Why did SE take thunder away from SMN?

[BlaiseArath]

Ifrit actually does considerably more than Garuda, especially with a WAR/NIN and/or MNK present. The main drawback of using Ifrit is your MP goes down the tube from much more constant recasting of your DoTs, but in short enough content, like T6 or many trials, Ifrit is better than Garuda.

Hmm, thought I remembered throwing Ifrit at a Test dummy and he ended up doing less damage than Garuda. I guess I remembered wrong :X

[ShinryuReishiki]

Ifrit actually does considerably more than Garuda, especially with a WAR/NIN and/or MNK present. The main drawback of using Ifrit is your MP goes down the tube from much more constant recasting of your DoTs, but in short enough content, like T6 or many trials, Ifrit is better than Garuda.

I don't think the MP consumption is actually that bad. With Contagion, each minute you're essentially able to cast 3 more Ruins, which is 161 MP less than casting the three dots again, but if you're using Miasma II with Contagion, you're not really conserving MP at all. I've only used Ifrit-egi in T11 and T13, but MP seemed nearly the same as with Garuda-egi.

[Sleigh]

Hmm, I haven't tried Ifrit T11 or T13 yet; were you getting Ballad?

On a dummy, I officially go dry around 3m20s with Ifrit, while Garuda affords me closer to 4m20s before going dry. This is without SCH in the party, MP pots, or Energy Drain in either test.

[Craiger]

This happened a long time ago guys, them removing Thunder for SMN a year ago, isn't the cause of SMN's fall this patch...

SMN was OP back then, and up until 2.4, SMN was a very good DPS.

Having Thunder now would only patch over the problems they have, and it wouldn't help with the MP issue, or with bad gear stats.

With the right stats and without MP issues, SMN are perfectly balanced. If you add Thunder on top of that, they would be OP again...

[Judge_Xero]

Hmm, I haven't tried Ifrit T11 or T13 yet; were you getting Ballad?

On a dummy, I officially go dry around 3m20s with Ifrit, while Garuda affords me closer to 4m20s before going dry. This is without SCH in the party, MP pots, or Energy Drain in either test.

I use Ifrit on T11 because my group also has a BLM. So I RS, DoT + Contagion the Cube. Then Swift Cast Ifrit and put it Obey on the Sphere since my group is lacking the extra Melee damage on it. Then I just leave it out for the rest of the fight. One thing I haven't been able to check is if Garuda does any damage at all on Kaliya after it absorbs the Egg, since you can't do any ranged damage to her at that point. (must be within melee range) Aside from moving her to within melee range of course.

[Bigcat9715]

It was part of their master plan to take SMN from being the top single target dps to the bottom single target dps. Btw, that mission was successful. SMN is now the worst at single target dps out of every job in the entire game, even though at launch they were the absolute best. Um, thanks, SE!

Really? I thought bard had the lowest single target dps.

[Hiruke]

Really? I thought bard had the lowest single target dps.

On a striking dummy, I imagine that's true, but in actual content, since BRDs can continuously attack regardless of pretty much anything, their dps still ends up being pretty ridiculous. And that's after they got nerfed into the ground.

Regardless, SMN is probably one of the more challenging jobs to play correctly, since you have to manage at least 4 different DoT timers (I'm including Shadowflare here), and if you want to maximize your dps, you need to know the fight forwards and back, because you need to know the best times to Contagion, how much time you have to land your DoTs, when the best time to reapply your DoTs is, etc. etc.

And of course if you want to minimize wasting GCD, using Ruin2 or Bio before using off-GCD CDs (and not doing the Ruin2 bit so often you ruin your mp - though unless the mob jumps off the arena a lot, your mp is probably going to get ruined).

And what do you get for your trouble? Basically the lowest effective dps on anything that matters that isn't basically tailored to SMN (e.g., Levi EX is amazing for SMN), a battle raise that will wreck your mp, and umm... You're really good at kiting Turn 7 pre-nerf? Yay!

Contrast with BLM and BRD, that you basically just faceroll, and it becomes rather odd that SE said that MNK was ok to be so dominating because it was more complex to play than DRG, when SMN is not similarly compensated.

[ShinryuReishiki]

Hmm, I haven't tried Ifrit T11 or T13 yet; were you getting Ballad?

No Ballad at all in T11. I use Ifrit-egi from the start, and go into add phase with ~1000 MP usually. We run 2 casters, so I'm on the Electric Node with Ifrit-egi on the Weapons Node. I don't cast anything on the other adds unless a group is falling behind. I also don't use Shadow Flare at all during this part, so I end up recovering enough to manage for the last phase. Usually end up 2nd/3rd DPS depending on how our BLM does.

For T13, no Ballad at all in the first 2 phases. I've only cleared once so far, so I'm mainly just comparing those first 2 phases. With both pets, I was having to use an Energy Drain on each Shadow to keep above 700 MP. Thinking about it, MP consumption was a little higher with Ifrit-egi, but we were getting to phase 3 a little faster, leaving me around the same number.

During phase 3, Ballad is played during the dives and the transition to final phase, which is more than enough to last me the rest of the fight (Generally going into last phase at near full MP). I ended up sitting on a ton of MP because our healers still needed some Ballad during the last phase. Managed to barely squeeze by the NIN for top DPS, but not really sure if my numbers were "good" since most people just aren't bringing SMN into the fight. I expect to get destroyed by our BLM next week, though...