SMN 5.0 Wishlist

[Seraphyel]

How likely is it that they'll increase Aetherflow stack from 3 to 4/5 in Shadowbringers? Would this even make sense?

[Mansion]

How likely is it that they'll increase Aetherflow stack from 3 to 4/5 in Shadowbringers? Would this even make sense?

Yes and no. They would need to rework the rotation accordingly. The idea of having 3 stacks now is that it cuts your overall rotation is sub-rotations. One for aetherflow, one for DWT, one for Bahamut...
I'm expecting some upgrade of DoTs, Ruin 5, and maybe one or two new oGCD skills. The flow of the current rotation is ok, it does not need a big overhaul.

But if shadowbringers is revamping gauges, SMN could change a lot because it has three (Aetherpool, DWT and Bahamut).

[Atomos]

I just wish they would make a system that implements more summons, Like what a summoner should be doing.

[Grimoire-M]

I don't really like the idea of one button doing multiple things too much.

It's not too much. It's one cooldown that replaces a bunch of cooldowns you're already familiar with, that all effectively do the same thing: Buff your damage for 16-20s. The only one of them that's different is Bahamut, and he's still specifically called out by Dreadwyrm Aether charges. SE specifically stated that they wanted to eliminate a bunch of useless buttons in order to make playing this game easier going into Stormblood, and they still need to do that for 5.0 to make room for more abilities. Shifting all of these extraneous buttons that don't really do much to the rotation as a whole is the ultimate solution to that.

If you want an analogue to how this would play out, look at Dragoon. Life of the Dragon and Mirage Dive is extremely similar to how this would operate in practice.

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.

HW SMN had about 25s of downtime if you ignore planning around their last Aetherflow stack in the middle of their 1 minute rotation. 15-20s was dedicated to refreshing DoTs and preparing cooldowns for DWT in a specific order and where some of that happened was based on whether you had Ifrit or Garuda out, but a consistent dividing point was Shadowflare. 15s was dedicated to DWT itself. That filler consisted of picking between Ruin I/II/III based on how much MP you had (or were going to have, based on when your BRD/MCH used their MP restoration skills), and how much movement you had to do for the encounter. The only problems that weren't addressed properly in the changes done throughout early Stormblood were the fact that the resource gating on Ruin III was tied to MP instead of some secondary resource, and that Aethertrail didn't need a timer. That's it. The Lockouts weren't necessary at all, and Ruin III could have been addressed if SE had taken the appropriate time to do so instead of letting Lucid Dreaming slip through unchecked.

I've gone over the other pertinent points already, but the problems with SMN right now mainly focus on the fact that they're only using Ruin II for cooldown weaving and otherwise default to Ruin III for 90% of their GCDs. They simply don't have another option unless AoE is involved. Their cooldown management is not particularly interesting either as SE explicitly makes it impossible to stack them in a meaningful manner. Every change I've ever talked about regarding SMN was made with the intent of consolidating their cooldowns into a more interesting burst window that takes up less space on their keybinds, allowing them to focus giving room for SE to build more into their rotation (hopefully their GCDs, to deal with the 'one-button' feel of their rotation) in order to differentiate them from BRD and actually get their pets involved.

With that in mind:

It doesn't kill the Tri-Diaster mechanic as it'd still provide the aforementioned buffs (Ruination and current Contagion)

I don't want to use Bio/Miasma III sparingly because of what I talked about above. Tri-disaster's value goes down, sure, but so does the value of that single DoT on a single target rotation. The goal here is to cut into the constant Ruin II/III spam. Why have a DoT all when you could simply rework Tri-disaster to be a 30s oGCD that replaces it entirely? Or vice versa? That's why I would rather remove the reset mechanic and keep the two DoTs, it cuts into our filler, and acts as a bridge between whatever SE wants us to do in that 30s next expansion and the consolidated DWT I mentioned before.


The GCD issue aside:
1) Tri-Disaster's Reset mechanic cannot be allowed to co-exist with Contagion unless you see it nerfed down to compensate. BLM exploits this too well. Think Piercing and Bard. Same problem.
2) Ruination and Contagion basically do the same thing already. Contagion just applies to a wider variety of things in addition to Ruin spells. There's little need for Ruination at all to be honest. It would be better to remove Ruination entirely, which leaves a debuff spot open for something else, like the other DoT.
3) Bane loses almost all of its value as multi-dotting has become significantly easier with no real AoE filler to compensate for it outside of DWT, which is already constrained by needing to spend all of your aetherflow in order to access it thanks to the lockouts. At this point Bane really is a GCD efficiency tool and you're cutting that value in half with this change.
4) Tri-Disaster and its reset mechanic make up 75% of our DoT usage in most boss situations. Having to DoT at all should have more of a GCD cost.

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.

Physical buffs are problematic because they exclude casters and healers. Magic buffs are similarly problematic for excluding all other DPS and tanks. It's a bad idea to only have one of these kinds of buffs in isolation. For MNK and RDM I'd rather they were universal bonuses because adding a similar magic equivalent just doesn't fit either of them well at all. The reason I disagree with it being a problem on SMN is because you get the option to pick between the two as a balancing point. SMN is tailor made to have that kind of split without it being a detriment since both effects can exist in similar places (pets) or in the same place as with my change. I'm just moving their utility to a single button instead of two seperate ones, ensuring it's mutually exclusive between the two (Pet Swap openers just add needless clutter imo). The only reason I mentioned a TA equivalent for Bahamut is because it's Bahamut. By putting him on an effective 180s CD he lines up with every other raid buff appropriately. I'd balance all three to give similar relative contributions, with Bahamut's Vul Up being the weakest while Garuda's would be the strongest with Ifrit somewhere in the middle, based on how each one operates. This makes Bahamut weaker (a good thing given how much of our total DPS he's truly worth at the moment), but better raid DPS (almost every single raid buff will always line up with it explicitly, only Chain/Embolden and maybe cards don't) while being less frustrating to use.

Also to me the reason the 'meta' is stale is because we don't have enough weight or depth when it comes to personal cooldown management and thus raid buffs matter too much as a result. Personal skill gaps need to be widened a bit and freeing up when to use stuff like TA needs to happen sooner or later. Bringing back some of the old DWT helps with this. Something I'd love to see is cooldown charges to help you keep stuff ticking down so you can save up for a larger, extended burst window. This is similar to how Foul operates, sort of. GCD-focused classes would need something to compete with this as well but they could use more on that front regardless, so whatever's added to them simply would need to be stronger.

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.

Titan is for solo content. He doesn't need a purpose in raids. He needs to function better at his intended role, which requires specific changes to him and SMN as a whole to support him. He doesn't need to exist in Savage. The last time he did exist in similar content (Coil/Ramuh Ex) SE made it so tank cleaves obliterated pets specifically because he took no damage at all otherwise. SE does not want to support a DPS that can sometimes become a janky Tank hybrid. And we don't need the extra party mitigation when Role Actions cover that area already. We can do without.

Provoke immune mobs generally ignore aggro to begin with, because Provoke isn't a status, it sets your aggro to the top player's aggro +1. And the way I worded it specifically dealt with that issue. Setting Titan's Aggro to the SMN's Aggro + the aggro generated by Mountain Buster means they'll never exceed the tanks provided the SMN is doing their job correctly anyways, but you wouldn't use Titan in the first place nowadays. There are tank mechanics that always default to a player. I believe second coil had a few specifically to keep Titan Egi out of there, but I know HW was full of them if you tried unsyncing content, and would generally wreck players without a shield of some sort.

I'm also not worried about having to use Sustain every 3-4 GCDs in solo content. In practice it's not even close to that if you're using Titan properly in the first place. Something needs to break up the Ruin III spam currently anyways so it might as well be an ability that keeps the pet alive and lets you single weave.

Look up T13 solos. It's been done before. I'm sure SMN could absolutely solo HW content too if not for their lack of self-healing.

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.

I have too, usually due to my own mistakes though. That isn't really enough of a reason to justify not using a macro for Shadowflare to me. Trying to manually place it in a mess like Forsaken phases in Kefka or during Hello World is not worth the effort. I use a macro and a regular button for it, defaulting to the former except when I know what I'm targetting is being moved, so I can place it where it needs to be ahead of time. The only time it's even remotely close to a problem is in 24 man content and if you're that far from the boss you're out of range of your healers meaning you're also not stacked with the party for most of the mechanics that matter in there. It's on SE to fix it properly but the real mistake is not using the tool they've given us in the meantime.

For reference, the macro range is basically the same as the Foe Requiem range too. Foes is supposed to be the same range as your normal attacks but is only slightly smaller. You won't notice the difference unless you're specifically looking for it.

Honestly, considering Bahamut isn't targetable, why don't they just increase his range to something ridiculous and just not have him move?...Don't know why Ifrit would be running around...Yeah, I've had him on small for ages. He's wingspan still gets in the way sometimes and is just annoying.

Bahamut's ranges are already 4x that of your own spells (aside from Resurrection). The problem literally is just the fact he wants to chase you. That could be solved by making him auto attack instead of waiting on your input. Or rescripting him and the Egi to only move once the have to make an attack that's out of range. The Egi have this problem too, that's why they follow you once the boss disappears if you haven't used a place command. Their autospell AI holds them in place until they lose a target. That's how Bahamut should operate, just without needing the auto-spell portion to hold him in place. He should sit still and wait for his next command, then move if he lacks line of sight or range somehow. If SE literally copy-pasted Bahamut's code onto the egi, then Ifrit would run back and forth between the mob and you as I described. That's why I disagree with changing them until they nail Bahamut specifically. Once that's addressed, then the Egi can inherit those changes at a later date.

This change would also address your camera issue as well, somewhat. He already plops down near the SMN though. Any further away and he'd be running automatically to you immediately. I'd recommend you zoom out and play with your camera settings, even the angle can help out here. It helps you see more of the encounter anyways. The only time to be zoomed in as close as the melee DPS are to the boss is for /gpose anyways. It's not worth the overhead until you know the encounter by heart.

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?

You misunderstood me here. Energy Drain would apply Sustain to your current pet in addition to its normal effects. You don't have to target them at all for it, just use it on an enemy and get your Pet Regen alongside your HP/MP and damage as normal.

For making Physick decent all you have to do is make it scale on Attack Magic Potency like Vercure does for RDM. It has no bearing on SCH because their Attack Magic Potency scales on MND just like their Healing Magic Potency does. The two stats are literally equal for SCH. So it's purely a buff to SMN, and that's it.

I've made use of the weak Physick before, but the last time I got to that wasn't padding 99% healing parses on SMN throughout the last two Savage tiers to the utter amusement of my healers, it was me using it to just barely squeak by taking two orbs in A4Normal when that was new content and healers weren't reacting quickly enough to them.

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.

There are HP checks in this game that outright kill a caster DPS or healer without full vit melds until you have full left-side gear for that raid tier. A personal shield or mitigation cooldown would address these issues for all caster DPS without having the raid bend around it. It's not good enough to be mobile if you're getting oneshot. And the lack of an oGCD personal defensive cooldown only applies to SMN and RDM specifically. The lack of a useful personal raid defensive tool is unique to SMN at the moment too. RDM can cure themselves on back to back hits if they absolutely have to. BLM will eat the clipping for the same reasons. SMN either uses Drain for minimal value or straight up dies in those situations.

BLM doesn't use Manaward to soak random AoEs either. It's not worth it compared to mitigating something that actually kills them when it comes up. If it costs a healer GCD or cooldown they're better off moving in the first place.

[Aomine1992]

There are HP checks in this game that outright kill a caster DPS or healer without full vit melds until you have full left-side gear for that raid tier. A personal shield or mitigation cooldown would address these issues for all caster DPS without having the raid bend around it. It's not good enough to be mobile if you're getting oneshot. And the lack of an oGCD personal defensive cooldown only applies to SMN and RDM specifically. The lack of a useful personal raid defensive tool is unique to SMN at the moment too. RDM can cure themselves on back to back hits if they absolutely have to. BLM will eat the clipping for the same reasons. SMN either uses Drain for minimal value or straight up dies in those situations.

BLM doesn't use Manaward to soak random AoEs either. It's not worth it compared to mitigating something that actually kills them when it comes up. If it costs a healer GCD or cooldown they're better off moving in the first place.

This is by far really annoying lol, early Omega progs and clears. I would always die right before panto 2 becuase of the damn fire, metoer, dot combo bs. Sometimes it would simply be from not enough HP to survive stuff and healers having to move as well causing them to have to focus casters....Any Savage with a heavy dot I just know I'm going to die.

Ion Efflux was another early on, it would literally one shot me becuase I hate vit melds lol

[Seraphor]

Dreadwyrn Aether renamed to Trance Aether.

Enigma Trance
Decreases damage received by 10%.
Duration: 16s
Additional Effect: Resets Tri-disaster recast timer
Additional Effect: Removes the Bind effect of Tri-bind, increases its potency by 40, and reduces MP cost
Additional Effect: Removes cast time of Ruin III
Increases Trance Gauge when effect ends
Can only be executed when Aethertrail Attunement stack is 3 and Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Alexander are not summoned.
Aethertrail Attunement is achieved upon executing an Aetherflow action.
Cannot execute Aetherflow while under the effect of Enigma Trance.

Summon Alexander
Summons Demi-Alexander to fight by your side. Each time you use an action on a target, Demi-Alexander will execute Enigma Screen on a random party member.
Duration: 20s
Trance Aether Cost: 2
Cannot summon Demi-Alexander unless a pet is already summoned. Current pet will leave the battlefield while Demi-Alexander is present, and return once gone. Cannot use while under the effect of Dreadwyrm Trance or Enigma Trance.

Enigma Screen
Erects a barrier around target negating 30% of damage received and reflecting 30% of the damage back to the attacker for the next three incoming attacks, with the effect reduced by 10% for each attack received. Applies to most attacks. (doesn’t apply to whole-arena boss attacks)
Will only execute while Demi-Alexander is summoned.
(Function is similar to RDM’s Embolden, it bestows 3 stacks of Enigma Screen. 3 Stacks = 30% reflect, 2 Stacks = 20% reflect, 1 Stack = 10% reflect. Each attack received consumes a stack.)

Enkindle: Orders pet to use their Signature attack. Orders Demi-Bahamut to execute Akh Morn. Orders Demi-Alexander to execute Sacrement. (consolidated skill)

Sacrement
Deals unaspected damage to a target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 560 for the first enemy, 10% less for the second, 20% less for the third, 30% less for the fourth, 40% less for the fifth, and 50% less for all remaining enemies.
Additional Effect: Consumes any existing Enigma Screens for additional effects: 1 Screen = +40 potency and Stun, 2 Screens = +80 potency and Stun and Silence, 3+ Screens = +120 potency and Stun, Silence, Heavy and Bind
Can only be executed while Demi-Alexander is summoned.

Basically, Alexander is a version of Bahamut tailored to trash mobs and defensive utility, while Enigma Trance would be your 'Manaward'.
This would be two new buttons (Trance and Summon) and one button reduction in consolidating Enkindle and Enkindle Bahamut into one.

[Shougun]

So wild for me to see these bigger egi being accepted by majority posts... Back in my day *ptsdwardog.gif* people fought so hard against the idea when I was asking for bigger better looking egi. It's a nice change lol. I like the changes SE has made, and am very excited to see new content to them - of course "more demi/upgrade mah egis" thoughts happen but overall am happy with and excited to see new content on SMN these days (years lol).

Would love to see a greater focus on the pets, although they need to respond a bit snappier then :3. Perhaps a way to do that without changing SMN too much is to see either casting spells through the empowered egi or in theme of them (Titan is out, Bane is now a sand plume).

Some random thoughts:

• When your pet is out the summon spell for their type is changed to sustain, remove sustain as a skill on it's own (new slot for something else). So if you have potato out, potato summon is now sustain.
• Pets can phase out, no longer being target-able like Bahamut-demi (cannot tank for you as a consequence, also can't die). Enmity is dumped and a fraction of the future enmity will be put onto the caster. They may phase back in of course, perhaps add this as a skill on the pet's own hotbar with a light cooldown. You shouldn't need to manage it too often but I believe it could help design the job around pets more, and let SE make a SMN focus more on other actions than keeping them alive (let the beastmaster concern themselves with that lol).
• Now that you don't have to worry about your pets dying in dungeons/raids, while a pet is active most of your attack spells now act as spells through or at least themed around the egi. Ifrit egi out, bio is enhanced with flames. Majority of damage spells will be re-themed to general primal that's summoned, thankfully because of the primal fights in game there are a lot of effects for SE to reuse rather than having to develop from scratch.
• New demi-egi system that upgrades them, either permanently, through rouse/spur, or another new mechanic I don't care but I'd like to look at the current egi less and less and something demi or demi like more and more .

Back when I was asking (badgering? lol <3) for a more grandiose summoner (pre-ahk morn/bahamut) I had described being able to summon larger egi via empowering a mechanic that was a bit like a battery.. I realize that pretty much happened already but a concept of that didn't make it through that I was sort of fond of was that as you power up you lightly fill the air with pyre flies (FFX spirit energy). Just want to toss that spell effect idea out there again, for anything really lol. Upgrading non-bahamut egi, new spell (recharges something or acts as a sort of hellzone gernade?), empowered form (like dragoon), etc.

[Dyvid]

I thought of a cool ability that would work similar to surecast. Aetharal Summon would basically turn a DoT based attack into a Demi-Summon causing all the damage the DoT would do into one attack, like the Thunder proc.

Shadow Flare would become Diabolos
Bio would become Siren
Miasma would become Fenrir.

[Seraphor]

I thought of a cool ability that would work similar to surecast. Aetharal Summon would basically turn a DoT based attack into a Demi-Summon causing all the damage the DoT would do into one attack, like the Thunder proc.

Shadow Flare would become Diabolos
Bio would become Siren
Miasma would become Fenrir.

What if all three were active? It'd generate all three 'Demis' at once.

[Dyvid]

What if all three were active? It'd generate all three 'Demis' at once.

Well no, it would be the next spell you cast, not what DoTs is currently on the mob.