a) bosses (except kepri and imoogi) area of effect hit everything up to 17m. Since sm can get one shot, there is no way for us to link a tanker because our link need to be casted at 10 meter but extendible up to 15 meter. Im full support sm but it seem I am wasting 10 stat point on Devotion and Revive link which only useful to tanker.
link is easily breakable just when a target move outside 15m range, so Devotion (only useful to 1 target) link which has 5 minute cooldown is too long to wait once the link broken. I suggest 1 minute cooldown is enough if its even necassary
c) link effect gets stronger when caster achieve critical hit. To aid caster, pet critical hit should be count to proc the effect. manually switching target to boss could risk the sm and interrupt heals
Side note: Immunity effect is up to 20m which deals damage to mobs and heals comrade with wide range animation. The FP lag increase if I spam this often at 10 sec cooldown
In anti-chronological order for no particular reason
On c:
Personally, I don't think that pets should trigger the crit. chance. IMO, this would open a box of endless complains (pet crit. chance, pet cooldown // attack speed, pets that don't select the target they should, etc.)
Critical heals however should do the trick as well, so you don't have to change the target. But even if want to, I recoommend to try out the "assist target" key. It selects the enemy of your current target.
An example:
First, select the tank, then press the assist target key to target the boss (the tank should attack // select it). Press that key again to switch back to the character the boss is attacking. Most likely, that's the same tank again.
On b:
IMO, the Devotion link has it's drawbacks on purpose . It was (still is?) meant to be a mixture between a Resurrection (30~50min cooldown), a Coluseo Heal (3~5min cooldown) and a kind of Assumptio (2min cooldown) with a much longer duration and an HP cost instead.
An example:
If an attack would deal 10k damage to the target of the link, it would only take 7k damage instead (30% are transferred) and would recover 1k damage right away as well, for a total of 6k damage taken. You (the caster) would take 3,000 damage, but also recover 1,000 damage in response for a total of 2k damage taken.
If the target would die while the link is active, the life total would be set to 10% instead and the duration ends.
In other words, the target of the link would take a significantly lower damage the whole time (Assumptio) and would be brought back to life automatically (Resurrection // Coluseo Heal). So the player wouldn't have to use a spinel (10min cooldown) or Spinel Purple Potion (5min cooldown).
Note: It's an explaination, not a justification.
On a:
The range of the links is a tricky matter. I just want to state that the arguments seem to be too much centered around the current FB boss AoEs. To lower the range of the AoEs from 17m to 13m would then be a valid solution as well.
And if the range of these AoEs would be increased to a 22m instead, the Soulmaker would actually be the one who could attack from a safe distance 25m away. That would then give him the edge above other classes.
Edited by Greven79, 27 July 2015 - 01:31 AM.