Yet ANOTHER thread "Fixing SMN"
Aetherflow Procs
A change in the way R4 procs affect smn's would be a reduction on the aetherflow timer instead of enkindle. I would personally cap it at 5 seconds though a 3 second reduction for every proc wouldn't exactly be terrible either. Just a bit of napkin math means that even if you had the luck of Hildibrand (every pet GCD procs R4), you would still be capped at 30 seconds or 50 seconds between refreshes for 5 and 3 second reductions respectively.
Hell, if they changed aetherflow reductions to 10 seconds for every proc (*coughschcough*), we would still be capped at 40 seconds between bahamut since DWT has a 20 second cooldown (thinking further about this, maybe they should bring back the 30 second cooldown with DWT if they do implement this :thinking: )
So why make this change?
"It's all about the beat" - Michael Jackson (probably?)
A cooldown reduction in aetherflow would bring up the tempo of the job, allowing for earlier access to bahamut instead of a strict 2 minute timer (realistically it's more than 2 mins since you theoretically need aetherflow to be up when Bahamut gets summoned for more dps).
There needs to be some potency adjustments if this does happen as two 680 potency attacks on a roughly sub 1 min timer seems a bit excessive (then again, we have SAM's now...). This does not necessarily affect the fundamental way that SMN's work (multiple phases) but it does bring up the tempo of the job and allow it to "feel smoother" (evidently, "feel smoother" is an inherently subjective subject). As it stands now, SMN's don't really have the flexibility of changing their rotation to match the timers of other jobs (this is a real problem when trick attack or battle litany comes up) or, crucially, the fights themselves. The ideal raid setting for SMN's is building your raid strategies AROUND us (I play SMN to assist my team, not to build strategies around me... though it feels nice to hit big numbers :3 )
Enkindle isn't THAT large of an attack (350 for garuda and 420 for ifrit when rouse comes into play) especially when you consider that enkindle is now theoretically on a ~90 second-ish cooldown. Changing R4 procs means that the phasing of SMN's will be strict for their pets instead of the job itself and allows for a streamlining of this phase (aka 3.x enkindle)
Wyrmwave
Change Wyrmwave to 2.5 (or 3) seconds. Why is it that a role-skill meant for mitigation is a dps increase for SMN? If they bring up the GCD timer of Wyrmwave it would:
1) reduce the need for aetherflow stacks to be up before bahamut arrives
2) simplify this phase by quite the margin as it would be LESS buttons required to push over a 20 second window.
- Sidenote: this would actually greatly reduce the gap of the skill floor to ceiling too. [Didn't they say they wanted to make every job easier?]
There would probably need to be some potency changes to wyrmwave but an overall streamlining of this ability would be great.
Sustain
Yeah. This is a thing I want. Will we get it back? I hope we do. I don't want to use physick as a SMN other than for jokes.
Devotion
Yeah, nah. This is a dumpster fire of an ability. I don't really care for it, it just makes my pet confused (oGCD queueing ;-; )
In summary:
- Change R4 procs to reduce the cooldown timer of Aetherflow (by 5 seconds; this is a great enough change to meaningfully increase the tempo of the job)
- Change wyrmwave to 2.5s GCD
- Bring sustain back
- Why did you even put in Devotion? Was it so we could feel not as useless compared to RDM's?
As it stands right now, playing smn in a progression setting is kinda difficult. You are playing against the job (which most already consider a difficult job [side note: it isn't THAT hard... it's just that the punitive costs of playing the job incorrectly greatly outweigh the reward for playing the job correctly])
ALL that said (I ramble a lot), SMN is still *kinda* enjoyable. It's not inherently bad that SE has gone from DOT mage to Burst Phase mage. I just feel like the rhythm of the job is clunky, from only requiring 2 dots to locking aetherflow out of DWT and ESPECIALLY how Bahamut works. Ultimately, SMN's can still do a fair amount of dps and will contribute to any raid situation. Will they change anything before 4.2? Probably not. But it would be nice to dream of better days before 5.0 comes in and completely separates SMN and SCH.
Thanks for reading.
- SMN main out of spite rather than enjoyment
I'm all about getting feedback so please feel free to savage (hue) my thoughts.
Huge disclaimer:
I don't raid at the moment. Post-uni life is a grind man XD. But if you feel like disregarding my thoughts, by all means, I'm not your mum.