SMN - Most Glaring Issues

[Delta041]

I have 3 main grievances with 4.0 SMN

1. Aetherflow and Aethertrail are now combined rather than being separate.
You will never convince me this is in any way, shape or form a good idea. SMN on the whole has become more obtuse since the systems it has to juggle (Aetherflow, Trail, Trance, Bahamut) constantly work against each other. However, it's especially egregious with Flow and Trail, since their tug of war can result in a SMN being penalized with the loss of up to 3 stacks of aetherflow and an entire Trance cycle. If they wanted to make trance stacks easier all they had to do was remove the timer. Even with the timer, SMN has effectively 90 seconds to enter dreadwyrm trance. That's a lifetime as far as regular encounters go. As it stands I've basically had to unlearn everything I learned in 3.0 to play what I consider an inferior version of the system as I can no longer have Aetherflow on cooldown while going through my trance.

2. Demi-Bahamut is too micro intensive
Stormblood was supposed to make jobs easier to play, yet here SMNs have been slapped with a micro management nightmare. Demi fires off Wyrmwaves every 1.5 seconds based on player actions. Players meanwhile are locked behind a 2.5 GCD. Demi then requires players to have at least 5 targeted off GCDs and very precise timing to be able to get the most out of their Demi's uptime. This decision however I can understand a bit. My though are that they wanted Ahk Morns to be more responsive than usual pet actions, so they bound Demi's auto attacks to player actions. In my opinion however this is far too strenuous on a class that already has 3 other now completely separate and competing mechanics to cycle though. Where it up to me, Demi would behave like a Rook auto turret, it would be summoned, stay in place, fire off its attacks on the last target its SMN attacked. This would likely result in Ahk Morn becoming more unresponsive (though I can't recall Wildfire having that issue) but I think it would be a worthy tradeoff.

3. Tri-Bind is still worthless
Why is this skill so bad? WHY? PvP and PvE actions are separate now, there is no reason why SMN should still continue to take this skill off their hotbars. Personally I love its cast animation but between the 3.0s cast time and worthless 30 potency damage, it simply not worth using in any situation. The skill needs to have its cast time knocked down to 2.5s and a potency boost. This would give SMN some much needed AoE sustain back while not touching SCH.

[NoxLumina]

Transparent, no shrinkerino.

[Gallus]

The amount of random suggestions that have absolutely no sense in this thread is very worrying...

SMN is perfectly fine. It could use a slight potency in some of its spells because of how punishing and complex it can get to do good damage with this class (as opposed to BLM and RDM which are more braindead, especially the latter).

Only issues I can agree with atm:

1 - Bahamut size. Just shrink it.
2 - Make the pet even more sturdy against AOEs and random mechanics.

[Neela]

The amount of random suggestions that have absolutely no sense in this thread is very worrying...

SMN is perfectly fine. It could use a slight potency in some of its spells because of how punishing and complex it can get to do good damage with this class (as opposed to BLM and RDM which are more braindead, especially the latter).

Only issues I can agree with atm:

1 - Bahamut size. Just shrink it.
2 - Make the pet even more sturdy against AOEs and random mechanics.

but...Gallus... shrinking the legendary dragon lord.... just would make him laughable... I mean he's a god... a fucking god... give people the ability to toggle him of or to adjust his transparency.. idk BUT.... I as smn myself don't wanna run around with a cute, tiny Tabaluga instead... .______. '

[Xiozen]

The amount of random suggestions that have absolutely no sense in this thread is very worrying...

SMN is perfectly fine. 1 - Bahamut size. Just shrink it.

Everyone has an opinion and yours is duly noted. I DISAGREE with shrinking Bahamut... While I concur that during specific content it can be very difficult for players to see mechanics and respond/react quickly enough if the Lord of Dragons is blocking their view---the answer of shrinking him down to size just doesn't seem like it fits. I would instead recommend either:

1. Providing players the option --assuming this option does not already exist--to turn off egi's so that they are not VISIBLE--similar to how other players/alliance players effects can be "turned off" so that you do not see them on your screen and they don't interfere with your FPS... 2. As such suggested, specific to Bahamut's summon only; when summoned by the SMN, have stay in one spot "X" # of yalms behind the player, so as not to interfere with others field of view...not really sure how this would play out in truly mobile parties when moving from one area to the next... 3. Have the option similar to #1, but allow the SMN the option of making Bahamut transparent when summoned--so default can be set in cases where you don't have a lot of people around you in either a 8man party setting or alliance content and you'd like to SEE his regular form, then when you are in content where his normal form may hinder others, the SMN can set Bahamut to transparency mode, so mechanics cannot be shielded from view.

But just blatantly shrinking the Lord of Dragons after we just received him as an immediate FIX.... I think NOT!

[Avia_Frost]

I only agree with 2 and 5 need to be adjusted. For other points, we just need time to get used to.

For dungeon, what I do is just to keep one aetherflow available before the next pull. Hand dots / Tri-D then bane off with that one aetherflow you save. This will send you right to DWT and you use it from there. while your dots are up on all mobs.

One thing I would like to see change is that it's really annoying for aetherflow to be locked when you are in DWT. I think at least once it's unlocked, we should have what we have before it's locked back. This will help minimizing the dmg loss issue.

[Vallhallix]

Being a hard core SMN myself , the only thing I agree in a sense is Bahamut.

As bahamut don't take any damage at all by mobs or raid bosses what they should do is to let it spawn 3 bodies behind SMN and keep it there.

Let's not forget as well that bahamut pops to help in fight is not a constant fighting egi.

But whatever they do , DO NOT reduce the size of it.

Give people a toggle. They can't shrink him after giving SMN the first big SMN, if they did...I can see the next inevitable SMN complaint coming from a mile away. People will be pissed.

[ToasterMan]

I'm hearing that SMN's have a 4 minute rotation now? Seems like they're doing more work for a lesser reward. For that reason I just can't recommend this job now....

[Neela]

I'm hearing that SMN's have a 4 minute rotation now? Seems like they're doing more work for a lesser reward. For that reason I just can't recommend this job now....

This is a half empty opinion.

The half full opinion could state that smns rotation is actually one of the less things in SB which needs some more practice and timing than most other cls which are to easy or not challenging at all. Although the reward in mastering the timing on smn is kinda unsatisfying... true.

Closing the cap between casuals and veterans skill level is still a thing I do not understand... after my own hype of SB release started to vanish... I noticed that it brought nearly nothing to challenge or goals to master... everything like rotation/gear gathering/ex-primales and even Omega is waaaaay to easy... maybe I take a look at MCH next, cause after all I read it seems one of the less cls aside of smn which is challenging you a bit in the end. : /

is something like Rdm which is easy and forgiven by mistakes with op output or an ex-primal which you can clear on your first 1-3 runs really the definition of "fun" in a long term... questionable...

[Koyuki38]

Hi, I'm a career savage-raid summoner. I've been a summoner since my first day of playing (the PS4 release). With Yoshi-P's recent forum post about the state of job changes coming in patches 4.01 and 4.05, I wanted to post what I see are the most glaring issues with 4.0 SMN in the hopes that the devs see them and consider making some necessary changes. NOTE: I don't take issue with the fact that SMN has switched its play-style from a mainly DoT class to a burst-phase class.

Hi.
What did say YoshiP about SMN in 4.01/05 or where can i find what he said ?