SMN - Most Glaring Issues

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

Not sure what they expected with all that changes to summoner lol. I'm really interested what they'll do in 4.05(probably nothing or nerf us even more haha)

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You ever consider that Square Enix looks at you outdpsing the Red Mage and goes: "Welp, Time to hit them with the nerf bat!"

Or do you think it's more like: "Oh it's Tuesday! Better Nerf Summoner!"

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Originally Posted by Ariomi

You ever consider that Square Enix looks at you outdpsing the Red Mage and goes: "Welp, Time to hit them with the nerf bat!"

Or do you think it's more like: "Oh it's Tuesday! Better Nerf Summoner!"

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Hehe more like the 2nd one. I get a feeling that they hate summoners for a while now haha.
Anyway I dunno how can they balance and test jobs to came to a conclusion that SMNs are fine and ready to release.
It seems that they were cautious of bahamut giving us too much dps(which it does). But now when we see that most summoners underperform maybe they will boost ruin3 potency somewhat? I hope... at least...

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Originally Posted by Atamis

... Idealy they would make an actual model for him instead of shamelessly taking the model with all the allagan garbage on him still....

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I had to become active on the forum again just for this. I do agree that this is lazy. This is a new expansion; everyone is looking forward to shiny new jobs and shiny new skills. Summoner gets to level 70 and can summon Bahamut... but it's the same model we've been looking at "forever".

I guess that's ok, I mean it's freaking Bahamut right? At least now we get a true Ahk Morn.... but it looks "exactly" like the deathflare we've been looking at since Heavensward...

It would have been fine if deathflare didn't originally use that attack animation. However, since it did, you have to up your game. You can't convince me that it's a more powerful attack by using the same animation. I mean, I was able to use that attack "without" Bahamut ten levels ago... wait, is this even really Bahamut?

I mean, couldn't work on a different Bahamut model? Couldn't visually differentiate his Ahk Morn to highlight that it's a more powerful attack? A double Ahk Morn, or even just a wider one would have been fine. Are we really at the stage of re-re-using(yes, two) old assets trying to pass them off as new? I mean, you did it the first expansion.. now again? What happens next? Can't be bothered to think about about how changes will affect the player base?

That's what happens right before the show goes off the air guys, c'mon...

Yes, I used this thread as an excuse to rant. Sorry, but this really bothered me more than the other changes because it speaks to the mindset of the developers. Back to the serious discussion guys...

I only agree with 2 and 5 need to be adjusted. For other points, we just need time to get used to.

For dungeon, what I do is just to keep one aetherflow available before the next pull. Hand dots / Tri-D then bane off with that one aetherflow you save. This will send you right to DWT and you use it from there. while your dots are up on all mobs.

One thing I would like to see change is that it's really annoying for aetherflow to be locked when you are in DWT. I think at least once it's unlocked, we should have what we have before it's locked back. This will help minimizing the dmg loss issue.

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Originally Posted by Troile

I had to become active on the forum again just for this. I do agree that this is lazy. This is a new expansion; everyone is looking forward to shiny new jobs and shiny new skills. Summoner gets to level 70 and can summon Bahamut... but it's the same model we've been looking at "forever".

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I personally don't care the Ahk Morn visuality that much (though yeah it could be better and different to D-Flare) but what bothers me on his skin is that he's designed in that very washed light blue... why haven't they just take the Final Coil Skin - it's way more "dragon-ish" - and they don't even have any work to do, it already exists... people asked for redesign Garuda/Ifrit/Titan to a modern look... I can oversee this demand but why didn't they give "new" egi-skins a bit more love in detail... I'm really sad bout that.

http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170710/3hk3cp27.png

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Originally Posted by Neela

.... but what bothers me on his skin is that he's designed in that very washed light blue...

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I'm not happy with the color either. Being an older player my ability to differentiate some colors close together in hue is degraded. Bahamut's hue is very close to some of the AOE and floor colors which only makes it hard for me to differentiate when Bahamut is out.

I'd love to see some changes to Fester and Bane that prevent them from "missing" and canning our DPS for two minutes. With Fester, it could be as simple as giving it a base potency of 100 and having Bio and Miasma increase it by 100 each; still a DPS loss if you screw up, but nowhere near as crippling as it is currently.

Bane is a bit trickier, but I could see it also refreshing the duration of your currently applied DoTs on the primary target or even applying a debuff that increases the target's vulnerability to the next DoT you apply to it. If the current steep scaling of the spread DoTs is here to stay, this would at least give Bane some niche use during movement-heavy portions of single-target encounters.

What really grinds my gears while soloing is that my chocobo completely ignores my summons for healing. If I get smacked in the face? Heals! If my summon takes the hit for me? Nothing. Allowing chocobo targeting of summons would partially alleviate the lack of a sustain spell.

You know something else that's bothersome at the moment? I recall seeing someone that made a bug report on Physick, saying in the report that Physick should be using INT to heal, and it obviously wasn't since his heal was crap(as expected) and there was another player that replied that it is how it should work, just because Square-Enix can't make Physick scale off of INT because then it wouldn't work for Scholar...
Clearly said guy forgot that Ruin 1, Bio2 and Miasma were adjusted to scale off of MIND if you are a Scholar, and still scale off of INT if you are a Summoner(that isn't high enough to get Bio and Miasma 3 that is).
Therefore, if Square-Enix has the ability to make damage spells scale off of a different main stat based on the job, they can surely make Physick scale off of INT for healing. Either that or make a new trait that turns Physick into a new healing spell that scales off of INT.
Oh and that bug report got classified as 'Working as Intended'. Making it's working as intended, but it's far from being effective.

It seems that Bahamut is getting shrink... Just noted on live letter.

I fully disagree with this nonsense.

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Originally Posted by Mature

It seems that Bahamut is getting shrink... Just noted on live letter.

I fully disagree with this nonsense.

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I think they said you can do it with / command like glamour.
Overall it's pretty disappointing how they were talking about smn. Literally didn't say anything useful or acknowledged any actual job problems...

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Originally Posted by Mature

It seems that Bahamut is getting shrink... Just noted on live letter.

I fully disagree with this nonsense.

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I'm hearing it's an optional thing, via text command like egiglams. That said...I wish they went into detail on what they're doing to fix the actual job as well, instead of the aesthetic nonsense :<

Oh wait so it is a glam rather then a shrink? I'm slightly confused

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Q10. Demi-Bahamut is quite large. Do you have any plans to make adjustment to his size or transparency?

A10. We’ll make it so that you can change the size of Demi-Bahamut using a text command. I’m sure there will be players who would like the size to remain as is, so we’re making it so that players can adjust the scale on their own. However, we won’t be able to make it by Patch 4.05

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I'm ok with this

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

I think they said you can do it with / command like glamour.
Overall it's pretty disappointing how they were talking about smn. Literally didn't say anything useful or acknowledged any actual job problems...

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Oh but they Buffing Machinist and Black Mage though.

Machinist will be getting their base damage, turret damage increased.
Black Mage is getting shorter cast times, (Literally just a huge buff. Black Mages stack spell speed anyways) and Foul no longer costs mp.

Summoner literally the dragoon of casters. Except the utility they bring is tiny in comparison..

Oh and they made Dragoon stronger too.

I feel like the live letter totally misunderstood why we summoner mains (or ex-mains) are concerned. Looking at JP players' response to the live letter, I noticed that they're saying a few similiar things to us.

1) Bahamut's issue isn't mainly his size. It's his inability to stay where he's summoned and moves as the summoner does mechanics, thus blocking people's views.

2) Titan-Egi is useless without Sustain or Physick or some form of heals for the summoner to use. We don't even need Sustain back. Just add a trait to Physick that gives pets sustain when used on them? Pets are dying and not even because they're standing in front of bosses.

3) Devotion is useless.

4) Is our level 50 aoe really tri-bind...?

Scholars lost their identity and are being fixed, but so have summoners. We've gone from a dot class to an aoe+dot class to.. I don't even know, a ruin spamming class? A burst class? Summoner is the bard of 3.0--some people enjoy it, but some of us who've mained the job since it came out can't stand it anymore.

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Originally Posted by Ariomi

Summoner literally the dragoon of casters. Except the utility they bring is tiny in comparison..

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And most of our utility is dumb and pointless.
Oh oh here's another good one for ya - compared to 3.0 they didn't even give us ANY interesting skills in 4.0.
Heavensward really change summoner(without all this rebalance PR for 4.0). They gave us burst damage, several aoe skills, a lot of variations and ways to plan fights and use all our abilities. Then they buffed ruin3 to 200 potency and smn became on of the strongest jobs.
But in 4.0 they barely gave us anything. All skills before 70lvl are just meh and bland shadows of our old skills and barely add or change anything to the better. And on 70 lvl bahamut just feels like poorly designed DWT with huge dumb dragon that covers the whole screen. Literally no new ideas, no new spin on the job, only more of old stuff and nerfs...

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Originally Posted by Cherishes

We've gone from a dot class to an aoe+dot class to.. I don't even know, a ruin spamming class? A burst class? Summoner is the bard of 3.0--some people enjoy it, but some of us who've mained the job since it came out can't stand it anymore.

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RUINED MAGE

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

And most of our utility is dumb and pointless.
Oh oh here's another good one for ya - compared to 3.0 they didn't even give us ANY interesting skills in 4.0.

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We got new skills in 4.0?

Really? I would have sworn they just took old skills, adjusted the potency on them and handed them back us saying: "Look New SKILLS"

Bio 3? Miasma 3? Literally no different then old dots except weaker. Ahk Morn? Same thing as Deathflare except 100 potency stronger.

Ruin 4? Oh wait... It's ruin 3 but with a different animation and needs to proc first.

Summoner got A new skill. Singular. We got devotion. 5% buff to the healer. Who needs to waste a Cross Class skill for Cleric stance? I got you healer!

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Originally Posted by Ariomi

Summoner got A new skill. Singular. We got devotion. 5% buff to the healer. Who needs to waste a Cross Class skill for Cleric stance? I got you healer!

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Really it is an occasional new skill as it only works if the healer happens to be the closest one to the egi. Don't know about you but I have found it very hard to train healers in a PUG to follow Garuda around. ;)

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Originally Posted by Claviusnex

Really it is an occasional new skill as it only works if the healer happens to be the closest one to the egi. Don't know about you but I have found it very hard to train healers in a PUG to follow Garuda around. ;)

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If you join a group with only Melee, chances are it's going to the healer lol.

I've even switched to ifrit and still baffled that healers get it sometimes. (I have had healers who run into melee range and stack on my Egi.)

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Originally Posted by Cherishes

Scholars lost their identity

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I don't know about you but Scholar feels just about the same for me except for not having Miasma II and Blizzard II. Their identity is still there.

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Anyway I do like the new Summoner's core gameplay. Less focus on DoTs and how easier it has been is good for me because the DoT management pre-SB is so annoying since their durations are uneven. Both jobs rely more on Aetherflow now too and it will benefit their pets.

I do think Summoner has problems that actually made me not want to main it right now however. The Aethertrail/Aetherflow change made it become more punishing even though they abolished its countdown, Devotion being underwhelming, the lack of Sustain, Demi-Bahamut's design flaws and just how Summoner just feels so weak compared to the other casters. It's disheartening that the devs didn't acknowledged Summoner's actual problems in the Live Letter.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

I don't know about you but Scholar feels just about the same for me except for not having Miasma II and Blizzard II. Their identity is still there.

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I prefer old Summoner. Yes dots were a thing, But it was something other then Ruin spam.You could do interesting things, Like Raging Strikes Dreadwyrm Trance Tri-Disaster Contagion then Fester twice in dreadwyrm trance before you deathflare.

I saw a far more experienced Summoner then me make an in-depth Opener. In said opener they used Ruin 2 and Ruin3 a combined total of 38 times....

Thirty.... eight.... times... All the changes to Summoner take away the identity they have had since hitting level 50 in a real reborn. We were the Dot Pet class. Tri-Disaster is almost pointless now. Back in Heavensward it was cool. Instantly apply all your dots. Now? Uhhh... It takes two seconds for me to apply my dots normally... And Miasma 3 does damage when I apply dots normally...

New Summoner is dumbed down. Painfully streamlined so much, that it punishes people who used to play it on an advanced level. It's even clunky locking Aetherflow stacks behind Dreadwyrm trance.

"Oh you accursed summoners! How dare you find a way to make your class more interesting! You did something clever with your class to do more damage! I'll nerf you straight into the ground and make Dreadwyrm trance the most boring thing ever!" - Square Enix

Cause every Summoner ever asked that we spam Ruin more right?

You guys saying 3.0 SMN was better...no way. The only thing that HW SMN had better was the damage. The gameplay was an absolute mess with a million OGCDs coming up in the middle of a DWT, a horrible raging strikes and nonresponsive contagion which had to be lined up with a nonreseteable tridisaster. Not to mention shadowflare and how it forced to burn your swiftcast for some DPS gain turning your raise spell into useless utility.
Stop smoking weed 3.0 SMN was horrendous.

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Originally Posted by Ariomi

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I have to agree that the Ruin-spamming it has become now is pretty boring and I think SE not add anything interesting at all in 60-70 also is something to blame here. Yes, Demi-Bahamut looks cool but it's pretty much another Deathflare that's a tad stronger, but that's not really my problem about Demi-Bahamut.

I do miss a lot of things about the old Summoner though. Now that I think about it, the only thing I really like about the new SMN is easier DoT management (which made Tri-Disaster pretty pointless as you said. If only the Ruination buff was a lot better...) and Aethertrail having no countdown...that's it I guess. I'd like the new SMN a lot better if they fixed the problems pretty much most people agree with, right now I have mixed feelings for it, mostly hate.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

You guys saying 3.0 SMN was better...no way. The only thing that HW SMN had better was the damage. The gameplay was an absolute mess with a million OGCDs coming up in the middle of a DWT and a horrible raging strikes and nonresponsive contagion which had to be lined up with a nonreseteable tridisaster.
Stop smoking weed 3.0 SMN was horrendous.

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Heavensward was 100% better. You Contagion after your dots are up. As long as your pet does contagion any time in the next 15 seconds you were set. Your unresponsive pet does the same thing now and all of your cooldowns are misaligned. You literally could Macro your pet to contagion after you use tri-disaster.
Contagion was a hard 560 potency Increase, You could Fester for 15k under dreadwyrm and raging Strikes, Summoner was more then a ruin mage.

OGCDS? Summoner literally only had three. Aetherflow stacks Tri Disaster and deathflare. Everything else like Enkindle or the pet buffs and had a minute, or two minute cooldown. Ninja, Monk, and Dragoon have way more OGCDS then Summoner ever had to deal with. Mudras, Mug, Jugulate, Dream within a Dream, Duality, Trick attack, or for monk, internal release, Shoulder tackle, Perfect Balance, Steel Peaks, Howling Fist, Elixir Field, Forbidden Chakra, the list goes on and on.

And Summoner gave you all the time in the world, Your dots easily let you weave OGCDS. Swiftcast Raging Strikes Dreadwyrm Trance Ruin 3 and Tri Disaster and contagion is super easy. You literally use most of your OGCDs in dreadwyrm trance and you don't have to worry about them.

You're wrong if you think anything about new summoner is ok.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

You guys saying 3.0 SMN was better...no way. The only thing that HW SMN had better was the damage. The gameplay was an absolute mess with a million OGCDs coming up in the middle of a DWT, a horrible raging strikes and nonresponsive contagion which had to be lined up with a nonreseteable tridisaster. Not to mention shadowflare and how it forced to burn your swiftcast for some DPS gain turning your raise spell into useless utility.
Stop smoking weed 3.0 SMN was horrendous.

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I mean... nothing rly changed then? There's still million OGCDs and now you actually need to line em up properly? Contagion is still unresponsive but now you also need to deal with bahamut which is clunky and unresponsive too...
3.0 SMN was in fact an improvement over 2.0 SMN.
If 3.0 summoner was horrendous then 4.0 is straight up a disaster lol...

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

All smn nerfs(1dot, SF, bane, r3 potency) are there for a reason - it being bahamut. Which is a lot of dps especially when your atherflow stacks are ready. So I don't see them boosting bane back even a little, especially after overall aoe nerfs.
The only way to make smn AOE more impactful and satisfying I see - is to rework the job from ground up, get rid of dots pets etc. and make job around summoning like they did with bahamut. Then we would be able to have high potency impactful skills. And while we have nonstop firing turret that does like 20% of damage it won't happen.

That's hilarious.

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They(SE) practically did that with the PvP. You don't even have egis anymore, and they made it so you only need one aether rotation to summon bahamut.

I agree that messing up your stacks is far too punishing. Nothing like hitting fester on a dotted boss, only to have him go invuln so it misses. It honestly would be better if there were two different bars; one for aether and the other for deathwyrm stacks. That way if you have deathwyrm trance ready to go, but are for some reason OOM**, you can still aetherflow to be ready to cast the aether abilities as soon as you exit deathwyrm trance.

**for me, it happened when i was trying to solo Mog Ex, and my mana was stolen. :(

I personally don't want sustain to return; it left b/c of bar clutter, tho they do need something. Maybe increased potency of physick on your pet and/or it also applies a regen effect.

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Originally Posted by nanatotempole

I personally don't want sustain to return; it left b/c of bar clutter, tho they do need something. Maybe increased potency of physick on your pet and/or it also applies a regen effect.

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Sustain doesn't have to add to bloat. Just change Physick to Sustain when you pick the Summoner job at level 30. SE already changes other actions dynamically based on your sync level so this shouldn't really be that hard.

Despite the issues (whether some believe them to exist or not) is anyone else excited by them adding a text command to resize Demi Bahamut at a player's discretion? Doesn't this open up the door for SMN to get 'Demi' versions of other primals and other players can freely decide if they are cluttering their screen or not and take action independantly so no one can complain? I think this could lead to something very amazing! I think someone also suggested that enkindle could be a mini form of summon Bahamut but for our current Egi (changing with the skin I suppose?). The demi could come out and we have a short time to use an exclusive (or set of exclusive) ability with them and end with the actual 'astral flow' ability that enkindle currently uses (I only know the FFXI name for it sorry D: )

The death issue is IMO the most pressing issue. EF stacks and DWT should carry over death. So that you just continue your DPS when you get rezzed.
It would be nice also if DWT would allow the use of EF skills. Maybe putting all the skills on CD when you use one but at least. You can spread your dots, fester and do aoe.

I'm a bit surprised the Live Letter didn't mention any changes to SMN. Bahamut-Problem seems not priority, even tough I wipe whole Susano Ex Groups up to Abandon or get kicked. Aetherstacks Problem doesnt even get mentioned, beside while they confirmed once again, that DMG should be based on complexity. I'll wonder how the patchnotes gonna look. Did they really have forgotten us?

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Originally Posted by Talec

I'm a bit surprised the Live Letter didn't mention any changes to SMN. Bahamut-Problem seems not priority, even tough I wipe whole Susano Ex Groups up to Abandon or get kicked. Aetherstacks Problem doesnt even get mentioned, beside while they confirmed once again, that DMG should be based on complexity. I'll wonder how the patchnotes gonna look. Did they really have forgotten us?

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Summoner is an afterthought for a while now(or always was? hm)

I really wonder how they will change smn in reference to "harder jobs should be rewarded more"... they tried this with the sss parser hp with smn on 3rd place after smn/blm but... sadly its just dps in theory until now - let's see if they change anything at all, without taking smn into concern in the last live letter... : /

The only thing I would tweak from SMN is Devotion. Allowing me to chose who gets it rather than a free for all.

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Originally Posted by Neela

I really wonder how they will change smn in reference to "harder jobs should be rewarded more"... they tried this with the sss parser hp with smn on 3rd place after smn/blm but... sadly its just dps in theory until now - let's see if they change anything at all, without taking smn into concern in the last live letter... : /

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Didn't they say they were trying to make the jobs less complex overall? All they did was eff it up even more with SMN.

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Originally Posted by Angry_Evil

Summoner is an afterthought for a while now(or always was? hm)

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I disagree. There has to be a great level of insane planning that went into this job to make it so terrible. I don't think anyone could just fall over and make so many painful things to this job.

Designer 1: Next up, SMN! Any ideas?
Designer 2: Oh, I know! Let's give them an incredibly clunky aether gauge of horror. If they mess up on one stack, they'll be punished with a minute CD.
Designer 3: We can also make all the animations long so that they don't get the full value of those seconds. Imagine the tears of the SMNs when they try to cast Ank/DF when they still have time left and FAIL! Bwahahah!
Designer 2: That's WONDERFUL! Let's also leave the Egi out on the field until Bahamut's animation is over so there's a chance it'll die and waste a two minute set up!
Designer 1: And we'll have to give them very hard hitting abilities and ZERO ways to negate that damage. Healers love that shit. Still... We need more...
Designer 2: We can make Baha fill the entire screen! Fun for all!
Designer 1: PERFECT!

Everybody wants to be a Summoner but nobody wants to be a Summoner......

My isue with SMN is literally everything. The patch notes weren't a good sign, but I told myself it'll be not so bad and it just seems bad on paper; oh how naive.

Without going to town in this comment, I will be brief (not very constructive I know) and just say - revert it to HW SMN. I don't care why the changes were made, I don't care for defensive reasoning or even softening of the blow; the class feels gimped to me now. Everything is completely unnecessary that was changed.

The top offenders are: The overly long cooldown on Aetherflow. The trash that has become Bane. Paper skinned pet that vanishes for no reason and dies easily with no heal skill available. The overly long cooldown on Shadow Flare. The gigantic Bahamut.

At the very least the timer on Aetherflow should be reverted, as well as returning Shadow Flare to how it was; I can live with the other mutilated limbs if they fix that at least.

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Dreadwyrm Trance

Aetherflow actions are no longer required to inflict an effect on a target to gain Aethertrail Attunement.

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Whoopeeee..................and we got a big of nothing once again......