SMN changes

[ShaolinMike]

The reason I bring that up, is because a lot of the damage is based on that.

Prior your DoTs + Pet were ticking all the while, and you could throw some Ruin Spam to make up for any heavy mechanics or boss mob killing your DWT... so losing it didn't hurt overall DPS much. Yeah it stung to lose a Deathflare due to either mechanics or Boss Mob invulnerability, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't hurt you that bad...

But with our primary damage locked in with DWT... and the other stuff nerfed... and at lesser damage... how close are we to that?

Valid point, but I don't think we'll be too far off. We get our own personal Foe's Requiem with Contagion now, increased Ruin potency with Tri-Disaster casts, and there will also be more frequent Enkindles.

[Neela]

yeah mr.happy said most of the pet skills will become selfbuffs - so swapping egis in and out during fights + the frequent use of Enkindles are supporting the "pet"-class character even more - might be very different to the current playstyle-feeling but I don't see this cls backstepping in any regards... : o

[Tsukaasa]

It might sound stupid but what bothers me the most is the 60s recast on shadowflare, how many times in dungeon does the tank move away from the aoe ?
It's going to be a nightmare...

[Fyce]

It might sound stupid but what bothers me the most is the 60s recast on shadowflare, how many times in dungeon does the tank move away from the aoe ?
It's going to be a nightmare...

With the nerf to Aetherflow (only gives 10% MP instead of 20%) I wouldn't even think of re-casting the current Shadowflare to relocate it because the tank moved. Not only it makes me lose GCD, but it also cost a lot of MP. I'm just gonna blame the tank (or myself for not taking whatever AoE he had to dodge).
But Shadowflare being an oGCD mean that it won't cost mana, and it'll be instant. So, even if we lose 50% uptime on it, if you can throw a Ruin III with it, the difference in potency won't be as bad as it sounds. It also free the use of Swiftcast, which will be clearly needed if we find out that switching pet for their buffs is the new way to play SMN.

In short, even if it's a potency nerf, it's actually a welcome change.

[ShaolinMike]

It might sound stupid but what bothers me the most is the 60s recast on shadowflare, how many times in dungeon does the tank move away from the aoe ?
It's going to be a nightmare...

Considering Painflare's shorter recast time and the fact that we can now get TWO Deathflares and TWO Akh Morns with the use of 6 Aetherflow stacks, a misplaced Shadowflare is gonna be a fly on the windshield of our AOE freight train.

[Vallhallix]

My thing is, if they want SMN to be stronger at single target, what exactly was the point in nerfing ruin? and I hope that the fester nerf is just the wrong tooltip. Yoshi nerfed SMN heavily while making BLM even stronger with next to no serious nerfs, this hasen't happened before /s. Good thing I geared both classes, will probably use BLM for SB content until I switch over to SAM/RDM until they fix this class. Of course I will wait to see on release if the changes really are as bad as they sound.

[ShaolinMike]

My thing is, if they want SMN to be stronger at single target, what exactly was the point in nerfing ruin? and I hope that the fester nerf is just the wrong tooltip. Yoshi nerfed SMN heavily while making BLM even stronger with next to no serious nerfs, this hasen't happened before /s. Good thing I geared both classes, will probably use BLM for SB content until I switch over to SAM/RDM until they fix this class. Of course I will wait to see on release if the changes really are as bad as they sound.

They had to need the initial potency of Ruin to account for the additional potency it gets from Ruination and Devotion. Otherwise it would be a bit insane.

[Silverquick]

Valid point, but I don't think we'll be too far off. We get our own personal Foe's Requiem with Contagion now, increased Ruin potency with Tri-Disaster casts, and there will also be more frequent Enkindles.

Actually its a decreased Ruin 3 potency... with only a chance of casting a Ruin 4.

We had Raging Strikes prior... The Contagion replacement is only 10%. None of that really makes up for the loss. Actually I take that back, it might over the long term work out a little better... but prior it was about 550 potency in AoE damage, I'm not sure it will make it to that level of damage.

Now... IF Ruin 3 had remained a 200 potency... and was UPGRADED to 220 Potency as we gained levels...

It would be a different story... but as its stands, its really just a nerf... with the possibility of a mean damage of all of it equaling probably around 180 potency.

Which means we're nerfed for all the levels prior to getting Ruin 4... and then after that... there's only a chance we'll actually cast it...

That's the real problem here.

[Vallhallix]

Yeah ^ rng like that for a BLM made sense they have a constant burst of high potency spells, on SMN I don't know how to feel about that. We'll have to see.

[ShaolinMike]

Actually its a decreased Ruin 3 potency... with only a chance of casting a Ruin 4.
We had Raging Strikes prior... The Contagion replacement is only 10%. None of that really makes up for the loss. Actually I take that back, it might over the long term work out a little better... but prior it was about 550 potency in AoE damage, I'm not sure it will make it to that level of damage...

Which means we're nerfed for all the levels prior to getting Ruin 4... and then after that... there's only a chance we'll actually cast it...

Raging Strikes was on a 3 minute cooldown though. Yes, Aetherpact (which triggers Devotion) is only 5%, but it's on a 90 second cooldown, so not terrible. And again, nothing really counts until we hit Level 70. That would be like saying BLM was nerfed because it didn't get Fire IV until level 60.