SMN - 5.3 Tri-Disaster 50% potency nerf - Misprint, Bad Joke or Just Right?

What opinions do my fellow members of the Erozean community have on the SMN class and also the 5.3 patch note that the "Tri-Disaster" skill potency was reduced from 300 down to 150.

Please share your thoughts!

necessary, and TBH not perhaps as severe a nerf as SMN may need right now given both its insane utility, mobility, and dps.

Dont mind me im just here for the show

still leaves it a top tier dps job while having more than enough mobility for any kind of mechanic handling and more utility than most other classes, so yea, smn went from "completly broken" down to "still one of the strongest jobs in the game"

Before 5.3: The better black mage with ranged mobility and utility.
Afer 5.3: The slightly inferior black mage with ranged mobility and utility.

SMN remains the 4th ranged and will remain the most insane job, yet bad to play.

Tri-disaster is about 4-5% of a summoner's total dps, so it's pretty much a 2 to 2.5% nerf.

It's not a huge nerf, but it puts it below black mage and samurai but still leagues ahead of physical ranged jobs, which is honestly pretty disappointing.

the summoner was a little too strong,
now he's more balanced,
the problem is that every x.0 patch summoner is very bad,
and every x.1 patch summoner is broken, and nerfed on several patches it is always tiring this same cycle.
it's a 2% dps nerf .

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Before 5.3: The better black mage with ranged mobility and utility.
Afer 5.3: The slightly inferior black mage with ranged mobility and utility.

SMN remains the 4th ranged and will remain the most insane job, yet bad to play.

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I have no idea why people say smn is bad to play when i find it to feel the best out of all the classes D;
(sure the pets are a little wonky, but i find that kind of almost organic optimization quite interesting)

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

Tri-disaster is about 4-5% of a summoner's total dps, so it's pretty much a 2 to 2.5% nerf.

It's not a huge nerf, but it puts it below black mage and samurai but still leagues ahead of physical ranged jobs, which is honestly pretty disappointing.

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I don't agree, of course the remote physical dps did lack a little bit of dps, but they still have 100% uptime, the summoner is super mobile but remains a caster with problems, I agree that the machinist's dps should at least be similar to that of the summoner, the bard should have dps similar to that of the dancer , but no the summoner does not deserve to have the same dps as a Ranged physical dps .

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Originally Posted by Roda

I have no idea why people say smn is bad to play when i find it to feel the best out of all the classes D;

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it's a common thing with a lot of jobs in shadowbringers, apart from maybe Dragoon, BLM and maybe all tanks except war. They are definitely good, and you can see what the devs went for, rotations are intuitive and everything. The issue is when you begin to look at uptime stuff, and try to optimize a rotation to the max. Then stuff starts not clicking, cooldowns do not align perfectly (iirc you have to delay your firebird trance for a bit else stuff will drift in the long run), and you lose a decent part of damage in the long run if you're not perfectly used to this.

This is mainly where players say that a job "feels bad" to play, and almost every job has this "it lacks polish" feel when you take the time to really dive deep into it, only exception for dps are BLM and DRG which have really smooth optimization.

As for the main topic, Tri-disaster nerf seems really light when you look at the power level of the job right now, especially when compared to red mage. I expect a bit more nerfs in the future, or even better a rotation rework, to fix the clunkyness AND the difficult balancing.

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Originally Posted by remiff

I don't agree, of course the remote physical dps did lack a little bit of dps, but they still have 100% uptime, the summoner is super mobile but remains a caster with problems, I agree that the machinist's dps should at least be similar to that of the summoner, the bard should have dps similar to that of the dancer , but no the summoner does not deserve to have the same dps as a Ranged physical dps .

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I wouldn't call summoner a caster at all really. They have like one spell they consistently have to cast everything else that they use regularly is instant cast.

To me it's a fair nerf, mainly due to that if Summoner was actually a 'balanced' job it would not be worth playing. The rework during the 5.0 cycle made the job playable after the expansion really put it through the ringer, but it didn't address many of the numerous issues the job had. But, at least with all the headache the job gave you trying to play it at a high level, at least if you managed to learn and deal with that headache, it rewarded you for it as a top tier job. If summoner was fairly balanced (aka probably right around Red Mage) then honestly the amount of headache you put yourself through to do it's rotation correctly would just no longer be worth putting up with when instead I can go play Red Mage for a much less strenuous rotation and be nearly as mobile and still bring solid party utility.

So to me, the nerf is fair. Summoner should 100% not be a the number one job, but as long as we are putting up with that massive headache of a rotation, then it sure as hell belongs near the top.

It'll be a noticeable change, but the job will still be on the higher end for damage output. We've said for a while that the Tri-Disaster change in 5.1 made the skill "overpowered" by design, because now it not only functions as a DoT refresh tool, but also as just a free oGCD potency gain. In encounters (especially ultimates) where you have instances of prolonged down time and phase transitions, Tri-Disaster at times is like having an additional Fester usage. So over the course of a 16-17 minute ultimate fight, you can gain upwards of 7-8 uses of Tri-Disaster as just "free" potency. For savage, it won't be nearly as extreme, but you do still have encounters like E6S and Shiva which allow us to use that same idea to gain a couple extra uses.

We weren't initially anticipating this much of a nerf, but having time to look at it, it really won't be too bad. SMN will still remain within the top 4/5 jobs for savage, and will likely still be the strongest DPS job for TEA (just not as dominating as it was on 5.1)

I wrote a summary here on AkhMorning on the change.

To add onto what Elevation mentioned - we were projecting in the range of a reduction to 200-250p. Was personally leaning to 200p since it'd reduce the on hit potency to the original contributions of Ruination, however, given that SE reduced it even further beyond expected cases this shows a deliberate hand in wanting to bring down to more to where they want us to be for general balance.

As I covered in the article - Yoshida was asked if further nerfs would happen and he said not without having to change other jobs more. As such, we can say he's happier with the current balance of things. I personally still think RDM could get some implicit cleave on finishers/scorch to help address one of their core weaknesses in fights/scenarios like TEA.

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Originally Posted by Roda

I have no idea why people say smn is bad to play

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Because they're bad at playing it despite it receiving numerous QoL changes to make it more accessible.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

Because they're bad at playing it despite it receiving numerous QoL changes to make it more accessible.

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Only objective complaint I can think of is apparently moving during bahamut/pheonix phases can cause ghosting where they don't do their attacks. To avoid that you need to be moving as little as possible

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

Because they're bad at playing it despite it receiving numerous QoL changes to make it more accessible.

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Its because it is a rather clunky spec to play, which requires you to hold off on some trances in order to prevent rotational drift. Let alone that the egi's can be buggy and result in phantom attacks resulting in a loss of damage despite the ability being instant. There are real complaints about it.

Arguing that someone has a view because they are bad is just being insulting.