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  1. #1
    Player
    Join Date
    Aug 2017
    Posts
    9

    SMN is destroying battle content. Please consider adjusting it.

    This has been a popular topic of discussion for roughly 5 months now. Many conversations or discussions on all sorts of forums regarding higher battles devolve to 'just use smns'. The playerbase largely thinks of it as a running joke. Now, common opinion does not make something true. Fortunately, we can easily quantify the requirements for a successful SMN burn as opposed to other jobs.

    When setting up a SMN group, you simply need 3 SMN, a RUN, a GEO, and a COR. The SMNs need competitive gear to be sure, the other jobs do not. Given that 3 SMNs can output enough damage in 30 seconds to kill many high end targets(Warder of Courage, Kirin(Escha-Ru'aun), Albumen, Teles, Zerde, Vinipata, Erinys, Schah), and RUN's level 96 ability 'Odyllic Subterfuge' reduces the chance of the monster landing any status effects to the minimum value for 30 seconds, you have very little risk of failure. This setup is not only the fastest and easiest to create, but the fastest and most reliable in execution.

    For most of these NMs, 6-man wins using any other strategy are nonexistant. The ones that have been done require a level of gear and coordination far exceeding what SMNs need to do so. Schah in particular is problematic, as the encounter seems to be designed around clearing a succession of 14 adds. SMN does so much damage that players can skip this entirely, reducing what should be a complex and challenging fight with many different damage and status effect sources to 3 macro presses each for a RUN, GEO, COR and spamming a single macro for 3 SMNs.

    Furthermore, SMN burns are exclusionary, requiring you limit the number of non-SMNs to a bare minimum to keep the monster's hp low enough that it dies during the duration of special abilities. That's right, SMN does so much more damage in this case that no other job can even hope to replace them. In the event other jobs besides the bare essentials are brought, it's primarily as a 'leech', someone who is contributing nothing to the fight and only allowed to be present by virtue of the SMNs. Allowing one job to have all this power over the rest is ridiculous.

    Traditionally, when a setup has dominated all others, an adjustment has been made to either bring other setups in line with it or reduce the dominance. Given new content is few and far between and Reisenjima NMs are a large part of current endgame, I believe reducing the dominance is the better path. Buffing every job to the same level would simply remove any challenge left in this game.

    This has been brought up before, to no response. I'm sure if there is a reason it is being left as is, players would be glad to hear it. Many people I know have quit, feeling their jobs no longer have a place. Please consider the damage output when stacking the following abilities:
    -Astral Flow
    -Astral Conduit
    -Indi-Torpor(Idris enhanced)
    -Geo-Frailty(Idris enhanced)
    -Drachen Roll
    -Beast Roll
    in combination with Volt Strike throughout the duration. SMN can reach numbers exceeding 700,000 damage in 30 seconds. Unless players are missing something, no other job is able to create half of that damage in that timeframe, even with twice as many support jobs enhancing their damage.

    My suggestion is to reduce the attack/defense ratio cap for avatars by roughly 40% and reduce astral conduit to a maximum of 5 blood pacts. With this adjustment, SMN would still be capable of creating the highest spike damage of any job by using their ultimates. Understandably, SMN ultimates have a history of being used in this manner and it makes sense to continue it. However, allowing them to defeat the hardest fights in the game with no opposition from the monsters is ridiculous.

    Thank you to anyone reading for your time, I understand this is a lengthy post for a short problem, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible in underlining the issues with it.
    (13)
    Last edited by Rawfury; 08-06-2017 at 07:25 AM. Reason: forgot schah in list of t4

  2. #2
    Player Shiyo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    705
    Character
    Kitori
    World
    Bahamut
    Main Class
    NIN Lv 99
    Yes.
    Job is literally destroying any difficulty this game has. It's completely absurd it's been allowed to go on for SEVEN months.
    (6)

  3. #3
    Player Gwydion's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Posts
    990
    Character
    Galkashield
    World
    Asura
    Main Class
    THF Lv 1
    Agree 100%.

    I'm also bothered that this approach is allowed for SMNs but was recently taken away for Beastmasters (nerf from 20 yalms down to 7 yalms).

    I sincerely hope this is unintentional and balance amongst jobs restored to reasonable levels.
    (5)

  4. #4
    Player
    Join Date
    Jan 2012
    Posts
    645
    Technically it was taken away from BLMs too, via the Geo nerfs, but I don't believe the answer is more nerfs, SMN isn't "destroying" battle content, it's the last non-frustrating way to do it, take that away too, and you're not going to just make me stop playing SMN, you're going to "destroy" battle content by just putting it altogether out of reach of a lot of players, or making it annoying enough that they simply won't do it anymore, if they nerfed SMN tomorrow, I simply wouldn't do any more aeonics until something else changed to make it easier.

    I'd rather Bsts get their range back, Blms get their Macc back, and melees actually be able to resist debuffs like they could when Vex Attune actually did anything.

    As to knowing people that have quit, for me, that came when each of these other things were nerfed.... all that nerfing SMN will do is make more people quit.

    Rather than balance everything by making everyone equally miserable, how about let us all actually do the content?
    (0)
    Last edited by Selindrile; 08-06-2017 at 02:16 PM.

  5. #5
    Player Shiyo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    705
    Character
    Kitori
    World
    Bahamut
    Main Class
    NIN Lv 99
    Quote Originally Posted by Selindrile View Post
    Technically it was taken away from BLMs too, via the Geo nerfs, but I don't believe the answer is more nerfs, SMN isn't "destroying" battle content, it's the last non-frustrating way to do it, take that away too, and you're not going to just make me stop playing SMN, you're going to "destroy" battle content by just putting it altogether out of reach of a lot of players, or making it annoying enough that they simply won't do it anymore, if they nerfed SMN tomorrow, I simply wouldn't do any more aeonics until something else changed to make it easier.

    I'd rather Bsts get their range back, Blms get their Macc back, and melees actually be able to resist debuffs like they could when Vex Attune actually did anything.

    As to knowing people that have quit, for me, that came when each of these other things were nerfed.... all that nerfing SMN will do is make more people quit.

    Rather than balance everything by making everyone equally miserable, how about let us all actually do the content?
    Game doesn't need to be made easier. The hardest bosses should actually be hard. Also power creep is bad, I'm absolutely sick of MMO's allergies to nerfs. Nerfs are good, you want MMO's to be hard.
    (4)

  6. #6
    Player Hawklaser's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Posts
    243
    Character
    Loftythoughts
    World
    Siren
    Main Class
    DRG Lv 99
    Quote Originally Posted by Shiyo View Post
    Game doesn't need to be made easier. The hardest bosses should actually be hard. Also power creep is bad, I'm absolutely sick of MMO's allergies to nerfs. Nerfs are good, you want MMO's to be hard.
    No, you don't want them to be hard. You want them to be challenging, but also complete-able by a good portion of your playerbase. The problem with a lot of MMO's is they make the endgame so hard only like 5% of players can complete due to life restrictions. IE average player can't sit down for a week and put in the 70 some hours of prep when content first arrives in order to clear it, can take them months or more especially if it involves competing for a NM pop. Then 1 of 2 things happen, the content becomes super easy with gear from the content so people can be carried through it, or it gets nerfed down to trivial status.

    The real trick to keeping MMO's successful is ensuring there is a meaningful goal people can keep working towards for a while, so they can build the social connections that help keep them around when in a lull between goals. Super Hard, and Super Easy doesn't do that, need the right balance so that those who can't play often can still feel like they are making progress.
    (7)

  7. #7
    Player Shiyo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    705
    Character
    Kitori
    World
    Bahamut
    Main Class
    NIN Lv 99
    I'd really, really, really REALLY appreciate a developer response. There is no way these developers care so little about their game they would let one single job, 1/22 of the jobs, completely trivalize and break their entire game in half.
    (2)

  8. #8
    Player
    Join Date
    Jan 2012
    Posts
    645
    Designing content that will only be completed by a small portion of your playerbase is a waste of dev time logically for the longevity of the MMO, powercreep is necessary to motivate your playerbase, and healthy, when managed appropriately, honestly this is one of the things FFXI has done better than most MMOs (Outside of adjusting Enmity to go along with it >.>).

    Easier and harder are relative, a lot of difficulty in XI comes down to randomness, which I feel is unfortunate, does WoC decide to benediction multiple times? Does it decide to charm more times than you have items to mitigate it? Etc, this sort of roguelike rng difficulty may appeal to some, but definitely not to me.

    Difficulty is also relative, what feels hard to you may not feel hard to someone else, the sweet spot is (as Hawklaser said) content that feels challenging, but also completable, by most of the players in the game, so only the extreme ends feel that it's too easy, or too hard.
    (0)

  9. #9
    Player
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Posts
    1,552
    Quote Originally Posted by Selindrile View Post
    Designing content that will only be completed by a small portion of your playerbase is a waste of dev time logically for the longevity of the MMO, powercreep is necessary to motivate your playerbase, and healthy, when managed appropriately, honestly this is one of the things FFXI has done better than most MMOs (Outside of adjusting Enmity to go along with it >.>).

    Easier and harder are relative, a lot of difficulty in XI comes down to randomness, which I feel is unfortunate, does WoC decide to benediction multiple times? Does it decide to charm more times than you have items to mitigate it? Etc, this sort of roguelike rng difficulty may appeal to some, but definitely not to me.

    Difficulty is also relative, what feels hard to you may not feel hard to someone else, the sweet spot is (as Hawklaser said) content that feels challenging, but also completable, by most of the players in the game, so only the extreme ends feel that it's too easy, or too hard.
    Master Trials ring a bell? Thankfully the backlash on those was so heavy that they've stopped adding more, but logic does not always apply to the dev team. ^^;;
    (1)
    “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”

  10. #10
    Player Shiyo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    705
    Character
    Kitori
    World
    Bahamut
    Main Class
    NIN Lv 99
    Content being difficult for 21/22 jobs and something you can sleep walking doing on 1/22 is not how a game should function.
    (3)

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