Too much? =The Summoner=

Sabia

Sabia

S.O.B. Superhero
Adventurer
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
3,528
Age
45
Location
Calgary, AB
Website
members.shaw.ca
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Windy
Main Job
Summoner-Female
Secondary Job
WhiteMage-Female
Third Job
Warrior-Female
Server
Quetzalcoatl
Linkshell
Kaizen
FFXIV
Sabia
I know there isn't a lot of discussion on these boards about summoners. I'm kind of interested in the opinion of those who do play the class on what they think about the updates in CoP.

Apparently we will now be able to participate in skill chains and be able to magic burst. Exciting? Maybe but I'm a little worried. All Blood Pacts have a re-cast timer of 60 seconds (w/o BP reducing gear on) and usually require insane amounts of MP to perform with a pretty long casting time.

As it is now in a party I have my hands full even with a WHM in the group. I usually cast Rolling Thunder at the begining of every battle with an Aerial Armor at the end, if possible I toss in a Shining Ruby which can be a nice defense boost for the main tank. Inbetween these BPs I'm casting Cure/Cure II, Enfeebs, Enhancing (when needed) plus trying to get enough MP back for the next battle. I do use Pineapple Juice and have some of the best gear for my level excluding Carbuncles Mittens. Mind you I haven't even obtained group Stoneskin and Haste... :shock:

I don't know if it's Square's intention to turn the Summoenr into a DD class *we'll see* but I don't see how I can possibly cram more summoning into one battle, especially with a 1 minute re-cast timer and the high mp cost of BPs. I doubt party's will want to toss the effects of group blink/haste/stoneskin/enthunder/ice spikes/evaision & acc up (if you have Fenrir) for an extra Magic Burst on a SC...

Oy don't even get me started on SC...how the hell does a an avatar skill chain? You'd have to take the 10 seconds to cast them, the 2 seconds to tell them to assult, add on another 5 or so seconds of actual casting time and then Leviathan will finally use his Barracuda Dive IF your BP re-cast timer is up. How the heck do you fit this into a well-timed skill chain? The same goes for the MB...the timing on it will be nuts!

I must be the only summoner out there that thinks this but I kind of like it the way it is. I have tons to do in my party and find i contribute quite a bit. Square needs to decinde if summoner is an enhancing class or a DD class because I don't see them having the time or MP to be both.

Thoughts, Opinions?
 
Most likely those offensive bloodpacts thats worth it to mb would be the 70 blood pacts. Reason is it has the best damage and mp ratio of all the offensive bloodpacts that the avatar have. MP wise, the summoners are usually picked up for their buffs, their offensive play doesn't come till 65~70s. I know this has been many times and it is true. The fact that its a 1 min timer, the fact that it costs huge amount of mp, and the facts that during the cooling time you are a main healer. Summoner should think what buffs fits best to the party. For instance they should use buffs to cover the PTs weakness.

Of course the usual melee weekness is accuracy, so some people uses fenrir only. But there are times when blood pacts such as aerial armor and earthen wards becomes handy. So I would say MB although nice in picture, unless they do something about the blood pact timer it will have a hard time bursting them, not to mention that it may not be worth to mb at all. We will see...
 
Well my smn (before I deleted my character :cry: ) was level 48. But my problem was that my static party was 2 ninja tanks, a sam, a whm & myself and one oddball we would pick up each time. I was sooooo bored as smn. I had nothing to do. I never needed to cast a single cure cause on the occasions when one of the ninjas would take a hit the whm was on it with the cure. (poor whm was almost as bored as I was) My blink was worthless with ninjas so no point in casting it. No point having my avatars attack as their dmg was so sad it was not worth it. Now earthen ward when I finally got it was nice and of course hastega was. But I admit the new features do have me curious. Maybe I will have to give smn another chance. This time with a pld tank though so I have something to do! :twisted:
 
The Changes are probably made for those that play sum/blm. because sum/whm gets abused as a WHM anyway. Not much you can do to better their Role ...

Until sum/blm becomes a Viable option i'm leaving my hands off Summoner anyways. If I wanted to play a Healer i'd play a WHM, not a Summoner.
 
It doesn't matter if you can MB or SC....a /blm sub is useless. You're still nuking a level 30 mob with a level 15 blm/level 15 spell. I really don't see how being able to MB is going to help the actual summoner class as you can allready MB currently as a summoner/black mage....

Fixes that would of helped the summoner are

-Eliminate the 1 minute timer, the MP cost of BPs would force you not to spam them every battle.

OR

-Keep the 1 minute timer and lower the cost of each bloodpact

OR

-Keep the 1 minute timer and make blood pacts last longer

I'm not saying all these at once but if you did any one of these fixes you could vastly improve the use of a summoner.
 
Eliminate the 1 minute timer, the MP cost of BPs would force you not to spam them every battle.

OR

-Keep the 1 minute timer and lower the cost of each bloodpact

OR

-Keep the 1 minute timer and make blood pacts last longer
Click to expand...

I completely agree!
 
I absolutely agree. What i would like to see is a Summon being able to Melee, then a BLM sub would be better for more Mana. That is just wishful thinking though.
The 1 Minute Timer is excessive. 45 Second or 30 Seconds would be more Appropriate I think.
 
I don't play a summoner, but from what ive seen there's currently only one effective way to play them. Perhaps SE is just giving summoners other ways to play thier job. *shrug* That sounds pretty good to me.
 
Perhaps you guys have seen my smn friend after all even grouping with him. His name is Punitan (ya female taru), hes 62 smn now. Bad thing about smn is not many people comprehend what they can offer to the party. Appart from being a main healer that is. For example they might know that smn can haste the entire party although they do NOT know that the blood pact costs 112 mp + the upkeep cost while shes up and only lasts 1min. Their buffs has very limited use on some party members such as Earthen ward for pld is pretty useless but on the contrary for rng/nin and nin/war could be a god send. I don't know how many 60+ people got surprised on what fenrir was able to give to the party members.
 
Shia that's what I mean...it's not really our damage output that's a major problem it's the duration of some of our blood pacts and how much MP they cost. Square has made it abbundantly clear that they don't want summoners to do damage unless it's level 70+ (Spinning Dive *drooooool*) or once every 2 hours. I don't see how being able to SC or MB with an avatar is going to do any good for a summoner. Haste, Stonskin, Aerial Armor, Rolling Thunder, Shock/Ice Spikes, Crimson Howl, and Clear Water are all awesome abilitites and that's what? 8 minutes right there of waiting for my BP timer to be up to use all those and god knows how much MP. I"m just floored hopping on all these summoner boards and seeing people praise this as the fix all for the summoner class. It's not! I don't see it helping at all. I don't need my avatars to melee because unless they're doing more damage than a dark knight everytime they swing they're just not worth the MP up-keep when a dark knight can do it for free.

Oh well we'll see I guess....

PS: Ecks there are lots of jobs that you can only really play one way...PLD for example, if you're not tanking there's a problem or a bard's job is to sing....
There's lots you can do for your party depending on the area you're in, what type of bad guys you're fighting that allows summoners to use different blood pacts at different times. It's not a job for everyone but I really enjoy it.
 
Well ehhh I feel as though i'm missing out on this big revolution. The job hasn't changed all that much 65+. We simply have more potential and ability to use our pacts for dmg than before.

At this point, upon reaching level 70 I haven't really used magic bursts with avatars yet, seeing as the 70 BP do bout as much as a 300% TP Bursted Fire IV anyway, with no need to wait on the skillchain, so kind of pointless to do that. Though from 60 on up they're a great way to dish out some free hurt with 0 hate.

The SC thing with avatars though is kind of questionable in it's use. Why bother making an SC with poison nails for 30 dmg when you can let the melee's do it and burst for 700+? Though on very rare occasion I've thought of how it could make a level 3 chain possible where it normally would not be (i.e. filling in a gap with a lvl 2 chain)

Other than that, dont be afraid of your job being replaced by SMN or anything. We were just basically given more jobs to do... orz

The one thing I don't understand is why people STILL think some of the pacts are as useful as they were back in the days of lvl 40'ish *sigh*... yeah Fenrir's acc buff is good if a BRD can't do it. But at this level I've noticed Earthen Ward, Hastega, and Aerial Armor are a phenomenal waste of time on 90% of the mobs I've fought lately, and that MP and 1:00 would better be spent doing 700-1000 dmg and (usually) having the avatar steal hate and tank for a good 5-6 hits (more than aerial armor would block on the tank, even with stoneskin up)
 
Thanks for dusting off this ol' thread Svina, it's good to hear the opinion of a high level summoner. I find a lot of them won't even talk to me because I don't have Fenrir :?

Anyway, as for the Enhancing buffs being a little useless at later levels I think it's why they gave you some awesome Damage Dealing BPs. I think it's kind of neat that after 65 levels of playing a job one way you get to open a whole new can of beans and unleash some major damage.

After giving this new expansion stuff for the summoner a shot I think it's completely useless. I'm level 36 now *yay* and find my enhancing BPs to still be quite useful. I know this will change, as I'm allready noticing how Aerial Armor doesn't get priority espeically with all the NIN tanks popping up, but I can adjust. I mean where the hell do all these summoners get all this MP to waste on letting their avatars melee? I'm level 36 with 610 MP which I think is pretty good, and even I find myself running out of MP. Mind you it's usually due to a mo-mo WHM who will cast Banish II instead of cure when our tank is yellow...but this is usually the situation I end up partying in.

I suppose it's possible with a really good whm and thieves that aren't SATA off the damn Dark Knight instead of the Warrior (had this happen last night) but it's still a complete waste of mp. That MP your wasting to build up the TP to unleash your UBER DMG FIRE II!!! that only Bursts for like 130-200 DMG could be better spent on more usefull BPs or a couple of more Cures so that the WHM has an easier time keeping up with an XP Chain of 5.

Is it just me not being able to adjust to this new way of playing? I mean I get tells all the time from Summoners saying "So how much have you Burst for?" "Have you SC'd yet?" makes me feel like I'm not playing the job right anymore. Any opinions on this matter? I personally don't think you're missing out on much Svina...but that's just me.
 
Well eh... compared to SMN a month ago that burst for 200 dmg was more like a hopeless cast Fire II for 20 dmg under any circumstance. I still think SMN make great main healers to a point, that is like around the time you gain earthen ward, your healing ability starts to take a nose dive as the other jobs get cure IV and all that. Also your mp starts to be rivaled greatly, a whm/smn having much more curing potential than you...

And yet we're still supposed to be main healers??????????

If anyone gives you the "well we couldn't find a WHM so we invited you" crap, just explain that you can't main heal. Backup heal, OK. We make great backups, especially while throwing support buffs when needed, but other than that.

And ehh don't worry about getting Fenrir. I didn't exactly get him the "honest" way so some people think that makes you less good at your job. I thought it'd help my parties out, and it did to some extent. He's not THAT great though. In the end game I don't even use him anymore, maybe just for the acc/eva up howl if the party wants it, but everyone usually just shouts the mantra (Spinning Dive) (Full attack!) ...so that's what I do :p
 
I do agree with the fact that Fire II does 200 DMG instead of 30 is better, but I think it's just a way to prolong implimenting some real changes that actually help the job. I mentioned above some of the changes I think can be introduced without over-powering the job.

Anyway, I hate main healing. It makes me absolutely bonkers but if it's the only way I can get a party I'll buckle down and do it. Right now I'm level 36 with no Cure III, making it impossible to main heal. I find there are a few levels that I'm more than capable of pulling it off but 36 definately isn't one of them. Backup healing is awesome though and I think any mage is expected to do it. It does get depressing when people invite me for the /WHM rather than my SMN/ though. I know this changes level 65+ (if you have fenrir) level 70+ (if you don't) but I love my job right now.

As far as the Fenrir thing goes I know it's not a big deal because I think I play my job pretty well, but it does tend to be a big deal for everyone else. "Summon Fenrir" "I don't have him yet, but I am working on it ^^" "Oh...he's awesome" and I'm thinking to myself "Jesus, you're a warrior! What the hell do you know about avatars?" It's more like a status symbol I'm thinking and that fact tends to hold me back quite a bit. I just enjoy playing the job. I like WHM and I love being a support job, summoner being my fave so far out of RDM/WHM/BRD/SMN. I just find it's the only job I spend the time to be my best at.

It's just really frustrating to see all these other summoners playing the job with the new "melee" thing and wondering if I should too. I just feel uncomfortable blowing all my MP on one battle and sitting out for 2 just to get it back. I find myself just watching parties with summoners in them to see what their doing and it's changed drastically after the update. Am I playing the job wrong now? Not really giving my party my full potential? It's not like I don't throw out Damage BPs if my MP and the parties HP are good, but it's definately last on my list of priorities... :(
 
I think SE should make it so if lets say you were fighting something thats weak against Fire and you used Ifrit, his melee attacks would do a lot more damage...


At level 10, do the II spells, like Fire II, do a lot of damage at that level, because at lvl 10, BLM's don't even have Fire yet...
 
Unless avatars are free to keep out or they're out-damaging every class in the game with their hits they're not worth keeping out. Why keep out an avatar that's costing me 7 mp every tick to do less damage than a Dark who gets to do the damage for free? Why the hell do summoners want to melee so bad? If you want to melee, don't play a damn mage! This isn't FFX so get over it because unless you're high level or using your 2 hour, your damage output is pathetic.
 
Because if Summoners did the damage they previously did in all the other FF games why the hell would you be anything else? It would render all other classes useless if Avatars could be used like they were in 10.
 
The problem is people don't know much about summoners :P

I honestly found that most of the parties (even now -.-) still dont know what we do and would rather just tell us to be healers than take advantage of what we can do at each level. Kinda sucks, but the job's had a long history of bad stigmas that will probably never go away.
 
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