SE, don't nerf SMN's DoT potency. Remove Tri-Disaster's Reset Mechanic First.

[ForteNightshade]

just buff Blm (a bit) and Rdm (a bit more), instead of nerfing Smn

Then you have Black Mage being superior to every single melee, thus guarantee it a spot while Red Mage has to fight Summoner still. You cannot just keep buffing jobs. They did that back in Heavensward with Bard and Machinist. They both wound up being overpowered as a result.

[Silverquick]

This speaks true, but to be fair they're mainly going to focus on the 3rd iteration and not touch anything else below it. That way, it won't impact the experience when you're leveling. However, as OP stated, there needs to be a change to Tri-D. Ever since they slapped 300 potency on it, it's interrupted the original use of it, which was only for reset purposes and not pure damage. Reverting it to having no potency would fix SMN's contribution issue since the Snapshotting of Buffs can be looked at at a separate time when they're going into 5.4 or 6.0.

I think its being looked at wrong in terms of what you can look at as far as more targeted that won't affect the Job up and down the chain the way DoTs do. Because even level 66 and higher is a ton of content that would be affected.

Instead of looking at the DoTs which do cause that kind of problem to the Job.

Perhaps instead they should be looking at things like Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame that won't have the potential to cause that kind of catastrophic damage up and down the levels.

Those are the types of things that would be specifically targeted and not affect the job up and down the chain like that.

[HyperiusUltima]

I think its being looked at wrong in terms of what you can look at as far as more targeted that won't affect the Job up and down the chain the way DoTs do. Because even level 66 and higher is a ton of content that would be affected.

Instead of looking at the DoTs which do cause that kind of problem to the Job.

Perhaps instead they should be looking at things like Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame that won't have the potential to cause that kind of catastrophic damage up and down the levels.

Those are the types of things that would be specifically targeted and not affect the job up and down the chain like that.

...you're missing the point. It doesn't go up and down the entire leveling spectrum as you keep saying it does unless they blanket Miasma 1-3 and Bio 1-3, which is illogical. At Lv 66, you should know at least the basis of your job. They specifically are targeting DoTs because that's generally what causes 2-target high-end raids to favor SMN over most other jobs because of how damage contribution skyrockets in that regard. Lv 70 and Lv 80 though...they really shouldn't tweak their burst phase because if they do, it's going to make SMN's damage be lower than it would be with DoTs considering the potency attached.

[Myon88]

I don't see any convincing reason to target tri-disaster instead of flat nerfing dots.

There's a very strange trend where people point to smart use of game mechanics and rationalize it as 'unintended' gameplay. It's not unintended just because you find it difficult or obtuse. Snapshotting is a fundamental part of the game, once upon a time contagion even extended the duration of your dots so you can't say that's some alien taboo concept.

Tell me, what is the difference between 1000 potency of dots lasting 30s being cast into buffs, and a 1200 potency midare being cast into buffs and dealing all its damage instantly? If midare instead did 1200 potency over 30s, would it suddenly become 'unfair' for all its damage to benefit from buffs? If bio3 and miasma3 became skills that did 500 potency instantly with 30s cooldowns, would it suddenly become fair for them to benefit from buffs? That makes no sense at all. Don't get too hung up on the distinction between instant damage and damage over time.

Burst damage is what gives a job agency to tailor its rotation to the needs of a fight. We need more of it in the game and not less. If you graphed out the dps a job did, you want it to look spiky and not flat, that's what makes for interesting gameplay. Otherwise you're just going through the motions with your rotation from the start to end of a fight, instead of actively looking for burst opportunities. At 200 potency for ruin3, summoner has long competed for the honor of being having weakest filler in the entire game. The burst coming from trances and demis are just about the only interesting elements of the rotation that remain. It's bad enough that the loss of aetherflow cut the amount of depth the job had in half, I don't want to see it halved again for an arbitrary reason.

Now, putting that aside,

A 50 to 40 dot potency nerf would be a roughly ~3% nerf to summoner dps in a single target scenario. With the current state of rdps balance, this would result in summoner falling from just below where blm is now, to the bottom of the pack of all the melees+blm. This is assuming they just nerf dots in that manner and don't include anything else.

I think this is something the job will be able to work with. A 4-5% dps deficit relative to blm is far more workable compared to the start of the expansion where summoner was more like ~15% below blm and had a broken rotation. It will continue to have a strong niche in sustained multitarget scenarios, as well as fights where downtime interacts well with the trance cooldown. I suggest watching how summoner performs in eden2 before proclaiming it needs further adjustments.

[dinnertime]

Ugh, I'd rather they nerf the DoTs in a reasonable way than go back to the inconvenience of manually refreshing DoTs twice as much.

[Nemekh]

Summoner's problem is never its DoT damage at the start of expansions. The problem is that each expansion they take hard 90 degree turns in the Job's design and flow. Go back through and look through Stormblood patch notes.

At no point was DoT damage ever increased. From the start of Stormblood to the end, the rank 3 dots were 50, which at the time was mostly equivalent to what Summoners had in Heavensward with Bio + Bio II + Miasma I.

This is not correct at all. There's a reason why the DoT yoyo meme exists with 40 50 40 50 x.

Stormblood DoTs started at 40p/t each. In 4.06 they were both increased to 50p/t each due to Summoner's weaker damage at the time, all before the huge patch that was 4.10.

[Nemekh]

Given that SMN had such a general lead in all content at all percentiles and not just TEA (recall a long thread I posted where we brought up the fact that this would happen, and that RDM would need buffs), it comes to no surprise that they opted for one of the easier baseline adjustments, just like all the previous times they adjusted DoT potency up increasing the baseline damage in a similar fashion.

Whether it manifested through DoTs being changed to 40 (-~3%) or 45p (-~1.5%) each or reducing pet potency across the board (which would have further ramifications and wouldn't be as elegant), they are one of the outcomes we were expecting. 40p would fit the bill for the meme.

I do not agree with the notion that removing TriD resets is the solution at all and if anything tells of a lack of foresight with what would happen in typical play in practice with the current job structure and fight alignment. It's asking for steps backwards in flexibility which is not what we need to see happen again while simultaneously being a bigger potency nerf from the extra hardcast GCDs that would have to happen and the lack of on-hit damage. It was a completely different matter back in HW when we did have a separated cooldown that did not reset with the 1 DWT aligned TriD/min with 3 different DoT timers and Contagion to add 15s to them all. The context has shifted tremendously since then.

[Kabooa]

This is not correct at all. There's a reason why the DoT yoyo meme exists with 40 50 40 50 x.

Stormblood DoTs started at 40p/t each. In 4.06 they were both increased to 50p/t each due to Summoner's weaker damage at the time, all before the huge patch that was 4.10.

In the future I'll be certain to visit that site for patch notes. It's organized much better.

[Karshan]

They're nerfing dots because there's a multiboss fight, and if they felt the need to specifically call out DoTs, it's probably because there won't be a targeter limit like in FOmega.

While on-paper might seem the same, removing the reset mechanic on Tri Disaster would feel awful. Unless many Summoners feel the current flow of the class is broken, better to just keep to potency adjustments.

Actually it does for me. What made me used the words "SMN is clunky", in the sense that it does not have a good "flow", was the case in Stormblood for 2 reasons :
- the "gates" that removed complete flexibility of HS smn : they are now a lot less present than in stormblood since they de-tied aetherflow and trances (but still if it's time for your trance you have to push it) and you can shorten without remorse your baha trance if need be (to gain even more flexibility) since there is no buff and mobility became extensive outside of it.
- the reset mechanic from tri D : you don't use it on "lighting up" and have to be careful using it at the right moment. It becomes a cause for reflexion if you had to shift your trances, that is still the case today.
I think no reset, so that you hardcast once and Tri-D alternatively, would be less... I don't know uncomfortable to keep track of in the middle of a heavy mechanic fight.

To be honest since 4.0 I'm not progging as SMN but as a rdm so I can focus on mechanics, only take it out when I'm on "robot mode" for the fight and can focus on the rotation ; and it saddens me cause SMN was my main.

But it's just my feeling with the class, if it's not shared I'll just keep things that way, is all.

[Shurrikhan]

In the future I'll be certain to visit that site for patch notes. It's organized much better.

Mm, Nemekh and others have done a hell of a job with that site.