Yoshi has gone on record saying that job complexity has no weight in DPS balance. Think it was before Omega hit and people were complaining about high Samurai numbers in primals.
Then again Squenix.
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You know it's funny. I remember the RDM playerbase saying much the same thing (They should focus on fixing SMN/BLM rather than nerfing RDM (side note: aside from a glitch fix, there was clearly no nerf needed)) back at launch, and a lot of the SMN playerbase came out saying that no, there's power creep and that's bad and RDM needs nerfed and that would fix everything.
First time I've known of that.
Except people were wrong and RDM doesn't need a nerf. It does the least DPS out of the 3 caster jobs since launch.
I'm not saying they shouldn't nerf SMN, they should fix MNK and BLM before nerfing SMN. I'm not opposed to nerfing SMN because it is really powerful but I'd like to see the jobs that need attention be addressed first.
Hooray for being right, and effing criminy for being anywhere between absolute last and third from last on every battle this tier, including the 24 man!
I agree that they were wrong and RDM certainly didn't and doesn't need nerfing. With everything SMN now offers (Contagion is a magic trick attack that has more uptime than trick attack, Radiant Shield is 2% physical damage up for 4 seconds every time someone takes damage with a timespan of 20 seconds, Devotion giving 2% general damage buff and 5% healing buff), on top of its solo dps matching or surpassing Samurai...it becomes a question of why take another caster? Summoner brings everything BLM or RDM could, with some exception, and surpasses them by miles. Hell, it surpasses Samurai due to all of this too.
I think SMN could use some potency nerfs. When I pointed out what Red Mages were saying at launch, it was both me saying I know where you're coming from with this, but I also know what the forums' answer to this was on another similar issue. I think SAM sets a good ceiling; BLM could use a buff to get up to those levels, but that SMN passes both in most instances is why I say that the job needs some potency nerfs here and there. Nothing to change the gameplay in any negative way.
SMN does have a lot of support but just pointing it out that Contagion is only worth it if you have another caster DPS with you, but there's also some meta with melees going on right now and that Ifrit is stronger than Garuda. Radiant Shield would see no use in fights where it can't reflect damage to extend the physical vulnerability debuff.
When people said SMN is as strong or stronger than SAM I thought it was some sick joke, apparently it is true. I'm impressed how such a change would put SMN from being so low to being so high up. It would need nerfs, sure, but they better be careful of what they nerf. Seriously.
Still, they need to do something about BLM and MNK first because both were ignored for a while now.