Apparently I'm distracting (and not the good kind)

[Waliel]

Blizzard 2 was used in a double Flare rotation when it was still possbile back in the day. The rotation was F3 - F2 'til low - Flare - B2 - B2 - Flare - Flare- B2 - B2 - etc. It required some timing to get it right and was absolutely devastating to whiff it, but it put out more DPS than the normal F2 AoE rotation when done correctly.

The way how they "fixed" it still haunts us to this day.

[Shurrikhan]

You being in melee doesn't somehow make melee AoEs target him more often.

Well, technically you can drop AoEs targeting you on the melee by stacking on them in several dungeons, the very start of Pharos being among them... but if he isn't some weird cast-locked melee hybrid... he can dodge. Easily. And if he has no positionals, I don't see any reason for complaint.

Thank you for maximizing your AoE dps.

[Critical-Limit]

I know you were being nice to them to just finish the run. But to be truly nice to them they needed to know they were wrong or they are gonna prey on the next SMN until someone sets them straight. Oh well they'll run into an elitist SMN that can destroy them with potency numbers eventually lol.

[UBERHAXED]

Doubt it as the same patch that nerfed it also made it available as a cross class skill, so surely they had SMN and SCH in mind when they nerfed it (WHM has Holy). It was made a cross skill as a they removed lightning because it was too op for SMN at the time.

They couldn't make it obvious that Tri-Disaster (as it was named at the time) was useless. But the reason was to fix the AoE imbalance. Of course, it went without saying that the end result didn't quite go as expected (they simultaneously changed timings for UI and AF) and we ended up using a "rotation" that just consisted of Flare (i.e.):
Fire 3 -> (Fire II filler) -> Flare -> Transpose -> (mana tick + 2 seconds) -> Flare -> Flare -> Transpose -> (mana tick + 2 seconds) -> Flare -> Flare -> Transpose -> (mana tick + 2 seconds) -> Flare -> Flare -> Transpose -> ad infinitum...

[enthauptet]

You should stand in melee range when spamming ruin 2 on single target anyway for auto attacks. (seems dumb but it does increase dps a bit)

[Kuwagami]

As dumb as it may seem, SMN is kinda a melee mage because you get more both in AoE and single target by being in melee range (blizz2 and ruin2/book spaking)

Of course it's situational (if you stack too many people in melee range you might hinder melee dps more than you'll gain by being in melee range yourself) but it's still here.

[Piconjo]

You've nothing to worry about. You were doing your job. Like people said before me, that person was a bad player. Cobtinute to rock SMN the only way you can.