Another Bahamut? Why not Odin? (SMN 7.0 job action PLL feedback)

[Supersnow845]

not only in terms of visual, shiva/levi/ramuh can definitely be used to improve the currently lacking depth of SMN gameplay and fix the job. (here's an example)

An example like that doesn’t really fix SMN’s problems because SMN’s problems are the fact that the rotation is far far too rigid and each primal doesn’t do enough to justify its own existence

Let’s say we apply you idea in practice. S/L/R have 2 long cast primals between them and one of them regens mana. There is no choice. The primals are designed to be exactly long enough to fill the window between your Demi’s so shiva’s mana regen is just a free given. With 2 hard cast primals pheonix is just arbitrarily less mobile than Bahamut; but you can’t control which Demi you summon next so you can’t play around that, you just have to be less mobile during that phase with no recourse. Compare that to something like BLM with triple cast or PIC with weapon motif.

As long as you can’t control which Demi you summon next the primals amount to visual flavour you can’t do anything with. However if you introduce choice then one dominates and leaves the other one in the dust, let’s use your example again. Let’s say both halves do the same damage and you retain SMN’s current rough mana neutrality. You’d never use S/L/R because T/G/I is more mobile. Let’s say that SMN was made strongly mana negative, then T/G/I would barely be used. If T/G/I did more damage but SMN was strongly mana negative. That could potentially introduce a miasma style 2 choice

Regardless all this hinges on choice being introduced, the current rigid rotation with S/L/R really adds nothing to the job. Adding internal complexity to the current 4 phase rotation per minute I think is a better way forward, I’d even be in support of making them longer and more complex but adding limits, like each phase is 35 seconds but Bahamut is still on a 1 minute timer but you need to cast all three astral flows to proc Bahamut to be able to summon. So how much of each phase do you skip by overwriting it with a different primal to maintain the 1 minute loop

[Ianmaru]

An example like that doesn’t really fix SMN’s problems because SMN’s problems are the fact that the rotation is far far too rigid and each primal doesn’t do enough to justify its own existence

Let’s say we apply you idea in practice. S/L/R have 2 long cast primals between them and one of them regens mana. There is no choice. The primals are designed to be exactly long enough to fill the window between your Demi’s so shiva’s mana regen is just a free given. With 2 hard cast primals pheonix is just arbitrarily less mobile than Bahamut; but you can’t control which Demi you summon next so you can’t play around that, you just have to be less mobile during that phase with no recourse. Compare that to something like BLM with triple cast or PIC with weapon motif.

As long as you can’t control which Demi you summon next the primals amount to visual flavour you can’t do anything with. However if you introduce choice then one dominates and leaves the other one in the dust, let’s use your example again. Let’s say both halves do the same damage and you retain SMN’s current rough mana neutrality. You’d never use S/L/R because T/G/I is more mobile. Let’s say that SMN was made strongly mana negative, then T/G/I would barely be used. If T/G/I did more damage but SMN was strongly mana negative. That could potentially introduce a miasma style 2 choice

Regardless all this hinges on choice being introduced, the current rigid rotation with S/L/R really adds nothing to the job. Adding internal complexity to the current 4 phase rotation per minute I think is a better way forward, I’d even be in support of making them longer and more complex but adding limits, like each phase is 35 seconds but Bahamut is still on a 1 minute timer but you need to cast all three astral flows to proc Bahamut to be able to summon. So how much of each phase do you skip by overwriting it with a different primal to maintain the 1 minute loop

ok first maybe I'm not being clear enough with the explanation, since I was just adding to the idea that someone had that I quote replied to.
basically with S/L/R, theres no '2nd halves'. every 1 minute, you have 6 options to choose from, and every 2 mins loop rotation, youre meant to summon each one of them. so if you use all the 3 high mobility primals on the first half, then you're stuck with low mobility primals on the 2nd half. which makes it not rigid. you might want to prioritize using the low mobility one first if you can, and save the high mobility for the boss mech that needs it. also naturally high mobility primals has lower damage output compared to the low mobility ones. and so on and so on.

[MagiusNecros]

I'm kinda disappointed too for the SMN. An another Bahamut could have been something else. Odin and Alexander are Optionnal bosses so it's understandable why we will probably never got those, but Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva are mandatory bosses, that's why most people think we should get them at some point which actually make sense.

Phoenix fight and doing Coil was also optional. Kinda shuts down the Alex/Odin optional argument. L/R/S made the most sense instead of Bahamut 2. Used to be in lore they gave us an excuse that SMN doesn't want to summon Ramuh because it's too dangerous to be attuned to so many elements. Then they stopped giving job quests and stopped caring about lore.

Pretty sure they went with Solar because the model skeleton and animation framework was already there. And given the attacks are mini versions of Hydaelyn attacks we should of gotten Hydaelyn as the summon instead regardless of the connotations it would bring.

[Supersnow845]

ok first maybe I'm not being clear enough with the explanation, since I was just adding to the idea that someone had that I quote replied to.
basically with S/L/R, theres no '2nd halves'. every 1 minute, you have 6 options to choose from, and every 2 mins loop rotation, youre meant to summon each one of them. so if you use all the 3 high mobility primals on the first half, then you're stuck with low mobility primals on the 2nd half. which makes it not rigid. you might want to prioritize using the low mobility one first if you can, and save the high mobility for the boss mech that needs it. also naturally high mobility primals has lower damage output compared to the low mobility ones. and so on and so on.

That really only fixes the arbitrary mobility difference across the two one minute halves but doesn’t really fix anything else. The rotation is still arbitrarily limited because all 6 have to come out once per 2 minutes and none really justify their existence because you have to summon every one to fill the gap between the demis

[Ianmaru]

That really only fixes the arbitrary mobility difference across the two one minute halves but doesn’t really fix anything else. The rotation is still arbitrarily limited because all 6 have to come out once per 6 minutes and none really justify their existence because you have to summon every one to fill the gap between the demis

every primal has their own unique utility, remember? their utility is what justifies their existence, on top of having 6 options instead of only 3.
also 'only fix a part' is still a fix. it still add depths, my point stands.
if you think the depth added by a total of 6 primals is not enough depth, then give me an example where you can add even deeper depth by only having the current 3 primals without overhauling the gameplay.

[Ianmaru]

Phoenix fight and doing Coil was also optional. Kinda shuts down the Alex/Odin optional argument. L/R/S made the most sense instead of Bahamut 2. Used to be in lore they gave us an excuse that SMN doesn't want to summon Ramuh because it's too dangerous to be attuned to so many elements. Then they stopped giving job quests and stopped caring about lore.

LOL true. also it doesnt make sense that attuned to so many elements is dangerous while BLU literally use every single element. and if its about something like capacity, like the limit of primals that someone can have, then they can simply say that the fact we absorbed Adbert makes our capacity twice larger yada yada, which is a very easy addition to the lore if they really need it.

[Supersnow845]

every primal has their own unique utility, remember? their utility is what justifies their existence.
also 'only fix a part' is still a fix. it still add depths, my point stands.
if you think the depth added by a total of 6 primals is not enough depth, then give me an example where you can add even deeper depth by only having the current 3 primals without overhauling the gameplay.

Utility when you are forced to press it as part of your rotation ends up next to useless. It’s why the current pheonix heals are near useless, because you can’t optimise their use into your rotation if the healing necessary doesn’t fall during pheonix anyway. Shiva having “mana regen” isn’t utility it’s basically just the mana regen on aetherflow.

My idea (which is just throwing anything at the wall) would be to leave Bahamut on a 1 minute CD but make the primals each much longer but have each one have distinctive phases or longer looping rotations that build to bigger damage but you have to summon every primal before Bahamut. So like let’s say titan has a 40 second rotation that builds to a big nuke, but then Garuda has 2 rotations, one that leads to mana regen and the other that leads to its current ground DOT. Ifrit could have something else I haven’t got that far. So you don’t have enough time to do everything on every primal so you have to prioritise what you want every time you finish a Demi phase based on what you need at the time

[Ianmaru]

Utility when you are forced to press it as part of your rotation ends up next to useless. It’s why the current pheonix heals are near useless, because you can’t optimise their use into your rotation if the healing necessary doesn’t fall during pheonix anyway. Shiva having “mana regen” isn’t utility it’s basically just the mana regen on aetherflow.

My idea (which is just throwing anything at the wall) would be to leave Bahamut on a 1 minute CD but make the primals each much longer but have each one have distinctive phases or longer looping rotations that build to bigger damage but you have to summon every primal before Bahamut. So like let’s say titan has a 40 second rotation that builds to a big nuke, but then Garuda has 2 rotations, one that leads to mana regen and the other that leads to its current ground DOT. Ifrit could have something else I haven’t got that far. So you don’t have enough time to do everything on every primal so you have to prioritise what you want every time you finish a Demi phase based on what you need at the time

see? its an overhaul, you gotta change a lot how the 3 primals work. and in the end it makes SMN feels like simply another mage. SMN identity is summoning the right summon at the right time, instead of using a plethora of elemental magic under a summon.
the addition of S/L/R on the other hand, can add the depth without overhauling, and gives SMN the 'choice' they need to have, by having 6 options instead of 3 options.

[Supersnow845]

see? its an overhaul, you gotta change a lot how the 3 primals work. and in the end it makes SMN feels like simply another mage. SMN identity is summoning the right summon at the right time, instead of using a plethora of elemental magic under a summon.
the addition of S/L/R on the other hand, can add the depth without overhauling, and gives SMN the 'choice' they need to have, by having 6 options instead of 3 options.

Except you aren’t remotely summoning the right primal under the right conditions as it is now nor under your suggestion nor does it fix the problem that both our suggestions are basically elemental mages

There is no “I need to summon this now” about getting a mana regen from shiva

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Phoenix fight and doing Coil was also optional. Kinda shuts down the Alex/Odin optional argument. L/R/S made the most sense instead of Bahamut 2. Used to be in lore they gave us an excuse that SMN doesn't want to summon Ramuh because it's too dangerous to be attuned to so many elements. Then they stopped giving job quests and stopped caring about lore.

Pretty sure they went with Solar because the model skeleton and animation framework was already there. And given the attacks are mini versions of Hydaelyn attacks we should of gotten Hydaelyn as the summon instead regardless of the connotations it would bring.

I never said that Pheonix made sense either. Bahamut does tho, because of the Lore behind the Summoner's quest.

Anyway, I think we should stop searching a "reason" to this add, because you are right here : "they stopped giving job quests and stopped caring about lore." This is on point.