The current State of Casters 6.05 edition - balancing discussion

[ghm12]

Well, sorry to say, Summoner is a caster.

With four casts (Ifrit twice, Slipstream, Ruin III filler) in a 60s rotation window? a caster that barely casts, really?

Mobility is a petty reason for people to say SMN is balanced right now. People see it as it makes them easier to play, yeah to a certain degree but they never needed that mobility. Here's a list of the changes that simplified jobs;
- Blood of the Dragoon is a trait
- Enochian is a trait now

I don't see them taxing those changes and I don't want them to be taxed.

I fail to understand how Enochian being a trait changes BLM gameplay in any way. The *only* change you could argue is that you don't lose *too much* if you mess up badly and somehow drop enochian twice within a 30s window. You still lose your polyglot progress just like before. It's just one less button you do in the opener if you play properly. Only that. Those changes shouldn't be taxed because they barely do anything.

Mobility was greatly improved for all SMN, BLM and RDM.
- BLM has a quickcast Paradox on their Ice Rotation. 2 Triple Casts, 2 Sharpcasts for quickcast Fire III and/or Thunder III. BLM has absurd mobility in their toolkit, they simply optimize when they have to move during a fight.
- RDM has a quick cast every 2 GCD. They have more melee combos now. Accelerate is now a quickcast and has 2 charges, they can effectively just swiftcast for mobility since they don't need to hold swiftcast for raise. They, too, can optimize around an entire fight.
- SMN hard cast 7 times per 2 minutes which 2 of those hardcast are 2.8 seconds and 1 is 3 second. Ifrit Rite spell can be improved with swiftcast for a damage gain.

But SMN is still the most mobile, thus it deals the least damage. RDM is mobile I agree, but not as much. BLM still has to deal with leyline positioning, especially since most fights of this tier has major mechanics happening during burst windows.

The whole point of casters doing more damage than phys ranged is because they have to stand still to cast, yet they do less damage than the melees overall because they don't have to be in melee range. If you take away casting like SMN did, how are they different from phys ranged other than role actions (addle) or mana management? (which is only an issue if you raise a lot or run high sps builds)

I joined this post to see if people were bothered by BLM leylines timing but I've read 10+ pages about RDM vs SMN. Mobility tax is real, it's one of the reason why BLM is the "turret caster" that deals most damage even though the rotation is "braindead" or "not busy". It's also why it's the most variant DPS comparing bad and good performance. In the current way of kits, SMN should be the one doing less damage by having less complexibility.

Does SMN deserves buffs? Yeah!
To the point of being equal to RDM? If they keep SMN as it is now, not really, no.