My understanding is that SMN was the TOP King and BLM was the weakest so I guess all those buffs are based on ultimate content which is pretty silly if you ask me.
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05-25-2023, 08:54 AMAikaal
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05-25-2023, 11:45 AMTaranokWhich would be funny if true, because BLM is the weakest because Endwalker has designed fights that have made the experience of playing a black mage and red mage as miserable as possible. Not because Black Mage didn't do enough damage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aikaal
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05-25-2023, 02:38 PMIvtrixrdm isnt all that terrible, just a lot of good opportunities for optimizationQuote:
Originally Posted by Taranok
but blm lmao might as well just shoot yourself in the foot -
05-26-2023, 04:00 AMAikaalHum, I wouldn't go ahead and say BLM has it worst than RDM. There's mechanics that are just garbage on RDM. I'm just assuming caster DPS role might get reworked next expansion. There's been too many complains and the suffering is too great right now. The question is, will they make it better. Who knows? Kaiten removal and Summoner rework were kinda controversial :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivtrix
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05-27-2023, 09:08 PMTaranokWorst case scenario is they basically rework BLM/RDM into something akin to bard or machinist. Best case is they recognize cDPS is actually a role defined by sitting still and casting, and start removing movement options from BLM, turn SMN back into a caster, and recognize that the best cDPS play comes from being able to move into the correct spot well, well before a mechanic has fired, and then cackling in glee as you managed to nail the position pixel perfect and can continue casting. It's part of what made me absolutely love Leviathan Savage as a black mage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aikaal
I love black mage for being able to sit still and cast, and optimize around minimal amounts of movement. Not to pretend to be a bad machinist that is infinitely more frustrating to play as I end up having to jog every 20 seconds such as in the new extreme. I don't care enough about its damage or aesthetic to want to pull out my hair playing the class. -
05-27-2023, 09:27 PMTaranokApparently it's pretty fight dependent. E.G. BLM is a nightmare on DSR but RDM lines up nicely. I know from experience RDM just kind of collapses in P4S especially in Pinax in a way BLM really wouldn't due to Aetherial Manipulation. Obviously, you can't aetherially manipulate a mechanic like Wroth but Pinax is largely a point to point transfer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivtrix
Both are below average on played, with BLM as critically low alongside Monk (I'm assuming ping and theme issues) and Bard (Not sure why, but its timers don't feel good if the boss ever does downtime.) -
05-28-2023, 08:26 AMangienessyo
It's been a terrible expansion for casters and I feel like they don't actually ever test any fights on RDM. Because while RDM has some mobility, it falls apart in fights with lengthy periods of movement. I get you can sit on melee combos, but it's not uncommon for those parts of the fight to involve the RDM having to get away from the boss. The SMN rework also robbed us of being able to have any actual choice with playing a high DPS caster, now you only have BLM. (it wasn't unusual for SMN to rival BLM in previous expacs) And well, RDM does less damage than phys range now without having extra mobility to compensate them for being so low. I hope the next expac brings us another high DPS caster so you're not stuck with BLM or two low DPS jobs if you want to be a caster.
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05-29-2023, 05:51 PMataren3That's kind of turned me off from black mage for the most part for a while now. Back in ARR and HW black mage was so much fun. Where can I stand so I can stay in fire phase the longest? Is there a way the healer can heal me through this vuln stack I'm taking? They'll understand because of this massive damage increase I can do by getting a few more casts off before having to swap to ice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taranok
When we got triplecast I was like "oh wow neat black mage has some mobility!". Then after a bit I was like "... oh. Black mage... the class that's supposed to hit like a truck playing through fun loopholes in fights and damage... has mobility." Then we got two stacks of triplecast. I really want them to remove triplecast now; it took away black mage's shining crown of "screw respecting mechanics, I will destroy if I live through it". -
06-01-2023, 12:29 PMTaranokWhat's worse is, a lot of people appear to vocally like the fight design of endwalker. This high octane fast-paced movement marathon of full uptime high precision mechanics where savage has the difficulty of a ShB/SB ultimate fight. Frankly, Endwalker's endgame is the closest I've come to wanting to quit the game in a while because I can't just casually sit back and enjoy the content. When every class plays like a ranged physical and the fights punish you for wanting to sit back and relax or cast anything, why bother? It's like starting a game of dark souls, and then the devs decide Parry is the only way to play when launching their Sekiro expansion. If you don't enjoy parry, guess you should just quit because all other playstyles are invalid. They've managed to make tanking, boring gameplay, frustrating by requiring so many layered mits (glares at top.)Quote:
Originally Posted by ataren3
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06-01-2023, 03:15 PMelioaikoI agree 100% with this. The fight design has shifted to constantly mechanic vomit rather than make the mechanic meaningful and fun. Everything has to be a massive stage, with 1 second reaction time mechanics stacked onto each other. Jobs need mobility more than ever with how much running we need to do in a fight.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taranok
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06-01-2023, 03:55 PMAycheMmm yes, but also Sekiro IS the best game ever made...Quote:
Originally Posted by Taranok
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06-01-2023, 05:50 PMNightHour
SE has been jerking melee off for a long time now and it looks unlikely to change
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06-01-2023, 07:23 PMTaranokIt's funny because I actually called out Zot's final boss as pure mechanics vomit, and it's amazing how many people think it's not that bad. It's so...awful. Playing BLM on that dungeon was just a nightmare.Quote:
Originally Posted by elioaiko
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06-11-2023, 08:12 AMSequora
I am praying that the next expansion will be kinder to casters. We have 3 options and nothing in the middle as far as complexity. Summoner is the braindead caster with zero optimization, red mage is the slightly more complicated, but barely a step above summoner, and then black mage is one of the most complicated jobs in the game. Probably just below monk. We need a new job, and summoner honestly just needs more. Zero room for optimization.
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06-12-2023, 03:03 PMTaranokEhh, I find monk is less complicated than SAM, and neither hold a candle to BLM. It's hard to compare any class to BLM because that class is literally designed for a game the devs stopped making back in mid-shadowbringers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sequora
I don't even want it to necessarily be 'kinder,' for casters. I want the devs to actually admit that casters as a role want to sit still and cast, and need fights designed with spots that you are able to get to, to sit still and cast for the majority of the fight. That's not the same as being stationary, but rather that mandatory movement for casters needs to be few and far between.
Which is why I support the other part of your statements. But I'd very specifically say that whatever class is added, they need to add a caster adjacent to BLM's playstyle. That is, a class that for greater than 50% of all GCDs, is sitting still and casting. I'd prefer it was at least 70%. Not even modern BLM is technically that. I digress. -
06-12-2023, 03:34 PMGgwppino
But objectively the rdm in this expansion is having much more movement difficulties than the blm. True, the rdm at each cast has an instant with dual cast + melee combo, but it gets so much unnecessary movement that when it has to actually move from point A to point B it has difficulty. The blm instead has instants, triplecast x2 + swiftcast in the case that allow it much more large and prolonged movements. The blm has more motion planning leeway than the rdm.
The blm behaves much like the smn should have behaved in this expansion according to Yoshi-P during the expansion's pre-launch interviews. The smn, according to them, had to be a strategic movement planning class, a pity that the amount of cast is minimal, making this aspect totally lost. -
06-12-2023, 05:35 PMCKNovelWelcome to the caster role, we have:Quote:
Originally Posted by Sequora
The actual caster, BLM
The ranged in disguise, SMN
That half caster half melee, RDM
I also find it really funny how RDM used to be the easiest caster, barely changed since its release and is now the job with the least adaptive mobility.
As you pointed, the caster role lacks choice, you either have the very demanding job or the easy two, with one of them being the least mobile of them. -
06-13-2023, 05:44 AMTaranokIf this were true, there'd be more BLMs than RDMs. Objectively, people find RDM more enjoyable than BLM in the content, and its movement difficulties are overblown compared to BLM. From my experience, BLMs suffer a hell of a lot more. For example, there is no amount of triplecasts or xenoglossies that can truly save you from phase 7 DSR's movement. RDM, on the other hand, has significant amounts of movement it can strategically save.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ggwppino
Just off of strategically saving your melee combos, you can breeze through phase 6 in a way BLM wishes it could.
What I also know is that BLM would have a slightly easier time at something like Pinax than RDM. It's tedious saving movement skills like corps-a-corps for high movement when you might have to randomly go across the entire arena whereas BLM just needs 1 instant and an AM to get 70% of the way there. Something like Purgation in P7S is just outright miserable on BLM, whereas RDM's dualcasting can help carry it with proper slidecasting.
You can only save up so many resources, and a lot of these fights demand way too much movement out of casters, period. RDM definitely has more practical movement than BLM, but it also depends exclusively on if Aetherial Manipulation is useful or not. It's easier to bank up a melee combo and, worst case scenario, you always have reprise to lean on instead of the utterly abysmal scathe.
Really, this is all also completely ignoring the most important point. It doesn't matter if BLM or RDM suffer more on X or Y fight. What matters is both are suffering. -
06-13-2023, 07:50 AMGgwppino
The blm has a much more demanding rotation, it has meat on the fire that it has to keep track of where its dps is based on, which the rdm does not have. I don't doubt that overall the blm is more complex, but on balance the movement of the blm can be calculated, it really has a lot of planning leeway and spells like AM that if you use them very well they take you everywhere, while the rdm is subject to slidecast continuous and can't run or teleport like crazy from point A to point B. The blm has about 20 sure seconds of instant cast, hypothetically continuous too. Clearly the BLM suffers a lot from micromovements but this has always been its characteristic: it is up to the player to pre-position himself in the best possible way in order to move as little as possible and lose as little uptime as possible (if it is actually lost). That is, it's the caster's job to figure out when to use what and where to stand to maximize damage. If the bosses were dummies it wouldn't be fun.
Of course, I also understand that from BLM it can be gnawing to see an SMN screw up your caster position when it is clearly a physical ranged without even resources to manage. (If the rdm is a caster with the melee combo, the smn is a physical ranged with the caster combo. Change my mind.)
But frankly I wouldn't complain about becoming similar to smn or reduce the casts even more, but I would ask for more balance for casters: casters must be casters. Which is exactly what you want. A truly caster class to complement the blm and rdm, that have >50% cast time. As it should be.
I also don't think the rdm and blm are suffering: they are just being challenged more than other classes, but in other games it's always been like this. -
06-14-2023, 01:42 PMSilversLyu
I dont think it's even an argument anymore at this point that BLM is the hardest job in the game, especially in its current state where the job feels like it is being abandoned by the dynamic design of the fights. Meanwhile melees needing to pay less and less attention to positionals and the hitbox of the bosses being greater than the mariana trench.
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06-14-2023, 03:15 PMLyth
It sounds like what casters really want to see here is a major simplifying rework on BLM. If it doesn't happen right at the outset of next expansion, it probably will happen in the wake of insecurity over the next Caster job to be introduced.
As sad as it will be, I take solace in the fact that if they do that, they can safely eliminate the artificial divide between 'physical ranged' and 'magical ranged', and put to rest this ongoing myth that occasionally stopping to 'cast' is difficult (this isn't even specific to Casters). -
06-14-2023, 04:35 PMGgwppinoSo if everyone jumps off a bridge, so do you?Quote:
Originally Posted by SilversLyu
Thankfully BLM and RDM didn't get the melee-like treatment they received. Do you think melee players are happy they lost some challenges to face? (Reminding us that we are playing a video game and not afk-arena or the usual gatcha).
When choosing a caster, you know what you're getting into. Throughout traditional mmo culture, the caster is put in the position of having to sweat to get uptime, much more than melee. of course, often accompanied by very high dps to compensate for downtime phases, but due to the game design that the designers want, they cannot allow it: mathematically the best comp must include 2 melee and 2 ranged to push players to be balanced (especially since there are 5 melees and if they had to compete for a single raid spot they would scramble).
Well, it sure activates the player's brain. However, you cannot compare perpetual movement with movement planning. Especially when movement planning also involves millimetric prepositioning during boss timer to waste less uptime.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyth
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06-14-2023, 11:23 PMSilversLyuI am not advocating for casualizing the game or taking away the difficulty of the jobs, make no mistake. But is it the definition of fun to shoot yourself in the foot and play against your own job/the current fights that are designed to punish traditional casters even more and reward mobility a lot? Saying Blackmage is a challenge is no argument, when the job is struggling way more than the rest and basically playing against the game. It can be tedious and rough, is this balance? Well if that is your definition of fun, more power to you. Meanwhile SMN players be like "no thoughts, head empty" and get rewarded tenfold, being optimized without optimization really. Where is the proportionality? And again I am not for casualizing, but for a more balanced approach.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ggwppino
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06-15-2023, 01:19 AMLythHave you noticed that whenever there is an 'uptime' strat, the tacit implication is 'melee uptime'? That type of millimetric spatial decision-making that you describe between having your autos/GCD and death loses becomes significantly less important when you're doing dps from the next arena over.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ggwppino
Casts are a temporal problem, not a spatial one (and again, they're not unique to casters). When is it safe to cast? When do you move before setting up the next cast? Can you interpose instant abilities/actions to give you time for movement? I think if it's that much of a big deal, then perhaps give Physical Ranged occasional bowmage casts to set up a sniper shot or something, and mix in some proc gameplay on both to let players juggle around their GCDs good measure. I think all roles have room for skill expression, if the content is appropriately designed for it. But we shouldn't be complaining about the stuff that actually makes the jobs interesting as if it's holding us back from doing more damage. These challenges are the entire point for playing in the first place. -
06-15-2023, 03:22 AMGgwppinobut the "fight against the class" is the gameplay of the caster. If the caster doesn't have to move and think because the boss is a dummy, it would just be keystroke spam, it wouldn't be fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by SilversLyu
On the smn I totally agree, I challenge you to find a main smn of the older expansions that is completely happy and satisfied with this iteration, they stole a decent job and replaced it with a physical ranged with no resources to manage, no gameplay that would feature, with no leveling progress but a single caster combo. It clearly shouldn't be in the role of caster, but it clearly shouldn't exist at all (it would be rather unfair even for a phys ranged)
indeed, strats are for melees, not casters. But this is due to the simple fact that melees have an exclusively spatial uptime problem, since they are melee, and not temporal, therefore easily solvable with strats and therefore guarantee that the melee follows its rotation constantly. The caster on the other hand can deeply vary his rotation according to the timer and can position himself in the best possible way to be able to reduce or cancel the downtime and this is the fun of the caster: not having the rotation deeply static and therefore adapting it to the fight , giving great satisfaction when you feel you have found the best solution.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyth
Furthermore, the caster must also think about where to position himself and to pre-position himself because the movement between one cast and another is limited, if you preposition yourself in one point, maybe you don't lose seconds, positioning yourself in one point instead of another maybe allows you to earn a triplecast and "earning" one/two gcd because you have to move less. -
06-15-2023, 05:42 AMShiroeSmn rota is easy, but you never played really learnt a savage / ultimate fight with Smm.., GL with Ifrit timingsQuote:
Originally Posted by SilversLyu
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06-15-2023, 05:49 AMtearagionnoooo!!!!!!! not 5.6s of casting!!!!!!!! and being in melee range for like, a second or two!!!!!! how will you fit that into 45s of dead fucking space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Shiroe
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06-15-2023, 06:15 AMLythAgain, this is still inaccurate, because two out of the five melee do happen to have casts that occur during their burst windows that align with mechanics heavy moments, especially in the last two fights of this tier. There are also situations where you need to utilize dummy GCDs to play with the alignment of these moments simply because you don't have the luxury of Swiftcast as a get out of jail free card.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ggwppino
These are not points to complain about, though. Fights with interesting positional movements are awesome (Glaukopis jank aside). Fights that make you play on the very boundaries of an AoE to squeeze out more uptime are awesome. Fights that deliberately mess with your cast timings and make you rework your GCD order are awesome. This is seriously the best tier we've had in some time now. These are not bartering points for you to demand more dps for less effort, because SE responds by taking these fun things away from us. This is where you can take pride in mastering your chosen job and enjoy these moments for what they are. -
06-15-2023, 06:37 AMSilversLyuSeems you are projecting, it takes one to know one. Placing Slipstream and trying to figure out the best use of Ifrit is no witchcraft. This optimization, if you even can call it that is minimal compared to other jobs. I am not denying anyones efforts and successes, if one is getting better results that's great. But we shouldn't pretend that SMN is in any shape or form the benchmark for difficulty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shiroe
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06-15-2023, 08:06 AMGgwppinoSorry, but... LolQuote:
Originally Posted by Shiroe
Bruh, but your understand that there are a massivelly differente between a 2/3 micro cast with ez slidecast every minutes vs 40 seconds of cast every minute (already taking away instant cast with triple cast), cast of 2.5/3 seconds? Sorry, but you can't absolutly compare them. Then I don't doubt that even the melee finds itself in these dynamics at times, but the caster is ALWAYS found in this dynamic. And that's good, because the caster has this feature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyth
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06-15-2023, 08:49 AMLyth
We can absolutely make that comparison. As you said though, it's not exactly challenging work at baseline, and movement around casting only matters if you're playing a job that actually requires you to do it. Though if you want what little bit of skill expression that is still present in your role to remain, there's no point in complaining about its 'difficulty'. Perhaps that's just a difference in role mindset though, and maybe the caster playerbase is just looking for something more laid back. Maybe everything on BLM will be instant cast next expansion.
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06-15-2023, 08:56 AMUrielparadox
the fact the our low physical defense is racking up the damage we take from bleeds, having healers openly saying they don't want rdm in their party since they have no self mit at all. We have to get extra mit from healers or literaly fall over with the best food and gear in P10S the second fight thats ilvl requirement says that shouldn't happen. the fact that rdms do horrible damage when playing at the highest lvl mean while absolutely trash samurias who don't hit positional and overcap gauges can do more damage. rdm has been in awful spot since the second tier, being locked out of almost as many parties as mch was. they "buffed" us strangely which saw very minimal almost nonexistant buffs(you can actually see in FFlogs how little rdm and smn gain compared to other jobs. saw we still did crap for damage and said RANGE TAX, on a job who has to cast and constantly gets in fights over needing to do melee combo, with a backflip and gap closer that only have about a 6% usability rate(gap closer take more time in animation lock than running because of boss hit bocks, inability to properly control back flip because of boss hit box/wall boss).
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06-15-2023, 09:17 AMGgwppinoWell, its clear. My speech is only to clarify that caster and phis ranged are not the same. I want clarify that this: "they can safely eliminate the artificial divide between 'physical ranged' and 'magical ranged', and put to rest this ongoing myth that occasionally stopping to 'cast' is difficult (this isn't even specific to Casters)." Is deeply wrong conception because the caster uptime Is not absolutely a picnic in the park.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyth
also, personally, I'm not complaining about the "difficulty" of the blm or rdm.
1) because gameplay is fine like this. There are more individual problems which, however, have nothing to do with the gameplay but more on both defensive and offensive mathematics
2)the smn, unfortunately, teaches -
06-15-2023, 09:30 AMUrielparadoxThis can not be done in party finder unless your party is used to working with casters because more often than not tanks and dps will stand right on top of u and claim you are in their spot, in fact for casting uptime it is more beneficial for a blm to be the melee spot in many fights(which leads to rdms and blm often fighting in older fights because rdm 2min often came up during forced spread positions. The tanks also have to make sure to not kill the caster, and the party has to be ready for the tank to be in the not normal spot. It is not easy for a caster to adept around a party, it is easy for a party to adept to a caster, but 90% of the time they will refuse to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ggwppino
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06-15-2023, 10:15 AMGgwppino
I agree. In pf you will almost never have a degree of uptime optimization that you have with a static one, you will not reach the absolute optimable, but the relative one will. however the caster is led to position himself and vary the rotation according to the boss's timer. He can get the most out of what surrounds him for example he can't use the mainfold blm uptime strat in p8s P1, but already positioning himself between tank and melee instead of running to the corner was a nice saving of movement.
my intervention always referred to the fact that the casters, to keep as much uptime as possible, must think and strategically make plans both for rotation variation and for positioning. and therefore it is not "*put to rest this ongoing myth that occasionally stopping to 'cast' is difficult (this isn't even specific to Casters)." -
06-15-2023, 11:05 AMSemirhage
It's not even "boohoo having to move to cast is so hard". It's a confluence of several things.
- Endwalker fights have been designed with long periods of downtime, followed by bursts of rapid, constant movement (Voidcast East, and then West, and then North, and then South, and then behind, and then in front), which is a pain in the butt for caster gameplay
- They keep adding instant casts to casters to make them less caster-like to make them viable for the rapid movement-happy fight design, instead of letting casters be casters
- They keep adding things that make melee's "difficulty" easier
- They state outright that they balance based on "difficulty", and then boost the crap out of melee while doing things to make their lives easier, and take a dump all over RDM and SMN's damage because "buh buh Raise utility", while also designing fights that devalue that utility
It's self-contradictory. It's hypocritical. And in a game where damage is overwhelmingly the thing that matters in encounters, playing these weird semantic games to justify lower damage output while hypocritically ignoring it when it comes to melee DPS is a source of frustration. -
06-15-2023, 12:35 PMSilversLyu
It is Meleewalker for a reason. Is there a reason why the devs are catering to melee so much? Are those the mains of the balance team? Is the role that more popular than others, I guess but...
Maybe cuz it is the easiest to "balance" around, My bet is they "rework" all roles eventually. Next expansion perhaps caster, at the same time we are long overdue for a new caster job. -
06-15-2023, 02:10 PMLythThat nicely sums up the arguments in here in a nutshell, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Semirhage
I don't think that jobs should be balanced based off of 'difficulty'. In fact, I've been arguing in favor of rDPS parity across all DPS subroles for some time now. But I'm also not naïve enough to think that the average player here wants a level playing field and a good competition. No, the collective response is going to be to argue in favor of doing the highest damage for the least effort. People come here looking for handouts for their preferred jobs.
I don't think that melee is balanced the way it is because of 'difficulty', either. They design fight mechanics around four players in melee range, four at a distance. Four supports, four DPS. Spread, stack, protean, partners. Everyone knows the formula. There are two reserved ranged slots by subrole. The dps balancing just reserves the M2 spot. And it's not a simple issue of going the tank/healer route and simply reserving those spots. Physical and magical ranged were historically subdivided in a system where BRD types were there to help with resource management as a sort of 'support DPS'. So now they're forced to work around the legacy of that decision well after it is no longer relevant.
Casters are in a bit of an unusual situation in which they simultaneously attempt the argument that 'it's only fair' that physical ranged do less dps than them on the basis of difficulty, while simultaneously complaining about the 'ranged tax' separating them from melee. Abyssos' underwhelming fight design and exaggerated hitbox size allowed casters an avenue of attack to try to apply the 'difficulty' argument more universally, but Anabaseios snuffed that out quite readily, as you've likely seen yourself in P11S/P12SP1. And our community's attitude to this is entirely different than yours. We love being able to demonstrate skill. Even in the recent melee positionals discussion, all the loudest complaints came from caster mains, hilariously enough. It's a privilege to have fights and mechanics that have a skill differential on them. Competitive people love this. Why would you beg for handouts if you take pride in your ability to compete?
I think what really needs to be discussed is how to give each role its opportunity to demonstrate skill at higher levels, and to have fights that reward this. Part of this should be around breaking down this arbitrary separation between physical and magical ranged DPS. If the occasional cast is the main determinant of 'job difficulty' when playing at range, then perhaps physical ranged jobs need action mechanics in which they need to stop and 'cast'. You also need more fight-specific mechanics that deliberately force movement, similar to those targeted AoEs that follow marked players around an arena. The current system is deeply unsatisfying for physical ranged, because you're in a position where you do less damage than 'casters' because they can claim that you're playing the 'easy' job. You're undervalued and disadvantaged in the same moment. And then you get brought along just for a raid buff. I can see why a lot of players don't want to be stuck with that design direction for the long term. I think if you put all jobs on a level rDPS playing field across melee/physical ranged/magical ranged, merged down physical and magical ranged into a single role group, and just enforced a 2/2/2/2 comp across the board, you'd have a lot more satisfaction across the playerbase.
I will say this. Complaining about the things that makes your job interesting as a means of bartering for more dps is always a bad idea. Because the response has invariably been to simplify down any complaints around player difficulty. If you don't want to see further erosion of our gameplay, reinforce the fact that you enjoy being challenged by the game developers. You really don't need a gold star for fulfilling your job description, the challenge is the reward. What do you call yourselves when everything invariably then becomes instant cast? Not casters. -
06-15-2023, 03:37 PMGgwppinothere was Shadowbringer who had undisputed best rdps the blm and smn (while the rdm was close to the dps of the physical ranged, probably due to the high mobility and much less complex rotation). With this expansion they wanted, from what it seems to me, to put a stop to this thing. Not that melee did less damage but had less uptime and more positional to deal with, while blm and smn, with good planning, didn't have major problems. They wanted to cut this story short because they basically want there to be 2 melee, 1 caster, and 1 phys ranged (they design fights with this Comp). The way to do this was either by creating mechanics that predicted a clear need for this comp (see Omega) or by encouraging the use of melee by making life less tortuous or by increasing caster downtime or by playing on bonus party percentages by incentivising the use of 2 melee (a decision that would have been momentous, but maybe the best solution).Quote:
Originally Posted by SilversLyu
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06-17-2023, 04:23 AMLucan_Astral
Yes yes! please rework SMN again.
The new summons are amazingly cool, who doesn't love summoning a giant bahamut or phoenix to annihilate your foes? but my god it's so excruciatingly boring, it's insane it even made it past testing. I checked the SMN guide on The Balance discord and it has a single paragraph on the rotation which basically just gives you a flow chart:
Use Searing Light in alignment with party raid buffs
Summon Bahamut and use all abilities to refresh your primal gems
Go through three primal phases
Summon Phoenix and use all abilities to refresh your primal gems
Go through three primal phases
Repeat
In comparison, the NIN guide on The Balance has like 4-5 pages on the basic rotation, then an extra page on advanced optimization for the rotation.
The other caster jobs suffer from this issue of being so mind numbingly easy that they're boring, but I think SMN suffers far greater from this. Unfortunately for SE, their SMN rework has failed and needs to be looked at again (though I doubt they will).
Also you know SE loves melee more since in EVERY single expansion the MC uses melee jobs, even in the Shadowbringers trailer when the MC is rapidly switching between jobs, the MC never once switched to a caster job.