A Summoner's Gear Guide

You forgot RDM.

Competitive to what though is the core issue in a 6 man pt, the geo? Geos got higher atk + additional atk via unresisted def down, not to mention malaise on the magic side. Brd? Brds still upkeeping more acc/similar atk via raw atk, and nearly capping/capping magic haste. Cors also boasting a high atk boost but also a huge tp increase via sam roll

All 3 of these are also putting in dd work, wheras smn is afaik stuck on staff so you got full swing primarily? Then theres just that in the time its taken you to get 2 of these buffs up(apog) the brd/geo/cor(might be waiting on 2nd roll) have their stuff set and are already meleeing. Putting bps on a charge style systems been brought up in the past to try and get the job closer to current pace but the cycle of summon > bp > desummon > summon next > repeat alone sinks a fair bit of time for what is generally substandard buffs and being largely locked to 6 slots means the others are going to be more desireable unless the sms there for its current "niche" which is largely mews these days

Wouldnt complain if it got said buffs but gotta agree it likely wouldnt move the needle, just means smn is less bad as a 2nd/3rd choice

EDIT: forgot rdm which maybe provides the least in group pt buffs but still drops eva by about 150 or so which is +300 acc iirc, frazzles near required in some specific cases i think, refresh 3 is fairly valuable for how free it is, haste 2 is haste 2, and its probably the strongest/2nd strongest of the above mentioned buffer/dds. Not to further mention any kind of crowd control that all but cor(light shots a lil limited) have ready at any given time vs again summon > bp cycle. Im sure the job could fill in better just cant see it being a 1st choice in almost any scenario

I don't know why we are arguing about hypotheticals.

Agree with most of your points, pretty much just re-stating what I already said. On this note though: -150 eva is +150 acc, the stats are literally just compared against each other directly.

there are absolutely ways SE could take the time to balance certain jobs but all of that assumed they want to. Smn has never been a priority for SE. they have given it some love over the years, but for the most part, it's a niche token job. there are a variety of buff that they have where a simple % conversion would make them viable buy not overpowered. as has been repeatedly stated, it takes time to apply them all, so in the average fight, no one's going to be putting 30+ buffs on the party. A thought, rework the favor bonuses to be more in line with the buffs those avatars have. what I mean by this:

ifrit would have a 7% attack bonus, (stacks with warcry) drop the DA from favor to 17% instead of the assumed 23% at cap, keep the enfire as is, because surprisingly it's the strongest enspell in the game.

ramuh could lose 20% of the crit rate (25-20) but gain the shock spikes effect. again, keep the enthunder by itself.

carby would keep the regen as is, since it's not that much to begin with, and gain the random stat bonus, though that should be reworked to align with the light stats, str, dex, agl, chr

conversly fenrir's stats would be int, mnd, vit and he should get the refresh instead of diabolos

shiva would get magic damage bonus and magic burst bonus, gain ice spikes and the crystal blessing at the 250 value

garuda would get the evasion with a 50% boost(55 moved to 82 at max), as it's quite weak where it currently site, in addition to the movement speed. keep the hastes as they are

titan would keep the defence bonus, with a possible tweak to the value being a % rather than a flat value in addition to having the earthan armor effect.

leviathan would have the magic acc tied to the cure potency received

diabolos should have his reworked to give the mab and mdb effects at a percentage based on the moon phase, ranging from 5-15%, also give phalanx based on the same phase ranging from 30-40.

cait should have the mbd reworked to be resistance to status ailments in addition to auto RR and an enlight effect

and lastly siren should be reworked to have subtle blow and pdl. the subtle blow effect should be cut to 2/3 of the value and that remaining amount given to pdl so at max, you'd have 18 subtle and 9 pdl.

the corresponding support bloodpacts that are absorbed into the favor bonus can simply be removed, as most of them, people don't use on the regular anyway. a few may need some new abilities to compensate, but those can be addressed on a case by case basis.

That's pretty much exactly my point, that's all weaker content that well-geared DDs can steamroll with practically zero risk. It's not fast & risky versus slow & safe, it's fast & safe versus slow & safe. Gear creep makes that inevitable the longer content has been out, it's always been natural for melees to eventually become the dominant form. Even Kirin back in the day, the penultimate "let's take it safe & slow" fight, eventually devolved into "just DD zerg it" once gear got good enough. That's expected.

When it comes to any challenging content being added since around the time MLs came out, none of it allows for the slow & safe approach even at release. CoD HTB being the one possible exception, but the fact he pops out adds that ignore tanks and chase mages with nasty auras definitely discourages delaying the kill.


Do you all remember wiping to something and then having one or two heroes somehow keep the NM occupied for 5-10 minutes while the mages raised people up, the ally recovered, and then came back to win the day? Was that not the greatest feeling? When was the last time that happened for you on newer content?

Ambuscade is probably the only challenging content where this still feels possible, depending on the months. I've had some epic recoveries in Ambuscade. Ambuscade is great, the last remaining well-balanced content that still has some challenge to it. And wouldn't you know it, SMN is actually viable there most of the time too.

There's little to no changes needed to the job in my opinion. It's the content. The content is what needs change.

Case in point. I disagree, it's not because SMN is worse than other jobs. It's because Sortie sucks. The boss fights are interesting and mostly ok but the way the content is laid out is absolute 100% garbage, objectives are too limiting, as are some of the boss mechanics like Setting/Vivi/Bane, and the BP wall should be reset by different BPs just like the WS wall is by different WS. If some of those problems were corrected, I bet a SMN group could down most bosses in 3-5 minutes which sure that's a lot longer than 30 seconds but it's not unreasonable. I bet it would allow SMN groups to clear 8 boss runs in the neighborhood of about 70-90 minutes.