Kuno's awesome SMN post

[gamez]

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.

wait a second... =(

**
Also, a typical 'party effect while having the avatar out' buff could easily be solved with an aura effect(ohai D2), I think they've already put mobs into the game now that have Aura, so it's not an unreasonable programming leap, and if they added it as a Ward party buff, it could simply raise perpetual cost to have the aura in effect.

[Ninjiz]

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)

Or they could just replace the - perp stats with something else? Problem solved.

The "aura" idea coudl be interesting. The 2nd Avatar weapons with effects active when Avatar is out could be expanded on with other things.

[Toth]

I love Fenrir when I play SMN. Best DoT and accuracy of all the avatars, a pretty decent BP on all mobs, and manageable MP cost.

[Shadowrunner]

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.

You seemed to neglect the non-rediculously hard ones to get, like I dunno... Carbuncle? What did carbuncle do? Kick-ass damage that made women and baby children cry? No.. I seem to recall something about Wall (Shell/Protect) and Regen. Maybe some HP cure. Hmm... sounds pretty familiar.

What mage requires more efficiency than normal? I dunno, most of the red mages bitch about how hard landing enfeebles are on end-game mobs. Isn't that uh.. one of their best skills? Bards have to go -gungho- and nab relic to hit the final found tiers on their songs (bad example, but it's what I do). BLM's in order to solo some of their mobs have to get their elemental magic up to the 300+'s. I don't think you "normally" get your magic that high.

In fact.. well damn, EVERY MAGE JOB DOES. In fact, I bet WHM does as well. Not sure about BLU. SCH is kinda special, but still could always need more to optimize. So all mages need an overhaul, no one should have to invest extra gear to ownzorz.

Why do you spend MP on Job Abilities: Because you are channeling your energy to them. You, Energy, Them. It even rings nicely and falls into place. And for the fucking last time, you are NOT SUMMONING A GOD, you are summoning their spirit, essence, to fight along side you. If you walk back to the cloisters, they are STILL sitting there, telling you that they will never be controlled. That's the WHOLE story behind our famous taru man who died that day. Summoning a god would kill you.

In fact, I hope they add that feature, the mage's version of Mijin Gakure. AoE Powerblow, with a touch of 0 HP.

Ninja's need a boost to, Mijin blows balls, what a waste, SMN 2hr at least leaves them alive.

On average weak as hell is one thing, but they can still hit, and they can do so without endangering you. This one comes to opinion, so I won't really try to point anything else about it until I get to my opinion.

Most of the other pacts are doable by other jobs. Which is why... summoners don't do them unless the other job isn't. Instead, they do those kick-ass ones that you know, other job's can't do really well (Hai2u Diabolos). You don't see SAM's doing Koki and DRG's doing Raiden Thrust all day do you? No, they tend to do their awesome moves on awesome mobs.

And if you think getting the actual summons suck ass, I pray pray pray pray pray that you are talking about the pre-solo days. For the love of god. 7 of the 9 summons you get are so easy to get, RMT usually do it for the CASH PRIZE that you get for completing them.

Now each job is not without their needs, I understand that. But here is what I see summoner having for them:

A pet that can do more than 1k damage to a single mob at command. No TP build up, No Weapon-buying shenanigans. Just an MP cost. Sounds just like a mage to me.

A pet that can do this damage, and then immediately shed all of the hate they have acquired. This is my big thing. This is pretty much the one defining reason why SMN was so important when fighting HNM's like Vrtra and such "back in the day". The ability to simply lose all of that hate for pure damage is ... a blessing. I'd love to be able to do it on bard all day and night and evening and even for breakfast.

A pet that can actually take a few hits before hitting the dirt. BLM can nuke for 1k+, and then hes praying on /NIN, Blink, or Cover. SMN can do it up and shoo-da-whoop.

A pet that can buff a group, and do damage. Now some DD can do this, some Mages can do this, but none seem to come up with the versatility that summoner does. 1k damage right after Hastega, Bind right after stoneskin-ga, En-THUNDER GOOOOOOOOOOOOO with a stun move. Awesome stuff if you ask me. And it doesn't exactly miss half the time.

The ability to siphon MP. It's like drain, only you don't need a mob. It's not often, half the time it's semi-maybe-kinda-slightly impracital (spend MP to get MP), but. It's still a siphon.

Gear that actually kicks ass. You can't argue with YYR and Summoners Ring and such. The gear is pretty sweet for the job and you get a lot of choices for +MP/Skill/Refresh etc. Every job has a kick-ass peice of gear, so I figured I'd mention it because it's still kinda pretty. You can cross this one out if you'd like.

A larger MP pool? You blow it pretty fast if you're not careful but. Meh.

The ability to make skillchains without ANY tp. That's right, most summoners forget about this because they only really care about doing max damage. The fact that you can, on a whim, open or close a good majority of the tier 1 and tier 2 WS's is amazing. It's like a sam in the pocket. If they every introduce some kind of miracle-savior for Magic Burst damage, or if they include tier 3 for SMN, they'll become one of the favored lovers of FFXI and it won't take a job-fix to do it. SAM would also be loved like a lonely child, but imagine the possibilities for adding on to the chain on a whim. The damage may kinda suck, but if BLM's and RDM's can MB whatever they need, you're gold.

The ability to self-skillchain. Oh hooooooooo I bet most summoners don't even realize that they can, in fact, make a skillchain solo without the use of meds. It's pretty nice, made me enjoy ifrit on SMN for a while.

The ability to Erasega, Hastega, Enthunder-ga, Slowga, Sleepga, Curaga, Protect/Shellra, MDB-ga up, Acc-up-GA, Warcry, and other like moves. Now some of them suck (see: warcry). But you can do it. All. Sleepga's saved my group several several times. Slowga is just fun, usually gets you killed but you can do it. The others are just nice. All of this in one compact job.

The introduction of SCH has brought a few of these to light for other jobs, but that costs them something that most SMN's whine about all day, their subjob.

To remove the effects of sleep/silence/amnesia/petrify or any other horrible paralyzing effect on their main source of damage/buffer without the use of meds, or waiting for a century for it to wear off.

And the ability to do all of these once or twice every minute AT MOST. Note: You can reduce these pact timers. Not sure how low you can make em (I think close to 50s), but you can reduce it.

Summoner can and does have some bad points. I won't argue against it. But it really seems like people just like to point out the bad things about it. Half of the stuff they do can be done somewhat decent if not better than by another job, true. And that simply means that every other job has an ability that is replicated by summoner, probably for a MP cost over an ability.

It would seem that .. well.. every job needs a good look over. But I honestly feel summoner, while not the cream of the crop, is lookin just fine...

[Cookiemonster]

I have only been 75 summoner a short time and I'm sure I'm far from the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the job but here is my impression so far:

While there are a lot of nice things about summoner I hate main healing on the job and wish it had more support oriented pacts that could compete with those of corsair and bard.

Having Ecliptic Howl moon phase dependant is weak and the effect duration of crimson howl is laughable. Hastega is nice but it only really feels worth using if there is a scholar in the party, the regular haste spell is better and if your the only healer it's a big mp sink.

One of the things I find more enjoyable about the job is soloing but avatar melee damage really could be improved upon and the whole enmity situation can be very frustrating. I am also very content with the job when it comes to end game but I have the luxury of bringing the job to a few choice fights and using other jobs for situations where it isn't as great.

There are a lot of nice things they could do to improve the job, a higher tier auto refresh, more equipment to lower blood pact delay, ect. Is it in dire need of improvements? Probably not but it would be nice to get more use out of the job.

[Miraun]

@ Shadowrunner;

You're really overstating the effectiveness of a lot of things:

1) You highlighted hateless damage, in the same argument, you also highlight how this was an effective means of taking down Vrtra "Back in the day". That has been the argument from page 1, is that the job is out dated to 2003, when it needs to be brought up to 2008.

2) Buffing the group, then attacking. If you're in a melee party, chances are, the summoner's HP is so low, that you can't effectively buff. If you have your avatar assault, and then use the buff at range, the avatar will try to target the summoner for the BP, which will result in missing any melee that's not dry humping the avatar. This is why many have called for extending the buff range.

3) In the same argument as #2, you commented on our stun move. Talking about Chaotic Strike? Any blood pact has a 2 second charge time. Congrats on your 2 second delay on stun, and 5 second summoning time. It's not like you can just hit a button and the mob is stunned like a BLM. And Chaotic Strike damage is typically subpar until we start fighting an undead, bone-style wyrm (not vrtra, one that actually looks like a skeleton. SE, impliment that)

4) Siphon MP? Alright, it's nice, but it doesn't make up for the problems. It's actually a lot less effective than it may actually seem, which I'll highlight after discussing your post.

5) Skillchaining? All BPs that skillchain have lower accuracy, and rarely can break 100/200 damage on any HNM situation. Additionally, the skillchains a SMN can create are restricted to level 2 at best. Congrats on skillchaining from claw to Tachi: Enpi for distortion against Tiamat.

6) Erasega. Leviathan's Spring water is not erase. It's esuna. It cannot erase status ailments that a corresponding -na spell cannot. I'm sure one of the wikis has more information, but I just know I've been wholeheartedly dissapointed when looking to erase something like gravity from the party, and spring water doing jack. I'd also like to bring up the fact that upon getting hit by an AoE, you're looking at taking 10 seconds before you can erase it as a SMN. Summoning, having the avatar path, and then initating the BP, and then having the avatar use the BP takes about 10 seconds. Try tanking a chariot in salvage and seeing how effective you'll be if you have paralyze on for 10 seconds.

7) Ability to quickly erase status ailments: Yes, but we have no way of being notified what status ailments are on our avatar unless we watch out log, even then we're not told when they expire. Additionally, without the use of fast cast, avatars have a 30 second recast. You're looking at switching an avatar to a different damage if your avatar gets inflicted with Amnesia.

Note: Amnesia on your avatar will take your MP, give you your cooldown, and then charge and not do anything if inflicted.

SMN's two hour: Astral Flow. It's effective in SOME circumstances, but so is Mijin. It'll do about 1/3rd the damage of a 70 pact against anything respectable. But, it will do that same 1/3rd damage to any targets in range. It's good for Einherjar if you build a specific setup dedicated to using astral flow (which is typically not terribly effective). Typically whenever you have swarms of mobs like that, you gotta keep them asleep... this'll wake them, and they'll rape someone before it's all over.


Now, regarding Elemental Siphon. It is not as effective as it's made out to be. Additionally, reducing the BP timer will not help the summoner job.

Background: I have almost all of the rare SMN gear out there. Bahamut's staff, full relic, Nashira gages, evoker's gages, AF+1 legs/feet. Oracle's Braconi, astute mantle, YYR, etc, etc. I can minimize my BP timer to the minimum available. But I don't. It's
not effective.

Below was taken from a post I did on the failwiki forums a while ago. It was in regards to discussion of using YYR/relic legs versus SMN doublet / evk legs for BPs.

Calculations:
We will begin as though you have JUST activated a BP Rage ~46 seconds remaining
Time taken for BP to go off ~43
Dismiss/Rest ~42
First tick of MP comes at approximately 20 seconds, about 5 'ticks' of MP from standard refresh.
MP+27 from Clear Mind 5 ~22 Sec remaining
Each additional 'tick' of MP requires only 10 seconds, However, in order to minimize BP delay/maximize damage, we need to stand at 15 to line up the next cast.
Therefore, we do not have time to get a second 'tick' of MP

46 Seconds of auto-refresh x2 =30MP (give or take 2)

30 MP auto-refreshed + 1 tick of resting MP = 27
=57 MP

+22 MP while resting = 79

Since 79 MP doesn't completely make up for the 190 you spent casting, you're running at a 140 deficit of MP generation, even with high MP gain.



Proposal:
Substitute YYR for SMN Doublet
Substitute SMN Legs for EVK Legs
Effect: +4 to BP delay, +3% chance to Crit, +Avatar ACC

Effect on MP regen:
Effectively the same as above, except with 2 extra ticks of MP refresh, and 1 extra tick of resting MP
17 ticks of auto-refresh = 34 MP
Resting MP: 27+30 = 57 MP
=91 MP
+22 MP while resting *2
= 135 MP


Release is a 10 second cooldown. If you're looking at doing it after releasing an avatar from doing a BP, you're looking at negating the entire resting phase between release and resummon. So while you may gain 300 MP, you're not going to be able to get a full tick of resting after using a siphon between BPs.




Sorry for the long post >.>

[Loziel]

People care about mob TP, people need to stop on the acid, it messes your brains guys.

As an experiment go throw a large bunch of Thf or Mnks to pound on Ixion Tia or Khim and then tell me how no one cares about giving TP to mobs while your alliance is waiting for a raise. lol

[Not Kuno]

People care about mob TP, people need to stop on the acid, it messes your brains guys.

As an experiment go throw a large bunch of Thf or Mnks to pound on Ixion Tia or Khim and then tell me how no one cares about giving TP to mobs while your alliance is waiting for a raise. lol

I like to use SMN on those Khim/Ixion because they wont die in 3 seconds unlike melee.

[Pooky]

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 could have sworn that blm's weren't popular in exp not because of giving mobs tp, but because of the popular exp mobs reflecting spells back at the party.

[Shadowrunner]

Don't be sorry about long posts. I voiced my opinion and I stick to it. There's a metric-ton more to summoner than most people realize, they just don't wish to accept it.

Every job needs a fix. Summoner gets em when they come. But I in no way find the job absolutely butt-raped to the point of being absolutely unfunctional, the way it's being described.

[Maxxthepenguin]

I like to use SMN on those Khim/Ixion because they wont die in 3 seconds unlike melee.

And won't kill the tanks.

[Not Kuno]

And won't kill the tanks.

OH NO THE MELEE ARE GIVING IXION TP. NOW IT'LL DO A TP MOVE EVERY 2.4 SECONDS INSTEAD OF 2.5

[Maxxthepenguin]

OH NO THE MELEE ARE GIVING IXION TP. NOW IT'LL DO A TP MOVE EVERY 2.4 SECONDS INSTEAD OF 2.5

He's not ALWAYS raged.

[Yugl]

-increasing their melee potential, enspell dmg

I want my pony to do super DMG. Screw the melees.

-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)

I want my pony to do super magic DMG. Screw the BLMs.

-Increasing Buff range (buffs across alliance?)

I want my pony to do super buffs. Screw the BRDs.

-improving astral flow Dmg greatly

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

Except they're not since LSs still wouldn't know what to do with you.

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

Uh Wyverns?

[Lampoon]

This post isn't awesome, Kuno. If you remove perp- you remove the concept behind it. Bad ideas Kuno, bad!

[Not Kuno]

This post isn't awesome, Kuno. If you remove perp- you remove the concept behind it. Bad ideas Kuno, bad!

Perp cost is retarded and unnessary.

[Lampoon]

Perpetuation = Fatigue.

Now, I'm sure you've seen plenty of anime where someone summons up an entity and it drains them of their "spiritual" energy while the perpetuate entity's presence.

Yes, you can argue that you can preset amount of "energy" or MP in this case, to be drained while performing a summon, but while the entity(avatar) is out, the power and stamina of entity is tied into the caller (summoner).

Imo, it makes a perfect sense how the summoning system works. The only thing I'd love to see added to SMN is something similar to FF10's avatar TP. (I forget what it's called when they get enough TP and can do Mega attack)

If SE were to allow SMNs build up TP on Avatar while in same zone regardless if you summon or release, and then resummon with full TP bar to do Maga attack (excluding Astral Flow), that would be awesome.

[Cesaria]

I'd settle for them cutting the casting time for avatars down... if you're stuck in curebot mode exping - the time it takes to summon, position, wait for retarded avatar pathing, then get a bloodpact off is the real thing that irritates me.

Or more avatar-specific -perp items on the lines of Carby mitts and Garuda hairband I can't spell. I'd take the inventory hit if it was the price to pay to knock it down a notch.

[Sixtail]

There is no fixing SMN.

And whoever talked about relic staff SMN melee is not thinking clearly. You want to melee on a job with less DEF then a WHM? Okey. Plus the high DPS of lolrelicstaff means that the second you put that avatar away, that mob is gonna be all over your shit like white on rice.

I'll likely play SMN till the day they turn off the servers, but I don't see any real fix coming, hell ES and /SCH was a godsend and likely as good as it gets.

[Jordache]

I want my pony to do super DMG. Screw the melees.

When your method of TP gain for magical BPs is the equivalent to a naked H2H THF without subtle blow, or any type of double/triple attack rate, then yes an improvement is needed in comparison to the other pet jobs.

I want my pony to do super magic DMG. Screw the BLMs.

Improving the legitimacy of the tier II/IV spells to the point where they're not on par with a /BLM then yes, an improvement is needed. God knows what the fuck ever made SE decide to make magical BPs TP dependent is beyond me; doesn't even make sense, the physicals should have been TP dependent. (not really, that'd've really caused a shitstorm)

I want my pony to do super buffs. Screw the BRDs.

I want my pony to have brd range buffs. Even horn range would be an imporvement.

Except they're not since LSs still wouldn't know what to do with you.

These changes would only make smn functional in their capacity as a jack of all trades. As it stands now SMN isn't even a jack of all trades, its like a 7 of clubs.