SMN 4.06 Changes

[Brinzy]

I'm sure you all have ideas as to how you want to improve the class. Any chance we can get a cursory glance of ideas you're thinking of, or is that off the table?

[Flana]

Basically: What do you (the dev team) think the problem is? Not really solutions or a timetable for fixes right now, just what the team thinks the problem is. So far, the only thing we've heard is bahamut's size and sustain. Neither of which are major problems (imo at least).

[lokinmodar]

Idk... Come 4.1 i'll already have lost the last bits of interest for SMN and/or MCH. Time to invest in some job else...

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

Sustain is probably the last thing the dev team should be concerned with as far as smn fixes go, let's get that straight right now. The way people talk in this forum makes it sound like sustain is the only thing wrong.

[KfLeX]

I play summoner a lot in ranked feast pvp. That summon blocks my view and those maps are pretty tight. Bahamut is nice and all but it's huge for feast pvp. I don't play summoner much in pve though so not sure it it works out there.

[Xie_Belvoule]

So I decided after years of playing that I'd level SMN in SB because it looked like it was moving more toward a classic summoner. I leveled it from 1 to 56 and quit. The job is so poorly thought out and boring that it was actually sapping my will to play. When a job is so bad it makes you not want to play you know you've found the worst job in the game. The devs aren't inspiring any confidence either. I mean do they even know why it's so unfun to play?

I'll put it this way, one thing they did in SB was to combine spells that are similiar (Stone for example) and removed off globals and DoTs that were simply pushing a button to do more damage. If they did that with SMN you would see that their wouldn't be a job left. I mean roll ruin, ruin 2, ruin 3 and ruin 4 together and you have like one attack spell. Get rid of the DoTs and oGCD "do more damage" buttons and you have no bio, miasma, or rouse etc. The job is the opposite of their new design philosophy and needs to be completely rebuilt from the ground up. If you think that's too much work then I direct your attention to 1.0>ARR. Surley rebuilding SMN isn't as much work as rebuilding an entire game. Decouple it from ACN and have ACN lead to SCH. Make SMN about trances. They have base unaspected spells that gain a matching element to what ever trance they are in and say the Ifrit trance gives their aspected spell a DoT and let them build, we will call it aether gauge, to summon Ifrit for a big single target burst. Just an idea off the top of my head. Point is they need to completely rebuild SMN.

[Jonnycbad]

The devs are pretty smart and by now they know how to Bala 've jobs pretty decently (compare to most other MMOs like WoW or FFXI). They buffed AST and MCH in 3.x and WAR in 2.x, I'm sure they can fix SMN, they created it after all and they monitor performance data in raids.

[Airget]

First, you can't just have Ruin under one umbrella, they all do different things. Ruin is designed as SMN's go to DPS, Ruin II is an instant spell, Ruin III is designed to be used during Dreadwrym Trance and Ruin IV which does share a slot with Ruin/RuinIII has a chance to proc. Combining them to one skill would only serve to nerf SMN greatly since they would no longer have access to their instant cast Ruin Spell.

If you want to know why SMN is hurting so much, read the abilities that BLM and RDM use, ask yourself, how do they synergize with the job, then look at SMN and ask yourself, how do they synergize with the job. When you notice the huge flaw in SMN's current Abilities, you'll understand why they have a hard time compared to BLM and RDM which have great abilities that flow well into their playstyle.

[dinnertime]

SMN doesn't need to be rebuilt and it's not something that will happen anyway. They just need to improve on what it was built on.

I only expect adjustments to SMN's existing skills in 4.x so I just hope they actually fix its problems in the coming patch, which is the clunkiness, how limited the AoE is and how punishing it is to die compared to other jobs.

In the future expansion they should improve on the Demi-summoning aspect of the job and actually give them new (and useful) skills.

[dinnertime]

First, you can't just have Ruin under one umbrella, they all do different things. Ruin is designed as SMN's go to DPS, Ruin II is an instant spell, Ruin III is designed to be used during Dreadwrym Trance and Ruin IV which does share a slot with Ruin/RuinIII has a chance to proc.

I'd rather have Ruin gone and replace it with Ruin III with the same low MP cost being your go-to spell, while replacing it with Ruin IV only during DWT. Ruin II can stay the same.

They should just get rid of Ruin already. It does pathetic damage. How Ruin III is designed is really nothing special to me either.