events. Fixes to the job thus far have not really addressed the issue at the majority of EXP party levels (say 20~70), but instead only find their use only when the SMN has hit end-game.

eg. Ward pact timer extension only working with SMN skill above cap when there's so little +skill equipment at lower levels is a huge pity when SMN at those levels would have benefitted from this just as much.

One of the best ways to alleviate problems during EXP parties would be to increase the base duration of Ward pacts (eg. 30s -> 1m, 1m -> 1m30s, 1m30s -> 2m), which in turn makes the Ward pacts more MP efficient, SMN will be able to bring more to the party since it can easily keep up more 1 buff at a time and will have more MP on its hands (to cast cure, unfortunately).
or fundamentally, allow SMN to do what they can already do a little bit better, but not as good as jobs that are supposed to specialize in that thing.

SMN at endgame is actually better off than SMN in EXP parties. I consider this a rare situation among jobs, but a lot of this is owed to the Lv70 Blood Pacts. As much as they are limited by the Rage timer, they are still formidable tools at end-game, being the strongest attacks that neither feed TP nor incur hate for the SMN. They're also not as common as they're strong physical attacks that do not require TP on top of that - and their base damage (even with a naked SMN) is pretty good. The only thing they cant do right now is Lv3 skillchains, but I hear SE is looking into this. If they could do Lv3 skillchains tho, they'd be golden.

Same goes for merit BPs, but you need to invest many merits (best to cap it) to see results from them. Otherwise, they're very consistent. Magic accuracy could be generally improved.

Ward pacts are often underrated in end-game.
3 minute Hastega is the most efficient form of 15% Haste in the game if it lands on 3 or more players, but isn't something you'll find to be useful at HNM, maybe for Limbus ...
Healing Ruby II is excellent for hate-free Curaga II, although it is slow to set up.
Earthen Ward, Ecliptic Howl and Growl, Aerial Armor and Noctoshield are all situationally useful for events, NMs and assault.
Dream Shroud is also a very cool to buff BLMs and is the singlemost effective way to counter Dvergr Cackle..

Of course, nobody ever bothers with this because they don't have to use it. They can just get by with WHMs, BRD and SCH and curing to compensate all of that.

Honestly, the only job adjustment at endgame for SMN that I see is necessary is avatar magic accuracy because at its base it is never enough when fighting anything higher level than yourself.
Perp cost and BP timer are welcome additions that can be addressed with gear.

So really, the only major issue SMN has is performing efficiently in EXP parties, and other than that, tweaks to improve the way the job already works.

The upcoming ward range extention and new avatars/new BPs that will enhance SMNs damage/support repertoire would all be steps towards alleviating these problems...

[Zeke]

Lightly scanning through this- one thing came to mind:

This is a symptom. You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on, consumes- the fish rots from the head, so they say. So I'm thinking, why not cut off the head?

[Yugl]

so you find that giving my spirit pet the absolute best possible setup and still getting only 50 damage from an AM spell reasonable? or that merited pacts, which have base stats similar to AM magic, approaching a 1 mp for 1 damage ratio worth the MP cost or merits? even though the mob was specifically designed to be killed only by magic damage?

Do you think SE thinks its not reasonable? If melees don't do that much damage on the non-melee resistant gigas when that's their core-role, what did you except from SMN?

[frodnonnag]

Do you think SE thinks its not reasonable? If melees don't do that much damage on the non-melee resistant gigas when that's their core-role, what did you except from SMN?

lolwut?

[Not Kuno]

So I'm thinking, why not cut off the head?

Of the summoners?

It's not a perfect metaphor...

[Yugl]

lolwut?

- Its been a while, but from what I remember, the damage on those Gigas isn't impressive to begin with
- If a class better than SMN at DDing isn't doing much damage, then its reasonable to expect that a SMN's damage is worse
- Way to fix this: Pick one role and ask for buffs towards excelling in that role

The side note:
- Does SE think a 1MP:1DMG ratio is good DMG from a pet that can be dismissed? Yes.

[frodnonnag]

- Its been a while, but from what I remember, the damage on those Gigas isn't impressive to begin with
- If a class better than SMN at DDing isn't doing much damage, then its reasonable to expect that a SMN's damage is worse
- Way to fix this: Pick one role and ask for buffs towards excelling in that role

The side note:
- Does SE think a 1MP:1DMG ratio is good DMG from a pet that can be dismissed? Yes.

yeah.. i'm just going to call you a dumbass and move on.

[Yugl]

yeah.. i'm just going to be a dumbass and move on.

Fixed.

[frodnonnag]

so you find that giving my spirit pet the absolute best possible setup and still getting only 50 damage from an AM spell reasonable? or that merited pacts, which have base stats similar to AM magic, approaching a 1 mp for 1 damage ratio worth the MP cost or merits? even though the mob was specifically designed to be killed only by magic damage?

re-quoting for the dumbass.

[Yugl]

yeah.. i'm just going to call you a dumbass and move on.

Quoting again for the dumbass. And I've addressed your post. SE thinks its reasonable, but I don't. If SMN heads in the direction of a magic DD, then it needs to be fixed. If SMN becomes a healer or supporter, it doesn't matter. Just because it was designed to be damaged by magic, that doesn't mean everyone's magic damage has to do good damage. It could just be BLMs and SCHs capable of doing reasonable damage.

[BRP]

The biggest issue with accuracy and attack power of either physical and magical is because SMNs are very limited when it comes to equipment and attributes. They really need to benefit from INT or MND or both.

Think of it like this: Most endgame sets are based on grouping similar jobs together. SMN is going to get bunched up with BLM and/or WHM. At least a few pieces of that set is going to be mostly useless to an attacking SMN. But if they benefited from attributes like everyone else(because unlike SMN, even jobs like PUP can use attributes for something), they suddenly find more equipment useful.

Make it so that a naked SMN is weaker than before, but a decent or well equipped SMN is much better.

[Nirokun!]

I guess that sounds like an idea~ but it'd make more sense to just further tie it into the bonuses of summoning magic skill. Weak summoners summon weak pets, summoners keeping up summon good pets, and strong summoners summon strong pets. It makes the skill more akin to melee weapon skill levels, and other magic skills, and makes summoning skill gear still something to be sought after for the job. Then they can just add new gear with summoning skill along with gear that, ideally, is suited for all pet jobs, like the new herder's subligar. I think that would be a way to appease summoners and the rest of the pet job community when looking for ways to beef up.

Still waiting for the change to our summoning magic skill to be A+ so i can have a higher elemental siphon ;3

[Ryuushin]

Our avatars should be like the taru(Gariri) in campaign summons =)

If you take a look at SCH, you would notice that SCH can basically do WHM, BLM or even RDM duties with a few unique abilities. That's how SMN should be like but not completely watered down like it is now.

[Sunrider]

So in short:

SMN = SCH + Pet?

SCH = SMN - Pet, since SMN came first.

I think that's a fair analogy.

[Not Kuno]

So Geocrush is the best elemental nuke? I always see people talking about and meriting that one to full and not the others.