I Got Banned From The Official Forums!

I am very happy to hear SMN adjustments are on the table! This is how I feel about this adjustment:

Uses could be found for it, as it gives us one more pact per apogee if we plan carefully but it also is limiting in that it doesn't help us say put on more wards sooner or do longer attack chains. It just lets us get more use out of wards in a battle situation where we'd favor rage over ward. Already doing Tumult Curator with a SMN in the party along with BRD and COR rotating buffs too, we reach the cap of max displayable buffs (especially since fenrir's takes soooo many slots), which lead to confusion and inability to determine when important buffs were going to fall off. I believe we and other SMN strongly feel that rather than the amount of buffs we can put on mid battle going up (or not sacrificing as much damage to apply the same number of buffs) our buffs should be more meaningful given that it takes so much time and often mana cost to put one on in the first place especially if you look at other mage jobs. To me our wards should be either unique or strong party wide versions of existing spells to constitute the cost of being able to apply less in a given duration. To me this was the original function and purpose of wards, just many have not kept up with the times at all. 13 damage reduction phalanx was meaningful at one point, but now that any mage with enhancing skill can reach 35 damage reduction, it is not useful to ever cast it (and I don't, I actually get more of using it as SMN with RDM sub and enhancing gear than using phalanx). SCH or a mage with SCH subjob can out do almost all our wards based on their spells, in shorter time. Phalanx AoE 35 damage reduction vs Diabolos 13. We get enfire, enthunder, ice spikes and shock spikes. RDM/SCH or SCH/RDM can accession these... and every other element, and I'm pretty sure at greater potency. What's worse, is that even though they can do that, they rarely do because they aren't valued. Endrain is a great ward, when the moon phase is right but Enaspir is very niche in use. Player stoneskin can reach 475 HP, but Titan's Earthen Ward is stuck at much worse values (still 248 if reports are to be believed which means it never kept going up with ilvl and is stuck at 99, much like healing wards and if that's the case with it, Ifrit's Warcry is probably in the same situation). I could go on but you get the idea, our wards are far behind and even what some of them do isn't valued enough to be cast by jobs that can both put it on the party faster and with higher potency. All that leaves a lot of SMN wards take both a high cost of time and have less meaningful effects, even compared to non support jobs, just other mages who sub sch for the aoe effect. It's not like our solo ability is great either, without 1 hours our dmg solo is painfully slow vs content Ifrit won't work on, and being so cornered into using a niche few pacts is I think the main problem. Out of all our cool toys I usually only use Haste 2, Earthern Armor, Flaming Crush, Volt Strike, Shock Squall, and occassionally TP Bonus, Warcry, and Enfire or Endrain if time. If doing bcnm runs for example, I won't get that entire list off. Our -25 Evasion down on thing's like Shiva's ward just don't make sense, why so little? During the right phase of moon Fenrir does more and it's not respectable either, not when Feint can put 250 evasion down, and distract 3 over 100, and again, any mage with rdm sub can put -35 evasion down distract, our wards for having a huge cast time are also very impotent. It makes them tend to not be used except for the ones most useful, which are usually the same ones which leads to less interesting play decisions and a lot of dead pacts.

For the adjustment itself I'm for it, if it's not the only thing in store. If it's a pick or choose thing though, I much rather would have at least some of our pacts scale with summoning skill because right now there is no way to enhance them, meanwhile mages get more skill, tons of fastcast and ability to put on tons of spell quickly, and more gear that enhances spells like stoneskin, and we are stuck in the past. If SMN had native skill in other magic schools, which they don't, they could at least use some of these on themselves. But they can't and defeats the point of having a lot of the wards in the first place. Even Aerial armor which I like, BLU gets a blink with many more blinks on it. It is not wonder so many BLU RME being made and jobs mastered, it really is stacked right now, and it isn't even used in the hardest endgame fights for aeonics. There always seems to be 8 or less people playing summoner at any given time on my server, there's even more WAR on all the time now. There's a few jobs less played than SMN but not many so I think SE would do well to give it help. The amount of work that goes into a good SMN is huge and it's much easier to gear a BLM, SCH or GEO in todays world than put that much effort into something unless you really care for and love it, and most the people here commenting outside people popping in because they want their jobs looked at instead, are dedicated summoner players that love summoner which imho is the right people to ask about the job because they not only will be most affected but have insights based on more knowledge. That said I don't pretend to speak for everyone, just myself. I thank SE very much for listening to us and I hope some of our suggestions make it into the game, thank you for making such an interesting and fun job to play and taking a look at the job balance.