SMN 5.0 Wishlist

[Grimoire-M]

• Enkindle trait.
• Different cooldown speeds - 13 seconds versus 180 seconds without procs.

I'd personally rather they went the PvP consolidation route and combined Dreadwyrm Trance to Deathflare and Summon Bahamut to Enkindle Bahamut.

I'd prefer to combine Enkindle and Enkindle Bahamut to be honest. The proc always felt wrong to me. It's one of the changes I put in my first post in this thread to be honest. I think a lot of people think it'd be pretty easy to consolidate SMN's major cooldowns into one or two buttons and that includes the Enkindles. They do the same things effectively. Rouse/DWT/Bahamut all share the same basic concept of being a burst window too so why not pair those down and the enkindles down and remove the aetherflow lockouts?

I've been messing around with SMN on and off since Demi-Bahamut came to the game. I can't say I've been thrilled with SMN being a heavy DoT class AND a pet class, but compared to ARR and HW, I like SB's iteration better.

I have to disagree here. Heavensward SMN was far better than you give it credit for. It had problems but the solutions to those problems were far easier implement and required less work than what Stormblood has left us with. The optimal rotation back then forced GCD clipping because we lacked an instant spell worth using in it, which I'd argue Ruin IV fits perfectly into if SE allowed it to be used during DWT. And its version of Aethertrail had a punishment that was actually better than SB launch's implementation too. Remember fatfingering an Aetherflow ability somewhere and the SB launch iteration not only took your DWT but your next aetherflow with it? That wasn't true of the old Aethertrail buff because they were allowed to coexist with Aetherflow stacks. Bahamut himself literally is a trashy rehash of what DWT was back then, with DWT itself being relegated to a weak mobility cooldown we don't need at all because that's what Ruin II is for. The mana issue with Ruin III easily could've been solved by making Ruin III only available during DWT without that proc. Players abused the hell of Lucid Dreaming because they were already primed to because of Heavensward. SE had to patch it over because they removed only GCD decision we had left, leaving us only with the very thing that they were intending to trim back on, cooldown management, to carry the class. But instead of stacking it was forced juggling, and not in an intuitive way like Bard.

• Merge Miasma III and Bio III into one DoT that lasts as long with the same combined potency (so 30second duration of 100 potency ticks);

No. This alone would kill the point of even having Tri-Disaster, which I'd argue needs the reset mechanic removed so we have to use these buttons more, not less. It's not particularly interesting because they're all in sync but it's far better than what we have now.

• For Tri-Disaster, have the DoT, Ruination debuff, and current Contagion's effect (increase magic damage by 10% for 15seconds);

I'd half-agree to this. I think the third debuff should care about which Egi you have out. Titan gets damage down. Ifrit gets Phys Vul up. Bahamut is a general Vul Up. Ruination needs to go. Allocate it's trivial power budget to the actual Ruin spells instead.

• Give a reason to pick whatever EGI you have, each with desirable applications. FFXIV runs on DPS is king - all 3 EGIs should have tools that feed into that design.
- Remove the pusback or change it to a heavy;
- Increase Garuda's potencies or add a DoT to Contagion;
- Change Titan-EGI to be a mitigation-based summon and remove enmities, since the SMN gains all enmity anyway once Demi-Bahamut is summoned, rendering the tank aspect of this summon completely worthless once you gain the ability to summon Demi-Bahamut;

The reason to pick your Egi is based on whether you are in a magic damage heavy comp or a physical one. That's plenty to distinguish the two. Titan is for solo purposes and I'd argue that in that situation he needs a provoke on one of his skills. Mountain Buster is the clear target for that. But it should only go to the Summoner's current aggro + the aggro generated by the current Mountain Buster if his current aggro is lower, not the top of the emnity list. That solves this issue cleanly with no further changes needed. Mountain Buster itself is on a 15s cooldown and does cool down while Bahamut is out and Bahamut himself is 20s long. You're guaranteed to have Titan re-establish aggro over you this way as long as you can survive without him, which players can in certain instances.

• Move Shadow Flare to a DoT or something other than a click-to-place ability. Macros are unresponsive and it sucks when you accidentally click a player or the ability just doesn't place because of latency. Don't want to remove it because the slow debuff is very handy in content where enemies are not immune to the effect.

It's fine as it is on a macro. I live in the countryside on the east NA cost my latency is as bad as it can get without being in Australia. You can absolutely work around this in the moment. I don't use the garbage marco spam option because it's not needed at all. It was far worse when it was on the GCD compared to now, and the macro ironically ensures you don't fire it off in a bad spot all that often because of how the macro works. Usually if it does for me it's because the tank was pulling the mobs further than I anticipated.

• Give SMN's EGIs the SCH's fairy treatment and have EGIs perform an action IMMEDIATELY. This has been my favorite QoL change done to ACN/SCH/SMN, but why it was limited to SCH and not ARC as a whole remains a mystery to me

Little secret: Fairy isn't fixed either. It just remembers you pressed the button more often, particularly when there isn't anyone else to heal according to its AI. The same issue still happens. I've played both classes extensively, neither is in an ideal state right now regarding their pets. Bahamut is worse when you actually examine him too. He's responsive, sure, but not in a good way. Moving out of his range sucks and absolutely should be addressed if they're going to copy his AI onto the regular Egi at some point, which seems likely. Movement is prioritized over Akh Morn and even Wyrmwave in some cases unless you chain them back to back perfectly. Unless you want Ifrit to run back and forth like a loon someday I would focus on Bahamut's inherent problems first. For all the gripes about regular Egi they at the very least sit still and there's time to actually fit in their oGCDs between attacks if you know how they operate, and they operate extremely well on Obey.

• Move Demi-Bahamut's appearance to be near the SMN, but not ON TOP, given the summon can't be damaged, but still obstructs view;

/bahamutsize small

I dunno what else to tell you he actually isn't that bad once you do that. Hell my PLD has him at large just because he finds it funny. And I use my mouse for movement and camera which apparently is weird to people. It's better than cramming the left half of the keyboard with anything other than abilities imo.

• Remove Physick as a spell on SMN and turn it into a trait; every time Aetherflow is used, or a stack is used, the EGI gets a heal or regen. This could also replace Sustain or

• Put Sustain as an oGCD.

Personally speaking, I'd rather they baked Sustain into Physick when used on pets or into Energy Drain only. It actually matters for that one dumb titan quest and for soloing which needs a fix too but I do not see that happening.

Then again SE could actually make Physick a decent spell past ARR regardless of whether you're a SCH or not but apparently that's weird too for some reason.

Even so, I want an oGCD personal defensive cooldown. Ideally manaward as a role action or a damage split with your pet/straight damage reduction if said pet is Bahamut. Shields work better against the things that kill Caster DPS.