SMN - Most Glaring Issues

[Cyrox]

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.

[Cyrox]

1. Most crucially: Of all the dps classes, SMNs are the most punished if they accidentally mess up Aetherflow or die.

• Bane is ineffective (no adds/adds too far away to Bane)? No DWT/60sec dps punishment.
• Fester, but no DoTs on the target (more than 60 debuffs on the boss / tab-targeted to an add without any DoTs / etc.)? No DWT/60sec dps punishment.
• DWT came up but you hit Aetherflow first (a habit most of us learned during 3.X, and old habits are hard to break)? DWT, but still 60sec dps punishment.
• Die, for any reason whatsoever? Lose all progress built towards Bahamut Trance and start from scratch: over 120secs of dps punishment, on top of your rez weakness.

The 4.0 class changes were announced as making the classes simpler to play so that the gap between the dps of a casual player and an expert would shrink, but make one little screw up in 4.0 SMN's rotation and that dps gap is larger than ever.

[Cyrox]

2. Bahamut-egi. My fellow raiders are complaining (rightly so) that Bahamut-egi is blocking their ability to see mechanics. This is exasperated in close-quarters tightly grouped fights like Susano EX. My teammates have to swivel their cameras around when Bahamut-egi makes his oh-so-glorious appearances so they can see if they're getting targeted, etc. There have been deaths and unnecessary party damage inflicted thanks to Bahamut-egi. Things only get worse when running with more than one SMN in the party. I have started feeling apologetic whenever I have to summon him. Which is stupid; I didn't make the game! I'm playing by the game's rules, and now I get to hear everyone bitch about it in Discord every two minutes. So yeah. Bahamut-egi, while cool, has got to be fixed. Shrink him down, or make him transparent, or something. Too much screen real estate, and too much of a burden on my fellow teammates.

[Cyrox]

3. No aetherflow abilities in DWT. Yeah, nothing like running a dungeon. You have DWT ready to go. And because DWT is ready to go, you can't activate Aetherflow cuz see point #1. Tank pulls a trash pack, you go into DWT, Tri-disaster an add and then... dammit. Can't bane. FML. Nevermind the huge bane damage nerf, we can't even use it for the next 15 seconds! By then, the DoTs have gone through half their duration so you go an manually apply fresh ones on another add so you can bane them. Meanwhile, half the adds are already dead and... wow. What a waste. Might as well just painflare spam instead at that point.

4. Ruin III/IV spam machine. Like, 80% of the time. Yeah, SMN now gets to enjoy the super exciting/interesting job of... ruin spamming. They took away our Miasma II, our Bio, our Blizzard II, our ability to recast Shadowflare at will, our use for Swiftcast outside of rez/pet rez/Ruin IV squeeze. Yeah, this rotation is very inspiri... zzzz...

[Cyrox]

5. Pet maintenance. Give me Sustain back. Or give me INT-based healing like RDM got. Or have pets below a certain HP% heal themselves. Any of those. I don't care which.

Honestly, I do like that the devs have decided to move SMN away from the DoT-based pet class towards a burst-based pet/summon class. But they broke a few things that made SMNs fun, and they punish SMNs FAR TOO HARSHLY for a single misstep (often out of the player's control). I do believe the devs can find ways to make things right. I love playing SMN, and want to keep playing it for months and years to come. Keep up the good work, devs! Can't wait to tackle Omega Savage!

[Zarabeth]

I agree with the op that things do need to be fixed. I've taken to using energy drain instead of bane as bane messes up my rotation at least half the time. If no need for energy drain (full of mp) i go with another painflare. I also try to move back before popping Bahamut. It's not like we can't hit our target from across the room anyway.

[Mature]

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.

[Gallus]

I only agree with point 2...and maybe 5.
Bahamut can be annoying, should be slightly shrunk.

Pets should either be immune to AOEs and stuff or have a massive autoregen buff in dungeons/raids. They can't expect us to manually move the pet out of the aoes while dodging everything ourselves too and keep up with the DPS, that's some unreal amount of work (and it doesn't work either, because if you are making your pet move to dodge they are not attacking, which defeats the purpose of being a DPS class).

[Ariomi]

I only agree with point 2...and maybe 5.
Bahamut can be annoying, should be slightly shrunk.

Really? That so? Don't agree with Point 1?
Oh one more thing about Point 1. If you die, not only do you lose all your aetherflow/stacks, get weakness but your pet dies as well. Meaning you revive, and lose 20% more of your dps then any other class. 120 Sec punishment, + weakness + 20% damage loss till you spend 2400 mana to resummon your pet and however long that takes. Oh and your pet is also weakened from your death.

[Alisi]

Oh one more thing about Point 1. If you die, not only do you lose all your aetherflow/stacks, get weakness but your pet dies as well. Meaning you revive, and lose 20% more of your dps then any other class. 120 Sec punishment, + weakness + 20% damage loss till you spend 2400 mana to resummon your pet and however long that takes. Oh and your pet is also weakened from your death.

Yup. LOL. Have you experienced the fun of having your pet die right when you summon Bahamut? The animation takes long enough that it can happen and then you've just wasted a two minute set up. LOL. It's soul crushing to see the animation start and then ... go away. ;=; It's like "Imma gunna summon Baha -- oh wait, nevermind..."

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....

It's about 2 min 30 seconds but it can be less. Baha is summoned by using DWT twice and that requires consuming two full stacks of Aether (which has a minute CD to refresh) plus 15 seconds per DWT. It's less if you had previous stacks before the start of the fight.