SMN is now the least popular caster again barely one expansion after its rework

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Originally Posted by CVXIV

I think if they leaned in more on the elemental aspect that would be nice
I've mentioned it before, and I'll probably butcher it again if I try, but having 3 summons for astral and 3 for umbral would be nice

Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Shiva, Ramuh, Leviathan
Those should really be the summons we have, and they can alternate depending on whether you are under astral or umbral trance

Two of the big summons could even be light and dark to really round things out

That might be a step in the right direction
Because for a job called Summoner, there's a distinct lack of summons you control

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There’s a lot of SMN threads in the DPS forum, with a few different versions of this idea, and it’s the one I like best. I’d like to see all 6 elemental summons present, split into astral/umbral teams, with something akin to Transpose that lets us switch between them. The different actions/skills would determine what team you want for dealing with particular mechanics, allowing for low skill floor and high skill ceiling.

What do I think we’ll get next? Another Demi, because I doubt they’re just going to leave it at 3 where one repeats. So fine, we’ll have Bahamut Classic, Phoenix, Sol Bahamut (Light) and they’ll probably give us a Dark, maybe Shinryu or Odin… and that’s fine, IF they give us the other elements and a switch teams button, because just lengthening an already longish rotation with the same three gems in between, locked into an unchangeable order, is insane. lol

For what it’s worth, I’m a caster main, which caster changes every now and then. Started on BLM, and SMN was my second, back at the end of Stormblood, and it’s the one I main right now, after playing RDM for the beginning of EW. The only thing I really miss about old SMN was the DoT spread; that felt really satisfying. I much prefer the flow of current SMN’s rotation and to me it feels more like an old school Final Fantasy Summoner. But it needs more summons. The gems were actually a great framework to add more in, they just haven’t done it.

Imho, SMN is a Summoner. Summons aren’t “pets,” so it’s not really a pet job; and hopefully we’ll get an actually good pet job with Beastmaster that doesn’t feel as clunky. It’s also not a WoW Warlock, and I haven’t played WoW, but I see that comparison a lot and assume it has to do with the DoT spells? That could make an interesting class on its own.

So yeah I actually like new SMN, it just needs more to feel complete. By contrast, PCT feels like a complete, well-designed job with a built-in system for adding new spells/skills with the canvases. We could have that for SMN with more gems and our own version of palette swap or transpose.

If I had to guess, the reason it’s not so popular is because it does the least damage of the casters. In Endwalker, it typically did more damage than red mage and was much easier to play than black mage. Now it does quite a bit less than red mage, and we have pictomancer which still does much more damage than summoner even after the nerf and isn’t very hard to play either.

The Dawntrail changes absolutely were awful, but ease of play is still going to make more people choose it, not less. Not everyone is there for a personal challenge from the job; many instead choose a job based on what it brings to the group. And ease of play is a big benefit to the group.

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Originally Posted by -Xenia-

Not everyone is there for a personal challenge from the job; many instead choose a job based on what it brings to the group. And ease of play is a big benefit to the group.

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I also tend to see more people pull out their SMNs when a patch drops - since having rezzes is helpful in content the average casual player doesn't know yet, and having an easy to play class lets you focus more on mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

You’re playing a game where a bathtub or a garden chair sells for 10 times+ more than a piece of max level gear. Please. The gameplay doesn’t even matter at this point because they know that it’s irredeemably bad and as long as they can sell gametime & virtual gimmicks to the house party subscribers they’re happy.

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TRUEhttp://10char.png

I started this game to play SB smn, I absolutely loved it. I couldn’t play it anymore with ShB changes and EW then cemented its death to me.
I felt like ok, if they killed it for me then there are at least people who are happy with it? Turns out if you kill an identity of a job - it becomes as easy to pick up as it to be discarded

NGL - the main reason I'm not touching Summoner at the moment is that Solar Bahamut it's really simple as that.

With Pictomancer building the iconic Mog and Madeen summons Eiko was using, it just felt more exciting to see and play.
Aesthetics can make or break a job for me and I'm sure it's not that uncommon in a game focused so much about aesthetics as this one.

(the second reason being the massively unfun rigid 2min locked rotation the job has but that's a whole other can of worms I'm not gonna open again)

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

NGL - the main reason I'm not touching Summoner at the moment is that Solar Bahamut it's really simple as that.

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I think it was a really weird call for them to shoehorn Solar Bahamut into the rotation, particularly when we still had plenty of other avatars that would've been way cooler than a brand new Endwalker fanfiction one. Actually, considering the connection to the Moon in that expansion, I think it was a huge missed opportunity that they didn't have than new summon be Fenrir instead. Would've worked great with the theme.

I also just think Solar Bahamut is ugly as sin, lol

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Originally Posted by Gaddes

I think it was a really weird call for them to shoehorn Solar Bahamut into the rotation, particularly when we still had plenty of other avatars that would've been way cooler than a brand new Endwalker fanfiction one. Actually, considering the connection to the Moon in that expansion, I think it was a huge missed opportunity that they didn't have than new summon be Fenrir instead. Would've worked great with the theme.

I also just think Solar Bahamut is ugly as sin, lol

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Lunar Phoenix as a spoiler-free Zodiark stand-in being the next capstone wouldn't surprise me at all. Reusing the same demis also reduces the amount of time they need to spend rigging, which gives them more time to work on other games.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Lunar Phoenix as a spoiler-free Zodiark stand-in being the next capstone wouldn't surprise me at all. Reusing the same demis also reduces the amount of time they need to spend rigging, which gives them more time to work on other games.

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If we're talking about re-use Fenrir literally already exists, with animations, in a Heavensward dungeon as a boss. But regardless there are other existing summons/avatars that already exist that they could have used.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

So yeahhhhhhh SMN is now a distant last in popularity amongst the casters with every other Carter having near twice the amount of clears and RDM having almost 4 times the clears (it’s even the least popular in casual dungeons and in the alliance raid)

Is this a sign that the rework was a failure? Or that reworks based on popularity aren’t always the most important thing?

How do they justify SMN’s changes as good in the longer term if all it took was one new caster and a few balance changes to send it to the bottom again

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Yeaaaaah, I would say that the rework they did has a lot to do with it but the real reason is because the Jobs balance is really bad, look at machinist for example, now they say that in 8.0 they will change things again (I doubt it) but let's hope that in 8.0 they show some love to SMN.

Pretty much everyone said something along these lines already, but since I played SMN from 2.0 all the way until switching to PCT with 7.0, I feel like I need to just...restate them all again, I guess.

The problem isn't with the rework in 6.0, it's that they claimed the reason for the complete overhaul was to give it more room to grow in future expansions, then proceeded to add absolutely nothing to it in 7.0 but another Bahamut. At the time of the rework, I was very happy to finally be rid of Summoner just being a Warlock from WoW, and I still think it's more like a Summoner should be than it was the whole time leading up to that. The main issues it had at that time - not as many actions, still just the same five summons they had before, Carbuncle just kind of being there and not doing anything - all still exist after 7.0 despite many things they could have done to fill in the gaps.

Like a lot of other people, I think the easiest thing, maybe even the "bare minimum" now, would be to put the other three elemental summons in and have them rotate along with Bahamut and Phoenix according to their aspects (Ifrit/Garuda/Ramuh after Phoenix, Titan/Leviathan/Shiva after Bahamut). If they really want to keep the other "demi" summon, I think it should have been another higher-tier one instead of a Bahamut reskin, and then they could either give access to any three of the other six after it, or add another set to go after it. Additionally, they should have fixed the fact that Summoner has very few actions by adding more that change along with every summon or possibly more oGCDs that are tied to Carbuncle instead of just having them come directly from the PC.

SMN and BLM right now have the same problems for me - they're less fun versions of RDM and PCT, jobs that actually get to cast spells of all the traditional elements and match up to what people expect from them in a Final Fantasy game.

The problem with this is that it's an assumption that BLM was reworked because it was the least popular. We don't know if that's why or if that's the only reason why.

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Originally Posted by Wasselin

The problem with this is that it's an assumption that BLM was reworked because it was the least popular. We don't know if that's why or if that's the only reason why.

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They stated the reason. It’s cast times we’re interfering with combat design.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

They stated the reason. It’s cast times we’re interfering with combat design.

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Yet BLM was not the least mobile class in the game

And their potency tweaks on PCT made new PCT less mobile than old BLM

When they can’t even apply their own balancing “logic” internally across all the classes it just comes off as fake and vapid

Call it irony or morbid curiosity, but I am actually looking forward to SMN 8.0 rework. Really curious how they're going to change this job (again). Will they axed solar bahamut I wonder.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

A major problem I have with SMN is how bound it is to the two minute rotation. It's much worse than other jobs imo, at least other jobs can delay and realign with burst, but SMN is just stuck once it starts unless you want to spam Ruin 3 a lot.

Take Byakko Unreal, initial burst is no problem, 2 minute into the fight it's also ok, but after that you're screwed. around 2:30 into the fight you enter the fall phase and it takes around 90 seconds, so that would put you at the 4 minute mark and ready for burst. The problem is that you used Solar Bahamut at the 2 minute mark, didn't use Phoenix on cooldown, so now your 2 minute burst for the rest of the fight will be Bahamut/Phoenix instead of the stronger Solar Bahamut. Unless you want to spam Ruin 3 to align, you're stuck. Most/all other jobs don't have this problem as their cooldowns will be ready after the fall phase.

Or take Jeuno, unless you want to spam Ruin 3 (or AoE) on the first pack, you have to use Solar since most of the SMN kit is locked behind the Demis, and then you again drift on the boss.

The job is so railroaded on the 2 minute burst rotation that it breaks when the content doesn't align with it, especially if you're stuck on Bahamut/Phoenix and can't activate it on cooldown.

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This is the actual problem with SMN and, worst of all, always has been. The one thing that was most baffling about the rework is how, of all things to be adressed, the fact SMN was a railroaded class whose rotation would grind to a halt with any downtime was the one thing they never deemed fit to fix. This is worsened taking into account the fact that they had just decided to shift to the 2-min meta for everyone (except BLM) just an expansion ago.

Why has SMN not gotten any solution? Easy. Because PCT took it with it how Motifs cooldowns work and how they're completely detached from each other. Just imagine the motifs only it's Gemstone summons instead of Creature motifs, Bahamut instead of Hammer Motif and Phoenix instead of Landscape.

For all the misgivings about PCT damage, the job was relatively well designed compared to the rest (until SE decided to do a shoddy job with the potency tweaks). Which only make one wonder... why couldn't they keep SMN to that level of quality?

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

They stated the reason. It’s cast times we’re interfering with combat design.

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Honestly, I find their reasoning a bit bad...

BLM had a good amount of mobility, it just required some skill to do it effectively.. Which is OK in a video game, now they've just had it as effortless as humanly possible whilst also removing many of the fail states.

This is why they are never going to accomplish anything because any given implementation they go for... They always have to take something away from other classes.. "Ah we've gone with new fight design, so now we have to neuter part of a job kit"

To be fair, Red Mage's popularity in high end content is massively inflated because of their rez. If they lost it, they would be right at the bottom, too.

More than half the players in savage picked SMN because it was the path of least resistance (and offered a raise). The only two other options were RDM that just asked to cough blood for the same output, and BLM that offered better output, but at the cost of a lot of effort too. Same thing for DNC in the rphys role, and it didn't even outperform the two others. It's just the path of least resistance.

Now that BLM has been simplified to death and we also have PCT that offers an easier solution, it only makes sense that a lot of SMN players moved over because the requirements for a better output and performance weren't that insurmountable anymore.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

To be fair, Red Mage's popularity in high end content is massively inflated because of their rez. If they lost it, they would be right at the bottom, too.

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I don't think they would be at the bottom because they do decent damage and have good support skills even without the raise, but it will be a lot less popular during progs for sure. When you do re-clears, nobody cares about raises that much since you aren't supposed to die anyway.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

When you do re-clears, nobody cares about raises that much since you aren't supposed to die anyway.

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That's just not true lmao

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Honestly, I find their reasoning a bit bad...

BLM had a good amount of mobility, it just required some skill to do it effectively.. Which is OK in a video game, now they've just had it as effortless as humanly possible whilst also removing many of the fail states.

This is why they are never going to accomplish anything because any given implementation they go for... They always have to take something away from other classes.. "Ah we've gone with new fight design, so now we have to neuter part of a job kit"

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I was mostly responding to the person who couldn't find why they had done it, when they provided the rationale. If it was just a popularity thing they could have left everything alone and just threw out more potency until the effort BLM took was more worth the effort over EZmode Picto. Especially since many people will gravitate towards higher performing classes when it comes to higher-end raids, over casuals who may gravitate more towards easier to play classes.

I honestly do not love the direction. I play casters because I like to cast. I always liked the playstyle of Long Cast Times = Big Damage. Now the classes are just all feeling more and more alike.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

I play casters because I like to cast. I always liked the playstyle of Long Cast Times = Big Damage. Now the classes are just all feeling more and more alike.

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You know, I felt that way about Paladin when they had the casts removed from Holy Spirit. Sure it was slightly annoying, sometimes, but I loved that it was half-melee half-caster in Stormblood. It did feel good having all the Endwalker spells despite being instant cast, but it makes you wonder if it's still truly a spell if it has no cast. Isn't that what a spell is in an MMO?

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You know, I felt that way about Paladin when they had the casts removed from Holy Spirit. Sure it was slightly annoying, sometimes, but I loved that it was half-melee half-caster in Stormblood. It did feel good having all the Endwalker spells despite being instant cast, but it makes you wonder if it's still truly a spell if it has no cast. Isn't that what a spell is in an MMO?

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I didn't even like them lowering the cast on Holy - since it was always a spell that took a WHM long to cast. Just little flavor losses over time.

Sure, it's easier to use now, but it doesn't feel the same.

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Originally Posted by missTori

i mean hell, red mage is just back forth back forth back forth, so it's not super profound to play either.

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lol the optimization depth on red mage comes from minimizing fleche and c6 drift, not balancing mana lmao

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Strangely enough, there's people out there who insist SMN and RDM should lose their Raise thinking they'll be compensated with more damage, thus putting them on par with BLM and PCT.

The thing is though... people thought the same would happen with MCH, than in not having group buffs, it would get loads more damage. Shock of shocks, this didn't come to pass, and now you have people wanting MCH to be turned into a buffer if its not going to get the damage it's expected to have.

But yeah, without that utility for double rez, RDM would probably be in a bad spot, and ironically its ability to do said double rez just ends up one more punch into SMN's gut because it wasn't even allowed to hold onto THAT novelty for its self. (And Physick is literally a wasted hotbar slot.)

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I think everyone should lose res because the devs make better fights without it. As seen in BA and DRS. Like, unironically, the devs only having the lever of damage down and killing players is simply bad for the game's encounter design. Not the only thing bad, but a big part of it.

As a long time SMN main who understood that the most recent SMN rework was likely inspired by FF16, and who didn't hate the new changes in 6.0 since I understood the reason why, I will say I *was* disappointed by a few things in 7.0 not coming back like I had hoped they would.

* Bring back Ruin IV charges adding via other actions. I guess SOMEONE out there hated counting Ruin IV in 5.0 SMN but most of us were fine with it.
* Bring back base pet auto attacks from Carbuncles and Egis. Having our little carbies get reduced to flashy spell effects is what gutted the job. Sure, pet management is a pain in the butt, but being able to plop a pet on a target wasn't hard if you knew what you were doing. The Bahamuts and Phoenix don't need them, but the egis don't need to completely disappear once they've done their first big attack, do they? Leave them out to do a few auto attacks, and let them go poof once we've used up all their charges.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

As a long time SMN main who understood that the most recent SMN rework was likely inspired by FF16, and who didn't hate the new changes in 6.0 since I understood the reason why, I will say I *was* disappointed by a few things in 7.0 not coming back like I had hoped they would.

* Bring back Ruin IV charges adding via other actions. I guess SOMEONE out there hated counting Ruin IV in 5.0 SMN but most of us were fine with it.
* Bring back base pet auto attacks from Carbuncles and Egis. Having our little carbies get reduced to flashy spell effects is what gutted the job. Sure, pet management is a pain in the butt, but being able to plop a pet on a target wasn't hard if you knew what you were doing. The Bahamuts and Phoenix don't need them, but the egis don't need to completely disappear once they've done their first big attack, do they? Leave them out to do a few auto attacks, and let them go poof once we've used up all their charges.

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I started with SMN, and outside the days when we could solo with a Titan tank egi I don't miss the old version. 6.0 feels the most cohesive over a weird hodge-podge of themes SMN had.

That said, I am disappointed in 7.0. I got a ton of SMN play out of 6.0 and nearly nothing changed, and certainly no real change in what I'm doing. Just very disappointed as this feels uninspired. I mostly moved to PCT since it's newer and more fun at the moment.

It's 100% due to Solar Bahamut. If they had given Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva as a new phase Summoner would be number one job played right now period.

Okay, that's hyperbole, but still, I wanted Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva... If they had just added one additional summoner to the original three that would have been better.

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Originally Posted by Wasselin

It's 100% due to Solar Bahamut. If they had given Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva as a new phase Summoner would be number one job played right now period.

Okay, that's hyperbole, but still, I wanted Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva... If they had just added one additional summoner to the original three that would have been better.

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A second set of gem summons after Bahamut(Sapphire Leviathan, Amethyst Ramuh, Diamond Shiva) would have made an incredible amount of sense, and they could have done something slightly different like Turquoise Bismarck and Jasper Ravana(I'm spitballing with those gemstones) as the buildup to Demi-Hydaelyn. It's like they're actively trying to be uncreative, because this seems incredibly obvious.

I can kinda understand them not wanting to use Hydaelyn given how much Venat's been through (though was it that Gem Summons are just carbuncles taking on their form? Kinda hard to know without job quests to explain things), but even then there's other major summons they could've taken, like Alexander or Odin, the latter of which even has a magicite in HoH.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

I think everyone should lose res because the devs make better fights without it. As seen in BA and DRS. Like, unironically, the devs only having the lever of damage down and killing players is simply bad for the game's encounter design. Not the only thing bad, but a big part of it.

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They will never make such a bold move. The "improved encounter design" they promised didn't happen. Or if it did it amounts to slightly faster DDR. FF14 players got Stockholm'd into thinking that body checks in virtually every high-level encounter is the norm and default, and don't realize how damaging it is to the game.

Keep in mind they use damage down because they hate player creativity. They hated that people were soaking vuln ups on shit like O6S's flame to get some uptime. They hated that speedrunners* figured out cool tricks to get a few extra GCDs in. They hated that as players themselves they need to resort to "unnatural" techs to compete on FFLogs. This whole game is now chained to the whims of FFLogs Discord dwellers who hate anything that isn't ultra-scripted choreography. I have no doubt the job and encounter designers are part of them (in mentality at the very least). The body checks are there to force you to do the same choreography everyone must follow.

There's a reason why jobs get gutted over and over again and funneled into the same style. It's because there are only a few job designers, and the entire playerbase and game must bow down to their idiosyncratic preferences. They don't design for you. They design for themselves. That's why healers were gutted first, because the job design team are DPS mains who hated that they had to use GCD heals and not do damage. That's why certain jobs like monk get a lobotomy every expansion because the team hated how it played. They hate you as a player when you don't do what they want. That's why they keep trying to gut nonstandard Black Mage, that's why they gutted TK monk. It's why they gutted Summoner because they hated that they didn't foresee that old SMN optimization involved in large part the interplay between pet animations and pet movement (which emergently created a playstyle of stutter-stepping during Bahamut windows).

*I speak of the ancient species of speedrunners who actually enjoyed pushing for speedkills using unconventional strats which often increased the difficulty of the encounter, not of the modern variety of crit-farming brainrotten parse-andies.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

So yeahhhhhhh SMN is now a distant last in popularity amongst the casters with every other Carter having near twice the amount of clears and RDM having almost 4 times the clears (it’s even the least popular in casual dungeons and in the alliance raid)

Is this a sign that the rework was a failure? Or that reworks based on popularity aren’t always the most important thing?

How do they justify SMN’s changes as good in the longer term if all it took was one new caster and a few balance changes to send it to the bottom again

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Them also hemming and hawing about removing the revival while giving you a FF16/yugioh looking bahamut likely didn't do well for the people wanting to put in a lot of time into leveling, especially if they're relying on it to be a backup rez. And picto introduced a way to alternate doing your 3~5 summons in a rotation.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

I can kinda understand them not wanting to use Hydaelyn given how much Venat's been through (though was it that Gem Summons are just carbuncles taking on their form? Kinda hard to know without job quests to explain things), but even then there's other major summons they could've taken, like Alexander or Odin, the latter of which even has a magicite in HoH.

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Solar Bahamut's already supposed to be a standin for her. The idea is that the more advanced summons are just mindless constructs we can make because we were exposed to a lot of their aether, and word of god is that Venat's soul completely fell apart after the trial and can't possibly be reconstituted.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Solar Bahamut's already supposed to be a standin for her. The idea is that the more advanced summons are just mindless constructs we can make because we were exposed to a lot of their aether, and word of god is that Venat's soul completely fell apart after the trial and can't possibly be reconstituted.

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Hm, a bit of weak excuse. While her soul is *gone* gone, we have been exposed to her aether via blessing of light since forever. To the point where past Venat immediately recognize her own signature. With bahamut and phoenix, having the WoL experience 7th rejoining is already enough for them to get bathed in their aether even though the event was short lived. Plus I am not sure demi summon requires (part of) the soul of the summoned.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Strangely enough, there's people out there who insist SMN and RDM should lose their Raise thinking they'll be compensated with more damage, thus putting them on par with BLM and PCT.

The thing is though... people thought the same would happen with MCH, than in not having group buffs, it would get loads more damage. Shock of shocks, this didn't come to pass, and now you have people wanting MCH to be turned into a buffer if its not going to get the damage it's expected to have.

But yeah, without that utility for double rez, RDM would probably be in a bad spot, and ironically its ability to do said double rez just ends up one more punch into SMN's gut because it wasn't even allowed to hold onto THAT novelty for its self. (And Physick is literally a wasted hotbar slot.)

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Those people are delusional and the existence of Pictomancer proves it. For years, the argument has been "utility justifies lower damage" and then you have Picto who came out with hilariously busted damage AND amazing group utility. Or the fact that melees now get AoE healing in addition to raid buffs while being allowed to have the highest damage output despite there being very little downtime AND every raid strat being tailored for their uptime. There is no good reason for the questionable balance.

Everyone suggesting just adding another set of gem summons are driving me a little nuts actually! As if that's the problem with the job-- not enough variety in the meaninglessly different summons you have.

The core central issue with the job like a lot of others at the moment is the mechanics don't really mean anything. All the gem summons are just potency buttons that give you slightly different buttons to press. There's no prepping for the next step of your rotation like there was in 5.x. There's no real actual reason you have an egi/carbuncle companion, besides the fact that removing it is way more work than just leaving it as a dummy NPC. Ruin IV is a Joke. And energy drain feels like it only remains because it'd be embarrassingly obvious how little the job has to offer if you take it out. Additional gem summons are just more of the same and they'd feel just as insulting as solar bahamut did. Nothing in the kit feels like it needs anything else in the kit-- like toys laid out on a blanket instead of the components of a well-built piece of machinery.

But those mechanical reasons don't matter really-- though I suppose this is a symptom of those mechanical issues. The job just no longer fills a niche. Niches are actually really important! Niches get you dedicated players and people who will always stick with the job no matter whether or not it's meta. SMN used to fill the niche of a pet job alongside its DoT focus-- something you can't find anymore unless you count its healer counterpart. Now its only real distinguishing feature is the fact it has?? What? No seriously what does it have that no other caster has? Summons? Those are just loud aoe abilities that frequently don't go through because they're obligated to use a proxy to cast them. It has the demi-summons I guess? But those are glorified turrets that just need to come off cooldown-- they don't really feel like much. You don't have to approach them in a way that stands out from anything else in the game or even your own kit.

I just don't think the solution is something that will amount to no tangible change in how the job plays or interacts with its own kit. Without changing the above issues the only real solution is potency buffs which sound positively miserable as a solution; just creates an arms race between it and every other job currently suffering the same issue of being nicheless.

Maybe I'm biased but I do think old pet-job DoTmage SMN was the version of SMN that actually worked in an MMO. It's a job type I really like! I was sad when they decided everything I liked about the job was a horrible flaw in need of completely razing it to the ground and salting the earth about it.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

Those people are delusional and the existence of Pictomancer proves it. For years, the argument has been "utility justifies lower damage" and then you have Picto who came out with hilariously busted damage AND amazing group utility. Or the fact that melees now get AoE healing in addition to raid buffs while being allowed to have the highest damage output despite there being very little downtime AND every raid strat being tailored for their uptime. There is no good reason for the questionable balance.

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Not only that, but for years we had "they have to homogenize jobs so they can balance the jobs well!!!!!"

You know why smn is not popular anymore. It's not the design of the job, it's just a ass job. Why picking smn when there a picto and blm for dmg. rdm for progging savages slight better dmg nowdays. The reason why SMN was more pick in EW.

1. RDM was weakest of caster dmg due RNG damage.
2. In EW SMN as no competitions was always facto number 2 due dmg and support ability.
3. BLM was doing dmg, sure but gotta put the effort, time and skill to be good at it.

Currently SMN is doing not good and hater of reworks just want to point it up because they re wet dream finally realise can shit talk about it.

The rework shine has worn off. However it shouldnt be that low in DPS.