[ShadowHolyFlyingDragon]

My main gripe with SMN was simply the downtime in between BP's and needing something constructive to do. And curing is not what I'm talking about.

I really don't understand why SE won't lower the recast time of BP's. How would it be out of balance to do so?

I mean, my 75BLM can do 3 AM2 spells in less than a minute... and that total damage normally exeeds 4000. In fact, while subbing /SCH its kinda sick how my BLM can but out a shit load of dmg in less than a minute on a God. Yet a SMN has to wait 3x the amount of time in order to get off maybe 700-900 dmg?

I mean, I know BLM only concentrate on direct damage, but what would it throw out of whack if SMN was brought up to this level?

I also agree that some BP's could use new sprucing up to make them more competitive with others jobs abilites.

I don't know about the whole perpetuating concept. I mean, I guess giving the fact SMNs specialize in summoning something else to do all the work for them and how SMN is completely useless DD'wise, what would it hurt to give the Avatars a boost in melee? I mean, BST's have great melee skills which allow them to solo. What would it hurt if SMN's, who have no potential for melee abilites whatsoever, were instead allowed to have their Avatars take that position over?

With the increased offensive/defensive abilites of lowering BP's recast time and boosting melee dmg on Avatars, perpetuation costs then would feel to me as valid.

And this is small tweaking, not a complete major overhaul of the entire job which completely re-invents the damn thing.

By simply taking into consideration what the standard is on another job and bringing SMN up to par, it would be a more viable job to pick in party.

Because as it stands, I won't invite a SMN to do anything these days when I can get another job that will do a better job and produce better results. Sad I know.

[Darkhound]

I share MANY (if not all) of your thoughts my friend!

[Karinya]

Originally Posted by Ketaru

This is watching a boss in the game physically use the summon animation (green sparkles and fireballs and all) to summon this avatar.

Kirin uses the same animation to summon the lesser gods. That doesn't make them avatars, let alone player-usable avatars.

Admittedly, he doesn't do the hand gesture from FFX, but that's probably true of the boss you're talking about too.


P.S. I think it's funny that SHFD's definition of "something constructive" is "not curing". So by constructive, you mean destructive? :D The fact that SE's idea of the job is different from yours does not make the job broken or gimped. If you don't invite SMNs that's your loss. And since SMNs can do a lot of things that BLMs can't, or can't do nearly as well, *and* with less hate issues, it would indeed throw them out of whack if they could do the *one thing* that BLMs do better than any other job in the game as well as BLMs do it. That's not rocket science.

[Armando]

Nothing wrong with asking for a job to be less boring (which was actually the motivation for my suggestions in the first place.) BRD has been in an almost uncontested seat of power for years, but if they asked for an overhaul to how the job plays I would support them whole-heartedly. The way the job is designed is horrible. The same thing could be said of MNK to a lesser extent (I wouldn't call it horrible, but still bad.) It's a very capable DD, but such an uninteresting job to play. It's almost entirely passive; nothing to do besides marvel at how hard and fast you punch and throw out your WS like everyone else.

Most of the jobs that came out pre-ToAU are very very bland compared to the 5 that came afterwards. MNK stands there popping Focus, BLU has a customizable spell list.

[Ketaru]

I'm going to keep agreeing that SMN needs to be tweaked in how often it can do Blood Pacts, and the MP cost to use those Blood Pacts. I'm also going to keep disagreeing with how other jobs are looked to as justification why.

I mean, my 75BLM can do 3 AM2 spells in less than a minute... and that total damage normally exeeds 4000. In fact, while subbing /SCH its kinda sick how my BLM can but out a shit load of dmg in less than a minute on a God. Yet a SMN has to wait 3x the amount of time in order to get off maybe 700-900 dmg?

If all were so simple, why don't more BLMs sub /SCH and do this? You should be able to answer this yourself if you are a BLM and why this is a limiting factor that SMN does not have to deal with. If you seriously want to use this as justification for a SMN boost, you should be looking to PUP instead.

I don't know about the whole perpetuating concept. I mean, I guess giving the fact SMNs specialize in summoning something else to do all the work for them and how SMN is completely useless DD'wise, what would it hurt to give the Avatars a boost in melee? I mean, BST's have great melee skills which allow them to solo. What would it hurt if SMN's, who have no potential for melee abilites whatsoever, were instead allowed to have their Avatars take that position over?

BST is not the only job that can solo. It specializes in chaining Tough mobs to be sure and it has a few more options for soloing EXP that others do not. But BST's melee skill is not the reason for its ability to solo. Our Axe could be B or even C probably and we'd still be able to solo. It's not an uncommon practice to actually restrain our damage output when we solo.

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by Karinya

SHFD

Off topic, but is it bad that I read this as SHDL at first? >.>;

[Aksannyi]

Well it's true that in a minute of unloading nukes on BLM I can easily do about 4k damage, depending (of course) upon what I cast and whatnot. I never really played SMN at 75 except on a few highly resistant mobs (Hi Tiamat and Odin) so I have no idea what a fully powered BP with capped ... whatever ... will do on most mobs, but I'm sure that a single blood pact doesn't even touch 4k. SMN spike damage doesn't even compare to most other jobs' damage over time.

It's very powerful when AF'ed, but ... that just makes it a niche job. Meh.

However, they are different jobs. I would like to see a slightly shorter timer on BPs or just something else that can be done with avatars or ... something! I don't know. It does suck that you can stand up, summon (5 seconds?), assault, blood pact (another 5 seconds), and release. Rest 55 seconds, repeat. BP Ward in a lot of xp parties weren't even worth using. The job is more boring than watching water not boil. It needs something else, god even if other subs could give it a boost or something, other than making SMN just another main healer that actually really sucks at main healing.

[Malacite]

I hate BRD because I feel like a fucking Robot playing the job.

Sing the same 2-4 god damn songs every 2 minutes, all of course which sound exactly the same, and then just sit there. Can't melee because BRD's melee skills are a joke on any kind of NM. You can cure, but oooh yay that's exciting. And then there's pulling in merit parties which I liken to having an aneurysm. The job was very fun to me and I enjoyed for the 1st 40 levels, but then it just got to be so damn bland and soul crushing.


MNK IMO, would be far more interesting if they'd do something about Guard's ridiculously low proc & skill up rate and gave MNK some incentive to take the heat. All that HP, VIT, Evasion etc and it usually just goes to waste except in a really good merit party. Nunchucks would also be cool.


Back on topic, SMN is in a similar boat. It has all these cool things to call out and various moves, but it's horribly impractical to leave them out and you usually only end up using a very small set of pacts much like a BRD. FYI SE, variety is the spice of life.

---------- Post added at 04:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:03 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Aksannyi

Well it's true that in a minute of unloading nukes on BLM I can easily do about 4k damage, depending (of course) upon what I cast and whatnot. I never really played SMN at 75 except on a few highly resistant mobs (Hi Tiamat and Odin) so I have no idea what a fully powered BP with capped ... whatever ... will do on most mobs, but I'm sure that a single blood pact doesn't even touch 4k. SMN spike damage doesn't even compare to most other jobs' damage over time.

It's very powerful when AF'ed, but ... that just makes it a niche job. Meh.

This. Very much this. People like to go on & on about how SMN supposedly has this uber hate-free spike damage, when there are 2 things to consider;

1) It's nowhere near on the level of a SAM, DRK or BLM's spike potential.

2) So many NMs/HNMs these days are zergged to death within 10 minutes, sometimes under 5 so it's irrelevant. Funny how SE had a problem with throwing more BLM & RNG at a mob but they don't say shit about an army of SAM which has arguably become just as effective if not more so. Haste abuse + ridiculously powerful WS = fair play apparently.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Malacite

2) So many NMs/HNMs these days are zergged to death within 10 minutes, sometimes under 5 so it's irrelevant.

Well, not all of us are in LSs capable of fielding people (the number and the gears) doing that. Are you in one which do that all the time?

[Aksannyi]

I was. We needed maybe one SAM, a THF (obviously) and some BLMs, obviously our tank party. SAM would self-SC, we'd MB. THF would SC with a PLD, we'd MB. Fafnir would die so quickly when my ls was at full power.

[Malacite]

Friends of mine take down Tinnin in about 5-10, and Sera can be beaten with 6 >.>


>.< if only my old sky LS was capable of whooping Kirin's ass that fast.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Malacite

Friends of mine take down Tinnin in about 5-10, and Sera can be beaten with 6 >.>


>.< if only my old sky LS was capable of whooping Kirin's ass that fast.

So, you're not in one of those super-melee-power LS, and the argument that SMN is useless as damage source in zerg fights is completely irrelevant to your day-to-day play in FFXI?

[Armando]

So, you're not in one of those super-melee-power LS, and the argument that SMN is useless as damage source in zerg fights is completely irrelevant to your day-to-day play in FFXI?

Why does it matter? As much as Malacite annoys the hell out of me, if something is stupid it's stupid regardless of whether it affects him/me/anyone else specifically. Like the fact that BRD being poorly designed bothers me even though I've never played the job (and probably never will.)

For instance I've never done endgame, but I have a terrible hatred for the formulas that dominate meleeing. The TP system was poorly thought-out - Attack is completely irrelevant to TP gain, and TP doesn't scale with multi-hitting or attack speed, so everything is "Haste Haste Haste" "Accuracy Accuracy Accuracy" "Multi-hit weapon!". Likewise I've never been in a situation where it's been a matter of life or death but I find it equally stupid that mob TP gain is directly proportional to the number of people smacking it, when two people already feed a mob TP rather quickly.

If it's stupid, it's stupid. Too bad it's too late to change most of these things.

[ShadowHolyFlyingDragon]

Originally Posted by Ketaru

If all were so simple, why don't more BLMs sub /SCH and do this? You should be able to answer this yourself if you are a BLM and why this is a limiting factor that SMN does not have to deal with. If you seriously want to use this as justification for a SMN boost, you should be looking to PUP instead.

Well big deal. Don't argue over semantics here. There's nothing wrong with my point, which you've missed. And I can agree, had you been so thorough to expound on your abrupt suggestion, that PUP indeed has at its dispoal the ability to have it's automaton cast spells in sucession without some kind of a one minute delay, where SMN does not. The PUP job is very active and can do things in that 1 minute, I concur! Why can't the SMN job be?

My point was simple. If BLM's are capable of a certain range of damage in one minute, why can't the SMN also be? They're both mage jobs in a mage class. If the BP counter was lowered, it would give alot of us SMN's what we want, more battle time. That's all. As long as we're put on par with the rest of the playing field, I think it would be fair.

And BLM/SCH hasn't been given the "herd mentality exposure" that most high end damaging job combos receive, probably because you just don't see it often due to the fact people love their BLM/WHM combo. When I played BLM/SCH for the first time in my SKY/SEA/DYNA ls'es, everyone scoffed at me because I wasn't doing the norm, BLM/WHM. Then, when they watched how I could bust out two spells in less than 20 seconds that could equal around 3000 damage, not to mention, sneak in bursts on sc's where the melee were chatoicly spamming their ws'es together, gave me some notoriety. Suddenly, all the BLM's in my ls'es were playing /SCH. It's a fkn great combo.

And I hear that SMN/SCH is starting to appear. Tell me exactly what's wrong with these job set ups that they're not worth comparing? /SCH at least gives SMN something to do while waiting on the BP timer, e.g. cast BLM spells with some adequate form of delivery, without having to rely on playing back up healer -all- the time.

BST is not the only job that can solo. It specializes in chaining Tough mobs to be sure and it has a few more options for soloing EXP that others do not. But BST's melee skill is not the reason for its ability to solo. Our Axe could be B or even C probably and we'd still be able to solo. It's not an uncommon practice to actually restrain our damage output when we solo.

I wasn't pointing out that BST's axe skills are the only reason it can solo. My inferrence was simple. If a BST can summon a pet and use the job's own melee skills to back up the pet in the battle at hand, where as the SMN has zero melee skills, why can't the SMN be on par with this kind of situation? Why not give avatars the melee support that the SMN lacks to bring them up to par with a BST's class? SMN deserves a reason to keep an avatar out in melee mode. As it stands, it's the MP cost to worth is not feasible.


SMN is a slightly watered down version of a BLM/WHM/BRD/BST. Just because the job has a few of the skill sets of several other jobs, while not being a master at any of them, doesn't mean SMN can't be even a little better equipped to make it more worthwhile. However, SE's concern obviously was such that they did not want to make the job terribly overpowered. Yet, in all of their conservatism, they've put the straps on too tight, which has caused SMN players to complain for years about the job's suitability.

Need I mention the amount of bullshyt you have to go thru to get SMN set up to play which is not worth the trade off? Obviously. But now I'm getting into dead horse beating issues.... lol so I stop right there.

[Aksannyi]

Originally Posted by ShadowHolyFlyingDragon

BLM/WHM combo

lol

Don't really have anything else to add.

Oh yes ... BLM/WHM sucks, except for a few things, but mostly, BLM/RDM or gtfo.