Curious on opinion. Smn or Mch. Which would you pick?

[Ryaz]

And I don't understand why every debate needs to turn into one party flinging insults at the other. If you want to make points, make them and leave the insults out of it. Calling names doesn't help your debate any and just makes you look childish. I have not insulted you at all, please have the courtesy to do the same. And don't make assumptions about me-- I also play a Ninja and Dragoon and think they're perfectly fine. And for the record, I'm a MCH, not a BRD. Brds have better utility than us (foe's requiem and easier use of mp/TP regen).

[SovereignAegis]

As someone who has mained SCH since release let me be clear in what I personally prefer to have in my party when I heal.

A SMN can offset damage, something I take to heart. Supervirus + Eye for an Eye will never be trivial in my mind. Never. Damage migation is my thing and anyone helping that is golden. HOWEVER the most crucial thing to me is the fact SMN can revive. THAT IS NOT TRIVIAL WHATSOEVER. I do not give a crap what anyone says, it is the biggest relief when both healers die in a raid (for whatever reason) and a smn comes along and revives one of us.

... In a less dramatic situation though if someone dies and a smn revives them (like a dps) then that saves us like 2.5k mp or something around that. That is a big deal because multiple revives sustained by a healer is ridiculously costly and can cause the raid to wipe later on when stronger heals are needed and the healer is already drained half way through.


However for smoother runs for SUPPORT ALONE I like BRD/MCH mana songs. To me the rest of the utility the MCH brings is too undertuned to notice. IE: Supervirus reduces ALL stats for a single target by 15% for a longer duration than dismantle/rend mind. MCH's puny 5% (and I have a 60 MCH) is not something I notice when I heal. Sure, throw it up whatever makes you feel better, but healing with or without it I don't feel the difference. I feel it with supervirus though or eye for an eye though. I realize it isn't some crazy difference in numbers but realize that it 3x or 4x higher than MCH's offering.

[o3o]

really both are alright. really its just which one you like better.

smn does considerably more damage then mch as mch is on the lowest tier of dps along with bard, both of them compete for spots on party as the "support dps"

smn is really strong right now but is a tad bit more complicated then it already was but still not that hard to get a hang of and its focus is for the most part pure killing power unlike mch. oh but it can res which is a nice tool. it competes with blm for spots in party's as you don't want more then 1 caster most of the time.

while smn has the same supervirus and eye for an eye as sch. your not going to be using supervirus that much tbh, as it has a 90 sec cd and prevents any other viruses to be placed for 60 seconds (the healers for example who should be the ones placing it because they work around it being up for some hard hitting moves) eye for an eye however is free mitigation that should be put on when you see your healers about to fall off.

[Minorinz]

Ok, let's look at this from another angle. You're a SMN..

No offense but I haven't seen people taking summoner over a bard during 2.0.. Even if we were top dps back then, if melee and tanks run out of tp then rip dps ESPECIALLY on stationary bosses which was the case during final coil. Not to mention long fights/instances that will eat up healers mp, there no way a virus can even help with that or a res tbh because that res will also eat up a major chunk of smn's mp and they will ask for mp eventually. There is a difference between being able to refresh your party's resources(tp/mp) during challenging progression and waiting for someone to drop dead or take a hit to use your resources. People are seriously underestimating mch and brd's utility before alex savage is out, I don't even know...

[RiceisNice]

...

Unless they legitimately make huge changes to current alexander fight mechanics (As in, getting rid of the jumps on A1, have faster spawn timers on A2, Tuning down the amount of phasing in A3, and the final phase in A4 is more than half the fight), TP songs won't be needed because the amount of sheer downtime for melee classes. MP song is (and has always) been dependent on the healers and their mana management.

And content outside of cutting-edge raiding is still a thing, whether or not you acknowledge how important it is.

[Minorinz]

Unless they legitimately make huge changes to current ..

Unless SE messes up the difficulty of savage and makes it a joke I doubt any of the savage content is gonna take anything less than 5 mins to finish with downtime, knowing the usual progression difficulty it will likely consume time, effort and proper planning. There will be hard hitting cleaves like always and dps races like always so if those exist, tp/mp depletion will follow. As for normal content outside of progression or difficult content, those do not require high damage output or extreme utility usage, it's balanced.

[RiceisNice]

....

I'm talking about the amount of downtime that occurs during the clear time. It could take 10 minutes to clear without factoring downtime, but the matter of fact is that the time transition for A1/A3 bosses jumping/water taxiing is long enough for melees to catch their breath with TP. Same with healer mp except that's also mitigated with familiarity of the fight and the inevitable overgearring as you clear it or as it gets older.

The design philosophy just doesn't sit right for me if cutting-edge end game is the only time that our regens are relevant (mandatory even), but unnecessary afterwards/beforehand and we're designed to naturally do less damage because of it (even when using said regen reduces our damage to begin with).

[Minorinz]

I'm talking about the amount of downtime.

Yes even with downtime there will be tp/mp depletion in most cases because the dps will not be that high in the beginning.

The design philosophy has been the same since the game is out and bard was like this on 2.0, why bother with it now? Bard was never near top dps during progression as far as I remember and was always bellow casters or on par in some cases. I would understand the frustration over the mobility with WM since bards are/were responsible of most mechanics in previous coil fights but dps wise there shouldn't even be an argument. Most bards even know that their utility has always been a thing and they know they will be needed for it.

[RiceisNice]

..

You won't have TP depletion if you have those downtimes is what I'm saying. I've (shamefully) been in A1 runs where we'd go through the cycle at least eight times because of our low damage output. Neither mine (MCH) or the NIN's TP that I queued with ever dipped below comfortable amounts from invigorate. For all we know the fights probably won't be the same anyway and we'd probably be able to attack them even while jumping, but again this is only from a raid-standpoint.

I've accepted that we're on the lower end on the dps spectrum, but the matter of the question is why. I've never been able do more than the resident SMN, DRG or MNK in my group in FCoB, and it's certainly not the case now even with gauss barrel. If it's a matter of their mobility (which I will still disagree with to an extent but that's another subject) then it's more of a moot point with GB/WM. If it's because of the support, why even add on an additional damage penalty on top of their naturally low damage?

[Renryuu]

Yikes, I did not mean for this to be such a heated debate.

I was just curious as to if people were only given those 2 classes to play, which would they pick. Guess my rambling kinda messed that idea up. v_v

Well after reading everything I do have to wonder something as I noticed a few people mentioning groups using 2 melee. Would it be a good idea to level a melee like Ninja or Monk to bring their tools to the raid instead? I'd mention Dragoon but after seeing all they get on the way to 60, I don't think I could fit it all within an easily to reach manner, at least until I get a new G600 MMO mouse.