Prelim 5.0 SMN Feedback & how the rework is going against improved downtime design

[Myon88]

While I'd be a fan of more DWT flex because it's a neat feature of current SMN, I don't see it as a critical problem. Job kits are allowed to have drawbacks, and it's possible that SE intends for this new DWT to be one.

DWT and FBT sharing a cooldown and dictating the tempo of the whole rotation is kind of analogous to if bard's 3 songs were just 1 button that transformed into the next song in turn. In a fight with many breaks like the ultimates, you would be forced to sit through the entire cycle and run the clock on AP, instead of your fight knowledge and planning allowing you to gain more uses of WM and MB. Even your troubadour song selection would come down to chance (not that that will matter since it's gone in 5.0).

I don't think any bard would be defending a change like that if it went through, there would be unanimous sentiment that the job was being simplified. And it is, because as you can see above, flexibility in rotations and resource usage are opportunities to display skill and foresight. It's unfortunate that this is happening to summoner now, when the team seems to be paying more attention to designing the jobs around downtime this expansion.

[Cetonis]

DWT and FBT sharing a cooldown and dictating the tempo of the whole rotation is kind of analogous to if bard's 3 songs were just 1 button that transformed into the next song in turn. In a fight with many breaks like the ultimates, you would be forced to sit through the entire cycle and run the clock on AP, instead of your fight knowledge and planning allowing you to gain more uses of WM and MB. Even your troubadour song selection would come down to chance (not that that will matter since it's gone in 5.0).

I don't think any bard would be defending a change like that if it went through, there would be unanimous sentiment that the job was being simplified. And it is, because as you can see above, flexibility in rotations and resource usage are opportunities to display skill and foresight. It's unfortunate that this is happening to summoner now, when the team seems to be paying more attention to designing the jobs around downtime this expansion.

I mean, that's why I said I'd like the flexibility to be there. I did main SMN for a tier, I know how nice it is. But I don't think there's a damning problem here, in terms of "SE must fix this or else the job is inoperable / unacceptable". It's not like the pre-pull nonsense or MCH's Rapid Fire issue.

Also I think you're being a little extreme if you're trying to say that SMNs will just be burning Bahamut for zero damage during downtime because they somehow can't help themselves.

Obviously they won't be able to get 11 trances in every 10:30 fight with breaks the way they can get 11 AF now, but that could just... be a thing. There's not really any reason why it couldn't be a thing, you'd get fight by fight variance in job balance but I think there's a chance that SE wants that.

It's very clear that SE is not super interested in the wishes of current players who main these jobs on a high level; they're killing lots of stuff that jobx mains liked all over the place. And from the "we're designing jobs for 2020 leafs" perspective, this doesn't stand out to me as a critical issue.