Am I doing SMN wrong or is there just a LOT to do?

[Elenoe]

busy class, a LOT of "random" weaves, being punished for weaves with lower potency, great loss of mobility, 5s DOT precast requirement before we can even attack (very useful on DPS check add phases), unweaveable AOEs (fits the rest just great) and bugging pet.

How did they manage to damage a reasonable well working class in so many ways? Are they just proving the theory about thousand monkeys randomly generating class changes for a thousand years... ?

[Roda]

Yeah I've actually started diving into EXes and omg it's everything I feared and worse.
No flexibility.
Less mobility.
Too many timers.
Weaving inertia, that forces me to weave so that I can weave so that I can weave.

My whole mindspace is glued to "never not have ruin IV, focus on farting out EAs so I can ruin IV into more EAs into more ruin IVs. Oh hey aetherflow. Oh hey, DWT, oh hey demibahamut/FBT I finally get a GD break... ... BACK TO SETTING UP MORE RUIN IV, CRAP I have to be mobile, guess I'll waste ruin IV"

For half my two minute rotation I'm furiously clapping my hands at my egi so I don't have to weave ruin II. If I have to move I'm punished hard for it and all that set up is blown away.
No longer is demi-egi phase a reward for setting up my resources just right and going all out on a satisfying burst phase, now it's just a break from having to worry about not dooming myself with a wasted ruin freaking IV. (just kidding! Bahamut is now turret mode so I have to waste a ruin IV if I need to move or use akh morn!)

SB summoner felt so good and rewarding to play, a nice balance between the hyperactivity of a redmage bouncing around everywhere, and the "I don't move, the world moves around me" of a blackmage with damage to match. Now I'm slapping 12 buttons at once, staring at ~9 timers at once, being forced to root myself for most of my rotation or completely blow the now core mechanic of my rotation that is the all mighty ruin IV, all for middle of the pack damage because what? We have a res that I know I don't have the time to use, what with my delicate cooldown and timer setup, and a 15s 5% dps buff that's up every 3 minutes.

I don't have time to enjoy the fights.
I don't have time to appreciate the demi summons.
My egis feel weak, and the recursive weaving feels suffocating.
And the entire rotation feels like a whole lot of effort and planning for not a lot of reward.

Basically it feels like HW SMN stacked on top of ARR SMN wearing late SB SMN's skin as a disguise.

[RenAshdoll]

How are you guys using the R4 stacks? One way my friend pointed out was to save the stack for movement phases and to use to prevent overflow.

[Roda]

How are you guys using the R4 stacks? One way my friend pointed out was to save the stack for movement phases and to use to prevent overflow.

I'm not struggling with it, I just don't like how the rotation obsessively focuses on it.
If you save it for only movement, you're wasting potential casts when your EAs hit 2 charges, or potential festers when your ED cools down, or ruination refreshes when tridisaster comes off of cooldown naturally, or when you need to akh morn.. etc. Basically whenever you're not in DWT/FBT, nearing 2 charges on EA (I & II) or have actual damage dealing ogcds to hit you should be using ruin IV. Waiting until you have to move is a waste if any of those conditions are met at any point.

[ksuyen]

Wouldn't you be glad to know that most of SMN spells are instant? If they are not, they can actually be made instant (by means of Dreadwyrm etc). By keeping that in mind, flexibility, mobility and even timers shouldn't be issues.


note: also, personally, it's the reason why I am not fond of BLM and instead choose to main SMN. Can't stand the long hard casting spells.

[Taranok]

Meanwhile, there's so many oGCDs at so many points in the rotation that SMN has to make most of their standard cast spells also instant cast in order to handle them, because the devs want the class to play like a bard but doesn't just make everything instant cast at this point. Because why not.

[NoxLumina]

The best thing about getting your class absolutely ruined and driven against a boulder is the people actually applauding SE for the "improvement".
SMN had a nice and steady flow in Storm, will neatly aligning cooldowns and burst phases.
Now we have this micro-management ridden weaving-massacre of poorly aligned CDs, Budget Bahamut phase, EVEN MORE Ruin spam and Egi Assault animation queues which screw over your opener more often than not.

Sure. Great change.

[ShadowNyx3]

The best thing about getting your class absolutely ruined and driven against a boulder is the people actually applauding SE for the "improvement".
SMN had a nice and steady flow in Storm, will neatly aligning cooldowns and burst phases.
Now we have this micro-management ridden weaving-massacre of poorly aligned CDs, Budget Bahamut phase, EVEN MORE Ruin spam and Egi Assault animation queues which screw over your opener more often than not.

Sure. Great change.

It's tragic really. I would have thought that SB SMN had reached the pinnacle of "improvement," having its skill floor raised steadily by making aethertrail attunement stacks untimed and eventually always accumulated whether damage was dealt or not, reducing the total DoTs from four to two, and balancing said DoT's timers, but apparently in 5.0 "improvement" means a total class redesign.

A part of me has always feared this would happen because of the great rift between people who have enjoyed SMN for what it was since ARR and people who have wanted SMN to be "more like an actual FF summoner." The only reason for such sweeping changes to the class that I can imagine is an attempt to appease more people, as the game gets more popular, by making it feel like it's utilizing its summons more. But even that is a farce because nothing really changed on that front. Egi-Assaults are the same skills that have always been there, it's just that now you have to use them when before you could just press Sic (I wonder if anyone who thought SMN before 5.0 was boring ever tried to play with Obey). As for Bahamut, removing wyrmwaves from oGCDs is not making me feel any more like a summoner with even less involvement in what he can do. There's always been quirks in dealing with the egis but they are making me feel like a zookeeper more than ever now.

I don't read a whole lot of community stuff but I sure hope that there's a noticeable amount of disappointment with the changes. It'll never go back to the way it was but for as bad as it is, it's not without the possibility for improvement.

[yumeyume]

I thought we were making fun of being a Ruin Mage and now we are spamming ruin like never before. There are way too many ogcd to hit and the opening is way too complicated. It is more like hitting 20 buttons for the first 30 second in an opener. The mobility of smn is almost gone cause we have to stand and cast Ruin 3. If we hit ruin 2, dps goes down. It is much better just to play rdm or blm. RDM rotation is still the same and only add one more skill at the end of their rotation.

I feel like smn has to work way too hard to get the same amount of dps like rdm.

[CecMiller]

Honestly,

Reading this thread makes me happy that other SMN players feel the same as I do with regards to how SB summoner played. I absolutely loved the job and its clear to me how important it was for us to have Aetherflow for our clock in our cycle. If the option is between pre-pull waiting with old aetherflow system and the 0 waiting with the current, please give back the old one.

I'll echo the opinion of most others here, SB summoner felt good and rewarding to play. The current incarnation tries to punish you at every corner:

"You didn't press this button on cooldown because you weren't watching your bars enough!"
"See this low HP add which will die in a few hits?" Put your dots on it or suffer half damage on your Ruins! Whats that? its dying so fast anyway that you're better servered to spam weak ruins? TOO BAD!"
"Remember when you felt good when there was downtime? Now you can feel awful!"
"Flexible trance timings? Whats that? Press Ruin 2 instead if Trances dont line up - yeah spamming Ruin 2 is way better than when you had to smartly plan to use trances for movement! This is way more fun!"
"Don't you enjoy your pets doing 2.4k per burning strike when you're doing 14k per Ruin?! (This is literally less than ifrit damage at 80) You don't like seeing your pets this weak?"
"NEW MOVE! Energy Siphon! Its good we promise! Really!"
"We felt you guys were interacting too much with bahamut so we made him less interactable and reduced his power level for you. Please enjoy this change whilst we release the much cooler phoenix which will show him up in every way imaginable!"
"We thought Aetherflow was stressful so we made it even more stressful by halfing the cooldown and triggering you when mobs in dungeons die with 1s left on the CD - you can thank us later!"
"We solved pre-pull Aetherflow for you so you don't have to wait anymore! We just made it worse to use in every way imaginable!"
"Did you enjoy being rewarded for the effort you put into mastering the job and perfoming well? TOO BAD!"
"We figured what REALLY makes summoner enjoy themselves is weaving those 40 potency OGCDs with Ruin 2 that barely brings it above Ruin 3 - that really gets them going."