SMN - Why it is not a very interesting job and not a good upgrade from ACN

[Hawklaser]

See, this is what I'm talking about.

The damage has never been fine when there's always an avenue to do more. The steep costs just make it worse.

Animations, in particular, are bad. Especially when they do less damage. KotR in FF7 is a HORRIBLE example. Why use that, with the long animation, when you can just mimic limit break? You said it yourself, there's a vastly superior option(and not just limited to 1 character). Hell, even Double Attack+Haste would most likely out damage KotR. It was also a jab at FF9, since any long animations were bad due to how buffs worked. First, they lasted based on both the casters and receivers spirit stat. Second, the timer went down during any animation and idle time.

And then when you compare ANY of the other summons? LOL

You miss the point of relative damage. As by the logic you are using why bother obtaining any gear but the "ultimate" gear in a game because it is just useless. So tell me, if the only damage that matters is the absolute best option, why should I use anything but level 1 gear until I get it, after all it is a waste using that logic. And on the magic side, why bother using cure or fire at all, because there are later spells that outclass them as well. And on the same point, in some games why even bother using the ultimate spells when with enough grinding can get plain old Fire to do the same thing for less? This is a problem when just look at things from a Min-Max perspective, you only look at things in the perfect optimal set-ups which rarely happen until post game anyways.

You also missed the point I made about animation sequences, which KotR is the perfect example for. As I said it was quite possible you could do more damage during the same amount of time as KotR's animation, but outside of the large multi hit limits like Omnislash, there was no way to do more damage in a single action. And guess what, those hard hitting limits were not just handed over to you on a silver plater either. If could turn off all the animations in FF7, you would just as likely abuse mimic-KotR as you would mimic-limit, which you could not do every single fight either seeing as limits had limitations on their use as well.

Now buffs and other timers continuing during a long forced animation is more of a overall design flaw than an issue with the abilities with the long animations.

[Kevee]

You miss the point of relative damage. As by the logic you are using why bother obtaining any gear but the "ultimate" gear in a game because it is just useless. So tell me, if the only damage that matters is the absolute best option, why should I use anything but level 1 gear until I get it, after all it is a waste using that logic. And on the magic side, why bother using cure or fire at all, because there are later spells that outclass them as well. And on the same point, in some games why even bother using the ultimate spells when with enough grinding can get plain old Fire to do the same thing for less? This is a problem when just look at things from a Min-Max perspective, you only look at things in the perfect optimal set-ups which rarely happen until post game anyways.

You missed the point. They are relatively weaker throughout.

You also missed the point I made about animation sequences, which KotR is the perfect example for. As I said it was quite possible you could do more damage during the same amount of time as KotR's animation, but outside of the large multi hit limits like Omnislash, there was no way to do more damage in a single action. And guess what, those hard hitting limits were not just handed over to you on a silver plater either. If could turn off all the animations in FF7, you would just as likely abuse mimic-KotR as you would mimic-limit, which you could not do every single fight either seeing as limits had limitations on their use as well.

It doesn't matter if anything else couldn't do more damage in a single action, if over the course of the animation you can get multiple actions that deal more total damage. You can't turn off animations, so why even bring it up? Not to mention KotR had it's own limitation in the MP cost, and unless you spent time grinding to master it, or mimic materia, only one person could master it. That's more of a limitation than LB when you can just pre-grind it for anything you needed.

[Hawklaser]

You missed the point. They are relatively weaker throughout.


It doesn't matter if anything else couldn't do more damage in a single action, if over the course of the animation you can get multiple actions that deal more total damage. You can't turn off animations, so why even bring it up? Not to mention KotR had it's own limitation in the MP cost, and unless you spent time grinding to master it, or mimic materia, only one person could master it. That's more of a limitation than LB when you can just pre-grind it for anything you needed.

Feel free to continue to write off all but the most easily abused or overpowered summons. And you still don't get the point of why the single action is important to consider in what was essentially a turn based game.And in turn based games, if trying to be as efficient and effective as possible animation times become irrelevant. As when both sides can not act simultaneously damage/healing per action is what matters in determining if you win or loose, not damage per second. Even in games where multiple characters can act at the same time, it still comes back to damage per action, which is how you get those "best" DPS rotations. The only reason people did not use KotR all the time was due to boredom and impatience, not its strength. If you still don't get this, I am not going to waste any more time trying to get you to understand.

Which comes back the the whole reason why SMN does not feel like a SMN. XI's SMN at least felt like a SMN because they did have access to those big impactful moves, however they were pretty much forced into a healer in a pinch role anytime they really could not use those abilities. So in order to avoid those issues, they evidently decided to try an approach that puts more focus on the character than the summons themselves.