Goodbye Vana'dielFollow

Well, you'd be wrong about that, too.

That's not to say that the flaw will always be a critical debilitating factor in every single situation, but it IS a flaw that cannot be ignored when the big dangerous tanking jobs come up. Just like how when MP needs to be dumped to either Curebomb or spam nukes, max MP will be a factor. (As an addendum: If max MP were not a factor, hardly anyone would bother with Max Sublimation merits. The primary point of those merits is to be able to enter a fight with higher "max" MP.)



People are always going to compare things, and in the end, you can lay things out and determine whether some roles are performed better by some jobs than others. It's not unlike Smash Bros. tiers. As long as the characters are not 100% carbon copies of each other, they can eventually be determined to be better/worse than everyone else.

Just to insert my own little plug into the mix of things, I do think it's rather unfair that RDM has to get to 75+merits in order to get a party-targetable ST version of one of their own spells, whereas SCH has the ability to sub RDM starting at 66 (no merits), rip off that spell, and cast a stronger, AoE version of it for roughly the same MP cost. As far as RDM is concerned, that's a flaw. And yes, the spell I'm referring to is Phalanx.

Edited, Nov 20th 2009 7:14pm by Fynlar

It is a shame that nobody ever invited you to puddings or wamoura manaburns. I can actually count the amount of times I got invited to pet burn parties on my thumbs because it is twice. The exp per hour was also about 3k both times.



Oh, you are now arguing with fake facts? That will will work great. For 70 MP a SMN would deal about 300 damage tops. You telling me your 150 MP costing spells do 300 damage tops? Yea, right. Keep lying to make your job look worse.

And as for hate, you are as always exaggerating. I've spammed 75BPs on ZNM mobs without pulling hate at all. My avatar probably has at most -5 enmity and nuke with 45 seconds intervalls. That means any BLM with -5 enmity and nuking with intervalls would also NEVER pull hate.

Yes, my avatar can pull hate if I decided to drop a 1.2k nuke the first 5 seconds of the battle, but last I checked balance was not judged by how fast you can suicide the first 15 seconds of a battle.

Good BLM can out-nuke and out-live a SMN. Bad BLMs though, will die. But go ahead and claim that bad BLMs should determine what is balanced and not, it will be a great argument.



And SMN isn't brought at all because they can't even stun. That is if we are going to be describing worst case scenarios like you seem to do.



Brilliant. Now your argument about how broken your job is depends on what you can do with your subjob? BLM buffs terrible with /BRD so they need a buffing update! Brilliant.



I've already told you it depends on LS. My LS brings SMN to Odin, VRTRA and the new Xarcbard [S] dragon. We happen to bring BLM to Tiamat, Jorm, Ouryu, Dynamis, Omega, Ultima, whole slew of SEA, whole slew of SKY (except for Kirin), Limbus, Medusa, Sandworm, Fafnir, Adamantoise, King Behemoth, etc.

If your LS can't use BLMs, ditch it. They can be used pretty much everywhere without being a bad choice. (Maybe not optimal)



Thanks for making it obvious that your only complaint is popularity and has nothing to do with game mechanics. I however am complaining that abilities and spells are not fitting into the game we are playing. You CAN'T debuff a mob with longer recast than the debuffs lasts. You WON'T toss up defense bonuses that do not matter. SMN is just a huge pile of "why bother" spells and abilities.

Seriously, if you are going to argue with me, try to at least argue about the same thing.

Overview of topic:

You are saying both SMN and BLM are equally unpopular.
I'm saying SMN have more tools that need fixing.

Having tools that need fixing = BETA.
Being unpopular = player bias.



It is ironic that every single time people don't manage to follow my line of thinking, they throw the nonsense card. Do you do that while in foreign countries too? "YOUR LANGUAGE IS SILLY!" as soon as you don't know it.



You are correct that it is a matter of opinion. BP:Rages are like WSes, they add damage and status debuffs, but they also cost MP. The question is, should we consider SMN a melee job and say the BP-delay is balanced, or should we consider it a mage job and complain that the BP-delay is breaking the balance?

Let us assume viewing it as a melee job is correct, so I can't complain on BP:Rage timers. Then a new complaint comes up... SMN can't make level 3 SCs. If it were a melee job, this should be included.

Let us backtrack and say it is a mage job, now the lack of level 3 SCs is not a problem... but again the delay between pacts become an issue to debuff mobs.

Whatever you try and label SMN as, you'll run into something that is incorrectly designed. Unless you want to call it a worthless job, since most requirements to be worthless is there.



While technically true, you are making it sound a lot more impressive than it is.

- Most jobs can solo certain mobs. COR, BLM, RDM, SCH, NIN, THF, BST all come to mind.
- Astral Flow-burn is available to everyone. Just that you can't level more than 1 none-SMN job per party.
- Astral Flow-burning BCNMs is in general a method that also helps 4 or so none-SMNs. Not to mention there are roughly 3 BCNMs in the whole game that this procedure is performed at, when there are more like 200 BCNMs in the game.
- The amount of magic resistant mobs are greatly exaggerated. On the top of my head I remember Ixion, Cerberus, Kirin. I were going to say Khimara, but having seen JPs nuke it to death with a RDM over using a SMN I considered I'd skip it.
- Removing links is a wonderful ability, but not one that is considered good enough to actually warrent a party slot. Since it is the only job who can, we can pretty much tell by the invite rate how high this skill is regarded.
- Off-tanking is more about soloing usually. The only other place you'd tank with avatars is in an exp party post 70, and if you are using DD SMNs in meripos I'm not sure what to say.
- Soloing BCNMs sounds hot, but I can only think of Shooting Fish that SMN can solo and no other job can.


Let me try and make one about BLM.

- Soloing BCNMs.
- Manaburning BCNMs.
- Soloing NMs.
- Soloing exp.
- Dealing magic damage to 90% of the game HNM.
- Being able to sleep links.
- Being able to escape from a bad link.
- Kite nuking.
- RETRACE!!!!

I guess BLM is at least as awesome as SMN. Too bad we are making lists of what we can do, and not about what we can't. Since SMN has tons of more things they can't do well than BLM has, which is my whole argument in this thread.



And you just want BLM to nuke for 9999. If we should drop the lies in our arguments, they would look a lot more valid.

My desire for SMN is to make it functional. It has so much that is so broken.

1. How would you like BLM requiring to wait 50 seconds after a pull before nuking, with the addition of having 60% chance the nuke fails and you don't cast anything. That is how SMN has it with spirits.

2. How would you like BRD needing MP for songs, 1.5 minute durations on songs and 1 minute recast on songs? Because that would STILL put BRD as better than SMN at buffing.

3. How would you like WAR getting ZERO benefits from haste and attack gear? Because that is currently more or less how avatars function.

If you combine them you get SMN. A WAR who has no haste or attack gear, that can put upp 1-2 buffs for MP costs, and get a random spell every 50 seconds that is very unlikely to be a nuke. Not to mention the secret penalty of perpetuation, secret penalty of needing to change avatar to get the correct buff and correct WS and that getting that random spell every 50 seconds clashes with the 45 seconds recast on buffs and attacks.


So what are the usual thins I want?

1. I want a spell cycle and no reset on spirit timers. Every 100th second you should get a tier IV spell or AM spell. Every 100th second you should get a debuff. With gear this would change to every 60th second you get a nuke and every 60th second you get a debuff, with a cycle of 30 sec -> debuff -> 30 sec -> nuke. Overpowered? Yea, if a BLM must wait 61+ seconds between nukes it is overpowered, else it isn't.

2. MP costs should go on buffs, duration should be 5 min. Now a SMN can toss up phalanx (for -15 damage), icespikes (for 10 damage each hit taken), shining ruby (10% def, yay), warcry (oh yea, 8% attack up!), ecliptic howl.

Moonphase/daytime should go, no randomness.

Dispel, sleepga, slowga and similar should be on yet another timer.

3. There should be food to enhance avatar attack. BRD/COR buffs should count on pets. BP-timer should be lowered by haste spells. (10 reduction by haste spell, 11 reduction with dual march).



This would basically allow a SMN to keep up with the competition, while still being worse than them. Nobody would pick SMN wards over BRD buffs, SMN rages over WAR WSes, spirit nukes over BLM nukes, but when you can get mediocre buffs, mediocre nukes and mediocre WSes, then perhaps it might be worth inviting a SMN just because it does more things poorly than what other jobs do good.

Same deal as today's SMN, except we suck less. But of course, sucking any less than today's SMN is obviously overpowered. As proven by the 18 other jobs (BST is allowed to suck more than SMN, to keep it out of overpowered status)

That one still stands. I'm talking about all the things that are in an unfinished and useless state, and you are sitting there repeating the same things about what we can do now.

You need to either shut up or learn the difference.





Actually the issue is still that I'm looking at what SMN COULD do, if it ever was finished. A SMN COULD dispel, if it wasn't on a global Ward timer stuck on Fenrir. A SMN COULD give out MAB if it wasn't related to time of day. A SMN COULD give out refresh, if it wasn't stupidly bound to an avatar that has perpetuation costs and prevent you from resting.



What I don't get is how you can say this AND say this:



Let me remind you that a spirit is a BLM-pet. It has tier IV and AM and DoTs, as well as a few RDM debuffs. Calling a BLM-pet "not supposed to nuke" while sitting there sayign BLM-mains "should nuke better" is nothing but 100% concentrated *********




I don't mind that you cut stuff out, but why did you refill it with crap that was even worse? I mean, I'm sorry, but I'll have to spend one of my monthly rate downs on that post just because it is so immensely dumb.

Go back to your LS and explain to them why Stoneskin for 250 HP for 15 min is better than stoneskin for 350 HP for 5 min. Also explain to them why a COR unlucky chaos roll is better than minuets due to being 5 min instead of like 2 min long. Because that is what you just wrote. Oh yea, don't forget to explain to them why a job that can land attack bonus on mages are superior to one that only land it on melee.

I'll be waiting for their replies here.

I'm sorry to say that I'm way ahead of you on the concept of what SMN was meant to do. It was simply meant to keep an avatar out hitting a mob and then once a minute use a pact. That is it. You know, like throw slow on the mob and then keep DoTing it with the pet.

But since it is terribly inefficient, people made up their own opinions of how a job should be played. SMN/WHM being able to heal, was now "meant to heal", because it worked well. 70BPs being the only pacts worth their MP cost also quickly became "The purpose of SMN". SMN was simply "meant to level 70 levels until they could help deal damage".

I however do not agree with "If it is poor, work around the problem" way of thinking. Instead I've been looking at what the job "has potential to do". Nothing more, nothing less.




A good example of the SMN situation:

A person breaks their leg. You now have two solutions. Take them to the hospital and get it casted, or tell the person to not move, because not moving will mean they don't need the leg and the leg being broken won't matter.

I'm the guy suggestion the hospital, this forum is a bunch suggesting we leave it as it is, because as long as we don't try and use it, it won't be a problem.

I completely agree with you all that the guy with the broken leg isn't dead. He can talk, eat, and probably play guitar. In that sense, SMN is not dead, we can heal, 70BP, favor and stuff. But I think fixing the leg would be a great deal better than to leave him there. Aka, I think fixing spirits and wards and everything else would be a really good idea.




I know, but I can't leave leaking pipes alone. If it can be fixed, I'll suggest fixing. A dripping toilet won't kill me, but one who doesn't would make my life better.

Buddy, methinks ye need a wee break from the vidja games.