The Reason for the New SMN Gap Closer

[Raikai]

I've always hated the book and have been saying this since 2.0. Scholar really did us dirty. If not the whip, the air racket

I hate books with a passion. They are the most boring weapon of them all. It doesn't help that SMN's books 80% of the time end up sharing a model with SCH.

I wish they would at least step outside of the box more... Like, what if one book was a wood tablet when held a scroll would float up? Or a book literally being a crystal - in lore they are literal repositories of knowledge.

Honestly the most out of the box book we ever had is FF13's collab weapon that is a Boomerang that somehow unsheathes into some kind of virtual book. That is pretty neat.

[Sequora]

I would love it if they finally split sch and SMN in 7.0 and give SMN a new weapon.

I’m not sure if they would give us a whip, but I would honestly take a wand or 1 handed rod.

BLU isn’t even a real job anyways so just give us their weapon.

Or come up with something totally unique like they did for Astro and Sage.

Maybe some kind of cool crystal ball or something.

[Maxilor]

I thought crowding the melee range with casters was a bad idea, makes it harder for the melee classes to actually see everything they need to.

It was to my understanding that certain mechanics only targeted ranged and therefore you wanted to give Melee space in case you get targeted.

I'm probably wrong though.

[Madoka]

Book smack was the final DoT in ARR. Now it's the only dot.

[Gruntler]

It was to my understanding that certain mechanics only targeted ranged and therefore you wanted to give Melee space in case you get targeted.

I'm probably wrong though.

In those cases you might want to pre-position before that mechanic comes up, but it's not like the game pulses random aoes at people just to force spreading all the time.

Unless a specific mechanic forces you to move, staying in melee means you're in range of all the buffs.

As for the visability question, most casters will be at the corners of the hitbox, so ranged can be 'due south' or even in the hitbox itself just fine, depending on incoming mechanics.