Summoner/White mage GAH!

[Legal Fish]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

I got a solution that would prevent further "fire abuse":

Level WHM and sub it.

[Taskmage]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

Conserve MP: If I'm not mistaken, this would only apply to the initial cost of summoning an avatar, which is pretty small. It wouldn't do anything to mitigate the perpetuation cost and BP costs that chew up most of a smn's mp.

Magic Attack Bonus: Increases the damage of spells you do by 20% with the first trait, obtained at level 20/blm10. Again, about this time your elemental magic skill will be woefully behind due to its half level cap. While mainjob blms will be starting to notice their magic getting resisted a little more, you might not even know what full damage looks like. MAB has no effect on the potency of your avatar's attacks.

Elemental Seal: I suppose this could be used to push through a debuff or a full damage nuke, but it only works every 10 minutes. Something, but really not much to speak of.

Blaze, Frost, and Shock Spikes: At times where you take hate, a small amount of counter damage probably isn't going to save you. Paralyze from Ice Spikes may kick in and buy you an extra round of life, same with stun from Shock Spikes, but you don't get them until level 40 and 60 respectively.

Warp and Escape: There is that ...

If you don't have the right avatar for the skillchain ... go get it before you continue playing smn. You can be excused from having Fenrir and Diabolos until much higher levels, but if you're able to get one of the elemental avatars, getting any of the others isn't significantly different in difficulty.

I hope I'm not coming off overly negatively, but there's a reason why the standard subs are standard and the fringe subs are fringe.

[Tekumel]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

Hey. I have only been playing summoner for about a few days now, and i have been subbing black mage. My summoner level is now 15, but at level 12, i got invited into a party in the dunes. Being a galka i got some bursts of abuse thrown at mefor being a mage. That is not what botherd me. As soon as i got to the camp, one member of the party tells me to go back and sub white mage. Of course i say no but he then has a massive rant at me saying "Your not playing your job properly, Summoners are ment to sub white mage noob!"

This then led back to the point of me being a galka.
After this i lashed out in self defence saying "Well, Taru's arnt built to play a melee job!" This taru was a warior red mage.

My main rant realy is that many parties did not invite me in as i "not playing my job properly" Summoners in my opinion are not ment ot be white mages, were are ment to SUMMON avatars and spirits!

Yes i understand that most summoners do this to get party invites, but me personaly i hate the idea. And to get abuse thrown at me for not subbing white mage, i think is just plain wrong. This game can be played by anyone however they like, and i choose to sub black mage.

Ok, my rant is over thanks.

You're both wrong, and for the same two reasons.

1. You're both judgemental idiots. Self-defense (which no, it wasn't) or not, "Taru aren't meant to play a melee job!" is the same god damned thing as "Galka aren't meant to play a mage job!". And you wouldn't say it if you didn't believe it.

2. You're both forgetting the primary purpose of a subjob: To bring additional USEFUL abilities to your main job. Personally, I wish SMN/BLM was more of an option. I understand why it's done, but I HATE SMN main healers. It's a waste of a great DD/support job. But...it's not. /BLM brings jack shit to the table, vs. the utility (main healer or not) of /WHM. Even if you're not main heal, you can still toss -nas, backup cures, etc., versus the 1hp nukes that everybody else has referenced. And a Taru WAR/RDM (If I'm understanding you correctly on that)...well, that's a double dose of lulz.

Life sucks. Shit happens. SMN/WHM is the standard, and until something in the game mechanics changes, the fact that it's the only subjob that's really useful isn't going to change. Learn to deal with it, or figure out what other job you want to level.

[Vildar]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

That is not what i am getting at. It is the fact of instead of providing advice of WHY summoner subbed with whm would be better, he invited me to the party, THEN had a go at me for not subbing whm when he saw i was subbed black. If he had given advice other than "SMN are ment to sub whm noob!" then maybie i would have changed.

[Chro]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

It's a double sided blade really, ye got Vildar wanting to sub blm for his reasons which is fair enough. But ye got the "standard" crap you guys are talking about as well. I understand that whm sub is useful, but if he really wants to sub blm then that's his choice really, standard or not he'll help in a party. Summoner healing is stupid in my eyes, it takes valuable time away from levelling summoning skill so ye have to sit there for hours on end doing it on ye own. You can only use cure 1, which is good for 30 hp but when you have a party of melee they tend to get a bit arsey if you can't heal them enough, and using cure 1 to heal a party of people ain't easy at all, i tried and failed.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

Conserve MP: If I'm not mistaken, this would only apply to the initial cost of summoning an avatar, which is pretty small. It wouldn't do anything to mitigate the perpetuation cost and BP costs that chew up most of a smn's mp.

Magic Attack Bonus: Increases the damage of spells you do by 20% with the first trait, obtained at level 20/blm10. Again, about this time your elemental magic skill will be woefully behind due to its half level cap. While mainjob blms will be starting to notice their magic getting resisted a little more, you might not even know what full damage looks like. MAB has no effect on the potency of your avatar's attacks.

Elemental Seal: I suppose this could be used to push through a debuff or a full damage nuke, but it only works every 10 minutes. Something, but really not much to speak of.

Blaze, Frost, and Shock Spikes: At times where you take hate, a small amount of counter damage probably isn't going to save you. Paralyze from Ice Spikes may kick in and buy you an extra round of life, same with stun from Shock Spikes, but you don't get them until level 40 and 60 respectively.

Warp and Escape: There is that ...

If you don't have the right avatar for the skillchain ... go get it before you continue playing smn. You can be excused from having Fenrir and Diabolos until much higher levels, but if you're able to get one of the elemental avatars, getting any of the others isn't significantly different in difficulty.

I hope I'm not coming off overly negatively, but there's a reason why the standard subs are standard and the fringe subs are fringe.

Okay, I figured most of these weren't BP compatable. Thanks for correcting me Taskmage .

Though, there is one thing I would like to correct here: when I said "don't have the correct Avatar," I meant, "don't have the correct Avatar on the battlefield at the moment of the Skillchain." I know it was worded weirdly, so I'll just save us from further confusion by saying "you can nuke for a MB if you don't have a (proper) Rage BP ready at the Skillchain."

[Cacti]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

i dont know about other people but when i am searching for a job, for example a tank, and i see a pld/blm i assume they are going to change they're sub to /war for the pt. I dont always specify to the player what i need them to come with, because i assume its understood. Some people like to try different things than the norm and that is ok when you solo, but when it comes to xp most of the time the tried and true method works best.

[Akashimo]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

i dont know about other people but when i am searching for a job, for example a tank, and i see a pld/blm i assume they are going to change they're sub to /war for the pt. I dont always specify to the player what i need them to come with, because i assume its understood. Some people like to try different things than the norm and that is ok when you solo, but when it comes to xp most of the time the tried and true method works best.

Reminds me when i went to a jungles party pld/mnk and i forgot i was subbing monk cause of soloing the day before @_@; Barely manage to get hate, then run through the jungles I did to change sub >_>; yay for invis powders /wins

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

A PLD/BLM could work, but probably only on paper. In theory, what better way to take back hate from nuke-spammers than to nuke-spam yourself? And there's also the Elemental Spikes spells. And, really, you just apply all the benefits to /BLM I mentioned earlier to this one (Conserve MP, MAB, Ele-Seal, Warp/Escape, MB a Skillchain you helped to create).

Obviously, though, you lose any Spike enmity from a sub-job, not to mention your stats would be completely out-of-whack: a BLM is basically the opposite of a PLD statistically; probably even more so than a DRK.

/derail

[Taskmage]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

It's hard to maintain mp for nuking, but Armando did an experiment with pld/rdm awhile back that held hate through flash, bind and blind spam - all have high enmity ratings and low enough cost that auto-refresh restores the mp used by the time the spell is ready to cast again. Also the combination of Flash and Blink mitigated a lot of damage, essentially negating 8 of the mob's attacks every fight. /rdm performed the necessary functions of holding hate and mitigating damage very well without adding unnecessarily to the party's downtime.

It just goes to show that unconventional subs CAN work, but you need to have an understanding of your job's role, its capabilities and what exactly your potential subjob can do to supplement that. It's not as simple as 1) Sub drk, 2) Get Attack Bonus, 3) ..., 4) Uber damage!

Here's the pld/rdm thread: http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/pal...rdm-works.html

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

Interesting stuff there .

I guess in this situation, it's not about the nuke-spamming as much as -which- nukes to spam. Though your advice on subjobs is pretty universal.

[Cacti]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

yep ive read those threads and while pld/blm or pld/rm is maybe viable for some situations and and level ranges its not the standard and as such not expected, being that way have my new tank show up as /mage would be a little suprissing and prob evoke some comment, personally i have no problems with allowing people to try different things and i've used the hate spike from a spell like bind to save a few mages before. The point is that when your using an unconvevtional sub some pt or players may like to be warned.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

The point is you have to know what you're doing. Look before you leap!

[Omniblast]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

Look. Everyone is telling you to sub whm. You don't like it. Too friggin bad. That's just the truth of things and how things work. The only reason someone would invite you in higher levels is for curing. Not for damage dealing. GET USE TO IT. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT DON'T PLAY SUMMONER!

Oh yes I did try blm sub for smn at level 60. I subbed blm because I was warping to my home point and I forgot to change subs. You know how useful that sub was? Well let's just say it was damn lucky that there was a whm and a rdm in the party with me. Blm sub did maybe 30 damage on a magic burst. that's pathetic. I could melee harder with the staff.

You will be curing from level 1-69. If your lucky at level 70 your Avatars will start dishing out more damage, but still paultry compared to regular damage dealers. 600-800 on a IT isn't much. You can do 1k+ on easy prey or decent challenges, but that's pretty much it. That's with full physical accuracy and smn af2 gloves.

You came here to ask for advice, so here's our advice. go level whm. Get your avatars (because it doesn't seem like you have any besides Carbuncle and some spirits). Then go level smn. Don't bother leveling without Fenrir either. Because that's just sad. Your reputation will go through the mud, and no one would bother to invite you.

[Freedan]

Re: Summoner/White mage GAH!

Well, if you don't want to put up with other peoples opinions you could solo. Then you won't have to care what other people think when they /check you

I've been soloing as a SMN since I got the job. I started as a SMN/THF, then at level 20 I switch to /NIN for dual-wielding daggers. At level 20 you can solo worms in Korro(tab) tunnels till you are level 24-25, then head to the Ice Pond in Qufim. Good thing about SMN is that you get access to a lot of very nice +evasion gear which will help you dodge those hits and make every shadow last that much longer. If you can afford it, at level 25, try to get a pair of Bastokian/Republic daggers since they add +2/+3 evasions respectively.

Garuda will be your Avatar of choice for dealing against Worm mobs. If you haven't aquired Garuda, do the mini battle. Garuda was a push over when I did it

Soloing with my Avatars actually gave me a sense of how a SMN was ment to be played, fighting along side one's Avatar and not just another /whm healer