My role in a party...

[Linra]

Hello everyone, I just got Summoner a few days ago after getting my White Mage to 30.

Alittle background info on me... I love being a healer and that's what I've always been with my group of friends. But every now and then I like to have alittle change. So I picked summoner because I saw it had a good boost to my main job, and it would give me that change as I leveled it up... or so I thought.

Tonight we were leveling and sadly we had sort of an iffy make up. Paladin, Warrior, Warrior, Bard, Summoner Me, and a Blue Mage. As you can see we were mostly melee, actually that's all the damage was.... melee. And while we were killing crabs, on occasion they would increase their defense damage pretty much stopped. At this time even though I was the main healer at this time (sad kitty I was) I thought, maybe I can sneak in some damage to help. So I send Carbuncle in... and to my surpise he's doing the same, if not worse damage then everyone else.

Now I know it might be alittle early in the game, but I'm 14 on my summoner... and want to know... summoners DO, do damage right...? And if so... how? All I see right now is a big mana pool and Cure I which isn't even from this job.

Is the role of a summoner really a healer, or am I doing something horribly wrong?

Also I should add, the Blue Mage is changing to his White Mage starting tomorrow... I thought it was a great thing at first... but now I'm starting to wonder...

Thank you for listening and any help you may give,
Linra

[sevenpointflaw]

Re: My role in a party...

If there is no WHM available, expect to be main healer. If there is a WHM available, then yes, you can DD just fine.

[Kirsteena]

Re: My role in a party...

At low levels, Carby is incredibly inaccurate. Totally so. Later on, AFish time, smn can get gear which enhances avatar accuracy. Avatar meleeing isn't meh at any level, which is why most smn save their mp solely for bloodpacts.

Basically most people are not quite sure where to put smn, especially early levels. They often get dumped in the 'gimp' healer role (I don't think they are gimp, my mission set works well with myself as rdm and smn sharing healing duties). You get better bloodpacts as you go along, until you get to 70 and get the pwnage bloodpacts of Predator Claws, Spinning Dive, etc.

[Linra]

Re: My role in a party...

So Carbuncle's damage at this level comes from Poison Nails? Should I summon him, make him attack like once or twice, use Poison Nails, then release until the next pull?

I'm so confused about how this all works...

[sevenpointflaw]

Re: My role in a party...

for the most part, thats exactly how it works. Doing it that way is the "expected" way, as it frees up your MP to act as a backup-cure. That said, just keep an eye on how much damage your Avatar does when it hits. If it is doing about the same as the other melee, and you have a WHM to main heal, then most people won't mind if you keep your avatar out.

Double Post Edited:
http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/sum...s.support.html is another ongoing thread talks about it.

[Linra]

Re: My role in a party...

Ooooh okay, thank you both very much. I'm also assuming, based off of what I've read, I won't be seeing many Magic Burst or Skill Chain abilities until I get to 20 and get more summons?

Also, Poison Nail doesn't mess up skill chains if used in the middle of them does it?

[Kirsteena]

Re: My role in a party...

Yes it will. Poison Nails can be used to open distorition, so it will mess up any skillchains if you use it in the middle of one.

[Sethe]

Re: My role in a party...

Unfortunately due to our massive MP pool Summoners get put in the healers role, even without having any native cure spells (we do have some very nifty blood pacts for recovering HP and curing status effects later on...).

SMN really is a battle of getting to Level 70... which is kinda sad really, cos 70-75 you can destroy anything in sight

[Neppy]

Re: My role in a party...

Being a low lvl SMN can be discouraging from a avatar DMG perspective, especially with the fact their ACC is kinda bad. All i can say is, from my experience, avatars didnt contribute all that much dmg in a party til higher lvls, example=double slap and meteorite, until i got those I pretty much just used buff BP and enfeeb type BP in parties and released, oh and I also MB with them if the BP timer was up. Most of the time I spent between lvl 22 and 60 was spent as a main healer, which is fine with me, xp is xp, I never fell into the trap of "SMN is only a DD class. Main heal, no thanks" I wouldnt be lvl 60 if I said that, I dont understand why ppl will only take a DD job in a party and only think they can DD, you are not contributing to a party like you should. To be frank, SMN isnt a true DD class til 70+, anyone who says different is only fooling themselves and if they really knew the job and how well a SMN DD's at low levels they would see this.

[Icemage]

Re: My role in a party...

Please for the love of all that is holy:

Do not use Summoner as a subjob before your main job is level 50+ and your Summoner job is level 25+.

Until that point, the only thing you get that is usable from /SMN is Max MP Boost - which you could just get by eating a pie. None of your avatar abilities do anything useful when subbed, except for Garuda's Aerial Armor at level 25.


Icemage

[Neppy]

Re: My role in a party...

You have a point Icemage, but you could say the same about a /BLM with the exception of warp. A WHM MB with BLM spells is pointless and a waste of MP, either way a SJ specific abilities as far as spells go are almost worthless.

[jiral]

Re: My role in a party...

You have a point Icemage, but you could say the same about a /BLM with the exception of warp. A WHM MB with BLM spells is pointless and a waste of MP, either way a SJ specific abilities as far as spells go are almost worthless.

Actually, the Conserve MP passive ability of BLM, and Elemental Seal + Enfeebling spells, have come in very handy for me as a WHM. When fighting in a pt with no RDM, and a magical mob is pulled, Elemental Seal + Silence might save the tank from that AM cast. Or Ele Seal + Sleep to shut up that link if there's no Sleep II available in the PT.

[SharMarali]

Re: My role in a party...

It's been said before (mostly by me), but I also feel that /SMN is *USUALLY* useful only for WHM. And /BLM is about equally useful for WHM due to conserve MP.

Usually. As in, yes there are exceptions and I'm acknowledging that, but the exceptions are situational.

I see waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many RDM/SMNs and it makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. Yes, in the past, I have been asked to go as RDM/SMN for certain things, like fighting gods where the tanks wanted blink and there weren't enough WHMs who could SJ SMN. This was way before my SMN was remotely high enough to be considered a main job. That's situational.

The things that SMN adds to RDM for exp PTs, in general, are far, far, far, far, far less useful than the things that WHM and BLM add. And while I did used to know a JP BLM who used /SMN frequently in exp PTs, he also made his OWN PTs, made sure there was enough healing to go around (and that he personally knew and trusted the tank and healers), and THEN he would sub SMN. I don't yet know whether /SMN would be any value to BLU, because even though we know a lot about the job, we still have a lot of work to do on figuring everything out. My gut instinct would be no, /SMN would not be particularly effective.

[Karinya]

Re: My role in a party...

I think BLU can get auto-refresh just by setting the right blue magics, so yeah, /SMN wouldn't really work for them. /BLM might, though, if they're not getting more out of /WAR or /THF.

I have only used RDM/SMN once: the ZM headstone in Behemoth's Dominion. With a carby pull you can fight only one weapon and allow the other to depop and you still get the key item afterwards, and we had no SMN along and nobody else felt like subbing it. I agree that it's a poor choice for most situations - RDM go through MP really fast, so /BLM saves you WAY more MP than you will ever get from Auto-Refresh and MP Bonus added together. And RDM actually have the skill to use some of their BLM spells, but a half-leveled avatar is almost always useless.


As for main SMN: they can do some healing, but they're not as good at it as a WHM (with a few exceptions: if something really spams AoE status, Spring Water may actually be better than a WHM's status cures since they can only make them AoE once every ten minutes. Just make sure Lev isn't sitting out and getting paralyzed or whatever.) At some levels their MBs are on par with a BLM, but they can't do as much damage in between. Avatars can participate in skillchains but then the SMN can't MB because of the blood pact timer. SMN have a lot of unique buffs but some are too weak to be really useful.

In some ways, I think SMN is like the old RDM - they can do a lot of things, but none of them particularly well. They *are* the only job who can put Blink, Stoneskin and Phalanx on jobs that don't normally get them, though, and one of only two jobs that can improve another player's Magic Attack. But in exp, usually only one or two people at a time benefit from those - they're more designed for HNM or Dynamis situations, IMO.

[Coris]

Re: My role in a party...

Curbing this thread back to its original point, if a summoner is being used as a main healer at those low levels (particularly if you only have Carbuncle), then do you even do any summoning? Would be expected that if you were main healing that you wouldn't even use a single bloodpact?

I'm just wondering if that's the expectation for low-level summoner main-healing, especially since I'm not certain that Cure I will be capped in the 10-14 level range.