SMN is now the least popular caster again barely one expansion after its rework

[PercibelTheren]

To be fair, Red Mage's popularity in high end content is massively inflated because of their rez. If they lost it, they would be right at the bottom, too.

[Taranok]

Strangely enough, there's people out there who insist SMN and RDM should lose their Raise thinking they'll be compensated with more damage, thus putting them on par with BLM and PCT.

The thing is though... people thought the same would happen with MCH, than in not having group buffs, it would get loads more damage. Shock of shocks, this didn't come to pass, and now you have people wanting MCH to be turned into a buffer if its not going to get the damage it's expected to have.

But yeah, without that utility for double rez, RDM would probably be in a bad spot, and ironically its ability to do said double rez just ends up one more punch into SMN's gut because it wasn't even allowed to hold onto THAT novelty for its self. (And Physick is literally a wasted hotbar slot.)

I think everyone should lose res because the devs make better fights without it. As seen in BA and DRS. Like, unironically, the devs only having the lever of damage down and killing players is simply bad for the game's encounter design. Not the only thing bad, but a big part of it.

[LoganMccree]

I think everyone should lose res because the devs make better fights without it. As seen in BA and DRS. Like, unironically, the devs only having the lever of damage down and killing players is simply bad for the game's encounter design. Not the only thing bad, but a big part of it.

They will never make such a bold move. The "improved encounter design" they promised didn't happen. Or if it did it amounts to slightly faster DDR. FF14 players got Stockholm'd into thinking that body checks in virtually every high-level encounter is the norm and default, and don't realize how damaging it is to the game.

Keep in mind they use damage down because they hate player creativity. They hated that people were soaking vuln ups on shit like O6S's flame to get some uptime. They hated that speedrunners* figured out cool tricks to get a few extra GCDs in. They hated that as players themselves they need to resort to "unnatural" techs to compete on FFLogs. This whole game is now chained to the whims of FFLogs Discord dwellers who hate anything that isn't ultra-scripted choreography. I have no doubt the job and encounter designers are part of them (in mentality at the very least). The body checks are there to force you to do the same choreography everyone must follow.

There's a reason why jobs get gutted over and over again and funneled into the same style. It's because there are only a few job designers, and the entire playerbase and game must bow down to their idiosyncratic preferences. They don't design for you. They design for themselves. That's why healers were gutted first, because the job design team are DPS mains who hated that they had to use GCD heals and not do damage. That's why certain jobs like monk get a lobotomy every expansion because the team hated how it played. They hate you as a player when you don't do what they want. That's why they keep trying to gut nonstandard Black Mage, that's why they gutted TK monk. It's why they gutted Summoner because they hated that they didn't foresee that old SMN optimization involved in large part the interplay between pet animations and pet movement (which emergently created a playstyle of stutter-stepping during Bahamut windows).

*I speak of the ancient species of speedrunners who actually enjoyed pushing for speedkills using unconventional strats which often increased the difficulty of the encounter, not of the modern variety of crit-farming brainrotten parse-andies.

[Taranok]

There's a reason why jobs get gutted over and over again and funneled into the same style. It's because there are only a few job designers, and the entire playerbase and game must bow down to their idiosyncratic preferences. They don't design for you. They design for themselves. That's why healers were gutted first, because the job design team are DPS mains who hated that they had to use GCD heals and not do damage.

That's the thing. Tanks were gutted first, because warriors straight up couldn't tank twintania, they turned warrior into paladin. AST was completely dead on arrival, and they spent most of HW and SB basically turning AST and SCH into WHM, because you need WHM's overpowered kit to heal the absolutely bonkers outgoing damage. There is no skill in deciding to use Medica 1 in FFXIV, but with the sheer amount of aoes going out, it's literally the only answer.

They homogenized their fight design down to the point where cast bars are a liability, in a game where the game's godawful netcode is a serious limitation, and then put in fights that are miserable anywhere above about 15ms ping.

They demonstrably don't test the game above a direct connection to the game server, because there's no way in hell M5S would have been considered fine if they tested it at 200ms ping, especially when I've run into players complaining about it at a mere 60ms ping compared to whatever god-tier connection they have that's normally better than 60. Hell, they certainly don't test it on every job, because even trying to find 3s of time to cast slipstream as summoner is a nightmare in M5S, and it wouldn't take much to realize funky floor 1's spotlights are a nightmare for the second person if you have to cross the map as any caster. 'Just use movement!' And do WHAT exactly for ensemble immediately after?

Their head is buried so deep in the sand that they don't even realize that they're off the coast of brazil right now, and their 'encounter improvements' are actively driving the game off a cliff because of these problems and more.

[PercibelTheren]

Strangely enough, there's people out there who insist SMN and RDM should lose their Raise thinking they'll be compensated with more damage, thus putting them on par with BLM and PCT.

The thing is though... people thought the same would happen with MCH, than in not having group buffs, it would get loads more damage. Shock of shocks, this didn't come to pass, and now you have people wanting MCH to be turned into a buffer if its not going to get the damage it's expected to have.

But yeah, without that utility for double rez, RDM would probably be in a bad spot, and ironically its ability to do said double rez just ends up one more punch into SMN's gut because it wasn't even allowed to hold onto THAT novelty for its self. (And Physick is literally a wasted hotbar slot.)

Those people are delusional and the existence of Pictomancer proves it. For years, the argument has been "utility justifies lower damage" and then you have Picto who came out with hilariously busted damage AND amazing group utility. Or the fact that melees now get AoE healing in addition to raid buffs while being allowed to have the highest damage output despite there being very little downtime AND every raid strat being tailored for their uptime. There is no good reason for the questionable balance.

[LoganMccree]

Those people are delusional and the existence of Pictomancer proves it. For years, the argument has been "utility justifies lower damage" and then you have Picto who came out with hilariously busted damage AND amazing group utility. Or the fact that melees now get AoE healing in addition to raid buffs while being allowed to have the highest damage output despite there being very little downtime AND every raid strat being tailored for their uptime. There is no good reason for the questionable balance.

Not only that, but for years we had "they have to homogenize jobs so they can balance the jobs well!!!!!"

[Zarkovitch]

You know why smn is not popular anymore. It's not the design of the job, it's just a ass job. Why picking smn when there a picto and blm for dmg. rdm for progging savages slight better dmg nowdays. The reason why SMN was more pick in EW.

1. RDM was weakest of caster dmg due RNG damage.
2. In EW SMN as no competitions was always facto number 2 due dmg and support ability.
3. BLM was doing dmg, sure but gotta put the effort, time and skill to be good at it.

Currently SMN is doing not good and hater of reworks just want to point it up because they re wet dream finally realise can shit talk about it.

[Kohashi]

To be fair, Red Mage's popularity in high end content is massively inflated because of their rez. If they lost it, they would be right at the bottom, too.

I don't think they would be at the bottom because they do decent damage and have good support skills even without the raise, but it will be a lot less popular during progs for sure. When you do re-clears, nobody cares about raises that much since you aren't supposed to die anyway.