After the Shadowbringers Update, the Summoner and it’s base class Arcanist has some problems related to Solo Leveling.
Pet Attacks are now AOE Attacks
First, at lower levels, the Emerald Carbuncle [blue caster pet] now appears to shoot an AOE which covers quite a large range, and may bring unwanted foes [mobs] to bear on the player. In previous releases, the Carby did a single target attack which did not aggro other mobs. Here is an example of the size of the AOE that the Carby does now.
Apparently, anything hit by the big green area, which is the auto-attack cast by the Carby, is aggro’d on the player. As you can see, two king wespe mobs are now attacking the player. Mobs do not attack the Carby, but only the player. This problem was so severe that I had to dismiss the Carby when doing a Fate at my level to avoid being overwhelmed by aggro’d mobs.
Secondly, the Topaz Carbuncle and the later upgrade to the Titan Egi, were Tank pets, which took aggro from the player. This effect has been removed. The rumor is that the pets are all the same, doing the same attacks with same potency, except for animations. In other words, the differences in pets are now just Eye Candy. I have yet to study this in detail. But it is clear from my testing that the Titan Egi no longer takes aggro. So this is a significant loss for the Solo viability of the Summoner.
But there’s another problem with the Self Heal for Summoner as well.
Self Healing Potency
Another issue is Self Healing. At low levels, 12 or 13, the healing is very adequate. About 27% of total health.
This was tested by doing a heal when the health was below max, and then watching the screen for the floating text showing the amount of the heal.
At level 50, however, the percentage was much lower.
In this case, the heal spell, Physick, heals for only about 7% of the total HP. To test this, go to a low level area with a high level Summoner and synch to a low level fate – this test was a level 8 fate, which resulted in a 315 HP. Then leave the fate and hit Physick a few times. The heal will appear on the screen and float down. It’s hard to see how much on the HP bar because it moves as it auto restores, but the value for the Physick alone appears on the screen and floats down. These screen shots show 460 as a typical heal from the Physick spell. The total HP is 6652, and the Calculator says that’s 6.9%. Clearly this is so small a heal as to be useless. I’m guessing that out of combat HP recovery is larger than this value per tick.
These changes make Summoner more difficult to use as a Solo job for leveling with Fates, Leves and MSQ Duties. The Chocobo pet acts as a tank and mitigates some of these problems. However, the Chocobo pet is not available during MSQ Duties, so the Summoner is at the mercy of it’s own pet and the other NPCs in the Duty. Sometimes these NPCs tank and heal and sometimes not.
But it may be that the Scholar job is a more viable alternative to the Solo Summoner. Since the Scholar and Summoner jobs share an XP pool – that is they level at the same time. I have always opened both jobs at the same time at level 30 when they become available. Leveling in Palace of the Dead, Scholar is a good damage dealer as well as healer. The Scholar pets do not attack or cause aggro problems. I’ll experiment with Scholar as a solo job as I level my Hrothgar arcanist.
May you walk in the Light of the Crystal.
:ww
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