Thread: I'm going to play the guessing game for SMN fix in 5.1

I don't know what I'd take bets on, but what I want to be fixed is this one specific thing:

The 'delay' between when a Demi is summoned and when it takes its first action. It 'looks' more natural when Phoenix comes out because it has to go through its EF animation, but it's also present with Bahamut. It plays very clunky, especially if you have unreliable latency and have to get that weaving juuuuust right to not ghost the first or last WW/SF. I'd like them to either remove EF or make it more useful. It's really awesome flavor, but I wouldn't mind it just being a straight up summoning animation when it comes out, rather than an actual buff it needs to queue up and use as a function of the game. That would allow the Demis to react automatically upon being summoned, like how Bahamut did once upon a time. He 'had' a summoning animation (the big wing burst as he came out), but you could force him to start WWing immediately. Phoenix summoning animation could work the same way. Going in the opposite direction, they could also make EF more useful and extend Demi time being out, or address ghosting directly. That is: if you get an ability off while the pet is out, the game will force the Demi to 'wait' and use that final ability before going away -- locking it in. Not exactly unfair because they only react with GCD spells anyway, but maybe their Enkindle would have its recast timer increased to compensate... because I know it's very close to being ready for a third hit once the Demi leaves (as it is right now). This would, of course, remove a huge amount of challenge from the job. But! It would make it a little more user friendly. I couldn't imagine just diving into SMN and figuring all this stuff out in an afternoon. It's one of those things you have to witness and experience.

There are some other quality of life changes they may introduce:

Reducing recast timer of Tri-Disaster by even 5 seconds (to be 45 seconds instead of 50) would greatly reduce the likelihood of dots ever falling off, or having to 'clip' them as they are falling off. This would make the current rotation a little more forgiving.

Further Ruin might be adjusted to reduce the pressure to double/triple weave. If EA remained on the same cooldown with the same charges, but gave more than one stack of FR from each use, you'd have more stacks to 'work' with when it came time to weave OGC abilities. Instead of cramming everything you can into one GCD, you could comfortably space them out between your extra Ruin 4 casts. Potency would need to be adjusted, of course, or perhaps they'd 'give' this to us because the ceiling would *technically* be very close to what it is now... just less difficult to reach. And you'd have more freedom to save your Ruin 4s for movement. Why would EA give more charges per use? Maybe they'll tag that onto a trait.

I believe my last and final proposal would be the only thing to make the job less 'busy' as he described it, but there will still be a lot going on unless you rework the timing/frequency of using EA. I wouldn't love it, but they could increase the cooldown on EA and increase the amount of Ruin 4s you get, plus increase the cap. Or they could not increase the cap and instead adjust 2/4 potency. Who knows.

The other things would be quality of life changes that allow for comfortable new player entry.

Would I love if all these changes were added? Yes and no. I've seen this job as a SERIOUS challenge because of how everything currently works... so reducing the gap between the decent and amazing players wouldn't exactly feel good. But, I'd roll with the punches if it meant people were generally more happy with the job.