SMN Theorycraft and comparison to Blm

[Akiza]

It's interesting to see that you claim to agree with Craiger yet you completely disregarded Craiger's point on using Extreme Primals as a benchmark to compare Black Mages and Summoners. But that's a bit irrelevant.



I feel like you ignored a large portion of my post: The context of which I addressed Black Mage vs Summoner debate was in the scenario where the player has to choose a job for the raid that they are not comfortable with - that is, progression raiding.

The context of your argument is grounded on the basis that the player will be comfortable with the fight - that is, farm content.

I have no doubt that Black Mages will be able to perform exceptionally in farm content. However their ability to perform and adapt in progression content where there are many unknown and uncomfortable mechanics as well as a more chaotic environment is definitely questionable, and in this regard it is quite reasonable to conclude that Summoners will excel.

It's also interesting to see how you don't want people to disregard Black Mage, but you try to talk down Summoner damage in the sense that you think people will jump ship back to Black Mage when "they see it doing superior damage in a raid setting."

I would like to clarify that Summoner damage is currently no joke - the way that you phrase your comparison as "superior damage" is akin to comparing a melee's damage to a Bard's damage. In reality the damage gap is much, much smaller, akin to comparing a Monk's damage to a Dragoon's damage. If you play with the most exceptional Black Mage and the most exceptional Summoner in the world, you'll likely find the Black Mage dealing a small amount of extra damage. The difference in their single target damage is not as large as you might believe.

The overall difference between an exceptional Black Mage and an exceptional Summoner is the Black Mages have 10% higher single target damage than Summoner which is large but not large enough to make the Summoner pointless. My concern is if SE does a flat out potency buff to Black Mage to fix their movement issues than the Summoner will be rendered useless and have no reason to be in the game.

[Alberel]

The overall difference between an exceptional Black Mage and an exceptional Summoner is the Black Mages have 10% higher single target damage than Summoner which is large but not large enough to make the Summoner pointless. My concern is if SE does a flat out potency buff to Black Mage to fix their movement issues than the Summoner will be rendered useless and have no reason to be in the game.

That's exactly what happened to BLMs in 2.2 and why SMNs were indeed rendered obsolete for the second half of the 2.x patch cycle. The real kicker was that SE buffed BLMs to compensate for dps lost to movement and then proceeded to implement multiple largely stationary fights in coil, causing those buffs to be vastly overcompensating. All the big changes SMNs got in the expansion were to bring us back into line with BLMs but many BLMs are just seeing all the buffs and jumping to the conclusion that we're now vastly superior, completely oblivious to how far behind we've been for ages.

BLM potencies are fine. Their rotation just needs to be made a little less strict so they can more easily reach the numbers they're capable of.

[HaroldSaxon]

That's exactly what happened to BLMs in 2.2 and why SMNs were indeed rendered obsolete for the second half of the 2.x patch cycle. The real kicker was that SE buffed BLMs to compensate for dps lost to movement and then proceeded to implement multiple largely stationary fights in coil, causing those buffs to be vastly overcompensating. All the big changes SMNs got in the expansion were to bring us back into line with BLMs but many BLMs are just seeing all the buffs and jumping to the conclusion that we're now vastly superior, completely oblivious to how far behind we've been for ages.

BLM potencies are fine. Their rotation just needs to be made a little less strict so they can more easily reach the numbers they're capable of.

Actually, SMN'ers were fine in 2.2, although BLM were better in T8 due to the fight time. They fell out of favour due to the mana issues in the long final coil fights in 2.4, and that was the real issue.

Even with the BLM buffs, Melee's were still preferred in many fights, with people going duel Melee for most of the fights, and in some, tri-melee.

I agree with you that the SMN changes have brought them back in line with BLM's, although BLM has been hurt from:

- The nerf to Spellspeed
- The change to Fey Glow (Fey Wind)
- The change to 3 second casts for their main DPS
- The reduction of procs due to the shift from Fire 1 to Fire 4.
- The impracticality of using Thunder and Thundercloud (due to losing stacks/enochian).

I agree with you that fixing the QoL stuff should fix BLM and they don't need Potency changes, that said, I still worry about the viability of casters in general - they will only be taken in an optimal setup if a fight mechanic makes it so. People often say when a BLM gets no mechanics and can turret they can do great dps; but in the same situation, a Monk or Dragoon will do much more, and that isn't including the buffs to other classes DPS that they provide.

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My suggestions:
Astral Fire Duration Increase
Thunder 4 - Thundercloud giving extended Enochian by 5 seconds (so that using Thundercloud doesn't punish you)
Allow finish of B4/T4/F4 cast if the cast has started even if Enochian drops off
Fix of the F3-Gap-F4 bug.
Reduction of the Mana cost of F1 to be the same as F4 (so that using F1 instead of F4 doesn't double punish you)
Enochian skill always fully refreshes Enochian (so only B4 is a diminishing return)

Then give one of the SMN skills a small magic vulnerablity debuff so they have more utility.

What the above will do is bring QoL to BLM, and make casters able to be a viable option in raids where there aren't any "cheese" mechanics that force the use of a caster - and allow caster heavy parties to compete with Melee heavy parties.