SMN is destroying battle content. Please consider adjusting it.

[Shiyo]

and expecting an overhaul of the entirety of endgame just so SMN can continue to be overpowered is laughably shortsighted. As is, you can trivialize over 80% of the content players would consider challenging by simply abusing SMN's 1hr.

Yep, this is 100% the main problem. I can't believe summoner mains think that their job is ok, it's just the game is badly designed. Like seriously? Open your eyes.

[Zeargi]

I'm getting the 700,000 number from actual parses of t4 using full BiS SMN. I did not isolate conduit or do a hard statistical analysis, but typically the numbers seen are in that range. It's entirely possible if you strictly count conduit pacts and not an initial apogee usage, the average would be as low as 550-600k. This is 18-20k DPS.

And that was YOUR SMN? If so, that is pretty impressive

Ultimately, how can it be fixed? I feel that your suggestion hurts SMNs that want to use AC in other ways than just spamming Volt Strike, and the ATT/DEF 40% would hurt SMN that want to do other things solo. A 20% reduce to ATT and maybe a change to the JP Categories like the Physical Att or BPD?

Yep, this is 100% the main problem. I can't believe summoner mains think that their job is ok, it's just the game is badly designed. Like seriously? Open your eyes.

Also, you've still not added anything helpful to this conversation at all. At least Rawfury is trying to address this from a technical sense.

[Rawfury]

My suggestion was just a crude estimation of what would make SMN zergs success rate comparable to melee with similar preparation(you could probably still win with enough SMNs, but you wouldn't be winning with a halfass group and you'd take more than the length of conduit.. basically you would need to consider an actual tank and holding strategy and entertain the NMs mechanics).

Obviously it's not the only way to accomplish it, and a similar damage reduction could be implemented by doing as Saevel suggested and treating it similarly to BLMs. The interval would need to be longer, perhaps every BP after the first will receive a 30 > 60 > 90% damage reduction with the reduction dropping by 1 tier every 5 seconds. As far as gameplay, my concern with that is that it would interfere with groups using large amounts of SMN as a hate-free ranged DD, similar to RNG. Perhaps it wouldn't interfere enough to discourage them, though.

In a more practical sense, SE's limited staff probably can't easily implement something like that. We know they can manipulate the existing values that result in the damage they do.

[Urmom]

100% less support would be 0% support, which is not the case. Pre-pop buff/drop COR is also a thing for melee groups due to HP scaling, so that's kinda iffy as a point. BRD doesn't really apply to SMN (or BLM) output though, so we're still looking at using both of the other relevant support jobs. If a group comprised of only SMN was the norm and still pulling off <60sec kills, then I'd see this as being a bigger issue.

I've been splattered by AOEs at the bottom of the hill in Reisenjima and I'm sure that I was more than normal max casting distance at the very least, so I personally don't like relying on height differences to avoid AOE if possible.

I don't want what happened to BST to happen to any other job. I don't play SMN, but I do sympathize with them as a fellow pet job. Kneejerk over-nerfing is always a bad thing. Even though I am quite irritated that there were no accompanying adjustments to JAs/traits to encourage master melee, I can still kinda/sorta get what the devs said was the reason for the BST JA distance nerf, but the concept of a SMN swinging away next to their avatar just isn't there compared to BST lore. (You also forgot about the more recent anti-Death nerf for BLM on certain Geas Fete NMs, but no one complains about manaburn setups popping out 99999s..)

From what I can tell, a simple adjustment to JP categories might be in order to tone down a bit of the extreme difference between 0JP/2100JP, but calling for the removal of an SP ability is flat out ridiculous. For example, simply changing the bottommost category ("Blood Pact Damage") from "3" to "2" per point would drop BPD+20% alone, so there are definitely other things that could be adjusted if tuning is needed. There is no need to remove anything if solutions could be found by simple changes.

BTW, does anyone know how much BPD+ a BIS/master SMN has? I'm curious about how much of an impact something like my JP suggestion would have on gameplay in a practical sense.

Oh cmon you took that the wrong way on purpose. You know I meant as in definitely not takes zero so stop being obtuse. Prebuffing wasn't my point that said it works less well on other set ups because the buffs wear before the mob dies. My point was that overall takes less people to get the kill done. Again hit and a miss on the point. The point isn't that you can do it with only smns but that you need less support and less bodies total. This allows them to keep party size down so that they can take advantage of hp scaling such that they can actually finish before zerg done so they less likely to get hit by something annoying or just so it wont land. That said the dmg difference between swapping a smn and a geo isn't so huge that smn party couldn't still take these things down.

Some spells like Meteor sure. Moves and other spells well that's on you messing up. Even then there are ways of avoiding those as well though tend to be used by bst dds more often. And part of the advantage of doing it fast like this is even if mob has annoying AoEs they wont do jack with Odyllic Subterfuge which on it's own is merely an OK sp but when the mob dies in that time makes it really good

That's great but that kind of thing is completely unnecessary and not the point. Point is other jobs have been thoroughly nerfed for less and only thing needed here would be an adjustment to AC because outside of it smn is merely good and honestly distance nerfing them wouldn't really stop AC burns. Honestly I forget the death thing because everyone just switched to 99999 T6s so it was in the end kind of ineffective "nerf". As far as bst I mean what lore? It certainly not how the job had been played since it was introduced.

Already addressed but no that's not how the it works. More importantly if that was how it worked it would make it's dmg pretty meh otherwise. Whoa there no one said remove the sp just adjust it. Not exactly the first time an SP has been adjusted. Could just do something similar to the old avatars favor downside onto it or any number of things. I forget the exact mechanic but I believe in exchange for the benefits of favor you lowered your the avatars dmg.

BPD depends on how lucky you get with oseem and DM but it doesn't really matter for your jp argument

Let's look at this another way. Imagine how this game would look if the multiple nuke in short period nerf wasn't in place and fully supported rdms could consistently do 60k nukes. Even if only on mb it would be kind of crazy

Super edit: Should add that while it's not as good and takes a bit more coordination bp zerging is still possible and still fairly strong without AC. Imagine Apogee double bp, random deal, apogee double bp, WC and repeat, everyone revit and repeat for 12 bps in a short amount of time. Note might need some mp restoration in there too

[Nyarlko]

... Lots of stuff. Posts are getting long with full quotes now...

I was just being a smartass about a misstatement on your part. This is why I tend to use emoji all over the place, even though I seem to be catching flak for that recently. XD It is nearly an absolute mathematical certainty that someone will interpret my writing in a tone not intended whenever I cut down on their usage, most often resulting in unwarranted offense taken.

I know and understand about all of the myriad advantages of rapid kills, and don't think that I disagree with any of the points made on that front. In one of these threads I suggested a time based damage cap to prevent 30sec zergs. I think that capping early damage might be enough on it's own to reduce the advantages that a lowman SMN burn enjoy to hopefully also reduce the feeling of unfairness for some.

Disregarding RDM, did you know that GEO can get w/in MBD+10 of BLM's total MBD+? Thankfully, due to players being too lazy to deal with positioning for Cardinal Chant bonuses, we're not seeing GEOburns all over the place, but I'm still surprised they haven't become a thing. I doubt that RDMs would be able to carve out a party spot even in the case that the diminishing returns was removed, since GEO should still beat them hands down on MB damage, and BLMs would be popping out all9s regularly. I sympathize w/ RDMs too, but can't figure out what it's actually meant to be doing these days.
(Well, it was only MBD+4 below BLM before Ea was added, haven't rechecked to see if that changed, so I'll lowball w/ +10 lol)

Shiyo is calling for the removal of the SP ability Astral Conduit from the game, at least until it is sufficiently nerfed to make Shiyo happy. So there's at least one who is calling for that to happen. ^^;; I refuse to stay silent on this point given how ludicrous this suggestion is.

Your super edit requires a lot of JA usage, luck, temp items, and team coordination. Don't see anything wrong with that at all. ^_^

[Vashkoda]

So to summarize, the issue here seems to be people who are upset that master gifted, top-geared, appropriately buffed SMNs in a small party can produce spike damage over 30 seconds that can kill many NMs, and find it unfair because other jobs cannot produce that output over 30 seconds without putting themselves in harm's way and without inviting a ton of support jobs, thus buffing NM hp levels and making them almost impossible to kill. While some people see a solution to be reducing the danger posed by NMs so that melee can safely attack it, or to remove hp scaling so more support jobs can be invited, or to remove time-based mechanics so that quick-zergs don't feel like almost an obligatory strat, others feel that the only solution is to nerf SMN AC. Yet if you nerf SMN AC, your're still left in the same boat you're in now - extremely dangerous NMs that have been made all the more difficult after the GEO "bug fix" was done that resulted in a massive nerf to everyone. The only other strategy for Schah, for example, that I'm aware of *after the GEO nerf*, is using RNGs. Will the next call for nerfs be against RNGs? Is this really the best way to go about fixing this game?

Just don't post anymore, and let informed people tell SE how things need to change.... I have no idea what you think you're doing by having these opinions, but they are bringing NOTHING POSITIVE to the game at all, you need to stop posting them and keep them to yourself. If you want to see this game get better and become the best it can be, I highly recommend you listen to my advice.

I don't actually see you offering any helpful advice, Shiyo, in any of the threads where you advocate a SMN nerf. In fact you seem to be shooting down any ideas others bring up to fix the situation. And I think it's a little presumptuous of you to assume that your opinion on this topic is worth more than anyone else's.

For starters, it needs to be pointed out that this advantage of "huge spike damage in 30 seconds with a small party" is only really relevant in certain scenarios. In areas without NM hp scaling (and only in Escha/Reisen is it actually penalizing you for bringing more than 6), you can invite more support jobs to allow dd jobs to shine. The only penalty I've seen brought up is you have to share drops with more people (but if the content is actually possible to clear with multiple setups, everyone will eventually get what they want). Plus there is content (VW, Incursion, SR, Unity Wanted NMs, Ambuscade, Omen) where people get their own individual rewards regardless. In fact Ambuscade (and now Omen, kinda) rewards you for bringing *more* people, which many felt was a better system.

The other issue is whether NM mechanics favor a quick kill. People have already brought up Schah as the most annoying NM with time-based moves, and SMNs taking him out quickly seems to be 80% of what the beef in this whole thread is about. While well-supported and geared melee jobs used to take him out, the nerf to GEO support is ultimately what made that strategy too difficult for most groups. I remember how right after that nerf, SE announced they were going to adjust some NMs, and people assumed it was going to be the T4s because no one could even imagine fighting them with nerfed GEO spells. It didn't happen, and players were quick to switch to other strats to stay out of harm's way, like RNGs and SMNs. When you boil it all down, *this* is ultimately what all the hate in this thread is about.

SMNs can zerg, sure, for about 30 seconds, and on a single target. How does that help against NMs with multiple forms, or alternating damage vulnerabilities, or when there are multiple targets? It's not like SMN are the go-to job for every single NM in this game, and it would be ridiculous to go to the trouble to build a AC setup for things that other setups can handle (the time it takes to restore 1hrs can be more than the time saved by using AC burn). There is new battle content coming soon, and with all the fuss people have been making over SMN, I'm sure the devs are going to take these things into account. At this point, Escha is almost 3 years old. The devs tend to make content easier rather than harder as time goes on, so for those still angry at SMN because they can't seem to get aeonics any other way, just be patient.

[Shiyo]

Have not shot down a single idea except "CHANGE THE ENTIRE GAME BECAUSE MY ONE JOB BREAKS IT" which is NOT worth considering since summoner is less than 5% of total jobs in the game, 1/22, and no other jobs break the game in a way that requires every single boss to be redesigned.

Sorry that I'm not going to entertain summoner mains completely irrational opinions that the entire game is broken and summoner is fine while 21 other jobs don't break the game in any way or have any problem with bosses being broken, only one single job, less than 5% of total jobs does, meaning that ONE JOB needs to be adjusted.

Literally no one is "angry we can't get aeonics any other way", you're literally talking to people who have been clearing HELM's for years now and thinking they're "angry they can't beat it without summoner"? Really? No one is saying that, people just want CHEESY EASY GUARANTEED wins that require 1/100th the effort of any other strategy in the game to be DELETED ENTIRELY from existence.

It all comes back to the same old conversation from you summoner supporters " you guys are just jealous of our power!!!!!". No, no one is "jealous", we aren't 11 year olds, we are grown adult who want to see this game not de-evolve into a boring snoozefest of mashing 1 macro at max distance with 1 gear set and clearing 100% of the games content in 30 seconds.

This game has a fantastic combat system, we want to take advantage of it's fun combat and jobs, not abuse 1 very glaringly broken mechanic(Astral conduit) for the rest of this games life span. Adding new bosses that "can't be AC zerged" doesn't change the fact that there's a MASSIVE amount of content that's completely destroyed by this ONE SINGLE ABLITY. ]

AC is broken, you disable it until the developers can figure out a way to redesign it. End of story.
No revamping the game, no changing every boss, no even changing summoner entirely, literally removing a single ability that allows a single strategy that completely destroys the games battle content. My solution is by far the easiest, quickest, and least dev intensive.

I have no idea what the problem is with disabling something that is the entire basis of this strategy and is completely and utterly broken, until develop time can be spent to revamp it. It's literally the easiest possible solution you have to fixing this problem and not letting it infest your game for another 7 months. SEVEN months already is far, far, far too long, and it's completely unacceptable and downright disgusting that this has been allowed to exist for over 7 months now.



ADJUST THE ABILITY. DISABLE ASTRAL CONDUIT UNTIL IT CAN BE REDESIGNED.

[Urmom]

So to summarize, the issue here seems to be people who are upset that master gifted, top-geared, appropriately buffed SMNs in a small party can produce spike damage over 30 seconds that can kill many NMs, and find it unfair because other jobs cannot produce that output over 30 seconds without putting themselves in harm's way and without inviting a ton of support jobs, thus buffing NM hp levels and making them almost impossible to kill. While some people see a solution to be reducing the danger posed by NMs so that melee can safely attack it, or to remove hp scaling so more support jobs can be invited, or to remove time-based mechanics so that quick-zergs don't feel like almost an obligatory strat, others feel that the only solution is to nerf SMN AC. Yet if you nerf SMN AC, your're still left in the same boat you're in now - extremely dangerous NMs that have been made all the more difficult after the GEO "bug fix" was done that resulted in a massive nerf to everyone. The only other strategy for Schah, for example, that I'm aware of *after the GEO nerf*, is using RNGs. Will the next call for nerfs be against RNGs? Is this really the best way to go about fixing this game?

I'd actually like hp scaling as it as you allude to addresses other issues. Fact is right now adding anyone who isn't adding more to the teams dps than the average already there ends up hurting your kill speed and possible your ability to win. Which mathematically becomes harder and harder and potentially impossible after a point. This leads to people who are actually contributing ending up being deadweight or worse and places an absolute priority on efficiency of slots when there is already inherent benefits to going with less.

As far as Schah goes bst and smn can still produce good chunks of physical dmg from relative safety. Pretty sure see vids where bsts were the main source of dmg

[Rawfury]

Another update and this is still seemingly being ignored. If we could get a response saying that SE understands how SMN zergs work and is ok with them, with or without backing, it would probably go a long way to ease feelings of discontent.

As far as users are concerned, it seems like the developer team is completely unaware of this happening and has been ignoring it for the better part of a year. It doesn't build confidence in the future.

[Halley]

They're going to wait until a certain number of nirvana are made (this was the only way to ever get them created). Then they'll fix it.

It's too late to matter anyway. Damage is long since done, there is no damage control anymore. Even the shouts for HELMS is all but gone. Everyone already scummoner burnt all 16.