SMN redesign in expansion?

[Bishop81]

I am just hoping on some news in the next live letter. My jimmies can't take it anymore

I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

Square Enix makes some nice games and all (good art, decent story, content rate is okey ... etc.) but responsiveness to player requests isn't one of their strengths.

To be quite honest it should've been. Carbuncle should've remained a Scholar pet and cast buffs on the party as Carbuncle has ALWAYS been known to do in FF history, dunno when he decided to put on the fighting gear...

That would mean no more Carbuncle for DPS.

I wouldn't mind the Carbies being more "effects" orientated though - as opposed to directly damaging the targets.

[zeroaru]

Any thoughts on the MP reduction for Ruin & Ruin II at all? I'm at work so I haven't played the new patch yet so I'm curious to see how effective it really is. My gut feeling is better performance in trash content but still not much of a difference in end game.

[Dyne_Fellpool]

Carbuncle has ALWAYS been known to do in FF history, dunno when he decided to put on the fighting gear...

Well the first time I saw Carbuncle in a Final Fantasy he looked like this:



And he could definitely put up a fight!
But to be fair, once you could summon him it DID just cast reflect on the party, which is what Carbuncle is most known for (Reflect).

[ViviAnimus]

Any thoughts on the MP reduction for Ruin & Ruin II at all? I'm at work so I haven't played the new patch yet so I'm curious to see how effective it really is. My gut feeling is better performance in trash content but still not much of a difference in end game.

Absolutely pathetic "buff"

[Romsca]

<begins prepping torch & pitchfork> Ishgard will most definitely be burning in 3.0.

[Tex_Mex]

Any thoughts on the MP reduction for Ruin & Ruin II at all? I'm at work so I haven't played the new patch yet so I'm curious to see how effective it really is. My gut feeling is better performance in trash content but still not much of a difference in end game.

It only solved one of the several issues that SMN is facing. Even with slightly better resource management, SMN cannot keep up with the single target DPS of BLM, nor can they compete with the significantly better utility that BLM brings to FCoB.

SMN will continue to have issues until:
1) They address spell speed by either giving SMN a different set of gear, or making spell speed more useful for SMN
2) They overhaul the utility that SMN gets. A battle rez that neuters DPS output due to costing a ridiculous amount of MP is only useful in short encounters. It is less than useless in FCoB where the party gets penalized for people dying anyways.
3) They properly balance the single target DPS for SMN. SMN is a DoT class, this means it has a long ramp up time and SHOULD have the highest single target DPS of all ranged classes.

They should not try and tackle all of these at once, as it would probably bring some major balance issues, but these are all issues that need to be addressed. Lowering the MP cost of Ruin and Ruin2 only really helped on the mana resource front, which is definitely helpful, but it did not come even close to bringing SMN back in line to be useful in FCoB.

[Brianmj]

I'm happy. You know what this buff and the corresponding explanation from Yoshida foretell: ACN isn't going anywhere. This is great. I love managing timers. I love the relationship I have with my pet, where the Summoner is the star and the pet is the sidekick. Maybe a little more micro-management and interaction the pet and would be nice (this will probably come with Heavensward and new abilities), but not to the point where the pet is doing all the work. No. Summoner is an Arcanist with Fester, and that is good. Hopefully this buff helps the people doing FCoB with their supposed mana problems. But for the people that want to take away something others enjoy, because they themselves don't enjoy it, I don't know what to say.

[Bigcat9715]

snip.

ACN isn't going anywhere, because Sch still exist. If Sch didn't exist Smn would have gotten a real buff not a hotfix, and these didn't fix nothing if anything it made SMN mains angrier. What they should have done along time ago was remove Smn from ACN and turn it into job only class like how Dark knight is going to be, but they waited too long and now we got "buffs" like these. Smh, I can just hear all of the BLM mains just laughing while trying to keep a straight face.

[Bigcat9715]

Absolutely pathetic "buff"

Actually it's a Hotfix*

[Senliten]

if anything it made SMN mains angrier..

Anger over the fact that SE has taken notice and without really screwing up anything major (i.e piety to our stone, potency to fester, etc..etc.) tried to do something that is not really even a band-aid fix? Hell, far from it. I'm actually laughing my backside off at those who thought it would be something major with an expansion not even months away. Least they acknowledge something is up with this change and now we have to just wait and see