For what its worth, I do miss the complexity and dps of the old SMN but I like the new visuals. However, looking past the visual aspect, the job feels very unengaging and overly simplistic. I feel the job is missing something. It used to be one of the most enganging jobs for me personally but this iteration has made it significantly less so. There are very few avenues for expression of "skill" outside of rushing.

If the simplicity is costing us DPS, I would much prefer having cast times/complexity back and increasing our dps. For the utility of having ressurection, SMN now bears a heavy cost for not having swift cast available. This is in comparison to RDM who has swift cast on demand.

aving played SMN since I basically started raiding, I've always enjoyed optimising SMN and enjoyed SMN being one of the stronger dps jobs (vain I know), but this iteration is not only lacking inspiration mechanically, but is also one of the most unengaging variations I have played. Oddly enough I am definitely feeling the dots being missing - but if that's not something you want to return to, so be it. But I feel like there should be some other management system or optimisation system for SMN to perform.

I am not sure how to solve the ressurection situation outside of giving it a long cooldown inside of duties (3-5minutes) and free use outside. I feel like it has been a burden that has been inflicted on the caster role for far too long and yet I understand that the healers should not share the burden alone (if that is SE's current stance).

I hope to see improvements in the near future. I miss the times of each SMN having something a bit special about them (contagion = magical burst window or extending dots, Radiant Shield = Physical Damage up/Reflecting damage though very niche, Titan = Yeah.). I would like for there to be more things to think about overall than simply standing still spamming my instant cast spells on cooldown and bursting every 120s.

My hope for SMN is that it becomes a more mechanically complex class with the dps to be below BLM but above Red Mage as I think that is its rightful place amongst the caster roles currently. My more selfish wish is that its closer to blackmage dps (more comparable to say MNK in terms of dps with BLM > MNK), loses ressurection, has less utility and is more complex.