casters: what am I missing

[Happosai]

Blm main here. Ive been seeing a lot of frustrated blm\\'s switching to smn. What im wondering is how are people that are struggling with blm having an easier time with smn? Personally I find smn far more complex than blm (not even lvl 60 on smn yet). Things smn thinks about: which pet, placement/commands, pet skills, pet related skills (rouse, sustain etc), 3x dot and their timer, aether stacks and how best to use them, cooldowns and more. Blm thinks about: cooldowns, two timers at a time, should I use this proc now/later or not at all, and...? On ps4 and every class ive played ive managed to fit all my skills on crossbar + expanded crossbars. But with smn im maxed out and need to actually swap bars mid combat. Im not asking about which is better. What im asking is how is smn "easier" to perform at their optimum level than say blm? I dont intend on switching mains, but would like to level up smn for options and ease of gearing. Thanks

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

I think it has to do with the fact that summoners can still deal most of their dps while dodging mechanics i.e. when ever they have to dodge something they can cast Ruin II instead of Ruin I to keep the damage coming in whereas blackmage has to either move and stop casting all together or move and Scathe (which im sure no one does lolololol)

[Sleigh]

Well, it's highly subjective on what's easier/harder. Personally I don't think SMN is very complex at 60 because it plays highly similar to SMN at 50, which I've been playing for two years. BLM is a different beast at 60 ... not terribly difficult at its core, but much more reflexive to the fight at hand, and much less scripted as you have to adapt and change your rotation on the fly, even if you repeat a fight constantly with the same team you'll be playing different depending on RNG. SMN, you usually do the same thing in any particular fight as you repeat it, more or less.

I'd say SMN would be considered easier because, once you have the base down, you deviate a few things per the fight at hand and then you just follow your script. If you have to change things, it's because you learned of a better way to do the fight. BLM is just always flowing according to its own beat depending on what happens and what targets you, and in some fights that's a lot more complex than what SMN has to deal with.

Really, the biggest difference between SMN and BLM on a dummy is just how many buttons you press with SMN, they're both pretty easy to do well with. It's more buttons but not necessarily any harder or more complex, unless you've got butter fingers I guess. In real fights they're night and day from each other.

[Lavieh]

Well, it's highly subjective on what's easier/harder.

I definitely agree that difficulty is subjective but we can measure a classes easy by their skill floors and skill ceiling.

Right now SMN has a pretty low skill floor as a well as a low Skill ceiling.

While BLM has a really high Skill ceiling.

Yea if Dot and Pet management aren't your thing then SMN will be a pest but given all things equal SMN is far easier to deal good numbers on than a BLM. Furthermore, it is a lot harder to distinguish a great SMN while a great BLM shines really bright.

[Sleigh]

Right now SMN has a pretty low skill floor as a well as a low Skill ceiling.

While BLM has a really high Skill ceiling.

Yea if Dot and Pet management aren't your thing then SMN will be a pest but given all things equal SMN is far easier to deal good numbers on than a BLM. Furthermore, it is a lot harder to distinguish a great SMN while a great BLM shines really bright.

Gotta respectfully disagree about a low skill ceiling on SMN, or that BLM's skill ceiling is much higher. SMN is more formulaic, but there's plenty to min/max on it, whether that's deciding on the optimal way to spend your Aetherflow stacks per the DPS check, to keeping your pet in line, to adjusting your rotation if you have to spend your DWT sooner than the minute marks that are so easy on a dummy.

Honestly BLM isn't that hard. Extremely easy on a dummy IMO (even if most people can't seem to pull it off right). The skill floor is absolutely devastating on BLM, this is true, but once you have the basics of it down, you kind of just do that dummy rotation (keeping an eye on proc and timer allowances) and when crap happens to you, you have to adjust once or twice then go on your way until the next variance comes at you. Honestly not a large skill barrier even in savage on that, it's just damage control.

Basically, SMN is about what you can do to the enemies, BLM is about what the enemies do to you. I would be very hesitant to say SMN is as easy mode as you suggest, even though I admit in some fights SMN has a much less confusing and adaptive time than BLM will, which is about the extent of the difficulty gap on them. To this day I see streams of A3S where players have BRDs and they'll do less than me up until add phase, which is extremely strange to me but I can't believe the skill ceiling is so low if I'm outperforming players in vastly better circumstances. People for some reason said the same thing about BRD in ARR, low skill ceiling, but then you'd see some BRDs top the charts in fights they had no business doing melee level DPS.

[Lavieh]

Gotta respectfully disagree about a low skill ceiling on SMN, or that BLM's skill ceiling is much higher.

SMN's floor would be 1-2-3 Dots, 3x Festers, DWT -> Deathflare. It is pretty simple and the numbers produced from following such a simple pattern are really pretty decent. There is definitely a lot of things you can do to optimize your SMN rotation such as proper AT stack management, not clipping dots, attacking, using the right pet ect. But reaching the base potential of SMN is stupidly easy and optimizing your decisions doesn't really make a huge difference as opposed to other classes. That is what I meant by low ceiling. Yes there is a lot of tweaking you can do to increase your DPS but the end result isn't far off from that of a decent SMN.

I may also be off with the skill ceiling of BLM. I think that the ceiling comes into to play when you have to handle mechanics though and learning how to DPS through them.

SMN is about what you can do to the enemies, BLM is about what the enemies do to you.

This is easily the biggest thing that distinguishes the two classes. You can always control what you do to an enemy but it is hard to control what the enemy can do to you (though possible). I would argue that SMN is among the easiest of classes to play decently (Given no personal preference, like not being good at watching dot timers ect).

[Uninstall]

SMN's floor would be 1-2-3 Dots, 3x Festers, DWT -> Deathflare. It is pretty simple and the numbers produced from following such a simple pattern are really pretty decent. There is definitely a lot of things you can do to optimize your SMN rotation such as proper AT stack management, not clipping dots, attacking, using the right pet ect. But reaching the base potential of SMN is stupidly easy and optimizing your decisions doesn't really make a huge difference as opposed to other classes. That is what I meant by low ceiling. Yes there is a lot of tweaking you can do to increase your DPS but the end result isn't far off from that of a decent SMN.

What you talked about is the skill floor not the skill ceiling though.

[Happosai]

Yea if Dot and Pet management aren't your thing then SMN will be a pest but given all things equal SMN is far easier to deal good numbers on than a BLM. Furthermore, it is a lot harder to distinguish a great SMN while a great BLM shines really bright.

That pretty much sums up my conclusion. Not a fan of dot management and prefer to only worry about myself rather than have a pet to micromanage. Im fine with the blm skill requirement. Any content ive struggled with has been cleared through learning the fight. Of course I cant speak of alex savage yet as ive only tried once with a pf group and we couldnt make it to first jump but atleast my add died under my lazer everytime will continue to struggle and love blm. After all im a filthy casual xD

[Muchmidget]

Could be the frustration that comes from a dropped Enochian (that may or may not be the BLM's fault). A summoner can't suddenly lose access to his main source of damage for 30 seconds. The summoner might mess up his rotation and/or have to resummon his pet; but that's not a 30 second setback.

[Alkimi]

Could be the frustration that comes from a dropped Enochian (that may or may not be the BLM's fault). A summoner can't suddenly lose access to his main source of damage for 30 seconds. The summoner might mess up his rotation and/or have to resummon his pet; but that's not a 30 second setback.

Like BLM though, they do benefit from knowing the fights. Losing your Aethertrail stacks or wasting a Dreadwyrm Trance will happen at first, especially on A1 and A3 savage. What with 3.0 being the patch of "Stuff going untargetable for way too long".