Quote Originally Posted by Corbeau View Post
New-SMN feels like it's all about being able to keep your mental bookmark in a semi-dynamic rotation at all times. Ruin and Gemshine being different buttons felt strange to me at first, but it's actually what makes it so important to keep your head straight. If you lose track of your attunement stacks and press gemshine, you lose a GCD. If you autopilot into a capstone summon and keep trying to push Gemshine, you lose a GCD. This wouldn't be the case if the buttons were consolidated. Given that there's some filler space in the rotation, the punishment for mental mistakes would be almost nil if the buttons were consolidated. Against a target dummy, of course, keeping mental track of your rotation is easy. Nothing about the rotation itself is difficult. The challenging part is going to come when you start contorting your primal order around fight mechanics, going through them in different orders each time through the cycle. I'm a fan of the design: there is palpable purpose behind the choices they made when putting this rework together.

The good and bad of the rework both rest on the same fact: this is a new class. I did not like old-SMN, but I really like new-SMN - enough that I'll be maining it for savage next tier. Great for me! For those who want the theme but disliked the old mechanics, this is fantastic! For fans of old-SMN, though, this is a big oof. Old-SMN is just plain gone. This is, for all intents and purposes, a completely new caster class. I expect that they're clearing the way for a 4th caster that will be a better thematic fit for a DoT-based class, but in the meantime that niche will go unfilled.
This game is not designed for DoTs which is why they have been, slowly but gradually, getting rid of them. They already made BRD's DoTs irrelevant in 6.0 and they are obviously on the chopping block for 7.0. 0 chance we are getting any class designed on DoTs.