Dev Tracker - News, Discussions

Probably worth pointing out that all the major merc groups use SMN for their aeonic mercs. They'd be doubling the amount of time needed to execute a run if it were nerfed.

Endgame revolves around 2 year old content because the only new content added since then was trivial to defeat and had a ridiculous lockout. It has nothing to do with mercing. Very few shells actually spent the time to get full aeonics, most do them at a slower pace.

If SE were to consistantly add new and meaty content, nobody would care about aeonics or t4s regardless of how they were being killed. Fact is, at present, that's the hardest content most players will ever try. It shouldn't be defeatable by people who don't even use gear swaps using an incredibly simple strategy.

Outside of the AF/AC window a good RNG or COR should be able to comfortably outparse a SMN, especially if they aren't running in constantly to maintain AM. SMN is powerful but people really need to step back on the hyperbole, outside of that burst period its going to get schooled dps wise by a load of jobs.

Also what's optimal for a mercing situation (or any low-man setup for that matter) does not mean to say it scales equally to other approaches.

The thing people seem to ignore about the Escha stuff is that its fundamentally about creating Aeonic weapons. T4 drops are mostly meh and once you have the single kill required for the vorseal buff, they are just obstacles with minimal intrinsic value of their own. So, allowing mercs to finish peoples sets isn't actually that unbalancing, compared to the speed with which say a full alliance can create up to 18 aeonics in a single cycle.

Which is why, AC zerging is less unbalanced in my view than is generally stated. If you are rolling with a full alliance I assure you its far from optimal. Even assuming you have enough HQ smn to offset to 300k hp per char hike on the target, you still would need sufficient support to optimize their dps. Its just unwieldy and unreliable compared to other methods.

PS. That people are so fixated on VS always makes me laugh too, Pred Claws does significantly better in many situations, but as per usual noone seems to want to deviate from the cookie-cutter.

Theres a lot wrong with that post.

Pretty sure it would be a waste of time to even point out everything wrong in it.

tl:dr version
Conduit and conduit mimicing is the entire issue. What happens without conduit isn't relevant to anything.

What's optimal simply is optimal. there is not "best for you but not for them" best is best period. Conduit burns are even faster than brewing, that's seriously *** up. No matter how you try to justify it.

The gil fountain from scrubs to mercs is quite a large amount of value

Scrubs with shinies is the epitome of unbalanced.
Nothing needs be said when speaking about one's own view/opinion instead of facts.

On smaller servers it's difficult finding summoners. We have two in my LS, but we don't resort to a conduit strat unless it's Fu or we can't do a NM any other way. We finally got to T4s for our first aeonic .. after working on ourselves (very casually once a week if we weren't doing Omen/Ambuscade) since late last year.

I had a few players jump servers to join us lately. One player specifically said to me that if we turned up to T4 and never tried any other way but "SMN only", he would leave the LS. And I agreed, I'm not a SMN .. but my dad is, and I don't want him to have all the fun. I want to feel useful too .. to just stand around giving rolls or setting up chains on my Scholar would be a seriously mind-numbing way of finishing our Aeonics.

Don't get me wrong though, I don't want SMN nerfed as it would completely negate the work my dad put in to his job. He's played it for many years, through all the good/hard times (anyone remember the Korroloka tunnel days when Summoners burned EXP at the expense of the servers?), and is certainly not someone who geared it just so he could steamroll Aeonics. He got Nirvana because he loves the job (his main is Warrior though), not because we needed him to conduit all the things.

While I understand it would certainly be quicker and easier to burn through T4s this way, I'd almost feel like we're cheating the game. We would be bypassing what makes these NMs so dangerous, and if we can handle them without burning .. we can handle future content as well. By working together on the hardest content, we become stronger as a group.

Again please don't get me wrong, I can understand why some turn to this method. Some players naturally want to make ALL the aeonics and/or merc them to get tons of gil, and it's the easiest way to do it. If SMN burning wasn't a thing, they'd find the next best thing and people would complain that "everyone" only uses that method.

Not every SMN you see is one that was made specifically for burning, and we should realize that nerfing conduit would make them less relevant, and for many years the job has had it's ups-and-downs. I like the fact I can put my 54-year-old father on a job I know is useful and doesn't require him to think about a million things. We can't expect every player to be so epic they can straight up melee T4s and know exactly what to do when, how, where, and with the right sets.

My group will have more fun trying to beat T4s without using this method .. even if it takes us a bit longer. We ain't in no rush, and a win's a win, whether its done in 20 seconds, or 20 minutes. We'll appreciate our shinies (and each other ) even more so in the long run.

Really don't understand how people defend AC burning beyond "plz don't nerf."

It really invalidates the game. There is no way you should be able to avoid all mechanics of the game, while being the strongest DPS by miles and miles with one set of gear.

Yes you do.

The same reason the exact same thing happened with GEO. The same reason the exact same thing happens every time BLU is brought up. The exact same reason for Embrava. And buff locking. and every single other nerf that has ever happened and will happen.

They like to take advantage of it. and gain profit from it. They will lie and obfuscate to maintain gains.

The fact is the devs are clearly not in agreement with your position or they'd have done something about AC/AF months ago.

Which ties to my point about "balance" as measured by the overall rate at which new Aeonics are made, as opposed to someone like you who is more concerned with a subjective view of by whom they are made.

Also I'm not saying "plz don't nerf" or "plz nerf". I'm on the fence. On one hand I can see it's overpowered. On the other, those who love the job and geared it for that reason, should they have their usefulness nerfed? I like to include different jobs when possible, and if conduit was severely nerfed, I'd be having to tell my dad "sorry about that Nirvana you made, and the abjuration gear you bought .. it's not useful anymore".

Is that fair? Just because a bunch of other players spammed Aeonics .. is it fair to make him less useful? I didn't want BST nerfed either (even though everywhere you looked you saw them), I wanted SE to make other jobs more useful so other strategies would become more available. And it's the same old story. Once using a melee/range/MB setup becomes just as quick/easier than a conduit burn, SMN burns will slowly fade away, outside of groups which specifically has players who enjoy the job.

At this point it's too late anyways, the "damage" has been done. Just look at the players with ALL those achievement points thanks to their constant conduit burning. Nerfing it now is like .. cleaning a tooth after a dentist has pulled it out. Pretty pointless.

Could we not talk about smn and talk about ilvl dyna

I dont care if you play ez mode smn with zero skill to get your aeonics... nor do I care how you kill stuff with out them... or how you cant because your a normie

-----


I really hope ilvl relic boosts the augment effects of each piece. Rng body gonna be smexy hopefully

Not sure how nerfing Conduit would make your dad quit Summoner. Unless that's all he does is Conduit. Summoner is far more useful than what people are giving it credit for.

You can provide aoe 25% double attack, 7+ min hastega IIs etc while being the top DPS. There's no way it should be that way at all.

Not really. They could have decided to leave it, as a way of weakening the content over time. You know, like a reisenjima equivalent to phase displacers.

They could also be blissfully unaware, as has been the case for many things in the past.

You argue that mercs provide less aeonics per run, but there's nothing stopping them from getting aeonics themselves either. There's nothing stopping trash players from burning up SMN and getting aeonics without learning any of the game's mechanics. You're using false equivalency, there's no reasonable argument that SMN in its current state is doing anything but drastically increasing the amount of aeonics produced.

If you consider any piece of content in the game to be a mechanism by which to drive player engagement and activity, there are plenty of benefits to accelerating Aeonic cycle completion.

First and foremost that whole quest is somewhat lopsided to begin with due to farming 50k beads being far and away the biggest time investment of the process.

I mean Zi'tah full clear takes roughly 50mins with a full alliance, Ru'Aun is longer, maybe 2hrs assuming you aren't farming a WoC set. Reisen T1-T3, again a couple of hours at most (may be severely overstating thinking about it), which leaves the 7 T4's to deal with, time taken on which will vary dramatically based on approach and how much party reorganization/setup is involved.

Fight time is minimal compared to that involved in the initial farm, especially outside of events where Quetz is by far the most convenient to grind.

The point I'm making is that SMN's utility within that whole process is not excessive really, on a minute-by-minute basis most other jobs will see more "action".

In fact I'd say the only place where its really a requirement is mewing Erinys.

Has anyone in this thread leveled SMN, and just used the AF/AC + Volt Strike combo in NQ Apogee gear with 0 JP? Also no Nirvana?

I'm curious how it stacks up vs. those with Nirvanas and HQ gear/good Reisenjima augs.

That's wholly inaccurate. They never acknowledge it's broken, and nothing gets done in less than one year. SMN still has 4 months before it can even begin to be adjusted by square standards.

I did. I took smn out to kill (random mob) when I had zero jp, all NQ gear and grioavlr.

Then went back and killed same mob with 2100 4/5 apogee+1 and Gridarvr. The damage more than doubles. So it's not *totally free* you do have to gain your jp and you *do* have to gear.

But it's free compared to a melee, and requires no swaps, and maybe a week of farming gil to get max power out of it. and it only took a couple days to go from 0-2100 jp.

I havent personally, I am a 2100 smn in higher mid-grade gear no nirvana, and a few in my ls though have been on smn with a very small amount of jp and just NQ apogee gear more or less. There is a great deal of difference in dmg.

When I parse vs a nirvana who knows what they are doing, I will lose by a good 10-30% of their dmg (with am3 up of course). However those smns with like gear to me, but very low jps always had 10-20% less than me at their best, and oftentimes it wouldnt shock me to see them at 1/3rd a real smns dmg.

We have a few smn who have damn near perfect gear but no nirvana and they can keep up with our nirvana smns just fine, always within a 10% margin.

While I have no data on hand to back this up, I am sure this is most people experience. A smn whos decked in gear w/o nirvana will have no issues dealing his part of the dmg for a win. A nirvana with sub par gear will do okay, but ultimately fall short. a smn with no jp will have a struggle because thats alot of lost dmg.

In the end the most impactful part seem to be if you have a Good lua / or macros for your AC/AF time, if you use food (most smn dont) and if you aren't the unlucky one on some lame mechanic making you useless for the fight.

I don't know why people who already have capped Gil and possibly used the SMN Method themselves to get Aeonic Weapons are crying..

Game is living on.. it's all about choice in the method you want to use.

The people who exploited SMN Zerg this way have already profited, capped their Gil, made 13/13 weapons and now are just cruising around on vacations around the world....

It's too late to complain now. Market economy has already been effected and game is still going.

LS's that choose to utilize another method will do so. My LS doesn't always use SMN we try to challenge ourselves and do it other ways for fun..

If SE wanted to fix this they would of done it a long long time ago..

It's way too late. Even if they do, it won't affect the people who already got the weapons they wanted and are done with content..

At this point the economy allows for people to purchase these weapons from groups at a pretty good cost. Making these weapons hyper exclusive again won't change much. The content is dead now.

Look forward to the new Dynamis and content coming up and next year's as well.. Get over it.. quit the game if you're bored..

Hi, i'm mainly THF and started to equip my SMN a few weeks ago.
First thing, whoever writes, that SMN doesn't need equip... well start playing this Job before you write anything. You need at least 6 different Gearsets to function correctly. The 2h conduit ist a 1h timer on it and even when its overpowered the SMN can only use it every 60min. Any melee should outdmg them between this time.
And when you do not have 2100 JPs you hit ***in the endgame. We tried it ourself in Omen with 2 so-so equiped SMN and barely 500 JPs and 1 Master with good (but not the best) equip. The DMG difference was high.
Every Job needs love and some work to be able to be good, stop bitching at each other and when you don't like SMN burn, then search for Melee's and supporter. i would be happy to join a full alliance for the NMs to get my Aeonic weapon done.

The only thing i hate as a melee is, that u get allways one-shotted or almost one-shotted by the NM and don't get a chance to drive some DMG. Or the mob is instant dead, depends which content you play.

You could have more or less used the same argument for the bugged Vex/Attunement and Focus/Languor potencies. That fact is that got nerfed so that they could indirectly boost the usability of other buffing jobs and have an easier time designing new content going forward.

As far as the content being dead, that isn't true for everyone. There are plenty of newer groups just now getting around to Aeonics and they shouldn't feel like gamesharking it is the answer. The gradual gear creep is enough to make the content easier so that they can get it done and still feel at least somewhat accomplished.

The problem is that if the mechanic is left unchanged, it will become the goto mechanic for all new content just like BST was and RNG before that. A single strategy that is the best on 95%+ of content should never exist in a diverse MMO like FFXI as it destroys the game in the long term.

So there is a new Dynamis coming, and inside this content there will be boss's that have drops people want. As it stands, without the content even being released, the SMN AC zerg method will become the standard by which those NM's are farmed.

Corsair says hello.

And you aren't using those other 5 sets for anything people are concerned about.

And MMM, a few abyssea nms, vw etc. Cmon people been resetting 2hrs for zergs since they were actually 2hr timers lol

ya none wait 45 mins or 1 hr, you got mmm and in 5 mins you can 2hr again.

Yep, and with very little investment all members of the group and their legion of mules will have maze on hand. Then you have abyssea if you really need it reset and no mazes left.

Putting words in my mouth I see. I never said he would "quit summoner", no idea how you managed to come to that conclusion. And you pretty much proved my point .. Summoner isn't just about burning through stuff, which is why I like to bring it to events. I know what it brings, so please don't talk to me like I'm a disrespectful child.


All of this. It's already way too late to be nerfing SMN. Anyone who wanted to profit .. already did, and still do. Those casual players who worked for the past 1-2 years to make their SMN decent, know they can use it in endgame content if their group decides to use the burn method.

You said if Conduit were nerf'd that his Nirvana and Abjuration gear would not be useful anymore. Not even trying to be disrespectful, but that implies that is all it has to offer.

I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. He'd be a tiny bit annoyed that his job wouldn't be as strong, but as summoners are not so easily found on this server, there's no doubt I would ask him to play it so we can make use of its other strengths. If anything, the nerf would annoy those players who ONLY geared it up for the reason of burning Aeonics for gil. He's never going to stop playing summoner as much as I'll never stop playing dark knight.

SMN's currently have an inferiority complex in the game. They know that before the AC SMN zerg, SMN was only used in specific situations and only when they could convince someone to let them "come along" as SMN. It's a niche job, and like all niche jobs it's only amazing when it's inside it's niche, outside of that niche it loses most of it's usefulness compared to more general purpose jobs. If AC SMN zerging gets nerfed, then all those full time SMN's will be forced to play a different job whenever they aren't in those SMN niches.

It's just like the BST's and PUP's, they defend their ground because that's all they have to offer.

Should have a mod change the threads name to

Smn - love it? Hate it? Lets debate it

jeez...