Patch 4.4 edition. Yes, it's me again. This time things are going to be a little different, though. I'm going to break up my comments into two sections, Fundamental and Personal. Fundamental should, ideally, be problems with the core job that aren't colored by my biases. Personal, obviously, will be influenced by those.
If you're asking, "Why now?" Well, this is basically the last time for anything to matter to the team, since the expansion is roughly six months out. Any later than now and it is possible they just wont have time to make changes before the expansion is locked in. With that in mind, let's get started.
Fundamental Feedback:
Pet Control:
Pets are still sluggish to commands and can easily gum up their queue when dealing with Enkindle and Aetherpact because of the unnecessary two step build up. First you have to activate a skill that does nothing except tell your pet to use a skill. Then the pet has to use the skill in its queue after being told to activate the skill. This adds unneeded wait time to both skills, when they could just activate when the Summoner presses the button.
Garuda-egi is especially bad at this because her basic attack is still a cast time spell, even though Scholar recently had the fairy's basic healing switched from a spell to an instant ability to cut down on Embrace gumming up the pets response time. This basic change should also be given to Summoner to make Garuda-egi more responsive, but I also think there should be changes to the skills to further reduce delay.
Having both Devotion and Enkindle Ultimates be skills that the Summoner controls and casts from the pet would drastically reduce frustration. So, instead of needing to tell the pet to use an ability and wait for the pet respond, you use the ability and it happens on top of the pet. Think of it like Deployment Tactics from Scholar. You deploy the buff (or ultimate) from the pet, not issue a command and wait for the pet to respond.
Titan-egi:
While I am on the topic of basic pets I would also like to point out just how useless and frustrating Titan-egi has become. His function as a tank is completely invalidated by Demi-Bahamut existing, since to summon Demi-Bahamut you have to kill your pet. This resets his aggro and basically renders him irrelevant to his only purpose, or you have to deliberately sit on dreadwyrm aether stacks and never use a massive part of your kit just to keep him going.
I really don't have an suggestions for how to fix this just because of how tied in Demi-Bahamut has become to the job. In the overworld you're usually better off just nuking enemies down, since they will rarely if ever be able to win in a damage race against you. I don't think turning him into a utility pet would accomplish much either, simply due to the fact pet actions all share cooldowns and midfight swapping can be very frustrating and mana intensive after several swaps. I would like to see something done to give this guy a better niche in the job, but I really don't know what that could be.
Aetherflow:
I still dislike that optimum use of Aetherflow and Dreadwyrm Trance requires you to throw away the majority of your first trance, and any other later trances that might be delayed due to jumps or boss intermissions just to keep the cooldown on Aetherflow rolling and progressing towards Demi-Bahamut.
If you don't want Summoner to use Aetherflow abilities during trance, just lock them out instead of locking out Aetherflow. It accomplishes the same thing but prevents you from needing to dump your entire opening trance just to keep the job moving. Let me Aetherflow in Dreadwyrm Trance, and simply disable abilities like Fester or Painflare if you don't want them to be used. It would help raise the skill floor since new Summoners wouldn't automatically be hurting themselves in the long run without changing the skill ceiling.
Demi-Bahamut:
Like Aetherflow, I do not believe that Demi-Bahamut accurately portrays his optimum use to the player, to the unnecessary detriment to new players trying to pick up the job and the frustration of veterans who know his limits but still must deal with them in a raid setting. Let me explain what I mean.
Summoners will quickly learn that Dreadwyrm Trance grants you an absurd amount of mobility. Not only is your basic damage spell, Ruin III, instant while under the effect of Dreadwyrm Trance, it also gives you complete control over your damage over time effects due to trance resetting the cooldown of Tridisaster. The only time you need to sit still is to AoE, since Tri-Bind still has a cast bar. Against single enemies or bosses, you have unparalleled freedom for a caster.
Demi-Bahamut appears to grant this same maneuverability because of his design. His abilities have triple the maximum range of your own, and the importance of casting Ruin II to weave off-global cooldowns to maximize the number of Wyrmwaves might lead you to believe that Demi-Bahamut is an extension of the Dreadwyrm playstyle, granting a high degree of mobility.
In reality, he is the exact opposite.
Demi-Bahamut has an absurd need to remain near the caster at all times, even though his range far exceeds almost every single boss arena and you won't stop to AoE most trash pulls until the tank has pulled as far as they want and settled aggro. His obsession with movement also results in lagged Ahk Morns, where he will prioritize moving closer to the Summoner over using his ultimate skill, even if that means he can flat out not use it, or visually fire the spell but result in no damage being dealt because he ran out of time. This is incredibly frustrating while learning the job, and still creates moments of irritation when you just want him to attack while you're off doing some bosses mechanic.
You can ram Wyrmwave commands down his throat to roughly keep him in place, but those can sometimes override priority on Ahk Morn and result in the attack being slightly delayed again for no reason.
What he needs is to go to a pet training school for separation anxiety.
Fundamental Conclusion:
These are what I feel to be the biggest core mechanical problems with Summoner in it's current state, and I would hope to see at least most of them addressed or at very least smoothed out with the changes to the job in Shadowbringer. I tried not to let me biases get in the way of this section, so please do let me know if I forgot something, or if there is another mechanical problem that you would like to see addressed come 5.0.
Now, with that said, it is on to my more personal feedback for both the job and the direction it is heading. This is going to get bumpy.