Kuno's awesome SMN post

[Rocl]

Is her ass named Poundcake too?

[Nirokun!]

Dont be jealous rocl, dont be jealous :D

[Liquidedust]

The best TP burn party Mage I ever had was a Smn. Kept Fenrir buffs and Hastega up all times, and had plenty of MP leftover to heal everyone. Combined with the Brd it was awesome; chaining colibri getting sweet exps etc.

Smn's perfectly fine how it is. They should look forward to new Avatars (eventually). If you "really" wanna complain about not being allowed to come as your favourite job to every event, then go join MonstersInc or LordoftheBeast. Or better yet dont level jobs like Rdm or Blm.

Well I have to be completely honest and tell you, even though we try to do as much stuff as possible with only SMNs and BSTs in MonstersInc some stuff are just no doable with only pet jobs (disregarding THFs of course since we all needs THFs one way or another).

We do try to modify or come up with strategies for only BST and SMN on as much stuff as possible so we can do it pet style (which is what MonstersInc is about in the end, doing it with pet jobs as far as we can take it).

Still atm Justice and Love are pure dickweeds to even try using too many summoners on, and this not since SMN is weak on them but because how pet hate works and the mobs they summon basically rapega us if an Avatar is summoned or dismissed at a bad point and the summoned pets decide to shift hate randomly due to that.

Also we do cheat some and use BLMs for pets on them and we do use tanks on Love since it just makes everything go smoother.

Stuff we currently struggle on but getting better at pet style is Einherjar. Sure most people probably laugh when I say we struggle on Einherjar but most of you wouldn't even think about trying it with BSTs, BRDs, CORs and SMNs only .

For us we try to do thing pet style because we want to be able to say we can do it pet style, sure it is also about gear but we also try to achieve something most other wouldn't try think about. We still play this game to have fun and do do something a little diffrently from the norm while achieving in-game goals.

Yeah we are lolBST and lolSMN but we try have fun while we are on our loljobs .

[Kenji]

The liklihood of SE completely revamping the system is pretty low. I think the best we can hope for, is some tweaks to address issues.

First, let's state where a SMN fits: Buffer and DD. Similiar to COR.

SMN issues and possible fixes:
- Spirit perp cost: needs to be lowered, less than avatars. Spirits should be a cheap alternative to avatars. The randomness of spells doesn't bother me so much, since with the right setup and cheap perp, spirits can cast a lot of spells.
- Ward range when engaged: SE already announced they are working on this
- Rage fizzle if the mob moves: annoying, yes. I believe SE said they wouldn't address this, because there are already some "ranged" moves. There is a workaround, if you BP, then immediately assault.
- Perp cost: An issue, because it doesn't justify the melee damage an avatar does. Too much -perp gear out there now, so auto-refresh II and III would do to offset this.
- Avatar melee damage: very low. If SE wants us to leave avatars out, the damage needs to be worth it, so a possible solution is enspells doing as much added damage as a normal melee strike.
- Most Ward buffs not that powerful, and/nor long enough: Easy enough; just extend buff time on most buffs to 5 to 10 minutes, as well as increasing potency on a variety of them, ie, Hastega should be 15% instead of 10%. COR rolls last 5 minutes, and are free and more powerful. Considering the MP, SMN buffs should be well worth it. With a 5 to 10 minute lasting time, a SMN can keep a variety of powerful buffs up.

Rage BPs - This, I am hesitant to touch. It's hateless damage, and can be quite high at times. The only thing I'd change, is to split physical and magical BPs into their own BP commands, and make Lv70 BPs able to create light/dark SCs. Magic BPs are rarely worth it, but if a SMN could help create an SC to then MB off of, it would raise the damage just enough to make them a wanted DD. It's dangerous to try and buff SMN damage too much, since it is hateless damage.

All of this together might be a bit much, so slowly tweaking each area would be the reccomended approach. Since hateless damage is difficult to tweak, at least buffing the wards would make SMN into a nice buff class.

As someone else pointed out, while other pet class jobs add quite a bit of damage along with their pet, a SMN is completely dependent upon their pet for everything they do. Which means the pet needs to be stronger. This is balanced, by the summoning time and the perp cost.

The last alternative, is to add SMN gear with acc and att on it, and some avatar specific high damage staves. Gear that buffs the avatar as well as buffing the SMN melee. This would be going the route of BST and PUP, by making the master able to contribute damage. However, SMN's have traditional been the physically weakest, with the summons making up for it.

But I think most SMNs agree, we're a Buffer/DD. And hell, make one of the new avatars come with a Regainga BP

[Ryuushin]

I'm not sure about you guys but noctoshield(phalanx) from Diabolos at LVL75 reduces 13 dmg.. who would want to use that? Along with a handful of ward buffs that are no good, aka earthen ward(you have diamond hide now or SCH AOE stoneskin).

I do like the idea of having an avatar out and giving the party a certain buff, maybe the avatar can have an aura around it and whichever party members are around it receive this buff.

Ifrit: STR, ATK
Shiva: INT, MAB

Just some examples.

[Spira]

all the OPs ideas suck. not so awesome post.

SMN does not need a bottom-up revamp, only tweaked for improvement.

[Khamsin]

First off, scrap avatar perp. That stuff should be on elementals only. Replace it with a summoning cost, that increases the higher level you are. Something like 300+ at 75. Current -perp cost can have a "decrease level" effect so if you had -5 perp at 75, you'd be summoning for a level 70s cost.

Second off, put every ability on it's own timer. This isn't broken as a smn who decides to use every BP at once would run out of mp really fast, and they would still have to wait a minute for P.Claws if they were just spamming the strongest one.

I think summoning should be cheap, and the BPs should cost the bulk of the MP. A summoned avatar by itself isn't worth much, as I'm sure you're well aware of the subpar melee performance of avatars. As for abuse as a meatshield or decoy, well, Carby can do that for free already.

There's no need for a 300 MP summoning if you're also going to spend MP on the BPs, too. Also keep in mind that SMNs need to rest, and it still would not be practical to keep an avatar out full time even if it were free to do so.

The only way I see something like that working is if the summoning costs a lot, yet the BPs are cheap. 300 MP summoning cost, but 50 MP Predator Claws (still on a 45 second timer w/equip)? Might work, but can easily be abused with refresh whoring (rolls, songs, spell, etc.) It'll take a bit more thought to come up with something that isn't cheaply abused but is also fair at the same time.

[evilpaul]

SMN is nearly useless, SE isn't going to change this.

They'll throw in a new pair of avatars (maybe only let you have one of them or something retarded?), and people will go spam the BC for a week and then go back to not giving a shit about lolSMN.

What SE should do is make the SMN Horn a 100% drop so I could throw the set in storage. Haven't seen one of those things in three fucking years.

[Silenka]

SMN is nearly useless, SE isn't going to change this.

They'll throw in a new pair of avatars (maybe only let you have one of them or something retarded?), and people will go spam the BC for a week and then go back to not giving a shit about lolSMN.

What SE should do is make the SMN Horn a 100% drop so I could throw the set in storage. Haven't seen one of those things in three fucking years.

^

[Ninjiz]

I'm Sorry, but anyone who says "Smn is fine the way it is" doesn't have a clue.
We all know SMN is one of the few jobs to not progress. And to say that Rage/ward IS its significant boost to compare it to everyone else is complete and utter grasping at straws. It was nothing but a band-aid at best!!

Most people who know what the hell they are talking about when it comes to summoner will admit it needs major tweaking to get out of 2003 and join the rest of the jobs in 2008. The problem is trying to figure out WHAT to to, to make sure it balanced.

-Eliminating the perp cost,(honestly higher tier auto fresh would serve almost the same function),
-increasing their melee potential, enspell dmg
-Majorly upping Avatar magical attacks (the dmg from the merit BPs is utter bullshit. compare PC and Wind blade on the same mob and tell me that makes sense)
-Increasing Buff range (buffs across alliance?)
-Giving each avatar job traits and stats so their are unique besides the BPs
-improving astral flow Dmg greatly
-Increased Enmity for using BPs to balance out (Yes i said it, and I dont care if i have more hate)

are all good places to start. And these are tweaks and not a compelete job overhaul.

[Malacite]

Why are people trying to argue that smn was a "great dd" in single-player FFs? SMN has traditionally been broken-awesome in the early game but limited by lack of mp, somewhat good in the mid game, and absolutely terrible by the end because avatar damage did not scale well if at all.

And what final fantasy might I ask have you been playing? Or was I just imagining Odin, 3 different Bahamuts, Knights of Round, Eden, Ark and the Magus Sisters to name a few?

Because clearly summoning magic was ever so useless against all those high level, auto-reflect monsters of yore.
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Seriously though the job is long over due for a complete over haul. It can't even practically perform the fundamental function it was designed for. Hell, summoning magic doesn't even do much apart from affecting spirits.

Give me a break with that over the cap bull shit. What other mage requires more skill than they are normally allowed to see an increase in their magic's efficiency? Oh that's right, NONE. So why the hell is it that job level dictates the strength of avatars and pacts and not summoning skill?

Why the fuck do we spend MP on JOB ABILITIES?! I mean you're not even casting anything, you're telling the avatar what to do!!! I was unaware it took MP to speak to these things.

They lose TP when they aren't engaged.

They are on average weak as hell compared to other pets and just end up hemmoraging MP while feeding mobs loads of TP.

Most of the pacts they get are garbage/easily doable by other jobs much more efficiently. Anyone who argues otherwise is a liar.

The summons themselves are a pain in the ass just to get, only for them to suck? They are literally GODS for crying out loud.

Okay that's enough negativity (plus I'm tired) for now.



I don't agree with all of your ideas but I've said similar things in a thread I made over at DiV long before you made this thread

Increasing the cost to summon avatars as you level isn't bad, but it should not be very high and definitely shouldn't have long recasts. There are a lot of instances where you will want to rotate avatars as the situation changes.

The problem is having perp cost on top of blood pact costs in addition to paying MP just to call them out. SMN easily spend twice the MP other mages do, and for what? I say if you're going to make the job bleed MP the effects should at least be powerful and very, very flashy.

[Tsuko_Asura]

I'm all for pointing out Summoner's obvious shortcomings, but lets not make things up. Summoner is and always will have the best damage to TP-given ratio.

[spooky]

I'm all for pointing out Summoner's obvious shortcomings, but lets not make things up. Summoner is and always will have the best damage to TP-given ratio.

That's a stupid argument. If my BP misses, the mob doesn't get any TP, so it's infinitely efficient! If it does connect then yeah it is the best dmg to mob TP ratio. Thing is most people don't care about mob TP on anything. If they did BLM would still be popular and it's not.
Pet Jobs do need some attention. It's retarded how many buffs melee have had over the years while ALL mages get shafted.

I was actually half temped to make a post like this for PUP recently, but never got around to it. Personaly I think PUP has a lot more problems than SMN. PUP to me seems like it's basicaly ended up as a "front-line healer" like DNC, you can sub DNC and use WHM automation on your PT. Trouble is like DNC, front-line healer was a shitty concept and isn't really that good for anything.

[Toksyuryel]

Thing is most people don't care about mob TP on anything.

People definitely care. That's why RDMs don't get to melee. DD classes have been buffed enough that their damage is now worth the TP the mob gains (and people put on a lot of subtle blow stuff for this anyway), that's all that's happened. It's not the BEST ratio, but it's good enough to kill things safely.

[spooky]

People definitely care. That's why RDMs don't get to melee. DD classes have been buffed enough that their damage is now worth the TP the mob gains (and people put on a lot of subtle blow stuff for this anyway), that's all that's happened. It's not the BEST ratio, but it's good enough to kill things safely.

No, RDMs and other mages don't get to melee because:
- They do shitty dmg
- Have shitty acc
- Too many other things to do
- Need to keep out of range of AoEs
- Need to rest

[Rocl]

NO. Spooky made a post I agree with.

[Lordwafik]

If RDMs should melee, they need to get Accuracy Bonus job trait at least, then they need enspells that give haste, refresh and then cure on the fly. To do it best they should use daggers to do this, for faster TP gain, and replace the chapeau on their head with a rose above their ear.

[Not Kuno]

If RDMs should melee, they need to get Accuracy Bonus job trait at least, then they need enspells that give haste, refresh and then cure on the fly. To do it best they should use daggers to do this, for faster TP gain, and replace the chapeau on their head with a rose above their ear.

But will they still have Death Blossom?

[Bdawgbud]

Dont know if this was mentioned, but With Kuno's new system of avatar summons, it would horrendously gimp SMN solo on anything hard. Free carby is nice to have, and to resummon for almost no MP is even nicer. Be careful what you wish for, because it might actually suck. As far as Auto Refresh 2/3 that idea is just made of win. I do agree that with PLD having an identical trait SMN looses some of its individuality (How many jobs have auto regen [just whm]) I rarely play SMN anymore though, im more of a main tank in LSes i join now, but my main problem is the lack of zerg potential. Killing things as quickly as possible seems to be the new trend, so for MP Converted into damage as quickly as possible is obviously most potent from a BLM or even a BLU. I think astral flow should AT LEAST cut the BP:Rage recast in half (with gear considered) for example i have 45 second recast from full AFv2 and yinyang, so instead of my 1/2 being 30 it should be 22 or 23. My only concern is abusing this at low lvl to make CoP Fights horrendously easy (as if they already werent with a SMN in pt)

[Bdawgbud]

Also failed to note: It is possible to get Free fenrir, which i think is a nice reward for going all out on SMN. For those few SMN who have this, the new system would be a slap in the face for thier hard work. With the release of Nirvana it is actually possible to get Fenrir with 1 MP Refresh in Dynamis (Might have already been possible)