Why Do SMN Get Such Bad Rep?

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Why do SMN get such bad rep?
 Midgardsormr.Oddish
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By Midgardsormr.Oddish 2010-02-01 12:38:14
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I'm just wondering why Summoners get such bad rep. Is it because the job isn't well-known? Does it just straight out suck? Is it one of those "situational" jobs? I don't understand why Summoner is put down most of the time (End-game wise). Maybe I'm the only one experiencing this?

I love being a Summoner and I wish I could use it more often outside of lolcampaign and other easy stuff.

Anyone know why?
 Bismarck.Maxse
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By Bismarck.Maxse 2010-02-01 12:39:53
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In my experience anytime that smn is good somewhere(a mob that cant be effectivly meleed.) BLM or RNG is better.
 Sylph.Hitetsu
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By Sylph.Hitetsu 2010-02-01 12:50:07
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SMN is a very underrated job, but that's mostly because of the players behind it and the abilities it gets access to.

Hastega is (if I remember correctly) 10% Haste. Whereas "Haste" is 15%.
Spring Water can be an amazingly powerful tool if the SMN has enough Refresh to keep up the MP to "spam" it.

So even if you're the best SMN in the world, you're tied by the BP Timers and Effects. If you weren't tied by them, then SMN would be so broken it'd be scary!

A lot of SMN's ability is Situational, but it's a very doable job, endgame wise. It's just making sure you are able to go to events as SMN (having RDM, WHM, BLM or BRD levelled pretty much ensures your SMN won't see daylight again)
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 Phoenix.Haltro
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By Phoenix.Haltro 2010-02-01 12:53:29
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They increased the boost of Hastega to 15% when they separated pacts into Rage and Ward, just throwing that in there. ^^
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 Fairy.Vegetto
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By Fairy.Vegetto 2010-02-01 12:54:12
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Because all smns aren't as good as Ninian! Once we all reach that level of smn sexiness, it will be a highly recognized job!
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By Lobsang 2010-02-01 12:57:57
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SMN is a cool job nxt to no hate returned when using Bps since the pet "dies" when de summoned every 45 sec's you can hit up 600+ physical blood pacts on cerb (amoung over HNM) and not need to be spam healed from spikes (assuming there on). Iirc spring water is the 2nd best healing BP carby's healing ruby 2 beats it (Don't quote me on it lol)Not to mention you can solo stuff other jobs cannot its pretty bst :P
 Remora.Ninian
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By Remora.Ninian 2010-02-01 13:00:57
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I'm on a cellphone so forgive me, I'll make this as detailed as I can.

Summoner is a neat job, and it really shines under circumstances in endgame. On the otherhand it really blows for other things, and then is surpassed by other jobs for other things.

What summoner is good at:

Kirin: Fully meritted Wind Blade does 1000k+ damage, essentially hateless. If you don't have that Nether Blast does 300-500.
Jailer of Temp: It shines on how it drastically speeds up lowman attempts at this. (RDMx2 + SMN)
Jailer of Hope: Essentially hateless nukes. Can duo it with a RDM.
Scylla: TPless nukes if you can time your BPs right.
T4 ZNMs: TPless nukes are nice.
Moblin Maze Mongers NMs: Hateless nukes, a level 70 smn with no skill can Diabolos them to death.
CoP missions: The rape isn't even fair.

There might be more.

What it's decent at:

Sky gods, other sea jailers. Can refresh *** Dynamis/Einherjar. Can't outperform other jobs though, and not worth the party slot especially if you have another job.

What it sucks at:

OuryuV2: I tried this the other day to refresh *** the BLMs. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but there were tons of add aggro and Diabolos would randomly fly across the screen. There's nothing to really do about that and it sucked hard. If ***randomly aggros anyone, don't bring SMN ever.
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 Siren.Ihm
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By Siren.Ihm 2010-02-01 13:03:34
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Nope, Hastega is 15% also.

I find everyone just looks at SMN as a healer without all spells, but an insane MP pool, which is why I barely touch my SMN ; ;.
 Fenrir.Nightfyre
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By Fenrir.Nightfyre 2010-02-01 13:07:00
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Hastega is 15%.

Timers have a lot to do with it. Hateless DD is rarely a significant advantage anymore, so that's often not a factor either. TP feeding is only a concern in a very few situations, as most are very manageable or stunnable. Your actual DD capabilities aren't as strong as other jobs, and the mentality of the playerbase and the metagame itself has unfortunately evolved to a point where specialists are usually preferred over versatile jobs.

When you're good you're very good, but those situations are limited for SMN.
 Midgardsormr.Oddish
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By Midgardsormr.Oddish 2010-02-01 13:11:38
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I guess you're right, Hitetsu. And I have 3 of those jobs you mentioned at 75. /wrist :<

Also... has a Corsair ever given you Beast Roll or Puppet Roll as SMN? Just wondering if it's awsum or not.
 Remora.Ninian
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By Remora.Ninian 2010-02-01 13:14:28
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Midgardsormr.Oddish said:
I guess you're right, Hitetsu. And I have 3 of those jobs you mentioned at 75. /wrist :<

Also... has a Corsair ever given you Beast Roll or Puppet Roll as SMN? Just wondering if it's awsum or not.

I get evokers/drachen. Makes wind blade resist less on Kirin, damage was consistantly 1.2k. Without a COR the damage was less, and resisted at around 500 damage sometimes.

 Unicorn.Kaomii
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By Unicorn.Kaomii 2010-02-01 13:16:00
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Summoner is powerful in it's own unique way. I think this "bad rep" you're referring to is the fact that a lot of people level the job to 75, then expect to play it all the time. To make it worse, they'll fight tooth and nail about how Summoner can do so much damage, or support a party, or whatever. While those situations are feasible, the truth is that what Summoner CAN do other jobs can do better. There are essentially three benefits a Summoner has that most other jobs can't compare with (some mentioned above, just repeated here for reference).

First, the amount of damage your blood pacts do are essentially hateless. The only real hate generated is from summoning within range and issuing the blood pact.

Second, you can stand at a safe distance to do this kind of damage. For most monsters, the range for issuing a blood pact is 17', but that scales up for larger monsters.

Third, if the situation is controlled enough for you to summon an avatar and walk next to the monster, Blood Pacts generate no TP on the monster, which makes killing a monster like Jormungand possible without it using a single TP move.
 Midgardsormr.Oddish
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By Midgardsormr.Oddish 2010-02-01 13:21:12
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Remora.Ninian said:
Midgardsormr.Oddish said:
I guess you're right, Hitetsu. And I have 3 of those jobs you mentioned at 75. /wrist :<

Also... has a Corsair ever given you Beast Roll or Puppet Roll as SMN? Just wondering if it's awsum or not.

I get evokers/drachen. Makes wind blade resist less on Kirin, damage was consistantly 1.2k. Without a COR the damage was less, and resisted at around 500 damage sometimes.

Cool. Do you have Pet MAB/Macc merits though? I have Pet acc/att so maybe i won't be able to chuck out damage like that.

 Garuda.Wooooodum
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By Garuda.Wooooodum 2010-02-01 13:24:18
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Certainly not a bad rep on our server. All the EGLS's dribble for SMN.
 Kujata.Daus
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By Kujata.Daus 2010-02-01 13:25:41
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The Collective Garuda (a bunch of garudas) are great for things that rngs are great at and arent prone to death like rngs. My ls uses them on Odins and T4 ZNMs and they're really nice for crate NM farming in WoTG as well as the BCNM that follows.

a smn can also help in salvage on charm happy frogs or pulling some NMs and helping on that one boss that does the 1000 needles type damage..a smn just takes alot of cells to work.


Just usually by itself a smn cant buff as well as other jobs (albeit my smn hasnt been to any raid since favors were released but my smn would still only go in an all smn pt or Id go on rdm to refresh pts) or deal as much damage as other jobs. Its one of my annoyances "Im going to kill this har monster!1 /starts summoning garuda........gdi they killed it already"

..you could probably cure as well as other jobs but why would you want to cure on smn if you manage to actually go to something on smn? I once went smn to the Tyger ZNM and some of our other key players didnt show..and ended main healing my sam pt and all I could think of was "I shoulda came rdm or whm" which is awful cause I should have been like "woohoo smn!"

unfortunately a smns use is limited to few things. I can only see a person going on smn all the time if its their only job, most everybody else has a job that is "better" for most other situations.

but I dont know if theres anything really wrong with the job. Its really fun to play on and I love soloing NMs on it..not to mention its really pretty to look at and cheap to play and theres nobody or very few to lot against you on gear.
 Siren.Temeraire
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By Siren.Temeraire 2010-02-01 13:31:10
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Against HNM, SMN is outstanding. I've hit Tiamat for 1344 before, and for 3091 in one ground (3 BPs). Those are numbers without a COR, but in my experience COR buffs add ~80 damage to your average with both buffs on. BLM can't match a SMN's average on Tiamat as far as I know, and BLU and RNG pulls hate way way too fast on Tiamat. Other CoP Wyrms are similar, with the exception of Ouryu (for the reasons mentioned above plus the fact that he has higher physical defense but lower magic defense than some others).

Perhaps the SMN's greatest asset is that you don't need to support the job at HNMs beyond refresh (COR is nice, but not necessary). This makes low-man attempts (i.e. half an alliance at CoP kings and wyrms) feasible, although full alliances with heavier hitters will still kill faster.

The reason so many people hate SMN is the sheer number of crappy ones that are out there. You have an army of SMN burn SMNs out there with one avatar and gear in 4-5 slots max. For every one of those, you have another SMN burn SMN with excellent gear and all avatars who can't play the job worth crap (you can usually spot these guys when they stand in melee range during low man/solo attempts on things like sky NMs). There are also more traditional SMNs who just plain fail (i.e. can't kite solo, don't know which avatar to use and when, etc.).

The job is crazy fun in endgame on things it is good at (SMNs are just plain worthless on zergs, for example) and on things it can solo/low-man (can duo Xolotl, for instance). The drawback is it is just plain terrible to level unless you SMN burn it. Pre-37, you will get invites to be a ghetto WHM. Post-37, you won't get invites at all, which means endless hours of chasing bombs around a volcano or snow field.

@Ninian:

That makes sense on Kirin and even on Fafnir, but Beast/Puppet is outstanding on most HNMs.
 Remora.Ninian
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By Remora.Ninian 2010-02-01 13:50:56
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To above ^

I have attack/mattack merits (like two in each) a Redingote and an abundance of skill+ gear. Maybe sometime I'll fully merit mattack/accuracy since that's all I use when playing SMN seriously. I'm not in a Kings shell, so I wouldn't know about that, but it's nice info! I'd love to do that someday on my SMN(doubt it though :<)
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By Asura.Korpg 2010-02-01 14:28:02
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Summoners don't have a bad rep when it comes to endgame.

Only reason why any bad rep would be attributed to summoners in general would be because of AFB.

Even then, its not just the SMNs who get the fault on it, its also the people leeching off of it. SMNs are there just to get the merits/exp for it.
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 Carbuncle.Agents
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By Carbuncle.Agents 2010-02-01 14:38:20
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I love smn for my soloing fun especially if you can trio avatars prime (2 smn20 just for smn warp and leech) that's mean easy 180K in less than 2 hours LOL and I can repeat everyday for endless money :)
For endgame my smn never see daylight with my other jobs like rdm, blm, sch, whm, brd.
 Hades.Ustav
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By Hades.Ustav 2010-02-03 04:11:19
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Unicorn.Kaomii said:
Summoner is powerful in it's own unique way. I think this "bad rep" you're referring to is the fact that a lot of people level the job to 75, then expect to play it all the time. To make it worse, they'll fight tooth and nail about how Summoner can do so much damage, or support a party, or whatever. While those situations are feasible, the truth is that what Summoner CAN do other jobs can do better. There are essentially three benefits a Summoner has that most other jobs can't compare with (some mentioned above, just repeated here for reference).

First, the amount of damage your blood pacts do are essentially hateless. The only real hate generated is from summoning within range and issuing the blood pact.

Second, you can stand at a safe distance to do this kind of damage. For most monsters, the range for issuing a blood pact is 17', but that scales up for larger monsters.

Third, if the situation is controlled enough for you to summon an avatar and walk next to the monster, Blood Pacts generate no TP on the monster, which makes killing a monster like Jormungand possible without it using a single TP move.

Pretty much this. I love smn and has great potential but... unfortunately other jobs can do a better job then smn does.

Siren.Temeraire said:
Against HNM, SMN is outstanding. I've hit Tiamat for 1344 before, and for 3091 in one ground (3 BPs). Those are numbers without a COR, but in my experience COR buffs add ~80 damage to your average with both buffs on. BLM can't match a SMN's average on Tiamat as far as I know, and BLU and RNG pulls hate way way too fast on Tiamat. Other CoP Wyrms are similar, with the exception of Ouryu (for the reasons mentioned above plus the fact that he has higher physical defense but lower magic defense than some others).

Perhaps the SMN's greatest asset is that you don't need to support the job at HNMs beyond refresh (COR is nice, but not necessary). This makes low-man attempts (i.e. half an alliance at CoP kings and wyrms) feasible, although full alliances with heavier hitters will still kill faster.

The reason so many people hate SMN is the sheer number of crappy ones that are out there. You have an army of SMN burn SMNs out there with one avatar and gear in 4-5 slots max. For every one of those, you have another SMN burn SMN with excellent gear and all avatars who can't play the job worth crap (you can usually spot these guys when they stand in melee range during low man/solo attempts on things like sky NMs). There are also more traditional SMNs who just plain fail (i.e. can't kite solo, don't know which avatar to use and when, etc.).

The job is crazy fun in endgame on things it is good at (SMNs are just plain worthless on zergs, for example) and on things it can solo/low-man (can duo Xolotl, for instance). The drawback is it is just plain terrible to level unless you SMN burn it. Pre-37, you will get invites to be a ghetto WHM. Post-37, you won't get invites at all, which means endless hours of chasing bombs around a volcano or snow field.

@Ninian:

That makes sense on Kirin and even on Fafnir, but Beast/Puppet is outstanding on most HNMs.

Blms can and will surpass the dmg smn deal to tia. Yes the dmg from smn is hateless but you must remember that Smn is limited to what they can do due to their bp timer(45sec to 1min) A blm is not. A blm that knows what he'd doing is able to to do 1500+mb to tia/faf not including AM2(bursted) I have personally seen SS of blms doing 2200MB burst2 to fafhogg.

Every job has an abundance of gimps that make the job look bad. For every 1 good <insert job here> there is prolly 20 that don't have a fking clue bout said job. I wouldn't blame it on smn burning as much as I blame the ppl. If you're a smart player and actually care about the job and care bout performing great then it's not going to matter whether you burn the job or not. Not everyone has that mentality though. Once they have that job to 75 they won't care much to learn how to play the job. This is true w/ smn burning and tradition exp.

Like i said before. I LOVE smn and it has the possibility of being a really powerful job and with the addition of Favors it just made it even better. It's just a shadow of what other jobs can do though...

Smn in a melee pt can have ifrit out for the DA and use Crimson Howl AND keep it up for over a min.

The bad stigma w/ smn are ppl that don't know much bout the job and the crappy players that play it.
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By Bismarck.Nevill 2010-02-03 04:54:16
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Midgardsormr.Oddish said:
I'm just wondering why Summoners get such bad rep. Is it because the job isn't well-known? Does it just straight out suck? Is it one of those "situational" jobs? I don't understand why Summoner is put down most of the time (End-game wise). Maybe I'm the only one experiencing this? I love being a Summoner and I wish I could use it more often outside of lolcampaign and other easy stuff. Anyone know why?

It's Carby's fault....
evil little neon doggy....
 Bismarck.Lighttaru
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By Bismarck.Lighttaru 2010-02-03 12:27:03
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Asura.Korpg said:
Summoners don't have a bad rep when it comes to endgame.

Only reason why any bad rep would be attributed to summoners in general would be because of AFB.

Even then, its not just the SMNs who get the fault on it, its also the people leeching off of it. SMNs are there just to get the merits/exp for it.


^^this, smn never had bad rep till AFB came out. I do have smn but im from old school n soloin/duoin imp is more fun for me that AFB. I dont care ppl use smn to burn it but at least dammit kno ur freakin job, dont b like this:
Siren.Temeraire said:
There are also more traditional SMNs who just plain fail (i.e. can't kite solo, don't know which avatar to use and when, etc.).
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By Koryuu 2010-02-03 12:50:06
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In my experiance the only situations where you NEED a Smn is where carby pull is needed to make things easier and thats usually Limbus
Assuming they dont overnuke a Blm can log out to reset hate and can nuke quicker with better timing then a Smn
Even if you get a Smn with 317 skill in a Blm party (4mp/tick refresh + MAB is better then what brd/rdm can offer) but if Smn pulls hate the avatar will attack and keep attacking so long as you have hate which can screw sleeps up plus the 10 foot range on favor gets up Blms noses if you need to move around
But why should you care? you play a game to have fun, if you enjoy smn then play it
I lost count of the people that jumped on the bandwagon and leveled whm rdm brd sam etc to be useful endgame and never get to play as anything else
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By Ramuh.Dasva 2010-02-03 12:53:58
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I think part of it is generally a blm will do better endgame if you have tanks. Sure the bps are damn near no hate but they also do less dmg per hit. Not to mention several of them are multihit. Either way it ups the tp given/dmg dealt ratio which is the whole reason people don't melee alot of stuff. Granted there are those mobs with lots of -magic dmg or MDB that can mess things up but by the same token there are plenty of mobs with really high def too. And well there is zerging or hitting every MB for every skillchain. Timers suck lol
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By Caitsith.Iphone 2010-02-03 13:33:28
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<3 Summoners I remember long time ago had 2 PLD's and 3 RDM's, 13 SMN's killed Kirin in 12Mins lol... Fun times.

/hate AFB's
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