Yet another SMN thread: SMN is the only job that doesn't have a gauge/proc management

[Ivtrix]

Which is why in the playermade polls it was rated the lowest out of all casters? and why player have complained about its problematic design for almost 2 years?

People play it, thats something no one can deny but a playerbase doesn't mean that people like it as it is nor that its design is without serious problems, a lot of people are neutral about it and play it because it simply doesn't offer any challenge and its flashy and that by itself isn't against increasing it skill ceiling. What a lot of people fail to understand is that a skill ceiling increase doesn't have to be at the cost of the skill floor and as you said:



There would also be a massive playerbase that woudn't even notice the difference between a fully optimized SMN and theirs so, why is an issue that SMN gets a bit of skill ceiling?



If this is a product of the masses why are you so against including more people in the SMN design and not only those who want to turn their brain off?

A quick look show that to be blunt, this guy doesn’t participate in literally any content that requires you to play optimally at all.

It’s easy to assume there is no problem when you subject yourself to content that is designed to be as fail proof as possible.

The number of people in here who take the postings as a personal attack “WELL I AM ENJOYING SUMMONER AND I DONT WANT IT TO CHANGE” is staggering and just shows the fundamental lack of understanding on job dynamics.

If you want a side by side example:

TOP P1:RDM vs SMN
RDM essentially cannot use melee combo for the entire first half of p1, as it is optimal for you to go into pantokrater with 81|92 mana in order to melee combo your way through the entirety of the mechanic. This means you cannot perform the standard loop opener of swift + acceleration on GCD 2 and it’s a negligible dps loss to jolt verfire and then embolden manafic GCD2 to save charges of everything since you will need to slidecast + use smart positioning to carry yourself through the entirety of program loop. When done correctly this hits the breakpoint needed of 81|92 just as the first player needs to move out for pantokrater and allows you to 3x melee combo your way through the rest of the mechanic.

SMN:
Bahamut
Titan
Garuda
Ifrit
Phoenix
Titan
Garuda
Ifrit

As long as you don’t ifrit 1st or 2nd after Phoenix, you can do literally whatever you want. But if you do the order I posted above summon for summon it work 100% of the time the only difference is if you get a 2 in program loop you hardcast slipstream and save swift for an ifrit hardcast. That’s literally it.

That’s why people are playing SMN in droves in high end content. A paragraph of text vs 8 lines with one word each to do the same dps. That’s the issue.

[Raikai]

Not the best example, since the broader playerbase very clearly continues to generally avoid BLM, because it's considered too difficult to manage and play correctly.

So in BLM's case, it absolutely is "invalidating" players — in this case, those who would like the "I'm a Wizard pew pew" classic "mage" fantasy, but cannot wrap their heads around how much anticipation, slidecasting, and plotting BLM requires to not become a completely-collapsed and near-useless mess in a real encounter.

However, that's championed as "okay" and a "gold standard Job" by skill-fixated players, because their needs are being met, so they think nothing is wrong — and thus react with hostility to the idea of changing anything about it.

I'm not trying to attack anyone, and I'm not saying anyone is wrong for appreciating BLM's more demanding, methodical, and subtle gameplay. I'm just stressing that it's very easy to become biased about, so to speak, "whose ox is being gored" — the reality is that someone is going to be unhappy in any outcome or scenario, because you're dealing with people who approach FFXIV in diametrically-different ways, and for diametrically-different reasons.

One thing that worked for me, in regards to the BLM difficulty, is that I used to be way too intimidated by the amount of work required to play the job properly and often frustrated because it seemed impossible to maintain a perfect rotation while solving the encounter mechanics, but then eventually it dawned on me that it's okay to have some degree of failure with your rotation during progression, simply because (generally) you don't have to dps to your best with any job until your party gets to see the enrage. If anything, it's more important that you land those Addles and use your Manashield where you should.

After that I started to enjoy BLM way more, because the mastery of the job is directly tied to that specific fight's progress.

[Shougun]

A quick look show that to be blunt, this guy doesn’t participate in literally any content that requires you to play optimally at all.

It’s easy to assume there is no problem when you subject yourself to content that is designed to be as fail proof as possible.

The number of people in here who take the postings as a personal attack “WELL I AM ENJOYING SUMMONER AND I DONT WANT IT TO CHANGE” is staggering and just shows the fundamental lack of understanding on job dynamics.

If you want a side by side example:

TOP P1:RDM vs SMN
RDM essentially cannot use melee combo for the entire first half of p1, as it is optimal for you to go into pantokrater with 81|92 mana in order to melee combo your way through the entirety of the mechanic. This means you cannot perform the standard loop opener of swift + acceleration on GCD 2 and it’s a negligible dps loss to jolt verfire and then embolden manafic GCD2 to save charges of everything since you will need to slidecast + use smart positioning to carry yourself through the entirety of program loop. When done correctly this hits the breakpoint needed of 81|92 just as the first player needs to move out for pantokrater and allows you to 3x melee combo your way through the rest of the mechanic.

SMN:
Bahamut
Titan
Garuda
Ifrit
Phoenix
Titan
Garuda
Ifrit

As long as you don’t ifrit 1st or 2nd after Phoenix, you can do literally whatever you want. But if you do the order I posted above summon for summon it work 100% of the time the only difference is if you get a 2 in program loop you hardcast slipstream and save swift for an ifrit hardcast. That’s literally it.

That’s why people are playing SMN in droves in high end content. A paragraph of text vs 8 lines with one word each to do the same dps. That’s the issue.

This cannot and does not apply to everyone but one cynical thought is a lot of people use the easy jobs or the multiple, third party, tools available for active boss guidance, and then talk about stuff not being hard enough lol. I mean the boss guidance tools are now at what, like three different ones? Some of them hold your hand substantially.

Personally don't bother with the content, and attempt to be open about that as not to change a content that I have no interest in, and know either way whether they're actively cheesing it or not it's something some people like, but I don't mind occasionally looking at the content and often player feedback vs actual action going.... "Uh..huh... hokay". Reminds me when Yoshida called players out for wanting hard content and as soon as they gave hard content the complaints went up xD.

Seems like there are lot of wanting the 'idea' of hard content but not the reality of actually hard content. I think that is a portion of the interesting relevance Elden Ring's success is delivering hard content that can, mostly, also be cheesed (lots and lots of potential, intentional, cheese developed in the game if one so cares for it).

[Eorzean_username]

[...]but then eventually it dawned on me that it's okay to have some degree of failure with your rotation during progression, simply because (generally) you don't have to dps to your best with any job until your party gets to see the enrage. If anything, it's more important that you land those Addles and use your Manashield where you should.

Yeah, this is interesting to point out — it's certainly the sort of thing that a lot of the more "skill-fixated" players try to argue, and to a degree, it's a legitimate point: many players worry more about the perfection of their rotation than is, objectively, numerically-necessary just to "win the game".

This opens up a bit of complex commentary, so I'll spoiler-tag it to prevent creating scroll-clutter.

To some degree, I think the "skilled segment of players" has kind of created the feedback loop that led us here — years of passive-aggressively complaining about, memeing, and mocking players who aren't "in the loop" on optimal practices leads the broader playerbase to become self-conscious and overly-concerned about small mistakes and "parse colours", which then causes the developers to try to calm people down by just removing the ability to make mistakes. Which, of course, is definitely "easier" than trying to make human beings stop being prideful and egotistical towards their "lessers" after they become skilled at something.

———————————————————————————————————————

But that's certainly not the only factor — there's also just human nature at play.

I think that most people simply do not want to be told, "Well, you're doing it wrong, but your performance is still adequate enough to not fail completely" — which is what most of the backhanded assurances given by Discords, etc, tend to sound like to players who are trying to gauge whether they're playing correctly.

This creates a general atmosphere where, regardless of how true it is, most players tend to see the game's Jobs as having only two outcomes: "failing" (non-optimal) and "succeeding" (optimal).

And I think a lot of players just do not like the idea that they're "failing" compared to the "ideal" rotation, even if the ideal rotation is not objectively necessary just to clear content.

This is why I think it's not as simple as a lot "skill-focused" players try to make it seem — the argument, "Well, let's just make the Job harder, because you'll still be able to clear content with the easier rotation".

———————————————————————————————————————

First of all, most guides won't even explain the "easy" rotation — because most guides want to teach you the "correct" way to play, and in the FFXIV community, that's interpreted as maximizing your damage potential. The people who make guides inherently see no reason to explain how to play at a mediocre level, because they assume that people can accomplish that on their own.

So when someone goes looking for a guide to their Job, it's all or nothing — they either get exposed to things like Optimal Drift and Alternate Lines, or they get nothing at all. If someone does try to make a "consolation prize" guide, it's usually not shared very broadly, and also usually dunked-on heavily by a lot of the "skill-focused" playerbase, because... again... it's imperfect.

———————————————————————————————————————

And second of all, "good enough" is just not what most people actually want.

Players don't want to think, "I'm playing the crappy version of my rotation, because it's easy, and that's what I can handle!"

They want to think, "I'm playing my rotation correctly, and I'm doing well as a result!"

The first perspective may be more realistic, but the second perspective feels far better to someone in terms of having emotional fun while playing a game.

This is why players will gravitate towards Jobs that they feel that they can intuitively play "correctly", and become averse to Jobs that they feel like they "fail" too frequently or too easily.

Let's say there's two Jobs, "Job A" and "Job B".

Job A is easy to play optimally, but has a low damage ceiling.

Job B is hard to play optimally, but has a high damage ceiling.

Let's also say that Job B played poorly ends up doing about as much damage as Job A played optimally.

I think most players will gravitate towards Job A, by a significant margin — because they don't care about their actual raw numbers nearly as much as they care about their parse colour (which has been conditioned by the community using things like "gray" and "green" as potent insults), as well as just not feeling like they're constantly messing up and failing... because that's psychologically-unpleasant.

———————————————————————————————————————

This is something that I think the argument, "Just make it more complex — if you don't like it, you don't need to do it", fails to take into account: people would rather decisively-succeed, than struggle and fail constantly, even if the numerical outcome is identical in both cases.

[angienessyo]

As someone that's played RDM since they introduced it...you don't want procs. Gage is good but no, you don't want procs. They spent the last few years making RDM's dps less RNG dependent.

[Kyssa]

It's almost like you have to start a whole new character in order to enjoy other jobs so that you're not bored with just one..

[Payotz]

First of all, most guides won't even explain the "easy" rotation — because most guides want to teach you the "correct" way to play, and in the FFXIV community, that's interpreted as maximizing your damage potential. The people who make guides inherently see no reason to explain how to play at a mediocre level, because they assume that people can accomplish that on their own.

So when someone goes looking for a guide to their Job, it's all or nothing — they either get exposed to things like Optimal Drift and Alternate Lines, or they get nothing at all. If someone does try to make a "consolation prize" guide, it's usually not shared very broadly, and also usually dunked-on heavily by a lot of the "skill-focused" playerbase, because... again... it's imperfect.

Eh. This isn't really true. In fact, I'd argue that majority of the raiding community actually gravitate towards "good enough" rotations.

A lot of guides for BLM for example, are pretty much basic guides that don't advocate for "Advanced Rotations" at all. They mention it sure, but they don't demand you master it to clear content, in fact I remember that some people was even kinda discouraging it if you were new since if you fuck up transpose lines, you lose a lot of damage compared to you just doing the Standard rotation.


I don't really know where this concept of "Oooh Raiders demand everything to be perfect and they only use the most optimal of rotations and strats" came from when the most popular PF strats are typically labeled as "Braindead, PF-Safe, Consistent" and not "High Uptime, High parses" (Hello Ilya Light Rampant ). The vast majority of raiders go with "good enough" for clears, and only in the cases where they want to go for parses/speedkills or just general improvement is when they look up "Advanced" Tips.

Like there's a big difference between average raiders like you and me and Gods.


The only reason why it just seems that they're only teaching the "hard" rotation is because in most cases, that is the only rotation. A skill ceiling being introduced would just give people gameplay variety. Something to optimize, change, and execute differently. You can't do that if your job really only has one rotation, like Tanks, most Melees (except RPR to an extent), Physical Ranged, SMN, and Healers.

It's not really got anything to do with "Pride" or anything, we just want more ways to play our Job. What's wrong with that?

[Renathras]

I just don't know why it's so wrong to just have a simple job with simple mechanics, seriously

Games like League have simple champions so you can focus more on the main mechanics and not so on your main buttons, that way you have both people who can have an easy time playing the game without putting a lot( or more than it should) thought on it
On meeles we have RPR with an easier pack of variable positionals you can choose and a stance where you directly don't have one
On healers we have WHM and to an extent SGE with simplier gauges and stuff to manage, contrary to AST and SCH wich at high level it's rewarded with a shit ton of dmg buff on the case of AST
And for tanks we have WAR again with a simple combo and unga bunga rotation

Why is it so wrong for casters and SMN to be just, simple?
Being BLM one of the highest cielings, RDM a job easy to play but hard to master and SMN just being, well, SMN

This.

There's nothing wrong with variable combat styles. Not everything NEEDS high complexity/difficulty, not everything needs stuff to juggle, not everything needs a Job Gauge of some kind - WHM got one in SB just because "every Job has to have one!" and it sucked so bad the Job was miles behind SCH and AST the entire expansion; SCH has a similar issue now with Faerie Gauge which is for exactly one thing, and not even a particularly powerful thing, and as someone said, PLD's gauge is entirely for defensive abilities and is honestly a stand in for just giving Shelltron/Intervene a shared 25 sec CD with 2 charges, since that would give the same exact result.

And a Job you can play "with your eyes closed"? Meaning you can actually engage with content and SEE THE BOSS in encounters instead of having your eyes glued to your hotbar looking for a proc, buff list watching for a self-buff to manage, enemy debuff list watching for your DoT to fall off, or Job Gauge waiting for...something or other to happen with it?

Oh, right: That's not a bad thing.

.

I get some people like old SMN.

I get some people want to play harder/more complex Jobs because they find simple stuff boring, but also want to be "rewarded" for their more work (that they're literally asking for/putting on themselves) so that they can justify a raid spot or...something.

But none of that says there can't or shouldn't be simple Jobs, and ideally one in each Role, OR that they're bad for the game, OR that SMN itself is bad. The Job works, it's designed to fit perfectly into the current paradigm (2 min meta), it's variable with parts you can move around that can have relevance if you are actually optimizing or playing smartly, it's straightforward enough that "read your tooltips" can actually result in optimal play; the player doesn't have to go to some third party site using third party tools that are actually banned to figure out how to play the game right on the Job, it has good utility, decent damage that still isn't so over powered that it eclipses the competition of BLM (RDM is a different problem, but that's RDM being undertuned because the Devs think Verraise is god-mode even with every encounter having a body check every 45 seconds), making both viable.

If you want a complex Caster with a high damage ceiling, play BLM.
If you want a straightforward Caster with consistent damage, play SMN.
If you like style and hope SE will eventually get their head out of their butt, play RDM.

This isn't complicated.

And every role has an option for simple and straightforward gameplay: WAR for Tanks (honestly, PLD may be easier now), WHM for Healers, RPR for Melees, DNC for Ranged, and SMN for Casters.

"But I don't like SMN doing competitive damage!!"

Tough noodles. You don't get everything you want.

"But I want a DoT Mage!"

This one I'll say is a fair desire, and I honestly DO hope they put in one, I'd call it Green Mage (given their typical representation in FF games as debuff Jobs/a debuff/debilitating school of magic), and I'd love for you to have that. But SMN isn't a good vehicle for that and, frankly, never was.

"But I still want DoTs!!"

Dunno what to tell you. Play BRD? They're the only Job right now with consistent DoT upkeep of more than one DoT (though they both refresh together with Iron Jaws). Not sure if it's a mechanical or balance thing, but the Devs seem not to like DoTs (except on Healers for god only knows what reason - they all get an obligatory one alongside their "starter pack" of "nuke spell, aoe nuke, cure 1 equivalent, medica 1 equivalent, and raise equivalent" for some reason). And, again, they don't make sense on SMN, and never have. Nothing about "Summons powerful energy beings to unleash powerful attacks on your enemies" screams "...by dealing small tick damage that you have to refresh several times a minute as busywork".

And all that aside: Not every Job needs DoTs. SMN certainly doesn't. Honestly, the Energy Drain/Energy Siphon/Fester already doesn't fit. (At least Painflare makes SOME thematic sense as deriving from Bahamut sorta.)

The end goal of all jobs is low skill floor medium to high skill ceiling, is this hard concept to understand?

Narrator: Except that wasn't the end goal of all jobs so much as it was merely what some wanted the end goal of all jobs to be.

Personally, I wish more jobs were “set” in their routine by 50.

Black mage is rather infuriating in that once you think you have it figured out, the entire rotation changes up like…twice?

Fire-fire-fire-fire, flip and ice ice to recharge, fire fire fire… nope! You got fire 3 now, so skip that.

Oh, now flare!

Oh wait, now you have fire 4 and enochian.

——

I’ve said it many times, but I really think the core rotations for all jobs should be entirely done by 50. Post 50, you should really only be gaining oGCds to weave into the core rotation.

This is my position, too, and I've said it before as well.

I like WAR for this. WAR has its entire core rotation and mechanics by level 50, pretty much. You have your 1-2-3, your -4, the self-upkeep buff, Infuriate, Inner Beast or whatever the version is at that level, Beast Gauge, low level Fell Cleave, and the low level version of your oGCD. Likewise, the 1-2 and I think the Beast Gauge spender for AOE.

The only things it gets after that are just small changes to refine that core. You get Raw Intuition and later Bloodwhetting and Nascent, you get some more defensive buffs, you get upgrades to Fell Cleave and the AOE one, you get the Inner Release free uses, you get the Infuriate new animations with more power but same hotbar buttion changes, you get your gap closer and up to three charges of it, you get spenders getting you more Infuriate faster, and you get the once per minute big attack you use with Inner Release, Primal Rend.

...but the core rotation itself is the same at 90 as 50, the hotbars are mostly the same, there's some stuff gained to optimize, but if you sync into level 50 content, you can still play your Job MOSTLY the same way.

RDM also has basically its total rotation by level 60 when it gets Manification, and if you don't count Manification and Embolden use, then by level 50 it has its Dualcast mechanic and the full melee combo. After that, it just gets Holy/Flare, then later Scorch, then later Resolution, but these don't fundamentally change the Job's builder-spender system, and you get stuff like an extra charge of Acceleration, Reprise, Magicked Barrier, and Verraise; but none of these change your core rotation itself (and you get Verraise at 64).

Contrast with BLM you have to figure out what you've been synced to then look up a guide to the optimal rotation at that level, which can sometimes be a stretch of a dozen levels and sometimes change multiple times within just few. Most of the Melee are this way - NIN at 50 doesn't have quite a few of its oGCDs (which are the big part of its burst) and Ninki stuff. BRD doesn't even have all three songs, so it can't even maintain full uptime on them if it tried. A lot of the Tanks are no better, like GNB not even getting Continuation until 70, despite this being a core of its design. PLD doesn't get Divine Might/Holy Spirit until 64, Atonement until 76, or Confetior until 90, and its combo self-healing, which comes from Holy Spirit/Circle, it doesn't get until 84. (In its defense, this is still WAAAY better than old PLD was in this regard...)

[Kaliesto]

I like Summoner as it is, my only complain is the spell Ruby Rite which is almost useless in combat without swiftcast, but the 2nd usage of it feels like a time waster of trying to DPS while other spells are ready to be used at that moment.

[AnotherPerson]

I just don't know why it's so wrong to just have a simple job with simple mechanics, seriously

Games like League have simple champions so you can focus more on the main mechanics and not so on your main buttons, that way you have both people who can have an easy time playing the game without putting a lot( or more than it should) thought on it

On meeles we have RPR with an easier pack of variable positionals you can choose and a stance where you directly don't have one
On healers we have WHM and to an extent SGE with simplier gauges and stuff to manage, contrary to AST and SCH wich at high level it's rewarded with a shit ton of dmg buff on the case of AST
And for tanks we have WAR again with a simple combo and unga bunga rotation

You're forgetting that while League doesn't have a lot of skills on each champion, they also provide skill expression in every champion, where your actions can apply crowd control, disables, etc. to create a more impact in their gameplay or environment. Skillshots can fail to land. There is more emphasis and importance in utilizing each ability correctly. FFXIV is devoid of that kind of gameplay decision-making entirely in PvE Combat because it's heavily mechanically driven and there's no way to prevent a mechanic from executing other than doing it properly. Skills in FFXIV are hard to miss. In patch 6.4 they doubled up on that by increasing the buff radius and healing radius of many skills to 30 yalms, so there's no real comparison to be had here.

Instead, DPS checks exists. As far as skill expression in FFXIV goes, it's simply hitting the right buttons (aka job rotation) because you can't miss and you must do the mechanic correctly because things like crowd control doesn't exist in the game. The problem is that every job in every role has to execute a job rotation, and jobs without much to contribute in this aspect will feel lacking when there's nothing else to consider. This is why skill expression usually correlates/sometimes used interchangeably to skill ceiling in this game (and why people find having a high skill ceiling to be fun), but they aren't the same in other games. Stuff like boss being out of range... when SE creates hitboxes so large that melee doesn't have to worry about uptime, it's a non-issue, so there's no skill expression to focus on gaining uptime either.

Also, no, healer forums are always riddled with complaints about having nothing to manage and healing becoming a snoozefest (or the 1-button DPS rotation argument wouldn't ever exist at all if the healing portion was actively engaging enough in all forms of content). Even from the healing side, there's so much you can mitigate and heal before that becomes useless if you constantly fail the mechanic, fall to your death, and accumulate vulnerability stacks (which can directly kill someone even with shields and mitigation if they have too many stacks because the damage greatly exceeds what the healer can put out). I mean, have you ever done a MSQ instance on a healer? Your goal isn't to heal your allies until the duty is over, your goal is to kill the enemy with your 1-2 button rotation for the most part and dodge everything else. Not the most enjoyable gameplay when your damage is utterly crap and you need to press the same dps button as much as possible when the instance throws a dps check at you or you fail the duty.

More recently though, P10N did give a heal check, which is nice to see, but it's unknown whether that will remain later down the line. The main issue with healer is that you tend to heal a lot more when the duty is new / everyone is not in the best gear, but that isn't always the case. After a couple months into a patch, most people will be at a higher ilvl and take far less damage / have a lot more HP. Healers will also be healing comparatively more per skill with higher ilvl too. Most players will know how to dodge the mechanic, reducing the amount of avoidable damage that needs to be healed. Once a couple patches rolls out, sometimes the ridiculous high ilvl sync invalidates needing a healer entirely because the tank or DPS can cover the sparse amounts of healing on their own. There's also the part where you look at dungeons being cleared with 1 tank + 3 DPS, or 1 tank + 2 DPS + 1 healer dead while the boss is over 80% HP. At some point, skill expression on a healer seems to amount to nothing because the skill floor is so incredibly low that it's non-existent and there's nothing else in the healer toolkit other than more healing. Inversely, drastically raising the healing requirements by increasing frequency of damage while keeping ilvl in check will raise skill expression, but it also raises the skill floor (the minimum requirement), which can be detrimental at excluding players who aren't as well-versed in playing the job well. Stuff like blocking 100% damage (such as Sage's Metoses in PvP) would be nice skill expression if we have more examples of life-saving skills outside the realm of just 'healing', but also gameplay breaking due to how incredibly impactful it can be.

From what I've seen, this usually leads to most skill expression being done on the "DPS" side of things - like a healer weaving in their heals while dpsing as much as possible rather than a healer constantly healing and failing to manage their MP will result in a party-wipe from a lack of healing. Problem with calling that as skill expression is that there's no expression. It's 1 button for the most part, so there's no variance other than hitting that button as much as possible -- and that just becomes the skill ceiling rather than skill expression. For Summoners, I figure they experience the same issue because there's no real variance other than which summon they utilize first, because most of the time they will be pressing the same button over and over. In most cases, this wouldn't actually matter because there's very not many situations where summoners need to worry about a lack of mobility. It's not like they have a wide range of summons they could choose to deviate from the regular dps rotation, and because mobility is a non-issue in most fights, it puts SMN in a weird place for skill expression.

Tanks actually have a good amount of systems built into their toolkit that they can juggle around - from mitigating & managing their DPS gauge to party-wide support. They don't need to have a complex toolkit if they have enough responsibilities to juggle around with said toolkit, which gives room for skill expression on a tank role. Especially a PLD who knows how to use cover in the right situations. It might not look impactful, but it can certainly lead to some great feeling when done in the right situations.

Melees generally have a more complex DPS rotation and also a DPS gauge to work on as well and their skill expression is maximizing DPS uptime with tips and tricks as well as for positionals (RIP Samurai Kaiten, also why forums have complaints about that skill being removed).