Elemental Siphon cap and the version updateFollow

SMN is a job that you fight SE's lack of attention and care every level of the way, if you play the job because you like it.

SE's done some stuff right, with changes to summoning skill, splitting BPs, and adding a few more pieces of gear we can actually use. But while their right hand is offering candy, their left hand is beating us with perpetuation, needing skill over cap, and now fantastically a capped Siphon (Can't be giving us too much MP, can we now.), and a generally flawed system for SMN in the first place.

I'll keep playing SMN in spite of SE, certainly not because of any sweeping changes they have done.

I would have thought when I said:


It would have covered that. I know that my avatars are hitting harder now, both physically and magically.
And I also know about (considering my thread about it was the first mention on here) and love the ward increase, which I did actually forget to mention in my first post.



So... Garuda didn't increase to 15 mp/tick at level 80 instead of 13 mp/tick? I'm pretty sure she costs more now to keep out. You need the magian staves to compensate for it.



Actually nitpicking, if you were at 350 skill prior to the update (which was possible with normal base of 346 with merits and bstaff, but 350 skill if you instead used a mythic pole with +9 skill) you are actually gaining less mp, because spirit perpetuation went up by 3 compared to level 80.

And I never said summoner lost anything. Since all bonuses are for skill over the cap, you have to recap your skill at 80 to have the exact same skill over the cap that you had at 75. I was saying that summoner has to work skilling summoning skill (which is a pain compared to enfeebling, dark, divine, elemental, etc) to be back at where they were. That 25 skill you got from going from 75 to 80? Yeah, that's just going to help you with elemental siphon. But oh, that's capped now. It's not an additional 25 skill for ward duration, or for rage accuracy. That 25 enfeebling skill that my WHM got? That's an additional 25 magic accuracy (or 25 x 0.9 considering the claims on macc). THAT is the difference.

My point, which you apparently missed, is that if elemental siphon is capped for pretty much everyone at level 80, what good are more levels going to do for your summoning skill? Nothing. If anything, it's going to hinder you if you don't have it capped. So you get to grind to try to recap it with every level.

And yeah, I am happy our avatars got stronger, but so did everyone else, so in that respect it kind of balances out and doesn't really show that much. I was in dynamis valkurm on sunday, and decided to play with free fenrir. I was doing 1200 - 1500 (double weather) Lunar bays at 0 tp on manticores (Because I wouldn't use wind blade on them, and fenrir is 4/tick cheaper than shiva) and had a hard enough time getting the blood pact off because the level 80 melee were killing the mobs so quickly. And we only had like 20 people. Oh, and alexander made the malboro boss laughable for the record.



I also realize that. This is why I care about the perpetuaton cost of avatars going up. This is why I will use things like wizard cookies instead of pies and marron glace. This is why at 75 I was all over /sch, especially if I could aspir things. This is why I care about things like elemental siphon and convert. This is why I was sad that accession didn't work with haste for my whm so I could instantly cast my haste cycle (for cheaper) and then take a knee. This is why my summoner will often hastega in a party setting if I'm with a single rdm or whm so they have a lot more time to rest their mp. Max MP was 2005. Max mp comes most into concern though with convert, which summoner now has access to, however your mp is likely far higher than your hp so it really isn't even an issue on summoner.

Isn't that what we've complained about since day one though? That all the "good" things about Summoner, comes from their sub job. The bad things are natively.

The job really should have gotten native spells like sleep, refresh, cure. That or BPs you could actually use as freely as normal mages. I know there are hate issues, but I'd like to hear whoever thinks a cure III every 60 seconds is balanced due to hate generation of cure III. If anything the healing ruby BP should be 10 seconds recast due to cheap MP. But certainly not 60 seconds.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Summoner is a job that has access to all subs on their main job, for 1 spell/ability a minute. But for some reason you can't main heal with 1 cure a minute. You can't debuff a mob with 1 debuff a minute. You can't chain mobs with 1 rage a minute. (Though that is more about MP in the end). You can barely buff a party with a 1 minute recast on buffs... the flaw there is that they last 1.5 min before ridiculous over cap extensions. Try having 30 seconds duration songs, boosted by skill over cap, and see if anyone would ever party with BRD.

MP cost down
Recast timer down
Duration up
Job fixed

It is that simple. Takes 10 minutes tops to do. And is 10 years too late.

smn and nin are due for a juicy, juicy update. smn overdue, in fact.

SE certainly doesn't seem to know what they are doing.

Melee -> free super haste set.

Summoner -> Well, -1 perpetuation pants SOMEWHERE hidden in the game. Try and find it if you can!

Could we at least get our essential gear as obvious and simple as other jobs do?

@$&holes are like opinions, everyone has one.

Usually I don't 'cry and complain', usually I just answer people's questions or post something I discovered which doesn't seem common (ie when I noticed hastega was changed). Was just annoyed thinking "with the uncapped hastega, I was max at 75, and now I have to work my ass off skilling summoning magic back up at 80 to get back to max again, when other jobs never have to do something like that". Spent awhile (hours) soloing imps in caedarva, and skeletons in KRT, and still not capped. Maybe the monthly payment in blood also attributed to my crankiness? I don't know.

And I was a bit harsh before, and I apologize. I actually have seen a lot of your posts before, and never had anything against you (and I think I remember everyone hating craftermath?). And I found your killing ifrit posts quite useful if I remember correctly. So, I apologize for what I said before. You don't have to accept it or anything, just throwing it out there.



And that actually sounds like a really good idea. Kind of like Ready on beastmaster, as well (and quick draw of course but I mean beast being another pet job). I love ready on my beast, though I think 'ready' would be bad on summoner (if they made it more than one charge for high level bloodpacts). So yeah scholar charges would be good. I like the charge system, only job I haven't got to play with as much that uses it is COR.

I was thinking recasts like that too... like healing ruby 1 -> 10 second recast or something. Healing Ruby 2 longer recast... but the high level things would probably end up just giving you a long recast anyways, and it'd only really be that great for main healing with carbuncle.

The charges, you would build while resting mp, which is a plus. And you can also bust off those charges on a boss quickly, which is also nice. I just think if they did charges it should be separate, like dancer timers on flourishes and stuff. Rage charges and Ward charges.

They just changed like everything I complained about in here... I love you SE!

While I do appreciate them reducing the 76-80 perp. nerf...I'm not holding my breath that it's going to be anything major.

They specified it for 76+ SMN, which leaves me to think it's either just removing one of the bumps (maybe spreading them out across both limit caps). Or maybe we'll pick up a trait that reduces perp. somehow other than just Favour, or perhaps in conjunction with Favour, or they're adding new gears more readily obtainable. So many paths they could follow for this level range, who knows what they have in store.

But at least they did throw us a bone so we know that SOMETHING is coming so we can breath a sigh of relief finally. Also nice to know that the 4000+ mobs I've killed so far for 4 of the -5 perp staves may actually prove to benefit me rather than just reset me now.

Raist

The problem is that they could eliminate perp costs altogether and I'll bet Summoners still generally wouldn't leave their avatars out. Sure there may be situations where they are just fooling around and would leave it out, just like now, but avatar melee in its current form will never do more damage than BP & release. Even the merit BPs which benefit from TP, you can only do so many of those before you run out of MP and need to rest. At that point, resting is more beneficial than leaving your avatar out and waiting for MP to refresh enough for another BP. The avatar melee damage, and the damage boost from TP, is minuscule compared to the benefit offered by 30 seconds of resting followed by a BP.

I still keep coming back to my age-old suggestion: Keep perpetuation as-is and let Summoners rest with their avatar out. This is the only way to truly let avatars stay out in most scenarios without drastically changing the way SMN works. Either that or feeding us so much MP that we can literally leave our avatar out and spam BPs indefinitely without needing to rest... which seems to be the direction they may be leaning toward but in my opinion would kind of take something away from the job. I like that SMN has to juggle so many priorities; it makes the job challenging. We shouldn't be able to have our cake and eat it too. It shouldn't be impossible to run out of MP, and unless that's the case, resting to recover MP for more BPs will always be more beneficial than just leaving the avatar out.

Beak +1, Qiqirn+1, antivenom + clear mind V + wizard cookie
in all -perp gear still results in 40 - whatever your perp is (my garuda being 0), which can be even higher if dark element avatar, non garuda/weather head, hmp back, grip, relaxing, star ring, legs, etc

Yeah it pales in comparison to full out hMP gear but it's not entirely terrible

However, with max bloodpact usage you only get in 3 ticks between bps... With refresh and a decent build it'd kinda cover the mp sink

Can always gear swap crazy too and hMP only on the ticks

I don't think there is any suggestion except "raise perpetuation" that would possibly make the situation worse though. So you have dozens of solutions to make it better.

I'd rather they upped avatar accuracy and either base damage or TP multiplier. I'd rather an incentive to leave them out rather than a "might as well."

As for meleeing, we have a precarious combination of a PUP mindset on equips with a mage's selection in gear. I wish they'd put us on more things like Spurrer Beret.