What did they do to SMN?

[Kalise]

I'm probably a bit late to this, given we're in the second major patch of the expansion...

But I just got around to playing with a few of the DPS jobs to see how they work in ShB.

So far, my biggest surprise is with SMN. Which, yeah, I'm aware that the job is doing massive DPS right now, going by logs.

Where my attention is focused is the actual gameplay of the job, which feels really wierd? Especially given that StB has a pretty smooth and fluid gameplay for the job.

Things I note:

Aetherflow seems really out of place. Like, before, it was expended to generate your Dreadwyrm Aether (Sure, for the most part, it could have simply been replaced by putting shared charges on Painflare and Fester on a similar timer to that of the Aetherflow skill).
But now, it has been detached from this role and truly just seems to exist for the sake of existing? (Outside a minor benefit of being able to generate Aetherflow and sit on it for 25 seconds without worrying about losing time you could be generating charges)

Instead of having synergy with Atherflow > Dreadwyrm Aether, this is now just done via Dreadwyrm Trance. Which in of itself, seems less synergistic these days. Since in StB, you'd be spamming Ruin III (With occasional Ruin IV procs) for its duration.
Nowadays, it feels like most your GCD skills are instant cast anyway (Egi Assault I + II, Ruin IV and Bio III) so the Trance itself doesn't feel useful outside of AoE.

At least Firebird Trance actually boosts your skills, turning them instant cast AND giving them extra potency/effects.

I dunno, it seems to me that they kind of gutted a lot of the synergy and flow of the job (Even if the flow was pretty slow and harshly punished by death due to the arbitrary nature of losing Dreadwyrm Aether on death) and instead supplemented it by just chucking a bunch of potency at it.

[Lastelli]

Coming from StB, SMN feels a little weird. Then you realize that its rotation is composed of 2 disnjointed parts and it becomes really easy:

1) Aetherflow - Energy Drain/Siphon: this doesn't interact with trances anymore and instead it's just used for fester (single target) or painflare (3+ targets). Think of it as 3 sequential oGCD skills;
2) Trances (dreadwyrm, baha and phoenix): these are dictated by dreadwyrm trance's cd, which also determines how your dots are applied.

[dinnertime]

They pretty much gutted the depth of 4.x SMN, but 5.1 SMN is still somewhat enjoyable.

Apparently the reason they changed how Aetherflow connects with Trance is either because people were too impatient with pre-pull preparations, it was "too complex" or that having both full Aetherlow stacks *and* Aetherflow on standby before a fight isn't what the devs intended. It's probably the worst change of ShB SMN because it feels detached and lost plenty of flexibility, breathing time and tactical planning, which made it fun in my opinion. Now it's just mashing everything and keeping them on cooldown.

Sometimes I would waste an Aetherflow stack by refreshing again because I forget it exists now that it's its own thing...instead of being tied to your Trances, which made it imperative NOT to waste.

These days, SMN has the mobility of a Physical Ranged. It sounds problematic especially with the numbers it makes, but honestly it keeps it unique from BLM and RDM. That and SMN has been known to be the most mobile caster since ARR so I welcome that kind of identity.

[Karshan]

I found it way easier to adjust to from StB > ShB than HS > StB ; Having suddenly gates and overwrites on aetherflow felt harsh to adjust to in StB while the synergy DWT / AF felt more flexible and "flowish" in HS.

To me StB > ShB is a much smaller step ; yes all feels disjointed now, but since the clunkyness I find in the job mainly from tri-D reset and the weird "float" before Phoenix-t are kinda digested from StB, I find it easier than before. But still find it clunky to have a button lit to sit onto for an amount of time that is harder to track than a mere CD.

[SchrodingersWaffle]

I ended up switching to DRG from SMN cause while I like the Trances and Demis the changes to how you enter them felt like a massive nerf to the flexibility of the class from what it was in StB. At least DRG is pretty consistent with it's inflexibility.

[Porcelain_Clockwork]

Personally, I always used SCH pre 5.1. Decided to give my forgotten sister a chance and fell in love. The multi-rotations and openers my seem strange at the start but I got used to them quickly. I'm not the best at the game, but I can see what I'm doing comparatively, and no, I don't bother to parse. Just saying rotation is a bit wonkier know, but if you find a good place you can utilize it in, it's pretty effective. Especially when you top dps and res more than the healer xD.

[Nemekh]

I made this video reviewing the state of 5.0 SMN discussing at length how things changed from Stormblood to Shadowbringers. Things covered included the anti-synergies and how the job took further steps backwards in downtime management. You managed to miss some of the worst parts notably how inflexible the job was and the disaster that was Festerruins.

Later I then made a video talking about how SE originally intended for 5.0 SMN to play as per their official Japanese job guide book (which I now have with HQ scans on akhmorning.com). It featured a bunch of things that simply didn't work in practice like their Demi-summon rotations or impossible Festers.

5.0 release was pretty much a train wreck and it took much feedback and a lot of forum threads for SE to realise how much they messed up discussing the urgency of needed changes and giving SMN players a sincere public apology during a PLL and being one of only two jobs to have a drastic early patch rework due to how bad they were. (The other being NIN). You can see in the play statistics for the first raid tier how little the job was played until 5.1.

FBT was really the only good new thing they gave us and even then it made no sense in two ways of which one was fixed (Everlasting Flight's HoT duration increased from 20s to 21s to always be 7 ticks instead of 6 or 7 ticks) and the other being Phoenix's inability to react to the first Fountain of Fire for Scarlet Flame due to their coding and EF's animation lock (which is still present to this day and requires one of several methods to navigate around).

However, Egi Assaults being on the GCD instead of OGCDs was a big boost in mobility and reducing double weave cpm bloat. Tri-disaster having 300p on hit effectively being M3 B3 Fester is very strong now, even post DoT nerfs in 5.2. Trances now have a cd of 55s which opener up some powerful choices for executing encounters with the ideas of the standard 2 min cycle timings or rushing trances on cooldown each with their own strengths and weaknesses, instead of always being 60s leading to drifting and desyncing one's rotation.

Pet AI is still atrocious as always. I've put up a good number of bug reports and problems here on the OFs as well as listing them on Akhmorning. In several regards it became worse. It's dumbfounds me how other pets are coded with anti-ghosting measures like Bunshin and Automaton Queen yet SCH Seraph and Demis are not while hosting a whole slew of other bugs and AI problems. There are tweaks they could do, but honestly I would prefer a big overhaul to move away from the old, broken and dated pet system into something more along the lines of Yuna's VFX in Dissidia. Only arcanist job players truly know the nightmare and pains of wrestling with awful pet AI just to hope things resolve when you want them to.

That said I do enjoy the job and probably will always do my part to enjoy it to the fullest. But despite its potential and performance levels it is far from a perfect job. Very strong with its toolkit yes, but not a god job like some make it out to be. I would rather a job that functions cleanly and is satisfying to execute without all the headaches, even if it meant damage not being as high, than clunk and genuinely broken systems.

[Dyvid]

Pet AI is still atrocious as always. I've put up a good number of bug reports and problems here on the OFs as well as listing them on Akhmorning. In several regards it became worse. It's dumbfounds me how other pets are coded with anti-ghosting measures like Bunshin and Automaton Queen yet SCH Seraph and Demis are not while hosting a whole slew of other bugs and AI problems. There are tweaks they could do, but honestly I would prefer a big overhaul to move away from the old, broken and dated pet system into something more along the lines of Yuna's VFX in Dissidia. Only arcanist job players truly know the nightmare and pains of wrestling with awful pet AI just to hope things resolve when you want them to.

So I've commented on this years back and the key issue is Demi's don't have an auto attack were as Egi's and A.Queen does. The Demi's programmed nature is to follow the Summoner around and attack after the summoner uses a spell or commands a enkindle. The problem is it does sometimes does movement over attacks causing the ghosting problem. Unfortunately the only fix I can think of is give Demi's an Auto Attack rather than dependent on spell cast.

[Vitreus]

I'm hoping aetherflow gets replaced with a more interesting mechanic in the future. Personally I thought it felt better before and fit with the lore idea that summoners are slowly building up power, reflected in spending aether to unlock trance etc.

[HeulGDarian]

I miss stormblood smn .i hope SE return us to that in 6.0