SMN 4.06 Changes

[Grimoire-M]

Titan is used in solo content to tank things. Typically in job quests, hunts, and in undersized content. It fulfills that job well, but requires sustain to actually do that safely. The Titan job quest in particular has been hit hard by the loss of Sustain.

[Kio]

I would absolutely love for Bahamut to have auto attack instead of being triggered by player actions. The way it is done now creates a long and very boring span of downtime where we cannot cast anything beyond ruin and makes abilities such as addle useless.

[Cidel]

It's really quite ingenious: by having SMN in its current state, players will be distracted long enough by asking for general job gameplay/skill buffs so incrementally that there's significantly less people worried about/asking for the status on new egis for egi glamour. This just might be the perfect distraction for it to fly under the radar until, say, patch 4.55?

Well played.

[Neela]

It's really quite ingenious: by having SMN in its current state, players will be distracted long enough by asking for general job gameplay/skill buffs so incrementally that there's significantly less people worried about/asking for the status on new egis for egi glamour. This just might be the perfect distraction for it to fly under the radar until, say, patch 4.55?

Well played.

wouldn't be surprised if it goes the other way around: 4.1 patchnotes for smn could be something like "after taking the community feedback in consideration we need a bit more time to find a new cls design which is balanced with Blm/Rdm but hey moon and obsidian carbuncles are available now woop woop take them for a walk and stay tuned for 4.2."

[ShaolinMike]

I would absolutely love for Bahamut to have auto attack instead of being triggered by player actions. The way it is done now creates a long and very boring span of downtime where we cannot cast anything beyond ruin and makes abilities such as addle useless.

No thanks. This would make the SMN-Bahamut connection basically non-existent, AKA braindead as f**k. Also, if all you're doing when Bahamut is out is casting Ruin and Addle, you're doing it wrong.

[dinnertime]

I would absolutely love for Bahamut to have auto attack instead of being triggered by player actions. The way it is done now creates a long and very boring span of downtime where we cannot cast anything beyond ruin and makes abilities such as addle useless.

I'd like this too. If they wanted Demi-Bahamut to be more engaging and feel the connection that you're controlling him, they could've done better ways to do it. Right now it's just clunky.

[Dahlinea]

- To be honest if I could I would simplify Demi-Bahamut even more and just make him appear physically on the field to do his signature attack (Akh Morn) when we command "Summon Bahamut" and add the potency multiplier of Wyrmwave to the SMN own skills (with the necessary adjustments). While not in accordance with how summons work on recent FF games ( I think this would be X, XII and XIII) it was how it worked on older FF games (spend MP and summon the 'primal' to do its signature attack). Would solve the blocking of mechs and it's pretty weird having that big thing following you around. Also, the problem of Bahamut going away without using the second Akh Morn because the gauge timer is over during the animation of the skill is pretty annoying.



- For Egi response to the SMN commands I don't have much problems with delays when I use Ifrit and Titan, they are actually pretty responsive. In Garuda's case it's probably related to the Wind Blade cast time so it would be nice to make Wind Blade an insta cast ability with a more faster animation.
An alternative to this (and probably and overhaul of the pet system for SMN) would be simplify the pets role in the following sense:

1) make the current pet out give a buff to the SMN based on its element (Wind = + __% Spell Speed, Fire = + __% Attack Dmg, Earth = + __% Magical/Physical Resistance);
2) give the pet a UNIQUE skill that it will be using for the time it's out (which already occurs on Obey till we command them to do otherwise);
3) the pet current out grants the SMN three oGCDs (yeah, the ones that was supposedly swiped out of the pets or maybe just the important ones like Contagion and Radiant Shield).

This can make up for delays but will treat the pets just like a constant buff or stance.


-Make the Summon spells be insta cast and reduce their MP cost. There is literally no reason to make the SMN's life so difficult during a battle when he dies that he 1) has weakness that nerfs his attacks (standard for everyone); 2) has all his aethertrail built lost and needs to start his rotation from start and most probably with all important abilities on CD and 3) is ressurected with low MP when his get up into battle depends heavily on a lot of MP due to summoning (with a long cast time, no less) back his pet.



- SMNs have too many Ruin spells! Actually we have 3 ruin spells (Ruin, Ruin 3 and Ruin 4) that does the same thing with just different potencies. This is too much spells of the same kind that does the same thing without any advantage to distinguish them (in contrast with BLM's Fire, Fire 3 and Fire 4 that also does the same thing but each has it's own advantages that benefits the BLM rotation).

[Dyvid]

My suggest for Bahamut based on community feedback and my own experience of play. D-B is tethered to Aetherflow, he follows you around, lacks abilities, and his signature move is lackluster.

Demi-Bahamut:
*Make Wyrmwave his auto attack, change to 2.5s recast. This would give him AI similar to Summon I (Garuda) where he would stay in range and auto attack.
*Ruin, Bio, Miasma have a __% chance to change the next Wyrmwave to Mega-Flare - 250 potency
*Change Enkindle Bahamut recast to 45s or once per summon.
*Change Ahk Morn with Tera-Flare: 1400 Potency attack.
*Add party wide Buff, Eikon's Favor - Critical Hit rate increased by __%.

[ThirdKeyOfSun]

Also, if all you're doing when Bahamut is out is casting Ruin and Addle, you're doing it wrong.

I think what Kio is saying is that to use Bahamut to his maximum effectiveness we need to not only have the Bahamut aether to summon him (2 stacks of flow) but also an additional, third stack to push festers (which is how I read spamming Ruin in the downtime waiting for flow to come off cooldown). On top of this we need to hold a tri-disaster and an Addle for this push phase which is causing us to have to use Addle offensively instead of for it's intended purpose.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Two of my biggest annoyances with SMN:

1. Why wasn't Ruin I upgraded to Ruin III? There's literally no excuse to still be spamming an unimpressive looking level 1 spell at level 70.

2. Supposedly, they wanted to fix button bloat, yet we have 4 DIFFERENT BUTTONS for Dreadywrym/Deathflare/Summon Bahamut/Enkindle Bahamut. Ridiculous it wasn't merged into two like how it is in PVP.