Nerf SMN

[Khiril]

Alright look, I know you're famous for this, but it's time to realize something.

There are more aeonics made in a single day since the Geo"fix" than were made in an entire month the way it was.

This is beyond disgustingly broken. Look if you want people to care, SMN needed to be "fixed" already, no more delay. At this rate everyone will have all 16 aeonics by summer and reisenjima will officially be dead content if you don't move your *****.

((and you should take away every Aeonic built with Astral Conduit to prove a point that exploiting something so broken has consequences))

[Songen]

You realise your title is ASKING for summoner to be nerfed right? Your title pretty much means you think smn sucks and you want it nerfed.

Aeonic isn't easy if you don't have the right group or able to make random groups, only true endgame LSes have it extremely easy to get, and even that takes time for them and they actually make the effort to level jobs, JP them and equip em to be event ready, so yeah, they kinda deserve it.

Personally i'd be happy with one aeonic at this point but its odvious that ain't happening soon because ITS NOT EASY TO GET UNLESS YOUR ALREADY IN A GREAT GROUP.
Also, aeonic isn't ment for massive DDing, nor built for advancing a specific job's abilitys.
very few aeonics actually have WSs that don't suck and they don't get a 10-40% increase in the appropriate WS dmg like REM weapons.

They are designed to speed tp build while boosting SC and MB dmg (Which means its gonna offer very little for melee burns except for store tp and tp bonus and magic dmg (Which is more for SCs too).

SMN is already a strong job, and the nerf they did to BP tp scaling before did cause some problems, however they still deal a great deal and are still used for a major amount of events. they are still stronger and more damage dealing than alot of DD jobs, they buff at a higher rate and duration than alot of mage jobs, they even have their own unique buffs and debuffs as well.

So before you rant on about how smn needs a boost because of aeonic (Which is so unrelivent), go and see what a real smn can do and you'll realise they are stronger than you think. Get a mythic, 40-60% of jobs get a mythic to make em stronger than everyone else, smn's mythic AGIII does just that too. if you want to do even more dmg, sub sch, get yourself a "Seidr Cotehardie" and MB along with your smn, you won't lose any mp with that body piece when MBing a non resiste spell and they dmg is very high if you have sch subed for dark arts. 80% of smn staffs which are aimed for avatar buffs come with nuking capabilitys for the smn itself too. all honesty "Seidr Cotehardie" probably makes smn OP if you use it correctly

[Sirmarki]

Alright look, I know you're famous for this, but it's time to realize something.

There are more aeonics made in a single day since the Geo"fix" than were made in an entire month the way it was.

This is beyond disgustingly broken. Look if you want people to care, SMN needed to be "fixed" already, no more delay. At this rate everyone will have all 16 aeonics by summer and reisenjima will officially be dead content if you don't move your *****.

((and you should take away every Aeonic built with Astral Conduit to prove a point that exploiting something so broken has consequences))

Do you have some kind of anger problem?

Do you really think a company is going to respond or acknowledge your rude posts? You're talking to people at the end of the day.

[Aysha]

Uh.... Songen......


Nerf SMN

You somehow took this, to mean...


So before you rant on about how smn needs a boost because of aeonic

This?

lol. OP says SMN is too powerful, you're trying to say that the OP is saying SMN needs a boost.

......wut?

[Nyarlko]

NERF NOTHING. BUFF EVERYONE ELSE.
^ My standard stance on this issue.
...
I've yet to see any reasonable, rational, well-thought out or backed-by-evidence "Nerf XXX" posts in the 2yrs since I've been back....

Just because you see groups gravitating towards the ACspam setup does not mean that SMN needs to be nerfed. I honestly see a lot more TPburn groups running thru than SMNburn whenever I'm in Reisenjima. Even so, bandwagoning will happen in any class-based MMORPG depending on the content being done and so long as it's not due to a bug/exploit, it's not the type of thing that should be nerfed until there is data that supports doing so due to an overwhelming advantage over other classes in the same role. Do you have any actual evidence to support your request?

Resentment because >you< were not involved in a win does not justify trying to tear down a job you don't play because they were.

[Songen]

Uh.... Songen......



You somehow took this, to mean...



This?

lol. OP says SMN is too powerful, you're trying to say that the OP is saying SMN needs a boost.

......wut?
First: YOU called your title "Nerf SMN", so i presume your a smn who feel's your far too strong, if not, why talk about a job that doesn't concern you.

Second:OP means overpowered. I'v seen some incredible summoners out there that put the time and effort (Which is what your suppose to do if you want a OP [overpowered] job). they come on par of some of the most powerful DDs out there, however even they have their limits much like everything else

Problem here is rather than resolve a issue where other jobs need to be fixed to come on par of end game, you intend on bringing down another jobs for your own reasons

Now then, as far as aeonics go. SMN isn't used for all aeonic events, infact, from the ones i'v seen, they are rarely used, Melee burns and blm death burns with bst covering the multi-mob burns. these are the current things being used (On odin). SMN is used for stuff, event aeonic stuff and could be used for more than most, however don't feel it justifys saying it needs a further nerf, they already got one a few months ago, they don't need another. at this point i'm guessing you hated all GEO's too and wished they had a bigger nerf before than what they got. I may not be in aeonic groups, but i have spent so much time in reisei and escha next to those groups to say i RARELY ever see em.

How about you come up with idea's to bring other jobs up to a higher level rather than bring another down. the boost brd got was massive, but it still needs a bit more, better to boost other jobs to come on par rather than bring down another job because you don't play it or you don't want to equip it

btw, you missed to point entirely, you think smn's needs a nerf simply because on your server they are used alot towards getting a aeonic (Which isn't actually a OP WS weapon, its more a SC weapon and tp build weapon), how does that affect you? even if they nerfed it, if you don't have a group that's accepting you, then the problem is you, not another job

[Pooty]

First: YOU called your title "Nerf SMN", so i presume your a smn who feel's your far too strong, if not, why talk about a job that doesn't concern you.

Second:OP means overpowered. I'v seen some incredible summoners out there that put the time and effort (Which is what your suppose to do if you want a OP [overpowered] job). they come on par of some of the most powerful DDs out there, however even they have their limits much like everything else

Problem here is rather than resolve a issue where other jobs need to be fixed to come on par of end game, you intend on bringing down another jobs for your own reasons

Now then, as far as aeonics go. SMN isn't used for all aeonic events, infact, from the ones i'v seen, they are rarely used, Melee burns and blm death burns with bst covering the multi-mob burns. these are the current things being used (On odin). SMN is used for stuff, event aeonic stuff and could be used for more than most, however don't feel it justifys saying it needs a further nerf, they already got one a few months ago, they don't need another. at this point i'm guessing you hated all GEO's too and wished they had a bigger nerf before than what they got. I may not be in aeonic groups, but i have spent so much time in reisei and escha next to those groups to say i RARELY ever see em.

How about you come up with idea's to bring other jobs up to a higher level rather than bring another down. the boost brd got was massive, but it still needs a bit more, better to boost other jobs to come on par rather than bring down another job because you don't play it or you don't want to equip it

btw, you missed to point entirely, you think smn's needs a nerf simply because on your server they are used alot towards getting a aeonic (Which isn't actually a OP WS weapon, its more a SC weapon and tp build weapon), how does that affect you? even if they nerfed it, if you don't have a group that's accepting you, then the problem is you, not another job

Wait a second, Songen. Sorry about this, but you've made a mistake here. Aysha did not create this thread. OP in this context means Original Poster, which is Khiril in this case. Please be more careful.

[Songen]

Wait a second, Songen. Sorry about this, but you've made a mistake here. Aysha did not create this thread. OP in this context means Original Poster, which is Khiril in this case. Please be more careful.

you are indeed right about who made the post, however doesn't change the fact on the post.

as for original poster. i suppose using OP in a forum rather than ingame was my bad. sucks not being able to use 1 type of acronym and getting it confused due to the location used.

[Eaglestrike]

NERF NOTHING. BUFF EVERYONE ELSE.
^ My standard stance on this issue.
...
I've yet to see any reasonable, rational, well-thought out or backed-by-evidence "Nerf XXX" posts in the 2yrs since I've been back....

Just because you see groups gravitating towards the ACspam setup does not mean that SMN needs to be nerfed. I honestly see a lot more TPburn groups running thru than SMNburn whenever I'm in Reisenjima. Even so, bandwagoning will happen in any class-based MMORPG depending on the content being done and so long as it's not due to a bug/exploit, it's not the type of thing that should be nerfed until there is data that supports doing so due to an overwhelming advantage over other classes in the same role. Do you have any actual evidence to support your request?

Resentment because >you< were not involved in a win does not justify trying to tear down a job you don't play because they were.

You think every boss in the game should be able to be killed in less than a minute by a 5-7 man team?

[Songen]

You think every boss in the game should be able to be killed in less than a minute by a 5-7 man team?
Actually its more make every job a playable job in endgame instead of of a select few, however instead of weaking currently strengthen jobs, bring the rest upto par with those who already are at the top of the leader board

People only complain "Why is that job the only good job and mine is so weak? why can't you nerf that job instead", what nyariko and myself and alot of others too wish to say is more like "That job is really strong and used so much in endgame because other jobs don't fit the par, so can we adjust other jobs so we have more of a choice in our tactics for game content"

[Jakuk]

Actually its more make every job a playable job in endgame instead of of a select few, however instead of weaking currently strengthen jobs, bring the rest upto par with those who already are at the top of the leader board

People only complain "Why is that job the only good job and mine is so weak? why can't you nerf that job instead", what nyariko and myself and alot of others too wish to say is more like "That job is really strong and used so much in endgame because other jobs don't fit the par, so can we adjust other jobs so we have more of a choice in our tactics for game content"

With their limited developers, they are NOT going to buff every other job over nerfing just one. Besides, people will FOREVER pick a safe job that you can stay out of danger with than any other no matter how strong that job may be.

Hence the BST nerf only affected the safety of the job (albeit set way too low), the same thing that will eventually be done to SMN.

[Nyarlko]

The funny thing about SMN in particular is that it really hasn't changed much at all in the past couple years from an outsider's perspective. One of the first Escha-Ru'aun kills I was present for, I got to witness a single dedicated and well geared SMN kill a T2 in less than 30sec (using both 1hr SP abilities.) I knew that was something that was mathematically impossible with my BST, but it wasn't really upsetting to me, it was exciting to watch a job that I remembered as a high MP /whm utterly obliterate something that I'd had trouble downing. XD
(A couple weeks later, BST got beat down with the nerfbat, which still confuses me since what was done did not address the complaints about damage output, and my recent experience w/ SMN told me that SMN > BST as far as dmg output goes...)

So, SMN has been able to do exactly what the OP is complaining about now for a bare minimum of two years.. SMNburns are not a new thing either... The reason they've become the go-to EZmode/FOM setup recently was due to the recent GEO bugfix (and certain mobs gaining an increased resistance vs BLM's "Death",) shaking things up and making certain other strats (like Death spam) more difficult, not because SMN got some sort of massive buff.

Hmm.. A recent bugfix made things harder to complete for the majority of jobs.. Sounds to me like a buff to that majority of jobs would be what is called for here, rather than a nerf to SMN which only maintained it's own status quo. <,<;; It makes zero sense why anyone wishes to call for dragging down others to the lesser common denominator IMO. Unless the OP is asking for everyone to be brought down to MNK's level, alongside another ilvl world mob nerf-fest, in order to reduce the overall difficulty of the entire game, then the most rational choice would be to buff everyone back up to equal effect performance as before.

[Vashkoda]

The same thing won't be done to SMN. They recently even *boosted* the distance that SMN could use BP moves. The reason for nerfing BST this way was mostly because Matsui wanted BSTs to fight alongside their pets (they have dd gear and can wear a lot of heavy armor after all, so they can take a few hits. Not so with SMN). It still takes a top-end geared mythic master SMN to do the numbers people keep reporting, and usually several are needed to take down a boss. It's not the same situation as before, when bandwagon BSTs could solo NMs that would otherwise flatten parties. I don't know if the devs will ever bother to nerf SMN, but if they do, it won't be the same way they nerfed BST.

[Nyarlko]

With their limited developers, they are NOT going to buff every other job over nerfing just one. Besides, people will FOREVER pick a safe job that you can stay out of danger with than any other no matter how strong that job may be.

Hence the BST nerf only affected the safety of the job (albeit set way too low), the same thing that will eventually be done to SMN.

The stated intention behind the BST JA range nerf was that the devs wanted us to be meleeing alongside our pets... -_-;;; Since that is nowhere near the case w/ SMN, I sincerely doubt any sort of range nerf will be implemented. They also just nerfed the world (which is functionally a buff to players) so buffing survivability for everyone is not an impossibility.

[saevel]

Oh a SMN nerf is definitely coming though I think it'll be to certain avatar blood pacts instead of a distance nerf. The "SMN SPAM!!" is only when using Astral Conduit and a handful of avatar blood pacts that can do crazy stupid numbers.

[Zeargi]

Besides, people will FOREVER pick a safe job that you can stay out of danger with than any other no matter how strong that job may be.

Hence the BST nerf only affected the safety of the job (albeit set way too low), the same thing that will eventually be done to SMN.

Which still won't change the problem overall. SMN's major offset, is that it lacks the AoEs that BST had, THAT'S the real reason BST got nerfed. Still, the nerf to BST was too extreme, because it doesn't have the Job Traits that other DD jobs do. As it levels it gains lots of traits that won't be used at all, and there's nothing to fill in for the close distance now. It's not like SMN where the sole focus is the pet, or PUP where the Pets can be customized to fit the need. The over all problem is and will always be the NMs and how they were done with this whole iLevel thing


Oh a SMN nerf is definitely coming though I think it'll be to certain avatar blood pacts instead of a distance nerf. The "SMN SPAM!!" is only when using Astral Conduit and a handful of avatar blood pacts that can do crazy stupid numbers.

I doubt the Blood Pacts will be changed, but if anything it will be to the AC JP category. Still, People only see these high numbers, and don't equate the gear or other factors that go into making them.

My vote is still to buff other jobs rather than to bring others down.

[Jakuk]

My vote is still to buff other jobs rather than to bring others down.

I ultimately agree, but it won't happen.

[saevel]

My vote is still to buff other jobs rather than to bring others down.

So you want everyone to be doing 50K damage every 3~4 seconds while standing safely out of range? Guess we gotta give the NM's 10M HP to deal with that new power creep, and then raise the damage cap from 99K to 999K so the <new broke job> can deal 600K per attack and start the cycle all over again.

No SE needs to nerf SMN damage output by about 25%, especially under AC. It's the exact same problem BST had, doing amazing damage while being 100% safe. BST's brokenness had absolutely nothing to do with AoE's, nobody of any consequence cares about that, what they care about is how few people they can bring to a fight and still clear it in order to maximize the profits they make from charging others for the clear.

To anyone taking advantage of a broken mechanic everything looks perfectly normal, it's just confirmation bias. From a systemic point of view it's easy to spot broken mechanics by the sudden imbalance they create in the metagame. When everything is "Bubbly Bernie <Do You Need It> master SMN <Can I Have It>" then there is a problem. When the hardest NM's in the game can be consistently killed in under 60s by a group of SMN's, then there is a problem. When people decide that taking a group of SMN's makes everything magically snore fest easy to do, then there is a problem. Just a reiteration of the same issue there was with BST's and that resulted in a nerf, even while the users exploiting the BST mechanic was swearing up and down there will never be a nerf and the game was perfectly balanced. So yeah there is a nerf coming, I just hope it's not too hard of one cause I like a balanced diverse meta.

[Zeargi]

So you want everyone to be doing 50K damage every 3~4 seconds while standing safely out of range? Guess we gotta give the NM's 10M HP to deal with that new power creep, and then raise the damage cap from 99K to 999K so the <new broke job> can deal 600K per attack and start the cycle all over again.

There are already jobs that can do that kind of damage, and you've also have no grasp of SMN at all. 3-4s, hardly. SMN BP timer is 21 maybe 20 seconds. SAM, BLU, DRG, and DRK can all do far greater spike DMG than SMN can. Hell, even RNG and COR can do that kind of DMG while staying out of range of things. My LS was doing T2 Escha NMs, and every single fight the BLU and the DRK out did my DMG dealing 270,000+ DMG and that was without the requirement of using a 1hr ability like SMN has to.


No SE needs to nerf SMN damage output by about 25%, especially under AC. It's the exact same problem BST had, doing amazing damage while being 100% safe. BST's brokenness had absolutely nothing to do with AoE's, nobody of any consequence cares about that
It had everything to do with those AoE moves. How many of those Bandwagon BST used anything except that Grasshopper? And SMN hasn't changed with keeping it's distance from stuff. It's been like that since the job was introduced. The Trial Size Avatar fights, that was the whole mechanic. Use Carbuncle, run away, resummon, wait for engagement, and run some more, repeat. BLM and SMN are tied for having the worst DEF in the game. So I find it hard to believe, you would ask a BLM to hump a mob and try to cast while still functioning properly.


what they care about is how few people they can bring to a fight and still clear it in order to maximize the profits they make from charging others for the clear.
And that isn't SMNs fault. How many WHMs used to charge for raises in Valkurm Dunes or to use a Teleport Spell? How many LS charged for Dynamis/Sea/Sky Clears? How many PLDs have charged to be a tank for a fight? How many WARs charged for Cleaving in Abyssea? That is a community that is pure lazy and refused to help others.


To anyone taking advantage of a broken mechanic everything looks perfectly normal, it's just confirmation bias. From a systemic point of view it's easy to spot broken mechanics by the sudden imbalance they create in the metagame. When everything is "Bubbly Bernie <Do You Need It> master SMN <Can I Have It>" then there is a problem. When the hardest NM's in the game can be consistently killed in under 60s by a group of SMN's, then there is a problem. When people decide that taking a group of SMN's makes everything magically snore fest easy to do, then there is a problem. Just a reiteration of the same issue there was with BST's and that resulted in a nerf, even while the users exploiting the BST mechanic was swearing up and down there will never be a nerf and the game was perfectly balanced. So yeah there is a nerf coming, I just hope it's not too hard of one cause I like a balanced diverse meta.

SMN Burns are nothing new. Promy Fight back when it was a capped thing, People took 2-3 SMNs to Astral Flow the clears - claiming it had to be done that way. Waking the Beast (Carbuncle Prime) was done almost completely with an alliance of SMNs. But here you're saying that how dare these people take someone that has spent the time to MASTER a job to content. That is completely ludicrous that you're saying that at all. And what about those SMNs, have you taken the time to check what gear they have? A Nirvana, A Full Apogee set, a Helios Set, or many other vast array of pieces that are needed? People that don't understand and play a job, are equally bias. They're anger because X job isn't being taken, or Y job does things better. We as a community decide how the game is played and we can be the think tank to change things so that every job has an equal chance, but these witch hunts need to stop already.

[Songen]

So you want everyone to be doing 50K damage every 3~4 seconds while standing safely out of range? Guess we gotta give the NM's 10M HP to deal with that new power creep, and then raise the damage cap from 99K to 999K so the <new broke job> can deal 600K per attack and start the cycle all over again.

No SE needs to nerf SMN damage output by about 25%, especially under AC. It's the exact same problem BST had, doing amazing damage while being 100% safe. BST's brokenness had absolutely nothing to do with AoE's, nobody of any consequence cares about that, what they care about is how few people they can bring to a fight and still clear it in order to maximize the profits they make from charging others for the clear.

To anyone taking advantage of a broken mechanic everything looks perfectly normal, it's just confirmation bias. From a systemic point of view it's easy to spot broken mechanics by the sudden imbalance they create in the metagame. When everything is "Bubbly Bernie <Do You Need It> master SMN <Can I Have It>" then there is a problem. When the hardest NM's in the game can be consistently killed in under 60s by a group of SMN's, then there is a problem. When people decide that taking a group of SMN's makes everything magically snore fest easy to do, then there is a problem. Just a reiteration of the same issue there was with BST's and that resulted in a nerf, even while the users exploiting the BST mechanic was swearing up and down there will never be a nerf and the game was perfectly balanced. So yeah there is a nerf coming, I just hope it's not too hard of one cause I like a balanced diverse meta.

you seem to think we're trying to buff all jobs to 50k dmg? most are dealing 3-7k dmg even at 3000% tp(its these jobs were trying to bring forwards) , its rare to find a DD that can deal 50K consistantly every WS, infact, the average high dmg DD only deals about 15-35k, with the stronger spike dmg ones dealing 35-45K (not consistantly) (Thats at 3000% tp only, must have w/e AM on, have W/E rolls/abilitys on,so that means they need to lose 2 WSs in between which means even less dmg) 40-45k WSs (Since you need to build to 3000%tp)are only useful with SC style of partys, outside of that its more worth to just the WS when its ready.

[Afania]

Ah, this kind of thread will always follow by a group of people playing these jobs against it. Also Songen completely misunderstood the point but I think my point applies to other anti nerf people.




Aeonic isn't easy if you don't have the right group or able to make random groups, only true endgame LSes have it extremely easy to get, and even that takes time for them and they actually make the effort to level jobs, JP them and equip em to be event ready, so yeah, they kinda deserve it.


What happened here is the "rich gets more rich, poor gets more poor" scenario. You either level SMN, merc aeonic, make 50-100m a day or you don't. Once you reach the point to make gil that easily, you can literally gear up any job with full REMA/DM aug/HQ in a few weeks and face roll any content with any setup.

If you make the effort to lv other jobs, JP them and equip them to be event ready, you aren't going to take nearly as much advantage in terms of character progression.

It can sound salty but I'm just pointing out facts to people that may not be aware of it.




Personally i'd be happy with one aeonic at this point but its odvious that ain't happening soon because ITS NOT EASY TO GET UNLESS YOUR ALREADY IN A GREAT GROUP.
Also, aeonic isn't ment for massive DDing, nor built for advancing a specific job's abilitys.
very few aeonics actually have WSs that don't suck and they don't get a 10-40% increase in the appropriate WS dmg like REM weapons.


Thanks to some aeonic trolls on AH forum, these weapons are mostly very underratted. I can name a few weapons that I think it's either game changing or useful:

- Horn: Absolutely one of the most game changing weapon in game, besides Idris. There's a pretty massive difference in terms of DPS in semi high level content between a pt with BRD and without. From my experience, whether your BRD+GEO is NQ or HQ, often makes MUCH bigger difference than avg REMA DDs.

- Sword: It's an underrated weapon thanks to massive amount of bandwagon BLUs spamming CDC with it and parse low, that's not the right way to use it. Aeonic savage build is quite possibly RDM's best DPS option, probably BLU in high buff situations too, as long as you're not taking the advantage of CDC light SC.

- GS: This weapon is very game changing for RUN. Without it, RUN can only tank, DDing on RUN isn't even worth it. With this weapon, RUN become a competitive DD with great survive-ability and ability to emergency tank. I also believe this weapon is better than epeo III for tank/DD hybrid playstyle, on spreadsheet with 50% PDT- hybrid DD set, Lionheart is only 20~30 DPS behind epeo III in same PDT-, considering Lionheart doesn't need AM3 upkeep and reso SC light, I wouldn't be surprised if DD better than epeo III in PDT- 50% gears.

- Gun: It's my preferred choice for /ra last stand spamming over 119 III armageddon in 90% of situations, due to extra SC dmg and not having to maintain AM3.

Idk about other jobs, but from what I've read, polearm, GK, GA, Katana, Scythe with CR builds are all situationally useful because of their SC abilities, or TP bonus. I wouldn't consider these weapons anywhere close to bad considering there are some things that can only be done with aeonic weapon.




NERF NOTHING. BUFF EVERYONE ELSE.
^ My standard stance on this issue.


So you want SE to buff every DD job so they can kill Schah in less than a min as well? No thanks.

Those NMs are designed to provide challenge, they are one of the hardest NM in game. What's the point to buff every DD job so everyone kill the hardest NM in game and.....quit?




Do you have any actual evidence to support your request?


If killing the hardest NM 20 times faster than other DD isn't an evidence, what other evidence do you want?




Resentment because >you< were not involved in a win does not justify trying to tear down a job you don't play because they were.

You are taking this personal. Sometimes people suggest making job adjustments, doesn't mean they're salty because they can't win or anything like that, nor have some irrational hatred about a job and want to "tear" it down.

I participated in job discussion a lot, and most of the time I'm being hated for presenting my opinion. I still do it anyways, because I believe that everyone in FFXI should have equal opportunity and respect regardless of jobs that they choose to play. End game community often determine a player's value based on jobs that they have, and most of the time it's favor of the month DDs, or jobs that allow them to kill the hardest content in the easiest manner. And the only way to solve this issue, is to provide suggestions to SE to better balance jobs.

The issue with SMN is that some job in this game, has strong "zerg" abilities that allow them to deal massive DPS in a very short time. Such as BST, SMN, WAR 1hr, or THF SATA rudra back in 2014. Once a player's gear progress to a certain point, their zerg ability allows them to bypass the NM mechanics completely.

THAT may be the reason why you don't see SMN zerging the hardest content 1 year ago, but now that people start to reach certain level of gear, SMN's zerg ability start to output certain level of DPS that kills NM before the mechanic even happen. In the case of Schah, it's dead before adds pop, which is supposed to be part of mechanic.

In terms of SMN zerg, IMO the concept itself isn't broken, since the job is much weaker than melees without 1hr, and there's massive cooldown between each 1hr use, plus pets are susceptible to status ailments, so you can't just run around on SMN and outparse every other DD 24/7. The problem is content and NM mechanics, the way they design the content, allows SMN to reset 1hr between pops, and mechanics (pop adds after a min, need to deal with adds) just favor zerg jobs. You either zerg it down in less than a min, or suck it up and deal with adds.

If those zergable content isn't one of the highest ilv content, then it's not that much of an issue. But since it's T4, which directly relate to merc gil generation and endgame content longevity, it's a bigger balance issue than SMN doing BCNM fights back in the day and get clear.

Considering SE did nerf BLU in past 4 months via Omen DD gear progression, NM evasion nerf and BRD buff, I do believe SMN nerf will happen eventually. It's just that SE probably won't nerf the job by directly handing out JA or DPS nerf, but in a more subtle way, such as implementing NM mechanics that can't be zerged.

I actually liked the way SE solve balance issues with BLU very much. Instead of nerfing the job as a whole and make BLUs unhappy, they do it by making the balance adjustments from a bigger pov, and indirectly lowered the advantage of BLU. IMO the best way to solve this SMN zerg issue without making SMNs unhappy is to implement mechanics that can't be zerged in the future.

[Afania]

I ultimately agree, but it won't happen.

It shouldn't happen* Other jobs are fine, in terms of how they perform in endgame content. With current DD performance, increasing their output just kills endgame content longevity.

Other DD jobs are not "inferior" to SMN at all, they just can't bulldoze the hardest NM like SMN does and bypass mechanics. It's the content design that needs to be fixed, IMO.

[Eaglestrike]

There are already jobs that can do that kind of damage, and you've also have no grasp of SMN at all. 3-4s, hardly. SMN BP timer is 21 maybe 20 seconds. SAM, BLU, DRG, and DRK can all do far greater spike DMG than SMN can. Hell, even RNG and COR can do that kind of DMG while staying out of range of things. My LS was doing T2 Escha NMs, and every single fight the BLU and the DRK out did my DMG dealing 270,000+ DMG and that was without the requirement of using a 1hr ability like SMN has to.


It had everything to do with those AoE moves. How many of those Bandwagon BST used anything except that Grasshopper? And SMN hasn't changed with keeping it's distance from stuff. It's been like that since the job was introduced. The Trial Size Avatar fights, that was the whole mechanic. Use Carbuncle, run away, resummon, wait for engagement, and run some more, repeat. BLM and SMN are tied for having the worst DEF in the game. So I find it hard to believe, you would ask a BLM to hump a mob and try to cast while still functioning properly.


And that isn't SMNs fault. How many WHMs used to charge for raises in Valkurm Dunes or to use a Teleport Spell? How many LS charged for Dynamis/Sea/Sky Clears? How many PLDs have charged to be a tank for a fight? How many WARs charged for Cleaving in Abyssea? That is a community that is pure lazy and refused to help others.



SMN Burns are nothing new. Promy Fight back when it was a capped thing, People took 2-3 SMNs to Astral Flow the clears - claiming it had to be done that way. Waking the Beast (Carbuncle Prime) was done almost completely with an alliance of SMNs. But here you're saying that how dare these people take someone that has spent the time to MASTER a job to content. That is completely ludicrous that you're saying that at all. And what about those SMNs, have you taken the time to check what gear they have? A Nirvana, A Full Apogee set, a Helios Set, or many other vast array of pieces that are needed? People that don't understand and play a job, are equally bias. They're anger because X job isn't being taken, or Y job does things better. We as a community decide how the game is played and we can be the think tank to change things so that every job has an equal chance, but these witch hunts need to stop already.

You are the very reason a lot of the top tier players avoid the official forums, you clearly don't understand the balance issue at hand.

First: The strategy to kill nearly every single aeonic NM of note in the game is this: Tank, GEO, COR, SMN, SMN. Everything dies in less than a minute. I'm talking Kirin/Kouryu, Warder of Courage, Schah, Vinipata, etc. THEY DIE IN LESS THAN A MINUTE. The hardest bosses in the entire game die in a minute to this 5-man strategy. I have a buddy who has 5~ aeonics or so, he made a brand new char 4 months ago. Not an alt, a brand new, fresh account that's 4 months old has 5 aeonics.

Second: That strategy involves using Astral Conduit, which reduces BP recast to 0. So with these buffs a SMN can do 50k BP's...with no recast. This is a full minute of 50k damage spam, which is what Saevel mentioned. There's NOTHING in the game that can compete with that, which is why there's a thread asking to nerf SMN, because it's far above and beyond what any other job in this game is capable of.

Third: You claim MASTER in a job is some amazing accomplishment worthy of being able to mindlessly clear content. Before SMN burns were THE thing to do aeonic farming normally utilized MASTER of a variety of jobs, with some people shifting between two (or more) different MASTER jobs as fights required. But the aeonic fights would normally take 5-30min, where you would actually have to deal with the full mechanics of a fight. Whereas now you can get a couple SMN's to Conduit BP spam and Kirin's adds don't even reach the popping tank before Kirin is dead.

Fourth: Go watch a video yourself, youtube for "FFXI Kouryu SMN Burn". And just to note, most of the SMN's there don't have stars, so they're not even master. Fight took less than 90s and Kirin only popped one god before it died. If you don't understand how that is BROKEN and OVERPOWERED, well, there's not much discussion left to have.

[Nyarlko]

You are taking this personal. Sometimes people suggest making job adjustments, doesn't mean they're salty because they can't win or anything like that, nor have some irrational hatred about a job and want to "tear" it down.

I'm not taking it personal. ^^;; My statement was in response to the OP who most definitely was posting in personal anger and making irrational requests, however, it was also intended to be applied more broadly, sorry if I used odd syntax that made that hard to get across. :x You can replace the ">you<" in my statement with "any individual who is reading this" to get the point I was trying to make. ^^ The OP also lacked any form of evidence period, so yeah... I'll stand by my prior statements.
YOU (Afania) provided more evidence in support of a nerf than the OP, since you have one statement of evidence, while they had zero. ^^ I enjoy discussing job adjustments, but it's quite difficult to discuss anything when the only argument is "NERF IT TO THE GROUND BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!".

For the record, I do not play SMN, (I do have it leveled, but no room for gear,) and I'm against nerfing on principle. Nerfing players should always be a measure of last resort. Every system/opponent aspect should be examined and adjusted before nerfing players. I'm happy that the devs kinda-sorta agree with me on this, since the last few major combat adjustments have been nerfs to monsters, not players.

In order for me to agree w/ something, I need to know what I am agreeing to, and why I should be agreeing in the first place. Screaming for unspecified nerfs and revoking items gained by using a certain job/tactic is not something I am probably ever going to be able to agree to.

[Eaglestrike]

I'm against nerfing on principle. Nerfing players should always be a measure of last resort. Every system/opponent aspect should be examined and adjusted before nerfing players. I'm happy that the devs kinda-sorta agree with me on this, since the last few major combat adjustments have been nerfs to monsters, not players.


This is a fair way to look at things during the "BLU IS OP" era. And the way we got around that era was actually by buffing BRD and nerfing mobs. BLU still has a number of advantages, but it's not godly and way above everyone else like it was.

But that doesn't work for SMN. SMN is killing the hardest mobs in the game in seconds. If you buffed everyone to be able to do that everyone would be done the game next week.

[Zeargi]

You are the very reason a lot of the top tier players avoid the official forums, you clearly don't understand the balance issue at hand.

No, a lot of them don't come here because the majority of players just gripe and moan about everything under the sun, rather than try to enjoy the game. But if you think I care about ranks, then you're sadly mistaken. I know I'm not the best, but I still have fun all the same.


First: The strategy to kill nearly every single aeonic NM of note in the game is this: Tank, GEO, COR, SMN, SMN. Everything dies in less than a minute. I'm talking Kirin/Kouryu, Warder of Courage, Schah, Vinipata, etc. THEY DIE IN LESS THAN A MINUTE. The hardest bosses in the entire game die in a minute to this 5-man strategy. I have a buddy who has 5~ aeonics or so, he made a brand new char 4 months ago. Not an alt, a brand new, fresh account that's 4 months old has 5 aeonics. So... For this strategy to work it requires the only two support jobs that can directly impact a SMN's pet... So then it's not SMN alone that can do that. You all continue to keep pushing and pushing that SMN is broken. But if those things aren't in place then in theory it can't be done like that. So rather than looking at SMN as the sole culprit, you should perhaps evaluate the problem as a whole.

And watching that video, at least one SMN had the Nirvana equipped (That I could see), and only once did the AC Volt Strikes actually break 50k (Which I'm going to bet it was the guy that actually had the Nirvana). Most of them sat at the 25-36k range. I understand peoples frustration, but people need to evaluate the situations in it's fullest, rather than flying off the handle blindly. I personally have no goals for these Aeonics, none of them wow me as a SMN. But I know that if you feel that you have to have them all, then it's nothing more than just for some lame bragging rights or the server ranking on the FFXIAH. So, rather than punishing the SMN that have nothing to do with this Bandwagoning, why not adjust the mobs themselves to shy away from doing things like that. They have the means to do it. The PW would despawn when it changes phases, and the ADL splits based on the HP dealt. Why not make it despawn if a certain threshold is reached to soon, and have it spawn the gods based on the HP remain. They're always more than one answer when it comes to things like this. Much like there's more than one way to beat a boss, WE as a community can shape things just as equally.

[Songen]

You are the very reason a lot of the top tier players avoid the official forums, you clearly don't understand the balance issue at hand.

First: The strategy to kill nearly every single aeonic NM of note in the game is this: Tank, GEO, COR, SMN, SMN. Everything dies in less than a minute. I'm talking Kirin/Kouryu, Warder of Courage, Schah, Vinipata, etc. THEY DIE IN LESS THAN A MINUTE. The hardest bosses in the entire game die in a minute to this 5-man strategy. I have a buddy who has 5~ aeonics or so, he made a brand new char 4 months ago. Not an alt, a brand new, fresh account that's 4 months old has 5 aeonics.

Second: That strategy involves using Astral Conduit, which reduces BP recast to 0. So with these buffs a SMN can do 50k BP's...with no recast. This is a full minute of 50k damage spam, which is what Saevel mentioned. There's NOTHING in the game that can compete with that, which is why there's a thread asking to nerf SMN, because it's far above and beyond what any other job in this game is capable of.

Third: You claim MASTER in a job is some amazing accomplishment worthy of being able to mindlessly clear content. Before SMN burns were THE thing to do aeonic farming normally utilized MASTER of a variety of jobs, with some people shifting between two (or more) different MASTER jobs as fights required. But the aeonic fights would normally take 5-30min, where you would actually have to deal with the full mechanics of a fight. Whereas now you can get a couple SMN's to Conduit BP spam and Kirin's adds don't even reach the popping tank before Kirin is dead.

Fourth: Go watch a video yourself, youtube for "FFXI Kouryu SMN Burn". And just to note, most of the SMN's there don't have stars, so they're not even master. Fight took less than 90s and Kirin only popped one god before it died. If you don't understand how that is BROKEN and OVERPOWERED, well, there's not much discussion left to have.

/cough, ok then, you seem to be thinking that its best to fight these mobs over time, that killing it fast is wrong, and that its better to spend 20-50min on each hard mob? is this about it? thing is, mobs like escha and reisei have time limits. as such they fall into the caterogy of BCNM (and yes you spawn it with a KI made from trading pop items, and yes, they are limited to a radius around the spawn point which means it is a battlefield and if you leave you forfit the fight).

What you also fail to realise is that these fights have a 30minute time limit, which means you can't go around pointlessly trying to hit 10-20 weak points or take your time trying to clear off adds and then do a full wipe so your able to get up again and try again. you can't take your time on these fights, right from the very start of BCNMs it was common practice to come up with stratergys to clear the fight the fights within as little a time frame as possible. clearing a BCNM at 75 cap days in 1-5 min was common place, i know, i saw myself people selling drops from fights that make normal LSs weep out of difficulty.

A smn burn is pimped and can clear fights instantly, but you fail to realise that not all servers use that only. most comments i see concerning smn come from people from Asura server(we don't have that problem on odin so get off asura if you don't like it), and while other servers do use it, they work more on other stratergies too. Odin for example is notorious for blm and melee burns (Yes, we kick ass with something other than smn's). its more risky but it gets the job done. and guess what? (YOU NEED TO USE YOUR 2HR TOO FOR THOSE, omg omg omg, other stratergys other than smn uses 2hrs just like smn does? thats wrong, we need to nerf every job out there so they can't use 2hrs anymore)

your delusional, you and everyone who fails to see exactly what your dealing with. Long gone are the days of spending 1-3 years doing dynamis for a relic weapon, long gone are the days of spending 1-10hrs fighting HNMs, long gone are the days of owning a REM ment you were a elite. there are people who put the time in and solo those now, it simply takes time.

Aeonic's are strong, but only a few offer powers that stand at or above REM weapons. Aeonic is more of a off hand weapon for dual wield jobs, and a few of the 2handed ones are actually useful depending on the situation.

To summarise, smn is pimped, but pimped is needed for current events, however smn isn't only choice, there are choices, if your not getting invited, get over it or change servers.

Edit: you can turn off your master's stars. did you know that? not everyone likes it over there heads.

Also, if your buddy has 5 aeonics and that pisses you off so much, why do you call him your buddy?

[Eaglestrike]

At no point did I say I was "pissed off" that my buddy has a bunch of aeonics. I said it's a broken system. He's probably quitting soon because he can breeze through content so easily. You're not going to keep a functioning game around if all you need to do is hop on SMN, get a decent set and you can win any fight in the game. And most MMO players will always gravitate to the path of least resistance.

None of what you said explains why it should be possible to beat every boss in the game in a minute and a half...or less. And sure, you could beat some BCNM's at 75 cap days in a couple minutes...but I'm talking about the hardest bosses in the entire game. At no point could you kill Tiamat in 1-2min. When you could K club DRK zerg Kirin in a minute you know what they did? They nerfed it.

Also, I know some of those people in that video, they're not exactly considered top notch players, I am pretty certain two of the SMN's just tossed together gear only over the past few weeks because of the new SMN zerg strategy. So they very likely don't have stars on SMN, but they can clear Kirin easier than most other players of the game. Less effort for more reward, sounds totes balanced.

[Songen]

Edit:Screw it, i wrote a whole story here but i feel its simply adding to the ranting.
So to sum up,
I don't support the OP in terms of nerf the job entirely beyond the one ability that makes it overpowered.
And i most certainly don't support the remove all aeonic weapons attained by those who got em with smn.

[Khiril]

Edit:Screw it, i wrote a whole story here but i feel its simply adding to the ranting.
So to sum up,
I don't support the OP in terms of nerf the job entirely beyond the one ability that makes it overpowered.
And i most certainly don't support the remove all aeonic weapons attained by those who got em with smn.

So SMN is OP, but nerfing them isn't the answer?

Squares ONLY answer for 15 has been nerf.

Taking away their aeonics would never happen, obviously, but it would be damn hilarious. And deserved. Let's be honest, no one that plays SMN is good enough to use an Aeonic. That's why they have to play SMN, so nothing would be lost.

[Rwolf]

I agree that the focus should not be mentioning SMN but speaking solely about the ability Astral Conduit. There's a lot of miscommunication in regard to SMN as a whole but the opposing side is only describing SMN's capabilities during Astral Conduit.

A job doesn't need to be nerfed into the ground as some sort of punishment. Every time these nerf heated discussions appear, there is this mob desire to obliterate the job entirely instead of balance. Which isn't a healthy discussion. It just turns into a personal war against people who play the job and those who don't.

In regards to mentioning BLU and how it didn't need to be adjusted due to BRD adjustments. It still needs adjusting and it's not even a comparison but that's another thread entirely and doesn't need to be carried on here to derail. There's plenty of threads to resurrect or create.

[Khiril]

The reason it happens is because Square does. not. know. how. to. balance. There has never been anything even close to "balance" as far as style/tactic/dps/battles are concerned. EVER.

One style/type/job is ALWAYS extremely overpowered and everything is adjusted to compensate for it. Its a garbage practice, but thats what they do, so they need to get on this ALOT FASTER THAN THEY ARE.

[Songen]

The reason it happens is because Square does. not. know. how. to. balance. There has never been anything even close to "balance" as far as style/tactic/dps/battles are concerned. EVER.

One style/type/job is ALWAYS extremely overpowered and everything is adjusted to compensate for it. Its a garbage practice, but thats what they do, so they need to get on this ALOT FASTER THAN THEY ARE.

actually, smn's extremely balanced, its only one ability that isn't, and its a 1hr ability at that, everything is average depending one what your doing

[Khiril]

Far from it. Being the excuse that it's a a 2hour is completely irrelevant. There are many ways to get 2hours back.

If one aspect of the job is broken, then. the. job. is. broken. Plain and simple.

You dont get to have one REALLY broken ability, and still be balanced.

[Songen]

Far from it. Being the excuse that it's a a 2hour is completely irrelevant. There are many ways to get 2hours back.

If one aspect of the job is broken, then. the. job. is. broken. Plain and simple.

You dont get to have one REALLY broken ability, and still be balanced.

I was talking outside of the one ability,The problem is 1 ability and you Khiril.If they never had the ability functioning as it is would you still be complaining? probably, you always got something to complain about since the game wasn't designed around you.

People don't capacity party with their 1hr abilitys constantly, once the ability wears they don't stop for 20min to get it back.or on a average run against NMs its not needed to spam the 1hr ability since people don't want to wait 20min for people to recharge their ability between kills since they can win in 5mins without their 1hr.

Outside of the 1hr ability, it is balanced.

[Zeargi]

Taking away their aeonics would never happen, obviously, but it would be damn hilarious. And deserved. Let's be honest, no one that plays SMN is good enough to use an Aeonic. That's why they have to play SMN, so nothing would be lost.

Like seriously, who ran over your puppies? I play SMN because I love the job. It was the first job I unlocked, and was the 2nd job I got to 75. I played this MMO for the first few years alone, because NO ONE wanted SMN because it was only a super gimped healer. SMN has made great strides from where it started. And who are you to decide the value of a player? You've done nothing but be a toxic individual and are more part of the problem than the actual solution. You wonder why you keep getting banned, perhaps you should look at your gross demeanor towards others. Change the mobs so that others are forced to use things outside of this cookie cutter hive mentality. They did it with Ambuscade to GEO with that one mob that was immuned to their debuffs. Make it so that thresholds have to be met in order to progress.

[detlef]

Conduit's pretty unbalanced, you'd have to be crazy not to see that. When you have players gearing up SMN in a mad rush to get Aeonics done quickly before it gets nerfed and the JPs are up in arms over it then yeah there's a pretty good chance of it getting adjusted.

I used to think BLU was OP but SE adjusted it by making their Omen gear weak. I think it's pretty accurate to say that it's a high floor/low ceiling melee job and there's a place for that in this game.

[Khiril]

Conduit's pretty unbalanced, you'd have to be crazy not to see that. When you have players gearing up SMN in a mad rush to get Aeonics done quickly before it gets nerfed and the JPs are up in arms over it then yeah there's a pretty good chance of it getting adjusted.

I used to think BLU was OP but SE adjusted it by making their Omen gear weak. I think it's pretty accurate to say that it's a high floor/low ceiling melee job and there's a place for that in this game.

it's OBVIOUSLY getting adjusted, the problem is the speed with which they do it.

It needs to be done RIGHT NOW. Not this summer.

[Khiril]

Straight up unbelievable.

You've got to be kidding...

[Lewyo]

New ambuscade out and already the strategy is 3 smn burn astral conduit and this will be how everything is done till s.e sort smn 30s zerg out.

[saevel]

Don't even bother finding fight mechanics, just SMN AC it for easy win!

[elqplau]

I'm a long time player and they nurfed a few jobs in the past and made them a fraction of what they where... I was a front line rdm till one such nurf now I can still grab hate but can't defend myself .....I'm maxxed out on almost everything but job points and those I solo....I've not been in a party since rdm was dropped from the front line....this means I've been solo player since about 2004 ... I'm a 119 I gear rated rdm that hits with magic/weapon/bow/rebuffs and because trusts take que from I gear they hit/buff/nuc/debuff better than me so think about when u ask something to be nurfed ....used to be fun back in the day playing rdm...now 'am I going to take hate' runs in my mind so much I only attack if I know I can control the mob

[Songen]

I'm a long time player and they nurfed a few jobs in the past and made them a fraction of what they where... I was a front line rdm till one such nurf now I can still grab hate but can't defend myself .....I'm maxxed out on almost everything but job points and those I solo....I've not been in a party since rdm was dropped from the front line....this means I've been solo player since about 2004 ... I'm a 119 I gear rated rdm that hits with magic/weapon/bow/rebuffs and because trusts take que from I gear they hit/buff/nuc/debuff better than me so think about when u ask something to be nurfed ....used to be fun back in the day playing rdm...now 'am I going to take hate' runs in my mind so much I only attack if I know I can control the mob

Front line rdm is still a thing, people who say it isn't don't play rdm correctly, I get a good 1200-1300 acc after food and still have a decent tp build and deal a fair amount of dmg as well, use the correct swords too and can magic burst a even higher amount, WS for 4-10k and MB for 15-35k, and i'm considered a weak rdm in comparison to some of the more stronger ones. thats higher dmg that some of the more common DDs (Not pimped) out there.

opening a SC for 7k dmg, then MB when someone closes it for 15-20k twice, (thats 35-42k dmg in a period of 10 seconds) and because of my Seidr Cotehardie i don't lose any mp from the MB so i'm constantly going without stoping.

As for defending, build your phalanx, stoneskin and fast cast correctly, utsusemi is still a valid thing too and can be constant with the right amount of haste and fast cast, not to mention rdm can self heal. oh, and theres gear that enhances refresh further, i got a +3 or 4 refresh added to my base refresh 2 spell because of gear that enhances potency, i could take it further but its too costly

It requires a bit to get the macro's right, but the result is amazing.

[Dzspdref]

I feel glad that after reading that WHOLE 5 pages of "discussion", only once was PUP mentioned, and never once saw anything about H2H or MNK or NIN in there.
Oh wait,that's because no one wants those jobs for recent end-game content, nor had they ever.... /sigh lol.

[Songen]

I feel glad that after reading that WHOLE 5 pages of "discussion", only once was PUP mentioned, and never once saw anything about H2H or MNK or NIN in there.
Oh wait,that's because no one wants those jobs for recent end-game content, nor had they ever.... /sigh lol.

Actually, I use both pup and mnk, also in other forums people talk about how they want mnk to succeed and don't post here because SE doesn't responce 90% of the time because we complain about other useless things too much

[chiefhunglo]

They level the job did tedious shit to get gear and now your telling them they can't play a certain way wow no wonder ppl's pass on this game.

[Marada]

Actually, I use both pup and mnk, also in other forums people talk about how they want mnk to succeed and don't post here because SE doesn't responce 90% of the time because we complain about other useless things too much

I love PUP, but because I can't get in to the end game content, or can't spend tens of millions of gil to buy the best gear, I can't bring that anywhere. So I'm gearing my blu now, which will probably get nerfed along with smn and then I'll need to spend months to gear up another job that will then get nerfed.....I agree what you said back in the beginning of this thread, we need to start boosting other jobs instead of nerfing everything.

[Urmom]

Pup is actually in a decent spot right now. One of the better tanks... at least vs 1 target. Fights with multiple mobs or weird hate it kind of fails as does things like doom

[Teraniku]

Here's the thing. The only SMN who can do the AC spam and kill the mob in 3 min on ??? level are literally The Best Geared and job pointed SMNs in the game. You can actually do the same thing with a geared and job pointed BLM too, does BLM need to be nerfed as well?

As a fix without nerfing the ability itself, same duration but you have to alternate between Rage / Wards, so you can't spam Rages. Which is what everyone else is crying about

Another alternate fix is to make mobs immune to certain avatars, so it's trying to find the one that works (with only Garuda and Leviathan the only avatars that can heal themselves this would bring a certain strategy and timing if you have to use any of the other avatars)

[Urmom]

Lol there is no way blms are doing anything near the level of AC zerging

[Marada]

Pup is actually in a decent spot right now. One of the better tanks... at least vs 1 target. Fights with multiple mobs or weird hate it kind of fails as does things like doom

So you mean it can tank Ambu and a few other things, but other than that, it fails.......right? I think some Omen stuff it can tank, but I need to still build my gear to do that.

[Urmom]

So you mean it can tank Ambu and a few other things, but other than that, it fails.......right? I think some Omen stuff it can tank, but I need to still build my gear to do that.

Kind of depends on the month but generally speaking ambuscade is one of the worst things it can tank at. In terms of just durability and how much support it needs it's often better than other tanks. One of it's biggest flaws is it can't get hate on multiple targets nor has aoe hate moves which makes it basically usable at least as the sole tank for a lot of ambuscade or all the various mobs that spawn adds that aggro the master. But against a single boss it's pretty amazing. Also really heavy dots kind of hurt it since all that dt doesn't matter and you can't really cure it

[Afania]

we need to start boosting other jobs instead of nerfing everything.

If other jobs gets SMN level of efficiency and effectiveness then this game basically won't have any difficult content at all.

Currently here are the "high level" content in this game:
Kirin/WoC/T4
PW2
Master trial x3

Compare with the hardest content in 75(AV/PW), 2012(legion/NNI), 2013(pre-ilv delve). The skill and gear requirement in the highest endgame in 2017 was definitely one tier lower than the hardest content in previous years.......with SMN setup. The only exception being Shadowlord master trial, which can't be SMN zerged....yet. Everything else basically has no longevity since well geared SMN pt destroys everything quite easily, and relatively safe too.

We're at a point that most of the hardcore player are running out of goals, except making one pointless REMA after another. The fact that SMN makes hardest endgame content MUCH easier only hurt the game in the long run. And now people are asking every job to do what SMN can do.

Do you not care about challenging content? Or would you rather play an MMO that everyone sleep through every content on SMN? That's what FFXI is atm, and it's not fun. I really don't understand why people are anti nerf on this issue or even ask every job to be as OP as that. What's the point to work on your jobs and build gear sets, work on pt coordination if all you ever need is change job to SMN and spam BP then get win?

[Afania]

Here's the thing. The only SMN who can do the AC spam and kill the mob in 3 min on ??? level are literally The Best Geared and job pointed SMNs in the game. You can actually do the same thing with a geared and job pointed BLM too, does BLM need to be nerfed as well?


In terms of raw damage output, AC SMN >>>>>>Melees >>>> BLM.

[Teraniku]

In terms of raw damage output, AC SMN >>>>>>Melees >>>> BLM.

OK my Bad but what do you all propose to fix it?

-Nerf Damage output while Astral Conduit is in Effect?

-Shorten the length of Astral Conduit or lessen it's Full mp when used Capabilities?

- Negate or alter the effects of GEO auras on Avatars?

-Lower the Blood Pact Damage enhancement on Gear?

What do you propose to Fix it?

[Hawklaser]

In terms of raw damage output, AC SMN >>>>>>Melees >>>> BLM.

I wouldn't be so sure about this. The biggest reason is that SMN is mostly burst damage, while most melees rely more on damage over time, and few have the means to output large burst damage.

The reason this is important, is because burst is almost always more preferred than DOT. For one main reason, if both forms can kill a mob in the same time frame, burst wins because it is often safer. As an example, consider a long cast time spell like Freeze vs a melee, if the melee can't kill the mob significantly faster than freeze casts, freeze will be preferred due to being able to negate the threat of the mob during the cast time due to crowd control like sleep or even better the mob still un-agroed.

Now for Teraniku's question about how to bring smn more in line with other jobs. I am perfectly fine with smn having its excellent burst damage, as it is pretty rare that you hear much about smn doing great without the use of a 1hr ability. So really the question should be more about what can be done to endgame content so that stacking smns and burst killing is not the solution.

I don't want to see burst damage become irrelevant, just used more appropriately. And one main idea that comes to mind deal with this is giving mobs greatly increased resistance/evasion to burst abilities during specific phases. So for example, a mob that won't take much damage from a smn until it is at under 2/3rds hp or is doing a specific action.

Much beyond that idea, either ends up drastically nerfing burst classes such as smn, or over buffing the DOT classes. The only other thing I can think of is adding a new agroing mechanic to mobs to detect the preparation of high burst skills and begin attacking before the skill finishes, front load them with significant hate generation and instantly adding any party members within a certain distance to all agroed mobs hate list.

I dunno which would be easier for the devs at this point, reworking the whole agro system, or adding in ways to make it impractical for end game mobs to be just be burst killed in short order without just giving them absurd amounts of hp.

[Nyarlko]

I wouldn't be so sure about this. The biggest reason is that SMN is mostly burst damage, while most melees rely more on damage over time, and few have the means to output large burst damage.

The reason this is important, is because burst is almost always more preferred than DOT. For one main reason, if both forms can kill a mob in the same time frame, burst wins because it is often safer. As an example, consider a long cast time spell like Freeze vs a melee, if the melee can't kill the mob significantly faster than freeze casts, freeze will be preferred due to being able to negate the threat of the mob during the cast time due to crowd control like sleep or even better the mob still un-agroed.

Now for Teraniku's question about how to bring smn more in line with other jobs. I am perfectly fine with smn having its excellent burst damage, as it is pretty rare that you hear much about smn doing great without the use of a 1hr ability. So really the question should be more about what can be done to endgame content so that stacking smns and burst killing is not the solution.

I don't want to see burst damage become irrelevant, just used more appropriately. And one main idea that comes to mind deal with this is giving mobs greatly increased resistance/evasion to burst abilities during specific phases. So for example, a mob that won't take much damage from a smn until it is at under 2/3rds hp or is doing a specific action.

Much beyond that idea, either ends up drastically nerfing burst classes such as smn, or over buffing the DOT classes. The only other thing I can think of is adding a new agroing mechanic to mobs to detect the preparation of high burst skills and begin attacking before the skill finishes, front load them with significant hate generation and instantly adding any party members within a certain distance to all agroed mobs hate list.

I dunno which would be easier for the devs at this point, reworking the whole agro system, or adding in ways to make it impractical for end game mobs to be just be burst killed in short order without just giving them absurd amounts of hp.

I don't think I like your options. :x Most current endgame mobs already have absurd amounts of HP if you bring too many people (due to the scaling factor,) and enmity adjustments probably wouldn't do much to curb the tactic.. One of the SMN would just pop Perfect Defense before going on offense, and given that the speed of SMN burn kills is the main complaint, odds are good they can burn it down before PD wears anyway. Any enmity changes would be more likely to just hurt everyone else and do very little to discourage the tactic.

Perhaps some sort of innate damage taken cap for a specific time frame like 2-3min? Basically, for the first few minutes, being capped to say, 30k per source, might be enough to remove the speed advantage that smn-burns have. A 30k cap would also only affect the highest end melees, so the great majority of the playerbase would be unlikely to be affected. Think of it as an inverse rage phase. XD

[Gwydion]

SE: if you're not going to nerf SMN, can beastmasters get their 20 yalms back?

[Hawklaser]

I don't think I like your options. :x Most current endgame mobs already have absurd amounts of HP if you bring too many people (due to the scaling factor,) and enmity adjustments probably wouldn't do much to curb the tactic.. One of the SMN would just pop Perfect Defense before going on offense, and given that the speed of SMN burn kills is the main complaint, odds are good they can burn it down before PD wears anyway. Any enmity changes would be more likely to just hurt everyone else and do very little to discourage the tactic.

Perhaps some sort of innate damage taken cap for a specific time frame like 2-3min? Basically, for the first few minutes, being capped to say, 30k per source, might be enough to remove the speed advantage that smn-burns have. A 30k cap would also only affect the highest end melees, so the great majority of the playerbase would be unlikely to be affected. Think of it as an inverse rage phase. XD

Interestingly enough, out of all the options I mentioned this mirrors my preferred solution. Giving the mobs phases where astral burn just does not work either due to increased defenses or triggers attacks that have enough range and strength to potentially wipe the whole battlefield. The key is in having that aspect of the phase unable to be bypassed by coordinating multiples landing at the same time like how modus veritas was used. Though a different class, like say multiple samurai could burn through that phase with their 1hrs.

For the agro changes, going to use freeze as an example again. What I would be in favor for here is a decent ammount of aggro being generated at the start of casting on the targeted mob and others on the parties hate list in addition to the what the damage portion generates. Now for something like astral call and conduit, we would be talking along the lines of hate that invincible and benediction generate on use as well as some spill over from the damage applied to both the smn and avatar. It would need some tweaking, but the goal would be to make smn's large burst not be so hate free.

[Nyarlko]

Interestingly enough, out of all the options I mentioned this mirrors my preferred solution. Giving the mobs phases where astral burn just does not work either due to increased defenses or triggers attacks that have enough range and strength to potentially wipe the whole battlefield. The key is in having that aspect of the phase unable to be bypassed by coordinating multiples landing at the same time like how modus veritas was used. Though a different class, like say multiple samurai could burn through that phase with their 1hrs.

For the agro changes, going to use freeze as an example again. What I would be in favor for here is a decent ammount of aggro being generated at the start of casting on the targeted mob and others on the parties hate list in addition to the what the damage portion generates. Now for something like astral call and conduit, we would be talking along the lines of hate that invincible and benediction generate on use as well as some spill over from the damage applied to both the smn and avatar. It would need some tweaking, but the goal would be to make smn's large burst not be so hate free.

It would most likely have to be something that affected all jobs and not just SMN. I'm not sure that the system can tell the difference between pet types for damage calculations, and I for one, absolutely do not want to see BST get nerfed further than it already has been. >.> Even if it is possible to pinpoint BP.Rage, having them trigger "full battlefield" aoes simply removes SMN from playability. They might as well remove the job from the game at that point.

Your proposed enmity changes would either totally cripple SMN by making it too dangerous to use, or possibly turn it into a tank. <,< Again, making a job impossible to play normally is far from a viable solution. Perfect Defense rotations might become a thing again if SMN generated similar enmity to PLD, so be prepared to see 6xSMN parties take over if your proposal got implemented.

Also, enmity is jacked in non-SOA+ zones to begin with, so any baseline enmity changes (like those directly connected to JA/magic) would only make things even wonkier. :/

SMN damage output is actually not imbalanced outside of SP usage, so the only things that should be a potential adjustment target should be stuff that directly relates to damage output while SPs are up. A time-limited damage cap (30k-40k should work) should at least even out the kill-times between SMN/others and reduce the perceived "need" to use SMN for the fastest kills.

[Hawklaser]

It would most likely have to be something that affected all jobs and not just SMN. I'm not sure that the system can tell the difference between pet types for damage calculations, and I for one, absolutely do not want to see BST get nerfed further than it already has been. >.> Even if it is possible to pinpoint BP.Rage, having them trigger "full battlefield" aoes simply removes SMN from playability. They might as well remove the job from the game at that point.

Your proposed enmity changes would either totally cripple SMN by making it too dangerous to use, or possibly turn it into a tank. <,< Again, making a job impossible to play normally is far from a viable solution. Perfect Defense rotations might become a thing again if SMN generated similar enmity to PLD, so be prepared to see 6xSMN parties take over if your proposal got implemented.

Also, enmity is jacked in non-SOA+ zones to begin with, so any baseline enmity changes (like those directly connected to JA/magic) would only make things even wonkier. :/

SMN damage output is actually not imbalanced outside of SP usage, so the only things that should be a potential adjustment target should be stuff that directly relates to damage output while SPs are up. A time-limited damage cap (30k-40k should work) should at least even out the kill-times between SMN/others and reduce the perceived "need" to use SMN for the fastest kills.

Again, this is why the triggering of a move with battlefield aoe of either damage or nasty effects would be tied to specific monster phases. You know, like how Bahamut swaps between Megaflare, Gigaflare, and Teraflare based on how much HP he has remaining. Or like Spike Flail back in the day which was triggered almost exclusively when one took agro in certian locations in relation to the mob. In essence during a specific phase of a monster, it getting hit with massive damage on the scale multiple SMNs can produce causes the mob to do something nasty, or during said phase being highly resistant or evasive to certain abilities. If it is tied to specific phases, it doesn't make any class unplayable, and instead encourages bringing more variety to fights thanks to mechanics.

As to being able to tell the difference between pet types... I am pretty sure they can differentiate between pet magical and physical damage, as after all they have gear that can give bonuses to specific ones. Also don't forget certain avatars are more specialized towards physical damage as well.

The biggest problem with SMN's damage is how safe it is to use it in the first place. I am not saying make every summoner action generate a lot of agro, but some do need to generate more of it. Grabbing a random person to aggro the mobs in a way that keeps them off the hate list so a group of smns can pop Astral Flow/Conduit and blast away and clear them all in perfect safety does not work for long term health of the game. Should Smn be able to put out ridiculous damage while using those abilities, yes. Should Smn be able to use those abilities and the mob never really bat an eye towards the Smn? This is where the problem lies, and one of the reasons I propose adding emnity components to their 1hrs, and lesser amounts that decays fairly quickly for damaging blood pacts(enough so that Conduit+multiple BP's at the very least pull agro from a recently summoned avatar). The right amount is hard to say, but should be enough where unless the tank has had time to build significant enmity the 1hrs run a very real risk of pulling agro in a hurry.

Again, with having phases to the monsters where using smn 1hrs is bad, either due to counter attacks or them being ineffective, helps even things out as well and adds a little bit of skill requirement to smn by having to pay attention and know when to use their abilities, instead of defaulting to pop 1hrs and just obliterate.

[Nyarlko]

Anything that limits when a certain job is useful will equate to "do not use" as far as the playerbase is concerned. If there are any significant "phase" where a SMN can not attack, then SMN will simply be excluded. IMO, that is not a viable solution. I'm not sure that the devs are currently able to specify specific abilities/spells for triggers.. At least, I can't think of a single implementation of something similarly specific. The only examples I can come up with involve spell skill type (as in "Geomancy skill" or "Job Ability" or "Magic") or physVSmagic damage.

"Pet type" does not mean "damage type", it means "BST vs SMN vs PUP vs DRG". Again, I can't come up with any examples of where something similar has been implemented already as most (all?) of the time they are all lumped into a single "Pet" category. Odds are high that anything that could be done right now to nerf SMN pets would affect all four pet jobs rather than just SMN. That nullifies this potential solution unless the devs are willing to add a new combat system which sounds like a lot more work than they are willing/capable of doing with the current dev team.

SMN being able to command their pets from range is the primary aspect of the job. Unlike PUP/BST/DRG, the player is not intended to be doing damage themselves (don't get me started on BST tho..) and damage potential is intended and balanced around the pet being the only output source. It is not a "problem", it is the core design of the job and should not be touched. Range has zero direct impact on damage output, which is the perceived problem here. BLM and RNG can do burst damage at range as well, should they be nerfed too? BLM even gets less enmity from MBing than normal casts, and neither normal/MB give enough enmity to pull off of a tank in SOA+ areas.

[Hawklaser]

Anything that limits when a certain job is useful will equate to "do not use" as far as the playerbase is concerned. If there are any significant "phase" where a SMN can not attack, then SMN will simply be excluded. IMO, that is not a viable solution. I'm not sure that the devs are currently able to specify specific abilities/spells for triggers.. At least, I can't think of a single implementation of something similarly specific. The only examples I can come up with involve spell skill type (as in "Geomancy skill" or "Job Ability" or "Magic") or physVSmagic damage.

The funny thing is, smn has never really been sought for things outside of burning things down with their 1hrs. The phase would not necessarily prevent smn from attacking, but more intended to stop how people use smn to zerg and burn things down. It could be something as simple as if mob takes X damage from one target in Y seconds, use skill Z that is very dangerous.

And as to being able specify and detect specific abilities for triggers, Absolute Virtue. You had to lock it out of reusing specific 2hrs(at the time) by using them within a window of time after it used them. So they have used that type of mechanic before. Which means they can indeed have mobs respond to the activation of Astral Flow and/or Astral Conduit during specific phases. Such as if monster detects one of those abilities used during the non-burn phase, could have it do a large scale charm/amnesia/silence effect, or something similar.



"Pet type" does not mean "damage type", it means "BST vs SMN vs PUP vs DRG". Again, I can't come up with any examples of where something similar has been implemented already as most (all?) of the time they are all lumped into a single "Pet" category. Odds are high that anything that could be done right now to nerf SMN pets would affect all four pet jobs rather than just SMN. That nullifies this potential solution unless the devs are willing to add a new combat system which sounds like a lot more work than they are willing/capable of doing with the current dev team.

Well I forgot one thing, bst pets and drg wyvern still have their respective family types, so it would not surprise me at all if there is already a built in "avatar" monster family. If so they can give monsters special buffs akin to the varied circle JA's that grant bonuses against specific families of monsters as well as killer traits corresponding to what is tied to the avatars, and this would keep it from hitting other pet jobs as well. After all Drg wyvern, and bst pets get affected by killer traits all the time. So skip the pet damage type entirely, and target via the potential "avatar" monster family that is likely already in place on summoned avatars. The varied circle, breaker, and killer skills and traits show they already have stuff in place to specifically target sources of damage, question is do the avatars actually have a family type associated with them?

As to why pet damage type came up, Smn is the only one that does significant amounts of magical damage so would be easier to have a reduction happen to pet magic damage over X, or if needed to all pet damage over X to cover the few physical bloodpacts, as most of the other pets don't output much magical damage on that scale.(never really see pup's in action so I may be wrong on their automation)



SMN being able to command their pets from range is the primary aspect of the job. Unlike PUP/BST/DRG, the player is not intended to be doing damage themselves (don't get me started on BST tho..) and damage potential is intended and balanced around the pet being the only output source. It is not a "problem", it is the core design of the job and should not be touched. Range has zero direct impact on damage output, which is the perceived problem here. BLM and RNG can do burst damage at range as well, should they be nerfed too? BLM even gets less enmity from MBing than normal casts, and neither normal/MB give enough enmity to pull off of a tank in SOA+ areas.

Its not the range that smn does its damage at that is the problem, its the general lack of emnity they generate while doing so. The difference between BLM and RNG to SMN for the longest time has been if they go full out on enemies before hate is well established, they take a dirt nap. Smn just has to take a moment and recast a new avatar, so what is so wrong with Smn risking dirt naps when it fires everything it has off? Which essentially takes away the "glass" portion of their "Glass Cannon" playstyle. Hypothetically, if a tank has to only use one non-1hr emnity skill to hold the attention of an endgame mob when its health drops from 100-10% in under 1m from the rest of the party unloading all their burst, something is very wrong with the enmity generated by all that damage as there is no real risk to going full out with burst from the start. Which is why burn parties are popular, fast and little risk for those that know how they work.

Bst... well that one has always been in an odd spot.... either needed to minimize agro enough so could throw multiple pets at higher end mobs when solo, or use EM's and melee along side them to chain kill DC's much faster for good experience as well. And really, the only reason Bst ever needed to minimize agro was due to fighting mobs that needed multiple pets to deal with in the first place. But Bst has always had the risk of non-jugs uncharming and resisting new charm attempts. Now if there is gear to actually support both pet and bst melee is another problem entirely.

[Nyarlko]

There are numerous jobs other than SMN which is capable of cranking out large amounts of damage in a short time, so any form of your XYZ idea is going to potentially nerf others unless it's sooooo high that even SMN struggles to hit it. (Think like 200k+/6sec XD ...actually some melees can break that too, so nevermind.) It won't do any good for anyone if everyone in top-end gear is forced to hold back.

Didn't think of AV, good catch. ^^ However, even then, that's only 15x abilities that it had to care about. There's a helluva lot more than 15x BP.Rage abilities, which could potentially be too much to process server-side on each and every JA/spell used, possibly including all sources rather than avatar-only. And yeah, I'd bet that it really would require that much work, PS2-limitations etc. most likely limit what can be done at this point.

Totally forgot that the family types of pets are checked/separated within Voidwatch, (I've never done them as PUP/DRG/SMN and BST pets are only ever referenced as generic "pets",) so it actually might be possible to do something with this. Instituting any anti-SMN damage penalty would still only lead to SMN getting excluded from groups. Historically, the general attitude would probably be "SMN got nerfed? Don't care what the nerf was, I'm not using them then." That happened with the BST nerf btw, even though actual damage output was not touched in the slightest. ^^;;

Avatars are part of the Elemental family IIRC, which doesn't have a native killer effect. BGwiki has them listed as "Unclassified" though, so might be wrong. Even if added though, intimidation does not interrupt JAs like Ready, so I doubt this would have any significant impact.

Damage type wouldn't work as a good filter, since a lot of the heavy hitter BP.Rage's are physical or hybrid. Anything that relied only on magic damage type would hit all pet jobs and nerf the already middling magic damage output of BST and reduce PUP to a point where it wouldn't even be worth trying for. A PUP who's geared for automaton magic damage actually can produce some impressive MB numbers, though I've heard it's a serious PITA to do so. Targeting phys damage would be even worse.

Enmity works differently in SOA+ zones/content than in earlier areas. Old areas use the old enmity formulas and it's basically impossible for a tank to hold agro vs any type of DD player. I've done UNMs with a top-end geared PLD and even if I did not touch the mob for 30sec while he popped all his enmity tools, one WS/Ready would be all it took to snatch hate. SOA+ zones/content use a new formula to allow good tanks to hold agro against BLMs MBing for 99999, melees WSing for 50k (plus 99999 skillchain), etc. and is absolutely necessary to allow for jobs to do their things while using the best gear. (Do note that not-good tanks will struggle to perform well in that situation though. XD)

Since ilvl was introduced, BST has not had to worry about any of the issues you mentioned, but instead we now have to worry about pets taking agro from not-awesome tanks. ^^;;; Since we now have to totally rely on jug pets (the vast majority of ilvl NMs and instanced content do not involve any charmable mobs,) it is a bit simpler compared to the old-school style. Every BST I knew BITD favored the {Over there.} style of gameplay, which the devs nerfed a while back citing their "vision" for the job being master+pet fighting side-by-side even though there are no JA/JT/equipment to support that playstyle in ilvl content and have yet to add anything to allow it to be a fully viable playstyle... (Yes, I'm a bit bitter about this issue. <,<;; Sue me. lol)

[Hawklaser]

Didn't think of AV, good catch. ^^ However, even then, that's only 15x abilities that it had to care about. There's a helluva lot more than 15x BP.Rage abilities, which could potentially be too much to process server-side on each and every JA/spell used, possibly including all sources rather than avatar-only. And yeah, I'd bet that it really would require that much work, PS2-limitations etc. most likely limit what can be done at this point.

They don't have to watch for all the BP rage abilities, really just Astral Flow and Astral Conduit are the ones as they pretty much signify the Smn is about to unleash hell. That is if they want to deter smn burning content.



Totally forgot that the family types of pets are checked/separated within Voidwatch, (I've never done them as PUP/DRG/SMN and BST pets are only ever referenced as generic "pets",) so it actually might be possible to do something with this. Instituting any anti-SMN damage penalty would still only lead to SMN getting excluded from groups. Historically, the general attitude would probably be "SMN got nerfed? Don't care what the nerf was, I'm not using them then." That happened with the BST nerf btw, even though actual damage output was not touched in the slightest. ^^;;

Avatars are part of the Elemental family IIRC, which doesn't have a native killer effect. BGwiki has them listed as "Unclassified" though, so might be wrong. Even if added though, intimidation does not interrupt JAs like Ready, so I doubt this would have any significant impact.

People tend to knee-jerk to anything, and migrate to whatever else becomes the Flavor of the Month if they were not playing it because they liked it in the first place. Happens all the time when things get adjusted in the pursuit of balance.

They may not have anything listed on bgwiki, though ffxiclopedia does have them tagged as "avatar", but consider that almost every mob in the game has been associated with some family type as evidenced by Blue Magic and that when the avatars are enemies outside of specific battlefield fights they are often called xxxx avatar. And some of the odd ones, like sea mobs, I have to wonder if they were typed before or after Blue mage was released. Which makes one wonder if avatars indeed have a unique family type. While intimidate doesn't stop ready(which is a status granted from the bst), I do remember seeing pets get intimidated after using ready and sometimes not using a skill. If they have a family type, it doesn't have to be a killer effect, but more like the defense/resistance bonuses the circle JA's give. Heck, if I remember right, some mobs even intimidated players too.



Damage type wouldn't work as a good filter, since a lot of the heavy hitter BP.Rage's are physical or hybrid. Anything that relied only on magic damage type would hit all pet jobs and nerf the already middling magic damage output of BST and reduce PUP to a point where it wouldn't even be worth trying for. A PUP who's geared for automaton magic damage actually can produce some impressive MB numbers, though I've heard it's a serious PITA to do so. Targeting phys damage would be even worse.

Agreed, going after specific damage types from pets would likely cause the most problems overall.




Enmity works differently in SOA+ zones/content than in earlier areas. Old areas use the old enmity formulas and it's basically impossible for a tank to hold agro vs any type of DD player. I've done UNMs with a top-end geared PLD and even if I did not touch the mob for 30sec while he popped all his enmity tools, one WS/Ready would be all it took to snatch hate. SOA+ zones/content use a new formula to allow good tanks to hold agro against BLMs MBing for 99999, melees WSing for 50k (plus 99999 skillchain), etc. and is absolutely necessary to allow for jobs to do their things while using the best gear. (Do note that not-good tanks will struggle to perform well in that situation though. XD)


Emnity fell apart around the time of abysea, mostly thanks to how much damage ramped up around then. It still works fine in normal areas until you cross a certain gear threshold. And as long as not good tanks loose agro to a smn going full out I have no problems, and the agro isn't also gaurenteed to go on to the smn's avatar in that case. Good tanks could hold or easily take back agro from things like benediction back in the day as well without the use of SATA.



Since ilvl was introduced, BST has not had to worry about any of the issues you mentioned, but instead we now have to worry about pets taking agro from not-awesome tanks. ^^;;; Since we now have to totally rely on jug pets (the vast majority of ilvl NMs and instanced content do not involve any charmable mobs,) it is a bit simpler compared to the old-school style. Every BST I knew BITD favored the {Over there.} style of gameplay, which the devs nerfed a while back citing their "vision" for the job being master+pet fighting side-by-side even though there are no JA/JT/equipment to support that playstyle in ilvl content and have yet to add anything to allow it to be a fully viable playstyle... (Yes, I'm a bit bitter about this issue. <,<;; Sue me. lol)

I have yet to get bst to 99 and ilvl content, but I know I found the melee with pet style to be far more enjoyable while I was leveling it. Bst has the axe skill to do well in melee, so its more of is there gear for both bst and pet to function effectively. I heard about that nerf... and that the range for the abilities is too small now for some races.

[Nyarlko]

People tend to knee-jerk to anything, and migrate to whatever else becomes the Flavor of the Month if they were not playing it because they liked it in the first place. Happens all the time when things get adjusted in the pursuit of balance.
...
I have yet to get bst to 99 and ilvl content, but I know I found the melee with pet style to be far more enjoyable while I was leveling it. Bst has the axe skill to do well in melee, so its more of is there gear for both bst and pet to function effectively. I heard about that nerf... and that the range for the abilities is too small now for some races.

Wanna talk about knee-jerks? XD Just look at BST. To address complaints that BST/BSTburns were able to clear content more easily/reliably than other jobs, they overnerfed the range to make it a severe PITA to play the job. They didn't touch anything else like pet or master damage output, but they managed to destroy a playstyle that's been around since the life of the game, but they did manage to chase off all the FOTM/bandwagoners by doing so. Should be noted that not too long after the nerf went live, melees caught up gearwise and promptly began to outperform BST in damage output. lol orz

Extra salt in the wound, they have failed to do much of anything to support the playstyle that they have decided is the "correct" way to play the job.. It is literally impossible to get enough accuracy for both master/pet at the same time to handle 135+ content.

BST JA range is now ~6y from your pet, with a variance based on pet model size (tiger is a longer model and gives a longer range) plus a small variance (roughly .2y between sizes) between races. The variance is a separate/universal issue connected to player model size, but it stands out a lot when you compare a taru to galka at max range for BST since the range is so bloody small now. The range is so small however, that it's not hard to be meleeing less than 90' away from your pet and get the "out of range" error.

... TBH, I have 99SMN, but I don't play it since I don't have space to gear it. I'm posting here because I don't want what happened to BST to happen to anyone else. To me, any form of acceptable nerf would be one that is not actually SMN-specific but manages to curb the immediate burst output out of the gate in general without crippling anyone.

[Clou777]

SMN is not overpowered, there are still many more DD jobs that can out damage SMN easily, Conduit is where SMN shines most though and there is a cost of using it as it drains your MP super fast at the cost of the high dmg, to counter this you need to be a good SMN with knowledge on how to use conduit to its full potential. People need to stop whining about a SMN nerf, SMN was in terrible shape for a decade and is finally now on par with most other jobs and I for one main SMN since launch and even with a good group it still takes some real effort to get aeonics done, especially the reisenjima HELMS.

[Ilian]

SMN is not You overpowered, there are still many more DD jobs that can out damage SMN easily

Name one job that can DPS higher than SMN using AC please.

[Hawklaser]

SMN is not overpowered, there are still many more DD jobs that can out damage SMN easily, Conduit is where SMN shines most though and there is a cost of using it as it drains your MP super fast at the cost of the high dmg, to counter this you need to be a good SMN with knowledge on how to use conduit to its full potential.

My problem isn't so much with smn being strong while using conduit. It is more the fact the defacto solution to just about any hard content quickly becomes throw a lot of smns with conduit and/or flow to just burn things down from 100 to 0 in short order. Any changes I would like to see is more in the lines of preventing mass smns using conduit to be the solution for almost everything. Smns burning down a 20-25% nasty phase perfectly acceptable, the whole mob not so much as it kills off job diversity and leads to forcing people to play stuff they don't like for the off chance of maybe improving what they enjoy yet can't bring to harder content.

[Frodnon]

We have had RUNs in dd gear put up substantial parses in t4 conduits (upwards of 60% of a smn) I have no doubts a <1 minute schah is possible with melee DDs, it would just involve prebuff bards and the melee pouncing at pop.

[Zeargi]

My problem isn't so much with smn being strong while using conduit. It is more the fact the defacto solution to just about any hard content quickly becomes throw a lot of smns with conduit and/or flow to just burn things down from 100 to 0 in short order.

And that's part of what people don't see. This isn't a SMN problem in and of itself alone; this strategy has been used a number of times before. One SMN can't floor these things, it takes an entire group plus outside aid from COR and GEO. So to curb this type of play style from lazy players, this is a dev situation which need to be on a more creative level. Has much as I'd hate to see it done: The likely fix is to rebuke this style by forcing certain stages or retributive strikes. The first fix is much like the Pandemonium Warden, and once certain thresholds are hit (likely within a certain time) the enemy despawns and reappears with the allies it should have. The second fix is basically if an enemy is killed far to fast that it gives a OHKO move that ends the fight. The second is far more harsh, but would also punish EVERYONE has a whole. Ultimately it's a time sensitive matter, and with most end game things already having a displayed clock, I feel that it shouldn't be too difficult to implement. Those are just my thoughts, but I'm sure there could be more ideas and tweaks to make a best solution that would benefit the game and community as a whole.

[Urmom]

And that's part of what people don't see. This isn't a SMN problem in and of itself alone; this strategy has been used a number of times before. One SMN can't floor these things, it takes an entire group plus outside aid from COR and GEO. .

Not really. Smns are literally soloing T3 reisin. T4s are often with a party or less but yes it often includes a geo and sometimes run with the rest being smns. And that's where the huge advantage comes from. The lower numbers needed to do this means less hp which is what allow these zergs to even happen. Just one more problem caused by the extreme HP scaling

[Rwolf]

To be honest, there are a least a handful of jobs soloing Reisenjima T3. Search for T3 solo videos. I've seen BLU and SCH soloing them off the top of my head. Haven't seen SMN but I don't discount it. Without being super charged by a GEO and COR, I don't see it capable of melting a T3 and avoiding mechanics altogether solo.

[Urmom]

Thought only a couple of the T3s have been done. Like when looking for vids as suggested all I see Neak solo by sch and a Yakshi solo by smn who also solod Onychophora (neither of which are "super charged" vids). And I've heard tell of blu doing Neak but haven't seen it but enough people say they do it so I'll buy it

How exactly do you use a geo and still solo? Bubbles wear on pop don't they? Not sure about Neak but the idea on Yakshi is mostly to kill fast enough your odds of getting hit by something fight ending go decently down and for Maju to go slow and steady at never let it get enough tp to go glow eyes

Regardless of other jobs doing wasn't really the point I was countering. I was countering this idea that you need an army of them or something when really you don't need

[Hawklaser]

Regardless of other jobs doing wasn't really the point I was countering. I was countering this idea that you need an army of them or something when really you don't need

While don't need an army of them to do it, it is still telling that they are one of the first things people try for harder content to get past it easily.

After all, how often do you hear something is hard so lets throw more of generic DDs at it? Such as thf, drg, non-Kclub drks. It is almost always Smn that is sought. Blm, Rng, and Sam are the other main ones sought over the game's lifespan, thanks to the raw amount of burst they can do compared to others.

[Rwolf]

I see what you're saying but I also didn't want anyone to assume SMN is this OP job that's the only one soloing T3. I don't fully agree with nerfing SMN but I'm listening intently to concerns regarding it and find it has some validity.

The only thing I've seen players bring up is nerfing SMN because of Astral Conduit's DPS. Something like soloing a T3 you're not going to do solo with AC. It'll knock a chunk of health off but you're not melting one and certainly not avoiding mechanics. I brought up GEO and COR because that's where the spike comes from on higher content. Pet buffs and bubbles make a huge difference in damage and besides food and gear there's not much else to buff pets. So if someone is looking at what SMN is doing in a group, they can't apply that damage to solo. Not just speed but you're not doing near as much per Blood Pact without support.

Some BLU vs. Neak solo videos:
https://youtu.be/GL2ltSUCxeU

[Urmom]

Problem is AC is the problem. Not many have too much of a concern with there being jobs that can deal decent dmg from a distance (unless that job is bst for some reason) it's when they start outdps others at the same time with less other jobs needed if only for a short time. This whole thread wouldn't exist if it wasn't for a combination of the new bp dmgs during AC. So why not adjust AC if it's the clear problem?

As far as cor/geo... eh nobody is going to easy mode full dmg solo. It's a question of how much support is needed. Melee is undeniably always been the most support intensive to the point it's why prebuffing became a thing but traditionally offered the highest potential dps. With rng/mage strats being a bit less support (pretty much just a tank and support/healer for tank) and "safer" but a tad less dps (though not as much since the MB update). And strats really just needing the pet jobs but can be helpful to have 1 cor 1 geo and for certain zergs a run.

Could only find this vid but even with some mistakes and taking breaks to siphon tp for safety (makes it slower but less likely something random happens) still managed to go 67-5% on AC. If actually did prebuff with a cor, didn't make a couple of small errors and played the luck roulette by not using Cait Sith could probably do a bigger chunk possibly all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF34wSEiczU&t

[Shiyo]

We have had RUNs in dd gear put up substantial parses in t4 conduits (upwards of 60% of a smn) I have no doubts a <1 minute schah is possible with melee DDs, it would just involve prebuff bards and the melee pouncing at pop.
Melee actually are in danger of dying. Ranged classes that completely bypass all boss mechanics shouldn't deal anywhere near the damage of a melee.

Fixing this problem is such an easy thing. I quit this game for 7 months and come back and something like this has been allowed to run rampant for SEVEN months? I'm honestly disgusted - how can developers care so little about their game they'd allow a class to literally GAME SHARK their and completely destroy all of it's difficulty?

Remove AC from the game until it's redesigned. SMN is 100% balanced and fine outside of AC.

[Frodnon]

Melee actually are in danger of dying. Ranged classes that completely bypass all boss mechanics shouldn't deal anywhere near the damage of a melee.

Conduit burns aren't some magic 100% 'i win' buttons, even with the best setup. Schah can AOE and kill a pet or get a debuff off and stop a pet, killing DPS and costing the run. Kouryu can terrorize avatar or player and cost the run. A SMN can, sometimes, recover from that and resummon in time, but it costs usually 4-5 seconds of a 30 second ability.

Putting the blame solely on AC is pretty poor, and ignores all the other balancing issues that contribute to it.

HP scaling mechanics contribute to small party zergs over other setups. If the mob's HP were static, Setups involving melee DD would arguably be much more viable due to how much damage a superbuffed party of DD can put out in 1, 2, or 5 minutes, opposed to the frontloaded 30s of conduit followed by the rapidly falling DPS of post conduit SMN.

Mobs often lack hard stop mechanics. omen caturae, Tumult Curator and oncycophora are good examples of mobs that do have them, Schah is a poor example but does have it. Hard stop abilities like Invincible/Perfect Dodge, HP% Gimmicks like Respawning Kouryu at 50%, Multiple Targets of TC or Schah's DT- while 2+ pets are out All Mitigate a straight zerg. Schah just unfortunately has his be Timer based insted of HP, giving enough of a window to take down.

Odyllic Subterfuge helps to mitigate Debuffs to an extent.
GEO indi-frailty scales damage on pacts greatly.
DA fTP mechanics of Volt Strike gives Nirvana a 30% damage increase (40% total) over the 2nd highest competitor, Was+1 at 9%

[Zeargi]

Melee actually are in danger of dying. Ranged classes that completely bypass all boss mechanics shouldn't deal anywhere near the damage of a melee.

You do realize that all avatars have to be in Melee range to use their Physical Blood Pacts, right? Avatars have substantially less HP than players and other pets outside of Wyverns. They are still susceptible to all status debuffs including Amnesia, ATT/MACC/ACC/DEF/etc Down with them having a slightly higher resistance to elemental debuffs that are their elements or the ones they're strong versus (E.I. Leviathan and Ifrit are slightly less likely to get Amnesia) So, meaning that if an Avatar dies or is inflicted with something that prevents their actions like stun/terror/amnesia/petrify/etc then AC basically becomes useless because it only lasts for 30s.

Again, this isn't solely a SMN problem. Summoner burns are nothing new. I've said it before: The old Promy Fight, Those were SMN burned. Waking the Beast: Alliance of solely SMNs. The problems is that the game has shifted so hard to punish melee fighting with extreme AoEs and spamming of things like Full Clears of Debuffs. To add on top of all this, most enemies HP Skyrocket to unGodly amounts with more people that you bring. The problem is that this MMO punishes you for playing with other people. Nerfing SMN isn't what needs to happen. the Nerfing that should be looked at is the redesigning of the MOBS themselves.

[Selindrile]

This mirrors my sentiments on the matter, ESPECIALLY with the way the "Geo Nerf" was handled, if anyone noticed, the nerf completely bounced off Geo, we still use them for everything.

But, because they can no longer protect melees as well (Vex/Attune) or buff Blms as well, (Focus/Languor), these tasks didn't get picked up by other jobs, like SE was hoping.

Why? Alternatives for these things are either mostly too weak or situational to truly replace Geo for those situations, instead, the strategies that involved these things simply fell by the wayside by and large, and the strategies that allowed us to not have to deal with these things at all, instead of mitigating them, won out.

[Frodnon]

To be honest, there are a least a handful of jobs soloing Reisenjima T3. Search for T3 solo videos. I've seen BLU and SCH soloing them off the top of my head. Haven't seen SMN but I don't discount it. Without being super charged by a GEO and COR, I don't see it capable of melting a T3 and avoiding mechanics altogether solo.

Papesse did yakshi and oncycophora fairly recently with trusts. He's under the name duesssa on youtube.

[Shiyo]

You do realize that all avatars have to be in Melee range to use their Physical Blood Pacts, right? Avatars have substantially less HP than players and other pets outside of Wyverns. They are still susceptible to all status debuffs including Amnesia, ATT/MACC/ACC/DEF/etc Down with them having a slightly higher resistance to elemental debuffs that are their elements or the ones they're strong versus (E.I. Leviathan and Ifrit are slightly less likely to get Amnesia) So, meaning that if an Avatar dies or is inflicted with something that prevents their actions like stun/terror/amnesia/petrify/etc then AC basically becomes useless because it only lasts for 30s.

Again, this isn't solely a SMN problem. Summoner burns are nothing new. I've said it before: The old Promy Fight, Those were SMN burned. Waking the Beast: Alliance of solely SMNs. The problems is that the game has shifted so hard to punish melee fighting with extreme AoEs and spamming of things like Full Clears of Debuffs. To add on top of all this, most enemies HP Skyrocket to unGodly amounts with more people that you bring. The problem is that this MMO punishes you for playing with other people. Nerfing SMN isn't what needs to happen. the Nerfing that should be looked at is the redesigning of the MOBS themselves.

What is with this summoner main mindset? You don't REDESIGN the entire game because >>ONE SINGLE JOB<< out 22 can completely obliterate the game and nearly game shark through it with ease. That's completely insane - do you honestly expect such a small developer team to redesign the ENTIRE game because of a SINGLE job?

Anyways, more onto your point. Pets can be indefinitely resummoned without res weakness, players cannot.

[saevel]

You do realize that all avatars have to be in Melee range to use their Physical Blood Pacts, right?

Ok compromise, every time an avatar is defeated the SMN is inflicted with a 5 minute weakness effect and has all their buffs removed. Also we reduce the pet -DT cap to 50%.

[Zeargi]

What is with this summoner main mindset? You don't REDESIGN the entire game because >>ONE SINGLE JOB<< out 22 can completely obliterate the game and nearly game shark through it with ease. That's completely insane - do you honestly expect such a small developer team to redesign the ENTIRE game because of a SINGLE job?
Anyways, more onto your point. Pets can be indefinitely resummoned without res weakness, players cannot. All I hear, is that everyone is complaining about those stupid aeonic weapons. Look at changing those mobs and your problem will be solved. Correct, SMN's Avatars aren't hindered by weakness, but neither are the pets of BSTs, DRGs, or PUPs. The other solution which should have been is to give WHM and SCH the means to remove weakness at this point in the game. The NPC Ferreous Coffin has Reviviscence, so it's already in the game as it is. And earlier you said that no other job can do what SMN can, and that's completely not true. COR, SCH, SAM, DRK, DRG, BLU, and even RDM to some extent are all strong DDs. I have someone on my server that plays DRG and teams up with a GEO, and he completely outclasses other players. I have a BLU is my LS, and he's unGodly stong and was often the deciding factor of a few Wanted/Escha wins.



Ok compromise, every time an avatar is defeated the SMN is inflicted with a 5 minute weakness effect and has all their buffs removed. Also we reduce the pet -DT cap to 50%. No, that's not a compromise at all. The Trial-Size Trials for SMN would be complete un-doable, and you punish SMNs that are starting out.

[Nyarlko]

Ok compromise, every time an avatar is defeated the SMN is inflicted with a 5 minute weakness effect and has all their buffs removed. Also we reduce the pet -DT cap to 50%.

Limit that to "Avatars" at least. There is no reason that BST/DRG/PUP need to get nerfed.

[Rwolf]

Just to clarify my posts that are being misinterpreted. I didn't say SMN was incapable of soloing Reisenjima T3 or certain HELMs. Simply that I hadn't seen it yet. I believed it was possible. GEO and COR support = party. I was saying it takes party support not that it takes a prebuff SMN only to solo.

Not sure why SMN solo is even mentioned in a nerf SMN thread. They aren't doing something so extraordinary that no other job can accomplish. AC might luckily take a huge chunk of life if the avatar is not disabled or killed on high content. But it's not avoiding mechanics solo.

[Rwolf]

Back to Astral Conduit. I don't think it is inherently bad. I agree that eventually enough changes made it capable of massively getting crazy when well geared and supported.

The combination of multi attack, pet support/bubbles and speed of execution together is an issue with damage.
It also has zero reason to use for Wards.
It guarantees we're never going to see improvements to anything else like Wards effectiveness.



I don't even know how it gets to these suggestions to nerf SMN as a whole or into the ground completely. Regardless of decision to nerf AC. The dev team certainly does need to work on better pauses and mechanics during fights. The dev team is too small excuse in discussion is getting old.

Majority of fights are HP increase per player and time based. It is inherent that players will find the meta to be whatever is the fastest, safest, and easiest to execute reliably. You cannot fight that nature. Having fights being more about 100% kill it fast is going to always boil down to who does that best. Which means even if you burn SMN to ashes. The next meta will just have you bandwagon angry at the next job.

As long as combat is focused on zerg objective, kill as fast and overwhelmingly as possible. It will never change, just shift. Might as well put a monthly campaign in where <insert job> is "OP" this month. Because that's all nerfing a job into submission is.

Nerfing jobs to the point that it's rarely used and/or ineffective has never fixed this game. Distance didn't fix BST meta, mob nerfs did. GEO corrections didn't make it more likely to use BRD, BRD changes did and some ambuscade where NiTro lullaby was appealing.

There is a middle ground somewhere.

[saevel]

Back to Astral Conduit. I don't think it is inherently bad. I agree that eventually enough changes made it capable of massively getting crazy when well geared and supported.

The combination of multi attack, pet support/bubbles and speed of execution together is an issue with damage.
It also has zero reason to use for Wards.
It guarantees we're never going to see improvements to anything else like Wards effectiveness.



I don't even know how it gets to these suggestions to nerf SMN as a whole or into the ground completely. Regardless of decision to nerf AC. The dev team certainly does need to work on better pauses and mechanics during fights. The dev team is too small excuse in discussion is getting old.

Majority of fights are HP increase per player and time based. It is inherent that players will find the meta to be whatever is the fastest, safest, and easiest to execute reliably. You cannot fight that nature. Having fights being more about 100% kill it fast is going to always boil down to who does that best. Which means even if you burn SMN to ashes. The next meta will just have you bandwagon angry at the next job.

As long as combat is focused on zerg objective, kill as fast and overwhelmingly as possible. It will never change, just shift. Might as well put a monthly campaign in where <insert job> is "OP" this month. Because that's all nerfing a job into submission is.

Nerfing jobs to the point that it's rarely used and/or ineffective has never fixed this game. Distance didn't fix BST meta, mob nerfs did. GEO corrections didn't make it more likely to use BRD, BRD changes did and some ambuscade where NiTro lullaby was appealing.

There is a middle ground somewhere.

There already is a solution, it's the same on used on BLM back when they used to time nuke / chain nuke all the High Level content to death.


We've already had a situation like this that was corrected before and I'm not talking about BST's. Many moons ago we had legions of BLM's lining up and time nuking / bursting NM's for obscene damage and this method was so safe and easy that it became the gold standard for all challenging content, especially after the Ranger nerf. SE's answer as to create a resistance wall that BLM's chain nuking would rapidly run into. The first two nukes would largely be unaffected but the third and subsequent nuke would rapidly diminish in damage, after a few seconds the resistance reset. This had the effect of not nerfing BLM's individual damage while preventing an army of BLMs from steamrolling everything. Something similar needs to happen to SMN's BP damage, an individual SMN won't be effected but a group of them would be.

[Frodnon]

Back to Astral Conduit. I don't think it is inherently bad. I agree that eventually enough changes made it capable of massively getting crazy when well geared and supported.


The combination of multi attack, pet support/bubbles and speed of execution together is an issue with damage.
It also has zero reason to use for Wards.
It guarantees we're never going to see improvements to anything else like Wards effectiveness.






I don't even know how it gets to these suggestions to nerf SMN as a whole or into the ground completely. Regardless of decision to nerf AC. The dev team certainly does need to work on better pauses and mechanics during fights. The dev team is too small excuse in discussion is getting old.

Majority of fights are HP increase per player and time based. It is inherent that players will find the meta to be whatever is the fastest, safest, and easiest to execute reliably. You cannot fight that nature. Having fights being more about 100% kill it fast is going to always boil down to who does that best. Which means even if you burn SMN to ashes. The next meta will just have you bandwagon angry at the next job.

As long as combat is focused on zerg objective, kill as fast and overwhelmingly as possible. It will never change, just shift. Might as well put a monthly campaign in where <insert job> is "OP" this month. Because that's all nerfing a job into submission is.

Nerfing jobs to the point that it's rarely used and/or ineffective has never fixed this game. Distance didn't fix BST meta, mob nerfs did. GEO corrections didn't make it more likely to use BRD, BRD changes did and some ambuscade where NiTro lullaby was appealing.

There is a middle ground somewhere.


It does have a use for wards. 20% increase in buff duration.

[Rwolf]

Let's be real though, no one is using Astral Conduit for that. I meant it more as there's no good reason to.

[Frodnon]

Let's be real though, no one is using Astral Conduit for that. I meant it more as there's no good reason to.

I used it last week to prebuff a melee group that was doing a job master bcnm, Though i do agree that our buffs need an overhaul to make it more useful.

[Rwolf]

Prebuffing outside of a fight is not in the realm of what I was speaking of. The imbalance of the boon received from Ward use versus Rage use on AC. I feel like were debating semantics and agree on Wards.