SMN Plea

I have already posted feedback about SMN in other threads, but I don't really see anyone else actively ask for fixes for it so here's a whole thread dedicated to that:
After playing a bit of Shatter and a few Feast matches as SMN, it's been clear that SMN has been nerfed way too much. It's currently the only class which suffers multiple pvp exclusive nerfs, let's not bring up storm's edge/dancing edge/feint because those are nearly inconsequential.
Miasma/Bio/Bio II : reduced duration - After talking with fellow SMNs none of us could care less about that, if anything we all agree at least this was a fair nerf. Still bringing it up to make a complete list.
Miasma/Miasma II : No heavy. - Never really talked about that with anyone, it's a very old nerf from the start of Wolves Den, I'm fine with it although considering the nerf to tri-bind, maybe restoring it with a 10 sec duration would be fair.
Resurrection : Unavailable in pvp. - Another oldie, once again couldn't care less although being able to res your healer in Frontlines could sometimes be useful.
Tri-bind : 6 sec duration in pvp - Of all the nerfs this one has to be the most stupid. SMN has nearly no way of saving themselves.
Painflare and Deathflare: 200 to 150 potency in pvp for Painflare, and 400 to 300 for Deathflare . - Painflare and Deathflare are the subject which bother me the most, and SMN friends also think the same: by nerfing those 2 the burst of a SMN has become completely unnefficient. They both need to be restored to their original potency. As stated before, in the Feast SMN is the only ranged wich offers absolutely no carry power. The idea isn't to be carried but compared to what a MCH, a BRD, and yes...a BLM, can bring, SMN is far behind, and the Feast rankings attest to that.

Now I know SMN was a big threat with low skill needed in Frontlines, but the nerf has been handled terribly. SMN was my favorite pvp job and I originally wanted to play the Feast with it, but playing a crippled class completely drove me away from it, and even after trying it a bit it was clear that something was wrong.

tl;dr : Restore Painflare and Deathflare to their original potency.

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Originally Posted by NoelNoel

As stated before, in the Feast SMN is the only ranged wich offers absolutely no carry power. The idea isn't to be carried but compared to what a MCH, a BRD, and yes...a BLM, can bring, SMN is far behind, and the Feast rankings attest to that.

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Bard/MCH burst is way too strong right now for Feast, as anyone who plays (or played when queues actually popped) Feast consistently will tell you. Both can drop you from 100 - 0 in less than 2 seconds. They need to be brought down to SMN level if anything, not the other way around.

A monk asking for nerfs to another class that's hilarious lol. I agree with OP SMN should have pain and deathflare restored to its previous potency to bring it in line with the other ranged dps in terms of burst. There was no reason to nerf both the dot durations AND pain and deathflare. If anything they should have just restricted the AOE from pain and deathflare to single target in pvp as smn was only really viewed as OP in frontlines never Feast. The tri-disaster nerf also never made sense.

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Originally Posted by Dimitrii

A monk asking for nerfs to another class that's hilarious lol.

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Say what you want, but a MNK can't burst as quickly as a DRG, and a DRG can't burst as quickly as a BRD or MCH. Ranged win in both situations.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Say what you want, but a MNK can't burst as quickly as a DRG, and a DRG can't burst as quickly as a BRD or MCH. Ranged win in both situations.

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Monk can burst more frequently than DRG just not as hard. Besides, DRG burst is so painfully obvious when it's coming, you see life surge and Blood of the Dragon and you know it's coming. They are all telegraphed in some way. Anyway even if you wanna argue brd and mch burst is too bursty scaling it down to smn level is too much of a nerf imo. They already suffer dmg penalties due to distance and they can no longer harass casters and healers like they used to after the spell interruption buff. You nerf their burst too much and they become worthless.

I played Feast quite abit, sure MCH and BRD have a crazy burst but I really never felt underpowered as a melee... Besides these people people who can burst can be on your own team, if anything the medals system is bad, because the burst of BRD and MCH becomes a pain in the ass to heal through with stacks. Anyway I'm really against nerf in general, it makes things dull. All good healers know how to deal with bursts at the start. If you nerfed BRD and MCH nothing would die VS good healers, and SMN would then have an edge over all this nerfed bunch.

I agree with Knives on this one. DRGs have full frontal burst but any good player will notice it coming and can deal with it appropriately, but other than that they don't offer much after the burst is gone. MNKs have AoE pacify, damage mitigation and what not, along with a decent amount of burst to top it off. A MNK can 100-0 someone just as a DRG can, maybe not as fast but making use of your stuns it's possible.

As far as the MCH and BRD burst goes, BRD burst is hard to pull off soemtimes in Frontlines, I'll admit in Feast it's probably the scariest and strongest burst there is. Nerfing the burst is easy, you put the damage reduction from Gauss and Minuet back in. The good players will know ranges and will position accordingly. The reason both jobs have gotten so popular is because of this one change. I remember when I was one of the only Machinists that could burst probably because of this. The fact they made it so you get max damage up in melee range, MCH just go Gungho and run up to you while they're bursting, guarenteeing top damage.

I agree, SMN is a wet noodle compared to the other 3 jobs and I've said this in other threads plenty of times. So, either bring SMN up or nerf the other 3.

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Originally Posted by NoelNoel

. SMN was my favorite pvp job and I originally wanted to play the Feast with it, but playing a crippled class completely drove me away from it, and even after trying it a bit it was clear that something was wrong.
tl;dr : Restore Painflare and Deathflare to their original potency.

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That was the problem with it prior. Because it was such overpowered class when it came to pvp (pre nerfs) everybody and their mother was playing it. Same as astro. Don't get me wrong, I love playing SMN in pvp, but I think the nerf was something needed. It was pretty much boring to run just over the map and tri-bind 1 target, bane, painflare, deathflare the whole opposite party, especially since a lot of people do not use their pvp abilities or even know about. As it stands right now, at least you need to pay some attention as well as get some skill, if you plan on running the feast or even the newer maps.

You need at least 2/3 GCDs to set up DRG burst.

Monk requires 0.

You're missing the point of what he's saying. Currently a mch/brd can literally 100 - 0 someone in a stun. That kind of burst shouldn't be happening period. It doesn't make for good game play to suddenly vanish from one source of damage. Throw in melee and warrior focus fire and the damage is unhealable with minimal coordination.

The problem with SMN damage in pvp isn't cause painflare/deathflare don't hit as hard, it's that the bulk of summoner burst is tied to 2 conditions, having full dots on a target and having 3 stacks of aetherflow/trance. Both are painfully obvious and can be countered much more easily than mnk/drg/mch/brd burst.

The SMN toolkit in general requires too many stars to align to be able to output the kind of dmg that other classes do and that's not something that can be easily fixed just by giving a potency buff here or there.

I'm the second highest SMN on the primal leaderboard (the first is a guy with a curiously high win rate >_>) and I have struggled a lot just to get there. If we assume BRD/MCH are unlike BLM/SMN, having burst as their "thing", blm and smn don't really have a similar role. BLM will try to CC you, melt you, or fool you into attacking them (they're super tank-y). SMN will try to burst you, CC you only if we are being focused (or stalling at the end), or spread dmg and pressure the healer. I try to do all of those things, while using status effects to drag a fight out and pressure healer's MP/cooldowns, but I cannot at all carry because it requires a team that is otherwise self-sufficient. I cannot burst down another player like BRD/MCH to create breathing room for my team, nor can I repeatedly CC them to create that room. I have to apply constant pressure, try to stay alive, and hope the healer is messy with their MP and suffering enough to make mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Nirokun

I'm the second highest SMN on the primal leaderboard (the first is a guy with a curiously high win rate >_>)

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I assume you mean #21. I have played with and against that guy he's a beast and his ranking is legit as far as I could tell playing against him. The guy never seems to put out less than 200k dmg in feast on smn and constantly applies a ton of pressure on opposing heals. That being said he is an outlier and (while an excellent example of what smn can still do I suppose) is definitely not the prototypical example of the avg summoner atm since I have seen no other smn play at that high a lvl in feast. So the job could still use a buff imo.

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Originally Posted by Dimitrii

I assume you mean #21.

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Yes, thanks that makes me feel better. Obviously as ranged I don't play with other ranged, only against them, and I haven't seen him in any of my matches. But yeah, that's how it should be played (making people cry "padded numbers!" that still require healer to choose costly AoE heals when dmg is spread among 4 instead of 8). The only other SMN that I have seen play aggressively with bane usage was Vivi Ornitier. But really anyone can bane, it's often the pushback I/we get about not focusing damage that makes people give up when they don't even understand that it's the best thing for SMN to do most of the time. I feel as though people think that we're using Bane because we don't know how to focus dmg, and I'm always trying to set up for easy bursting and healer pressure (and using every tool skill available to leverage a win).

Yeah normally if it were a summoner in frontline doing 200k dmg I'd be like so what. The dots are much more easily handled and healed through because of the presence of more healers usually. But in feast there is only the one heal and if you keep on dishing out party wide dmg like that you will severely tax the opponent healer who is probably already under pressure by tank and/or melee and cause them to expend massive amounts of resources to try to keep the party alive nevermind topped off. This is an especially nightmarish scenario for Noct ast heals. Even if the dots don't outright kill the opponents the pressure on and expenditure of resources by the healer to keep party up will inevitably lead to a death as bursting someone becomes easier under those circumstances.

I rarely see SMNs use all of their skills or their pets and just rely on Tri-Disaster>F>P>E>Deathflare. SMNs should practice their Tri-Disaster + Contagion timing, with Bane if available. Make intelligent uses of their Healing Down. Use Wither and Aetheric Burst in their Burst. Use Buffed Garuda/Ifrit in their burst, Enkindle if available. Keep the AOE damage pressure up.

SMN's advantage is that a lot of their burst is AOE. When being targeted, try to bait people into each other then burst them all down. SMN can also virus BRD/MCH burst too and blind melees. Friend of mine gets multi-kills consistently in Shatter with AOE burst, no LB. In Feast, has even ended game(s) swiftly with just SMN aoe burst.

SMN should be balanced around its potential, not the mediocrity of its users. (not all of them are mediocre)

Sure it's good for pressure, at some point a NOCT AST or a SCH will crumble from having their team being baned, still, without a very good melee landing kills is difficult for a SMN. When I tried it in the Feast I had average melees playing with me and my burst sure wasn't enough to go through people. Not gonna say I'm the best SMN out there but I'm decent. People sure like to cry for nerfs though it's really annoying. A BRD can certainly drop you dead in 3 skills but not only is it rather easy to counter, but only the players who make the best use of the 15 yalms thing do well on MCH/BRD.
Reading about SMN burst/max dmg needing too many stars to align is laughable, the requirements are low. MCH needs a lot more things to align and some awareness to burst. Let's not talk about BLM which is even worse.
The accessibility of their burst certainly isn't the issue, it's just that's it's downright too weak.

Would you say that, "MCH burst has strict CC requirements!"?

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Originally Posted by Dimitrii

Even if the dots don't outright kill the opponents the pressure on and expenditure of resources by the healer to keep party up will inevitably lead to a death as bursting someone becomes easier under those circumstances.

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This is the correct way to play SMN. The caveat exists though, that if your healer is in any way insufficient, you cannot maintain pressure and you certainly cannot generate kills to make it easier for your healer. MCH/BRD can do that. I can't say for BLM, they're usually bad but really scary if they're good.

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Originally Posted by Nakanishi

Make intelligent uses of their Healing Down.

SMN's advantage is that a lot of their burst is AOE. When being targeted, try to bait people into each other then burst them all down. SMN can also virus BRD/MCH burst too and blind melees.

SMN should be balanced around its potential, not the mediocrity of its users. (not all of them are mediocre)

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Shh! You're giving away all of my secrets!

Healing down with marker and <call> into party chat is very useful for coordinating burst (because I cannot kill anyone myself if the enemy healer is paying attention).

As far as baiting, it's not just waiting to be targeted, it's making yourself look like a tasty target, load them up with DoTs and have them chase you back to their team. They think they're corralling you into a death trap, and you press bane, swiftcast tri-bind/blizzard2, LB to show them that chasing you is bad.

But yes, nobody except you has said anything about Virus. I really think it's the only thing that can be leveraged against MCH/BRD, when your job is very clearly labeled "BURST", to Virus that burst is very destructive and makes their burst survivable. That being said, one--and only one--MCH was sneaky enough to counter that. So it's not unbeatable.

I don't really know about blind, I'm casting puny Ruin II's as I'm being chased, usually I'm recasting DoTs because the duration is much lower now.

As a melee, blind is one of the more cancerous debuffs. Missing breaks combo, and missing big hits Full Thrust/Jump/Forbidden Chakra makes you want to commit a felony.