Remove two Summoner butons?

[godvivec]

Soon SMN gonna be the healer DPS. One button from 4-90.

[Kulve]

I do not want this to happen. During Ifrit and Titan phases you may not want to use a gemstone action because a boss has stepped away and all you can target at that specific second is a weak add. In that moment a Ruin III is better to use so that you can save your potencies and proc (Titan) for the boss when you can hit it again.

It is also not that hard to get used to the different button locations as SMN is implemented now. Perhaps when more actions are added with future updates this sort of thing could be done. However, for right now I would like the option use a ruin action or a gemstone action.

You're going to have to be specific on what fight you're doing that makes using Ruin 3 better over any of the Rites. SMN rotation is hard fixed so that you can spend all Summons, Rites and Astrals with leftover Ruin 3 and Ruin 4 to cast before the next Demi is ready. If bosses are becoming untargetable, then you just keep doing your thing until Phoenix/Bahamut come up but may get to exclude said Ruin spells, or optimise on getting all Summons before Demi cd is up.

Also don't count on a plethora of new spells or actions that everyone thought MCH was getting after its ShB rework.

[MellowMink]

Summoner arguably could use more buttons, or at least more changed action variety with the current buttons, not less.

[Anvaire]

The only thing combining these buttons would do is to create more awkwardness in the job design. At times i use a ruin3 to push the rotation slightly to enable me to keep uptime. Sure its often only 1 GCD that would be lost. But over a fiht that could add up if there are multiple instances.

[Raikai]

As simple ad braindead as SMN is today, in fact there is a weird case of button bloat between Gemshine and Ruin 3.

Gemshine is not usable without a summon out, yet there is not a case where you would Ruin 3 while a gemstone summon is out... so Why Ruin 3 and Gemshine aren't the same button? Is not like merging those would change anything about how simple summoner is.

[gamerseb]

You do get to use Ruin 3 instead of Gemshine sometimes - especially if you're Savage raiding, and you need to place Ruin 3 at certain point in the rotation (not at start before because of buffs, not at end because of movement).

But I agree with the button bloat. Having a button for ST and another button for AoE does not make the job more difficult - it's so easy it's stupid. I'd rather some buttons are simplified and leave space for more buttons that add complexity - like having more summons that are used in different ways, or giving more freedom over when to summon Bahamut and Phoenix. I feel like SMN was especially made as a class with few buttons and very compatible with controllers.

Main issue I see with SMN in Savage is how inflexible its burst window is, and no way to correct one after it has happened. I know it's about not having to think and just executing summons, but having some freedom to move the big summons and small summons around could give way for some cool rotations.

[Ayden]

You must remember Ruin 3 is used a lot more before lv86

[MilkieTea]

I find myself using Ruin 3 as filler to hold my bahamut phase (or Pheonix phase, if paired with another smn) til SL is off CD whenever I'm savage progging
It's removal would mean that they'd have to either rework how Bahamut/Pheonix works (right now it's tied to SpS which means that high SpS builds will invariably lead to you drifting phases over the course of a fight, heck after 2 rotation passes my phase is beginning to misalign and I need at least 2 ruin 3 fillers in order to keep things aligned) *OR* rework how SL works (tie it to SpS?... which would be kind of weird for an oGCD and end up with SL misaligning with other buffs.)

It's a really good buffer and to remove it would end up requiring a rework of other stuff, otherwise there'd just be a huge misalignment.

[TakumiHarada]

I see where OP is coming from and I agree. To those who say "there's nothing more to simplify", yes there is.
Not only can we merge gemshine/brilliance with ruin iii/tridisaster, but we can also merge energy drain/energy siphon with ruin iv.
Note that energy drain/fester and energy siphon/painflare are literally the same skills but 1 target or 2+ so there's very little point to actually separate them.

SMN is such a shallow job that they have to make up buttons to barely fill up 1 XHB. It's a literal button bloat.

[Renathras]

Except for Ruin III, the opposite phase's buttons are dead half the time (Gemshine and Precious Brilliance are dead in trances, and Tri-Disaster is dead during summons. Ruin III is active during summon, but there's little reason to use it then.

Other than "Herp derp, SMN is already too simple!", is there any reason for Ruin 1/2/3 and Outburst/Tri-Disaster not to just be Gemshine and Precious Brilliance's base form? Like, you're never going to cast Ruin 3 if Titan, Garuda, or Ifrit are out. It's a DPS loss in all cases, and in Titan and Garuda, a mobility loss as well. The low levels are even just <Color> Ruin anyway. And the same argument holds for Outburst. Even moreso than this, in Trances, Ruin 1/2/3 and Outburst/Tri-Disaster DO convert to the spam attack of Bahamut/Phoenix phases anyway, during which Gemshine/Precious Brilliance, as you note, do absolutely nothing instead.

It'd make far more sense to just make the base form of the Gemshine button Ruin.

I think that's what you're saying here, and if so, I completely agree.

Not because I think SMN needs to be simplier, but because I think it's honestly just logical to do that.

EDIT:

I see where OP is coming from and I agree. To those who say "there's nothing more to simplify", yes there is.
Not only can we merge gemshine/brilliance with ruin iii/tridisaster, but we can also merge energy drain/energy siphon with ruin iv.
Note that energy drain/fester and energy siphon/painflare are literally the same skills but 1 target or 2+ so there's very little point to actually separate them.

SMN is such a shallow job that they have to make up buttons to barely fill up 1 XHB. It's a literal button bloat.

The odd thing about this to me is they just made Ruin 4 AOE to begin with, so that you don't have a "single target vs AOE target" version of it. But they did for the others. And honestly, Aetherflow is the one mechanic I really DID hope they'd drop from SMN. It make some sense for SCH, but SMN has long since stopped using the mechanic, so it seems just weird to still have it instead of just having some oGCDs with charges instead. If we had Ruin 4 as a 60 sec CD button and Energy Drain/Fester as a single oGCD button with 3 charges and a 20 sec refresh, it would achieve the same result without the weird "we have it just to have it" 2 charge Aetherflow thing. It would need to share this with the AOE version, but other Jobs already do this, like WAR with Upheaval/Orogeny, and I think BRD has a single target/AOE target oGCD that share a CD, too. Bloodletter/Rain of Death, maybe?

I'm not saying just make everything AOE (like Ruin 4), but I feel like having two 3 charge buttons (Fester and Painflare) and dumping the Aetherflow mechanic entirely would just make more sense. Instead of pushing the one button to generate a Ruin 4 and then burning the two stacks, you could pool 3 stacks to use during 1 minute burst and Ruin 4 would be a 60 sec CD you'd use that way instead.

That is, this isn't about "make it even easier", as the Aetherflow charges don't add ANY complexity over just having a three charge button, and a three charge button would actually be more complex since you'd have options to either pool 3 charges or burn 1/2 for things like bosses going untargetable - this would actually be a higher skill ceiling than what we have now, if only slightly so - and more about "why the hell does SMN even still HAVE an Aetherflow gauge?" Decoupling it from Ruin 4 could make that "easier", but right now, you just use it on CD anyway, so that's not really a change, and it would punish people for sitting on Ruin 4 instead of keeping the CD rolling, so that would, again, actually be a higher skill ceiling as well.