SMN 5.0 Wishlist

[Mansion]

A very minor thing, but I'd personally like it if they consolidated Enkindle with Enkindle Bahamut. I have no idea why those are separate actions in the first place.

Yeah, all pet actions being unavailable during Bahamut, they could be replaced by Bahamut actions. Or with DWT. DWT could turn in Summon Bahamut and Deathflare could turn into Akh Morn.

[Aomine1992]

Yes please lol get rid of them please! Such a nuisance and hinderance and have us rely on actual summons, even if they need it I would definitely stick with SMN but if we get more egi crap I may just drop the class all together.

[JunseiKei]

A very minor thing, but I'd personally like it if they consolidated Enkindle with Enkindle Bahamut. I have no idea why those are separate actions in the first place.

• 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.

[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.

[JunseiKei]

[...]

I don't really like the idea of one button doing multiple things too much. At least the PvP consolidation are things that are only available while in those modes. That I can understand and get behind without being too macro.

[...]

I didn't really play SMN during HW because it was either too punishing or had too long of a down-time. I hated Aethertrails having a time-lock to them and burning Aetherflow during Dreadwyrm Trance that lead to that down-time I really disliked. In SB, I only recall my downtime right before level checker in 11s and that's pretty much my only down time. Everything else, there's mechanics being done, down-time or otherwise that gives me back resources for the next part of the fight. Even with 10s, I notice this, too. I don't notice the down-time, or it's short, or it's a force down-time in the fight itself. Gordias Savage, however, I remember just hating SMN. Nothing felt fulfilling. That's my opinion, though.

[...]

It doesn't kill the Tri-Diaster mechanic as it'd still provide the aforementioned buffs (Ruination and current Contagion). My point had been you only use both Bio III and Miasma III individually so sparingly, it'd be better to just combine them without re-tooling how SMN works.

[...]

The reason I didn't go the route of suggesting what you have is because we have enough physical buffs or invuls down, but hardly any magic ones. Embolden only effects their magic, but provides everyone else with a physical buff. I also didn't want to just tack on another version of Trick Attack as that in a whole changes popular choices to bring classes. IMO, we have such a "stale meta" because too much stacks and there's no diminishing returns on offensive buffs.

[...]

I understand that. This works outside of statics or other content that don't have locks on them that are generally easily downed in PFs or DF. My suggestion was more along the lines of allowing more choice of EGI even inside content that have lock-outs, like savage raids. The problem with Titan-EGI having a provoke is XIV's team programming the AI to realize the SMN has aggro (not any other PC or NPC) and not using it needlessly. Considering Selene on Sic and using her Silence, I don't have the confidence to make Provoke a suggestion. Also, there are mobs immune to provoke. Without having good, consistent healing on the EGI without slowing DPS, it makes another place, like Eureka if you're playing solo, intrusive, to have to use Sustain on GCD. Those same instances have much better player healing items, too, on oGCD like the Eureka Potions or the healing items you can use in PotD/HoH, that don't force SMN to slow down their DPS. That's why I made the suggestions the way I did.

[...]

North Carolina here. I swear my latency here is god-awful sometimes. I'd missed Festers and Shadow Flares in oGCD slots because of latency. It's annoying. Not to mention while using a macro on something like Shadow Flare, it reduces the range that you can place it down. Go try it on a dummy - go max distance and hit it. You'll get an error message. It'll only activate the beginning of your max range or closer, not your full distance listed under spell next to range. I am not satisfied with that. It may be minute, and I don't normally stand max distance, but should the need ever arise, this is the outcome.

[...]

I never said fairies were fixed, only they became so much more responsive. While I didn't play SMN much, I've been playing SCH on and off ARR to now. The change was such an amazing QoL one, one that I've heard other SCH echo. You'd be the first I've actually heard say otherwise. Don't know why Ifrit would be running around. As it is, my solution to it going places I don't want it to is to set Place near the boss. This resets with every Bahamut summon, but it doesn't matter as long as the boss is target-able. During phases where nothing is target-able, like Omega using his beam, I set reset the Place of Ifrit again and now it doesn't run around like an idiot.

Honestly, considering Bahamut isn't targetable, why don't they just increase his range to something ridiculous and just not have him move? Outside of PvP, of course, but PvP gets its own changes as is. This should be one of them. Or do what I was suggesting and prioritize the spell use over movement.

[...]

Yeah, I've had him on small for ages. He's wingspan still gets in the way sometimes and is just annoying. Just having him plop down near the SMN, rather than basically on top of, would also solve it. Though this probably is because I don't generally play with my camera zoomed out to the moon.

[...]

I'd prefer they'd not add it to Energy Drain as that's taking a DPS loss to heal your pet, which is no different than keeping a GCD-Sustain. I'm also not in favor of "making Physick decent" as that's a pretty vague statement. Why does Physick need to be better on SMN?

While I wouldn't be against having manaward added to role, or some other protection spell, I also don't see the point of it. RDM and SMN are both highly mobile, while the only caster that doesn't move has it. That strikes me very much as compensation for the immovable force of destruction VS two classes that can move closer for healing (since healing spells heal in order from closest to farthest) or dodging out of bad. Most AoE either just kill you or give you a debuff that something else will anyway, so it's not like this is Thordan EX days where you just ate some of the AoEs with manaward to keep Fire IVing.

[MStowastiqVahlshdeh]

Though egi's will always be a comic insult to us Summoners, especially Summoners who experienced the giant and gorgeous summons of FFXI, the community has already had this fight and we lost. So we have our Chicken Mc Nugget with honey-mustard sauce.

It would be nice to have Bahamut always available like egis but lets be real, it would be super cluttersome in towns and everywhere if they did not force us to keep it at small size and it would require a nerf to its dps because of the tremendous boost to dps we would get from having him up all the time.

I guess the compromise is temporary Bahamut tease we have now, who vanishes after a short time.

So no, I would not want to do away with all pets for the temporary use Bahamut we have now. Aesthetically, I like having a pet with me outside of battle and in.

Other wishes:

A new pet type, perhaps a ranged dps "support" type pet in one of the unused elements lightning, ice or water or maybe light or dark pet who switches between those two forms, (Black or White Carbuncle that the NPC's have).

White and Black Carbuncle egi glam to look like the ones the NPC's use.

A sustain that is good, though I do not ever want to go back to that horrible time when Sustain was gone. Please never again.

[KaerisKlyne]

Ditch egi for demi phases like BRD's song stances. Remove prioritization of movement from ranged pets. Further distancing from DoTs (they're an afterthought at this point that suit SCH far better).

If we can't have new egi, can we at least have lore that supports our aetherflow abilities being spells aspected to primal energies? Sure, we can't summon Shiva-egi, but are we bathed in enough residual Shiva aether to maybe ditch Fester and replace it with a Heavenly Strike that shares Fester's potency?

SMN output is in a great place. What it lacks is a cohesive job identity/direction and what it suffers from is AI issues and stringent lore reasons for kit limitation.

[MagiusNecros]

Multiple pets out at once pls. Get rid of your spaghetti code with having all Egi abilities sharing recast timers. Many thanks.

[ShariusTC]

A very minor thing, but I'd personally like it if they consolidated Enkindle with Enkindle Bahamut. I have no idea why those are separate actions in the first place.

True, as a controller user i have to use marco to merge both of them into 1 button to lower a slot require for smn so i can fit then into controller patern

[PriyaJugulataris]

+1 on the demi primals train from me.

I'd also like to see summoner distanced from scholars but I doubt that's happening.

My dream has been timed summons with minor party buffs building up to Bahamut.

Cycle Elements to summon Bahamut, the more elemental summons you have, the higher damage he does (Minimum of 3 to summon, leading to 2 minute cycles? in general)
Each Summon lasts for 30~ seconds, Enkindle usage immediately makes the summon vanish. Using the enkindle in the last 1-5 seconds of a summon duration gives you swiftcast on your next summon.

The summons would have effects like:
(Numbers are spitballing, durations would have to be adjusted)
Ifrit: STR+ 5%, Enkindle: Inflict Slashing Resistance Down on Target(s)
Titan: VIT + 5%, Enkindle: Inflict Damage Dealt Down on Target(s)
Garuda: DEX + 5% Enkindle: Inflict Piercing Resistance Down on Target(s)
Ramuh: INT + 5% Enkindle: Magic Vulnerability Down on Target(s),
Shiva: STR + 5% Enkindle: Inflict Blunt Resistance Down on Target(s)
Leviathan: MIND + 5%, Enkindle: Mini HoT/Refresh around Egi
Bahamut: Parameters 5% based on elements, Enkindle: Flat Out Nuke

Weave in Dots + Fester/Bane/Painflare, cut ruin spam.

Gain Utility and diverse rotations based on party, feels more like a "summoner", cuts the ruin spam a bit and makes gameplay much more engaging.
I play with controller, and I think that it'd be easy enough to handle