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

[Azurarok]

Also since the point seemed to be missed or repurposed to say "rez bad", a job with so little limitation should not be allowed to have the dps of BLM/PCT/Melees, rez or no.

It had respectable damage despite having a rez in ShB. So did RDM.

[Khryseis_Astra]

It seems like the balance team only value jobs that have melee, and cast time requirements, and SMN has the least compared to RDM, BLM, and PCT -- and it's why phys ranged is in the dumpster. SMN is being rez taxed, and phys ranged taxed. So SMN could get higher damaging summon phases that have more casting, and stricter positioning requirements -- y'know like maybe Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva.

I like having my fast caster, and I will continue to insist that a caster cast spells, the amount of time it takes to cast those spells is irrelevant; being a caster does not assume or require long casts. We have a range of casters from short to long cast times, and that’s a good thing in my opinion.

But I would be open to slightly longer casts for a new team of gem summons, akin to the difference between PCT’s additive and subtractive palettes. Note I said slightly longer… if I wanted to play a long cast time caster, I’d be doing it already, but I’d pretty much suffer anything for Levi, Shiva & Ramuh to be added! Or they could flip the current gem setup of 2 fast cast summons and 1 long cast summon, to be 2 long and 1 fast for the new triad. Regardless of cast times, I’d like the ability to switch between teams of summons, and for their actions/skills to be the main factor in that choice.

As for the rez, it makes sense to the job identity, just like it does for RDM. If they’re taking that away, they need to have a good enough justification (what I’ve seen up til now isn’t really doing it for me) and give us something truly worth its loss.

[Supersnow845]

I like having my fast caster, and I will continue to insist that a caster cast spells, the amount of time it takes to cast those spells is irrelevant; being a caster does not assume or require long casts. We have a range of casters from short to long cast times, and that’s a good thing in my opinion.

But I would be open to slightly longer casts for a new team of gem summons, akin to the difference between PCT’s additive and subtractive palettes. Note I said slightly longer… if I wanted to play a long cast time caster, I’d be doing it already, but I’d pretty much suffer anything for Levi, Shiva & Ramuh to be added! Or they could flip the current gem setup of 2 fast cast summons and 1 long cast summon, to be 2 long and 1 fast for the new triad. Regardless of cast times, I’d like the ability to switch between teams of summons, and for their actions/skills to be the main factor in that choice.

As for the rez, it makes sense to the job identity, just like it does for RDM. If they’re taking that away, they need to have a good enough justification (what I’ve seen up til now isn’t really doing it for me) and give us something truly worth its loss.

“If I wanted to play a long cast caster I’d be doing it”

How so- you playing WOW or something

[Manamaru]

You'll understand what I mean instantly and why saying it'd torpedo the raiding community is short-sighted at best.

When the devs design with death mattering, they design actually good content. DT is the natural extreme of the devs basically pushing themselves so far into a corner with death not mattering, that the only way to make fights challenging is to basically make them as awful as possible, where every mechanic is ridiculously punishing and even something as basic as ping will see the difficulty massively ratcheted up. None of that is a problem in BA or DRS. Fights where if you die, you have a 70% chance to get back up. If you don't get up, you're on the ground until healer LB or the fight is over.

Seriously, the best content in FFXIV comes from this era, and those fights are the crowning achievements of that dev team. And, lo and behold, only healers had res. On items and LB. No one else did. And it worked out beautifully.

At the price of something like alliance raids. If savage or ult was made without rez would be an entirely different story. Suggesting as a blanket for everything, especially when alliance raids are that meeting ground of casual, mid, and hardcore, you’re guaranteed that people are not going to getting to a second boss. Wipes would be far more frequent. (Especially when they’re forcing players to think of something like prime numbers)

The biggest issue is the devs designing fights with the only thing that matters is face mashing, pressing your community optimized damage buttons (except healers), stacking, and ddr positionals. Things like manashift as a role action on casters was ripped away, Astro has its utility turned into only damage mattering. A 2 minute meta to synchronize swim to because adding skills to circumstantially use on the fly without having things fall apart is apparently inconceivable to Creative Studio III. Nothing else matters to these devs except damage, droning, and face mashing. That’s why SMN is so lackluster and empty

[Misutoraru]

I remember when egi could die and you had to mindful in certain fight of their placement.
To recast was not a trivial amount of time and you would want to swift it.

I never quite found enjoyment in SMN game play. Micromanaging pet were two extreme, they entire face tank AOE without issue even in trial hard mode or dying like they made of paper in Coil back in ARR. Micromanaging the pet was also tedious and cumbersome.

I certainly prefer the “current type of summons” where each summon change your attack but the issue with the current lots not only we have the same summons over many expansions but also they don’t feel different enough. I just cycle through.

I would certainly want to see more summons but each summons have more uniqueness

[Daralii]

Also since the point seemed to be missed or repurposed to say "rez bad", a job with so little limitation should not be allowed to have the dps of BLM/PCT/Melees, rez or no.

It had respectable damage despite having a rez in ShB. So did RDM.

Yoshida's also been saying "We're thinking of removing Raise from casters" for about 6 years. It feels like there's zero actual direction when it comes to job design, so they lean in one direction or another without actually committing to anything while removing anything extra that the encounter designers would have to keep in mind.

[Azurarok]

I'd imagine the current fight design would not work well with the old pet systems (presumably why people are skeptical of BST having one), and I thought that was why they just did away with their hitbox in ShB, which seemed like a decent middleground. Most jank it had with queuing skills were fixed in EW, as can be seen in SCH's fairy who still serves the purpose of a passive auto-targeted hot and emitter for certain skills. It'd be even better if we could've ordered them off their own GCD timeline so it'd feel more like we're controlling two characters at once, but that's a another topic.

At any rate the only reason I accepted EW SMN was because it let you use all the summons in every fight, which seemed impossible to do with the old system, and thought it made room for more of them to get added like the foundation to build upon we all convinced ourselves it was going to be, but all we got was an OC Bahamut variant we've never seen before.

[aiqa]

What limitations do PCT and BLM have that SMN doesn't?

[Supersnow845]

What limitations do PCT and BLM have that SMN doesn't?

Actual cast times and No rezz

[GumshoeJump]

Actual cast times and No rezz

Bold assertion that BLM has cast times at the moment. I mean it technically does-- I Guess. But going from playing BLM before to BLM now feels like they may as well have gotten rid of them.