SMN - Most Glaring Issues

[-Yuuna-]

Bahamut, Devotion and Bane are out of discussion since weeks...

After playing SMN for some weeks since 4.0 release and read a lot of threads about it, I got my own opinion. Bahamut, Devotion and Bane is a point any longer, but not the most important.

I really hate Bahamut, because of him I couldn't see every mechanics (like the cloud in Susano) and I wiped a party (yeah I wiped a party in Susano, because I saw the cloud too late, shame on me -_-). My problem at this point is: I have no chance to take him away, not so close to me and I'm really glad that they will add a function to reduce his size, I hope that solve the problem.
Devotion…what shall I say about Devotion? I cannot choose at the group list who should get the buff. I have to move my egi. Yeah…I’ll never move my egi again (if it’s not REALLY necessary). I tried it so many times and at the most tries some other player are moving and the buff never hit the person I wanted to get. It also needs a lot of time to place the egi. So they have two options to fix this: Let us choose the player at our group list or let Devotion be a group buff for everyone (with a higher cd or not so strong – if the developer think 5% at all is too strong).
Bane got a huge nerf, but at the moment we just need it in dungeons. So it will be fine, I think. Playing SMN in dungeons works. We can do enough damage to clear it fast. BLM has a better AOE damage, but that’s okay for me.
I want my pet heal back. They can delete Physick for that, this is a skill no one need it at SMN. I totally agree with Yoshi if he says: You wanna heal? Play RDM.

4.0 SMN feels like the developer team designed it for dungeon runs and maybe the 24 man raids – we will see it in the future. And I think they want that we cannot move very much with Bahamut at our side, to reduce the SMN movement.

the main problem is that with all the effort of being perfect just rewards you with avg. numbers compared to way easier dds. thats why people complain in the end. if it would be possible to deal 6k+ dmg on a perfect rotation or skilllevel (like the 5-6 top tier on fflogs at 4k atm) than nobody would question the cls-design and aetherflow mechanic. but as long as you have to be that focused to deal mid dmg without even the chance to deal with the big players - people should discuss about that.

I agree with you completely. The Aetherflow change yesterday is a step in the right direction. Good player will not see any difference, but for the others it is a big change. They didn’t need to wait a lot of time to get the stack back. Changes like this can reduce the cap between casuals and elite. That’s what SE want, right? But this change alone didn’t fix the class problems. In the last years SE told us that BRD and MCH have a lot of supporting skills, because of that they have not a big damage. We didn’t get a lot of supporting skills, so why is our damage worse?
If we didn’t have a lot of supporting skills and get a worse damage, the people see no reason to grab a SMN for raid. And this is a big problem. We all shall be able to use pf for raid, but a lot of players are not really enjoy a SMN in the party.

there are two official statements from SE both seem smn excluding...
1) All jobs rota should be easier to close the cap between casuals and elite (SB-Interview)
2) More effort in certain cls' should be rewarded higher than on other cls (Before the live-letter)

We cannot use Aetherflow abilities in trance, so it might be easier. I heard from SMN starters and ppl who didn’t play this class very often that they love the change, because the rotation feels more fluent and easier for them now.
SMN is very often declared as an easy job. I think that’s the problem here. The developers didn’t see that we have a higher effort to get good damage.

[Angry_Evil]

After clearing O1S and O2S I really feel that mp restrictions of ruin3 are not justified anymore with it being so weak. With r3 spam you can barely hold your 3.8k somewhat dps between bahamut bursts. Probably even if they make it free and let us spam it instantly instead of r2 DPS won't go up too much lol... cause we still need to deal with stupid lining up of everything... ugh. Also kinda sucks that nin does kinda more DPS than me while bringing much better utility and being if not easier to play then at least not as poorly designed.
Also with BLM buff smn rly became pointless weakest caster.
rip
PS
Delaying pulls after wipe cause you need to wait for aetherflow sucks... SE need to address this somehow...

[Pyitoechito]

I'm not sure if someone else has already mentioned this suggestion, but it would probably help reduce SMN "clunkiness" if Ruin Mastery upgraded Ruin II to Ruin IV instead of Ruin or Ruin III (making it an instant cast). Ruin IV procs would then no longer impede any oGCD weaving (especially useful during Bahamut phases), so there would be no issues with casting it every time it's available.

Even though it would be a nerf, it would probably be for the best if Addle didn't trigger Bahamut's Wyrmwave. Addle is a defensive cooldown and this manner of usage was most likely not intended.

[Neela]

After clearing O1S and O2S I really feel that mp restrictions of ruin3 are not justified anymore with it being so weak. With r3 spam you can barely hold your 3.8k somewhat dps between bahamut bursts. Probably even if they make it free and let us spam it instantly instead of r2 DPS won't go up too much lol... cause we still need to deal with stupid lining up of everything... ugh. Also kinda sucks that nin does kinda more DPS than me while bringing much better utility and being if not easier to play then at least not as poorly designed.
Also with BLM buff smn rly became pointless weakest caster.
rip
PS
Delaying pulls after wipe cause you need to wait for aetherflow sucks... SE need to address this somehow...

yeah I wondered myself as well for the ruin3 mp amount... even ruin4 proc is way cheaper... does any other cls have to deal with a "fillerskill" which is so expensive for nearly no real goal aside of yeah... "filling" your rota?

[TheLenrir]

If it wasn't for the penalty to LB for the same class, a 2x SMN setup would actually be kinda neat. Rotate Ruinations would actually lead to a DPS boost, whether it's significant remains to be tested.

My biggest pet hate right now is simply Bahamut himself. Wyrmwave needs to be adjusted to simply being auto-attack upon your selected target. This alone would solve the general clunkiness of using GCD/instant casts just to spit out as many wyrmwaves as you can, instead being able to follow your rotation and maximise use of pre-contagion into Demi-bahamut then Tri-disaster to begin 'Operation Ruin', with the 2 En kindles in between.

That would, in my opinion, go a long way to solving some of their issues, at least for the moment.

[Sunako]

I did 10min summoner parse and 10min blm parse with same ilvl 318 gear and blm damage was around 4.6k dps and summoner 3.9k dps. I wonder what utility from summoner cover that 700 dps loss or am i playing this class totally wrong.

[Connor]

Personally I think Summoner issues can be summed up quite nicely in a single sentence; [i] you're working harder to do equal to what others do [i]
I think mostly what they should be focusing on is making Summoner feel more rewarding. Jumping through aetherflow, trance, contagion line-up and pet management hoops, just to summon Bahamut and keep your dps the same everyone else's.

[Angry_Evil]

I did 10min summoner parse and 10min blm parse with same ilvl 318 gear and blm damage was around 4.6k dps and summoner 3.9k dps. I wonder what utility from summoner cover that 700 dps loss or am i playing this class totally wrong.

I don't see how we can play differently. Lining up things like in eirene snow guide... Even then for some reason my ping became worse in 4.0 and it's pretty hard for me to do 11-12 wyrmwaves cause of that in actual fights.
Funny how they easily boosted BLMs but didn't even acknowledge SMN problems. Speaking about neglect...
Also pretty telling even before 4.0 they spend a lot of time talking about BLMs changes on liveletter and didn't mention summoner except clip with bahamut.

If it wasn't for the penalty to LB for the same class, a 2x SMN setup would actually be kinda neat.

4x SMN, nonstop contagion all day erryday, hell with lb lol

[TheLenrir]

4x SMN, nonstop contagion all day erryday, hell with lb lol

"We Summon Together, We Bahamut Together, Into the depths of hell we go!"

[Dyvid]

I did 10min summoner parse and 10min blm parse with same ilvl 318 gear and blm damage was around 4.6k dps and summoner 3.9k dps. I wonder what utility from summoner cover that 700 dps loss or am i playing this class totally wrong.

No, you are right here. Buffs/Debuffs don't cover that kind of dps deficient. Since parsers don't really track utility as caster dps we can only estimate (unless you really want to go line per line) and even then it can't cover that huge of gap.

Eirene's guide is spot on when describing the SMN play design about revolving around Aetherflow cooldown and the glaring issues around this. Bascially you fester X 3 which put you at 15s, DWT puts you at 16s or 31s before AF. That's 29s of filler time to do something. Then the optimal way to use Bahamut is to wait for AF for Wyrmwave spam but this make even more filler time and messes up the smooth transition from DWT/DB phases to AF cooldown phases.

In the vein of that design I would suggest the following changes:

Dreadwyrm Trance: Add Spur effect to pets for increased dps.
Enhance Enkindle: Change to reset cast time after exiting Dreadwyrm Trance.
Ruin Mastery:: Change to 20% and upgrades ruin I, II, or III.
Ruin IV: Instant cast.

Things people will most likely hate
Demi-Bahamut:
*Change Wyrmwave to 2.5s recast, up potency to 200, add additional effect 30% to upgrade next Wyrmwave to Mega-Flare.
*Change Ahk Morn, change to 600 potency. additional effect: 100% chance the next Enkindle Bahamut will be upgraded to Tera-Flare
*Add Mega-Flare, 250 potency
*Add Tera-Flare, 800 potency
*Add Party Buff Eikon's Favor: All party members receive Direct Hit increase for 20s.
*Add Summoner buff: Increases magic damage dealt by 10% while lowering the MP cost of Ruin III.
*Lock-out Aetherflow during Bahamut summon. The reason is reduce the clunky nature of the current design, reduce large gaps of AF filler space, and reduce wait time to summon Bahamut.

The idea behind the Demi change was simply looking at it as the ultimate upgrade of DWT rather than a simple upgrade to Egi. You need to adjust in a way that merges both Egi and DWT into one but balance it out so you don't need AF to maximize damage. Ideally you would recast DoTs, Summon Bahamut, boom boom boom, Bahamut is de-summoned and you have 5s to 10s left until AF is ready again.

P.S. Devotion needs something but I need to go to work.