Dusting off the Tome: Summoner Feedback for 4.1

Hey I miss cast bars :(

About the "not feeling like Summoner" people keep saying since ARR. I got it, but now you actually have a temporary big summon to do mid fight. Wasn't that the most required Summon-like aspect? Just actually trying to understand it here. I also felt SMN wasn't very Summonery previosuly but I just accepted it as how it worked to implement it on the game. Kind of like how Red Mage isn't exectly the iconic hybrid job. I think people would feel a lot more the Summoner feel if they finally implemented the ever promissed never delivered Egi glamours "every patch after Stormblood" heh. As for the dot-job, they kind of had already been dethroned on that by BRD, but I understand how people feel about the loss on dot management aspect. If anything, this loss made the job a bit less easy to understand going from 0 because the whole game used to be "never clip dots" and now you can use dot clipping for gains. But I also think a new player might not have as many issues as we have with these stuff, we mostly have them because we been following the game for a while and adapting some times can take a while.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ariomi

I found threads discussing it, but not a single post of people wanting casts bars and losing their mobility.

---

Anyone that fails to see BRD had close to free mobility on HW can't ever understand why cast bars weren't bad. While I do agree no cast bars feels better to play, cast bars were not a bad design by themselves. And like I said, the "right" is appeasing this majority that like without cast bars so yeah SE was right on removing them. But oh sorry I forgot it's a taboo to have a slightly unpopular opinion here. While most feedback on OF of Bard have been about being glad on the loss of cast bars, people in other medias and in game do miss it, but most of them are ok with it and don't think its worth to complain about it. Its like what Kumi said about adapting even to aspects you didn't like that much.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

Anyone that fails to see BRD had close to free mobility on HW can't ever understand why cast bars weren't bad. While I do agree no cast bars feels better to play, cast bars were not a bad design by themselves. And like I said, the "right" is appeasing this majority that like without cast bars so yeah SE was right on removing them. But oh sorry I forgot it's a taboo to have a slightly unpopular opinion here. While most feedback on OF of Bard have been about being glad on the loss of cast bars, people in other medias and in game do miss it, but most of them are ok with it and don't think its worth to complain about it. Its like what Kumi said about adapting even to aspects you didn't like that much.

---

There's one problem with your logic here. Bard never started out as a class with hotbars. From 0-50 Castbars weren't a thing that existed. And when Heavensward happened, the gameplay change was such drastically different, that it caused an uproar. The class that everyone had until 50 became fundamentally different. And not everyone knew about using Feint for mobility. Eventually Square Fenix fixed this, by removing cast bars from Machinist and Bard.

This can also be said exactly in the same case for Summoner. Suddenly Summoner only has 2 dots instead of 4, and the balance between dots and normal spells have become completely one sided. And while summoning Bahamut is thematically better, they still could have kept Summoner more inline to what people enjoyed. Having Demi Bahamut function similarly to Dreadwyrm trance, and keeping the rest of the class relatively the same would have had people much happier then the iteration we have now.

The same cannot be said for Summoner, because the very progression of the job was changed to accomodate the changes, so instead of living in 3 dots during a certain range of levels, you always have two now. You used MCH in the middle of the argument while the job was launched with cast bars but just following the "no cast til 52" concept of Bard and then followed saying SMN problem is the same even though it got essentially changed down to earlier levels? I think we should stop here friend and go back to good things pointed out on the OP. The discussion between you and me won't do anything but make this thread longer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

The same cannot be said for Summoner, because the very progression of the job was changed to accomodate the changes, so instead of living in 3 dots during a certain range of levels, you always have two now.

---

Your argument makes no sense at all. All classes unlock new combos abilities at certain levels. Taking away Summoner's dots is like removing a melee combo from drg/ninja/etc.
You don't see how that's a fundamental change? A class that had Four Gcd dots,(Shadowflare, Bio 2, Miasma, Bio 1 and some people even used Miasma 2 in the opener) fundamentally changed to two, is fundamentally as big of a change bard/mch getting cast bars with Wanderer's minuet/gauss cannon. (Atleast you could turn off wanderer's minuet/gauss canon. I can't get any of my dots back.)

Smn is not remotely the same. If You applied every dot summoner had, it would take 11 seconds, then you refresh each dot 6 seconds before the next. (Reapply after 18 seconds, reapply after 24, reapply after 30.)

Smn now spends almost no time applying it's dots. 3 seconds at the most. This has immensely changed the class. (Reapply all dots instantly after 30 seconds)

So your argument makes no factual sense and is completely wrong.

I actually said it was a fundamental change done in a different way so you cannot compare them the same. But you insist in doing so. I also said since we cannot agree ever we should simply agree to disagree with eachother. Oh yeah there is a thread saying they love SMN by the way, since you love "thread proof".

Yeah with aa lot of non mains, some stating things completely wrong on 4.1 changes. I mean sure SMN has good things, and I agree with the title : SMN is fun when you just play it in easy content with no expectations for your results.
But in trying to reach the top, SB SMN is way less intuitive than HS SMN and that's a slap to all old SMN players. Doesn't matter to newer ones or people who don't care barely reaching 4000, because "whoaaaa bahamut !", might matters to others though.
Frustrating to have a class with such power being so ludicrously unflowy and counter intuitive to reach a decent DPS. You have to train hard, shouldn't be the case when you've been playing the class for long. Should go smooth and easy, and only need learning if you begin the class.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

I actually said it was a fundamental change done in a different way so you cannot compare them the same. But you insist in doing so. I also said since we cannot agree ever we should simply agree to disagree with eachother. Oh yeah there is a thread saying they love SMN by the way, since you love "thread proof".

---

It doesn't matter if bard's change was in a different way. If they both bard and summoner have a single thing in common like... a fundamental change, that alters the way the class behaves, then you can absolutely compare. In neither case, were people completely satisfied.

SMN right now is very fun. It really feels like they just expanded the concept introduced in HW. Easing the dot applicationg so you can focus more on oGCD management. The real frustrating part is Bahamut's moves. Bahamut's damaging system is actually bad and one of the most non intuitive things in SMN so far. Besides that SMN feels pretty good besides being the only caster that can output comparable damage to double ranged comp. I been doing Ultimate with it and the only mini issue I've encountered is when Twin phases into Nael you have Bahamut and Rouse ready. But that's the same situation that happens on Exdeath post decisive battle no it's not a big deal anymore since people have managed to find ways to deal with it.

One big annoying thing is: takes forever to just test stuff with Bahamut on dummies. But that isn't a SMN only issue. Few other jobs have this with their own stuff too.

Man this thread is funny. You guys are crazy lol. Miss Arr smn? It was literally just dot and ruin. Even hw smn, you blow your load in dwt and sit around playing mp mini game for over 30 seconds cause of contagioned dots. Not to mention dungeons with hw smn sucked with most tanks, with the 30 second trail timer.

Now you have so many strategic choices for dps gain. Dwt timings to make use of instant ruin 3s and movement. Planning bahamut to when you can maximize it's dps, including a useful addle for both mitigation and dps. Clipping in situations for dps gain, as zuzu said. This change for smn has been great.

I must not be normal or we have a different definition of "flow" because to me, the job flows super well understanding the core mechanics. Not comparing it to what it used to be. You can't aether in trance or trance in bahamut. There's a flow. You have your aether burst and your bahamut burst. Things make sense.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kreyd

IMO SE should redesign the SMN and make it more like oldschool Summoners from FFI to FFIX.
Casting a Summon-> Summon appears and does a specific attack->Summon desapperas.
They could bring in the six Elements Wheel as Job Gauge, gaining elemental Aether from Summons, giving access to other Summonings (finally Shiva, Ramuh and Levi <3) and then spend all the Aether collected into one big Summon (Bahamut, Phoenix, Alexander).

---

Also best idea I've seen in this thread. We should be SUMMONERS.

Yeah that idea aint bad. When the expantion released I was walking with some friends on how BRD's song rotation idea would fit SMN perfectly too if they wanted to apply it to many summons.

>miss ARR SMN that was literal ruin1 mage
>complain that current SMN is ruin mage
haha xd meems

Can we get Bahamut to also last longer? I feel like its a big work up for such a short time of having him on the battlefield.

i wish i could have DoT mage thats not smn. i like all the dot,light pillar stuff that smn does but i dont actually like pet classes

Okay, trying the other way around : what harm would there be to, just, allow aetherflow (not the abilities, the skill itself) whenever it is on CD ? It would cost nothing to no one, and just make us, complaining folks, forget this "wall" ramming.

Just make this, and bam we're all happy and on the same page. So why the fuck wouldn't they ?

Or am I mistaken here ? Are you formally opposed to that, or do you also think it could be better but we get around well as is ?
First case we will never agree, the second ok well I'm not the kind to settle when I got screwed around by Square

To me it should be the other way around. They should add another lock to prevent us from using aetherflow when we have aether trail stacks already lol. I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I love the current version of smn. It has many tools and many forms of optimizing to go above and beyond. It has changed much from it's oversimplified playstyle and that's a great thing!

@Karshan
I'm not opposed myself. I just think it would go against SE's current idea to close the gap between better players and the average. They probably did many decisions about job's abilities thinking on that, but we can only guess. More opportunity to land stronger Fester inside Trick Attacks and other buffs on langthy fights would slowly increase the gap. That's all I think, really. Would be fun as hell though, doing Trance Festers into Trick Foe at HW was cool and I don't deny it. Meanwhile I agree once again with Kumi, just lock the button altogether while you have aethertrail stacks to avoid "whoops" situations. Many of us certainly had those moments when first experiencing Stormblood SMN. I know I did...

We don't need to all agree as long we can all express ourselves and understand eachother~

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

When the expantion released I was walking with some friends on how BRD's song rotation idea would fit SMN perfectly too if they wanted to apply it to many summons.

---

I thought of the same thing, too. Demi-Bahamut types of summons for the 6 ARR Primals.
It can totally work on SMN. Summons having advantages of either being better for single-target or AoE, and each having unique supports, but they have long cooldowns which makes you rotate through each of them.

It would be fair to all of the summons unlike right now where Ifrit is better unless you have another caster in the party to make Garuda worth it, while Titan is utterly useless.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Galand

Can we get Bahamut to also last longer? I feel like its a big work up for such a short time of having him on the battlefield.

---

I wish Demi-Bahamut only requires one Dreadwyrm Aether (AKA one Aetherflow-to-Dreadyrm Trance cycle) like in PvP but then again the PvP summoner doesn't have any Egi.

For the most part, my only major request would be that they add the PVP treatment of Dreadwyrm Trance & Death Flare and Summon Bahamut & Enkindle Bahamut to the PVE side of things. Just seems silly to me to have both parts of each when you can only use one part at a time anyway (e.g. can't use Deathflare when you can use Dreadwyrm Trance and you can't use Dreadwyrm Trance when you can use Death Flare), so they may as well just make them a single slot skill that changes based on the context of the situation.

Just one thing though zuzu : the skill gap increased with SB (from 45 to 65%) so lockouts did a poor job on that part. Wyrmwaves aren't responsible of everything in that matter.
As Kumi said, more room for optimisation. But that means harder to do good DPS and gap widening.
Going from 70+% to 30+% shouldn't have happened. Means training hard is needed : shouldn't be the case on a class with so many hours already, not spending other tens of hours practising a class that was well trained before sb, I'm mad at them to put me through that but more : to remove possibilities

The damage disparity is pretty much the same actually. I'm not saying SE was successful in reducing it. I'm just saying I can see them hiding behind the excuse that this or that other change would increase it. There are lots of ways to optimize yeah, do does any other job, creating more options for it is just a way to create a wider gap between players. If anything the R3 instant change should've helped with this gap, since some players didn't think R2 on Trance was worth it and would just clip stuff on R3. Now you don't have to do it anymore.

The main gap right now on players is because people either can't do the opener, can't do WW properly or fail in cycling each of SMN's "phases". I have been discussing about that lately on a few discord servers I'm in.

I spend half of last night thinking about SMN and how it could work with actual summons as regular casts and talking via discord with a friend ,who plays SMN too, over my ideas. She liked it and sad I should post it on the forum. Let me hear what you think about it.

TL;DR:
-Dot's, Ruin-casts and permanent Pet's are scrapped.
-Summonings now work as regular casts, inflicting dmg and add diverse aspects such as buffs, debuffs and Dot's upon you or your enemys.
-Ifrit, Garuda and Shiva are basic summons, inflicting elemental dmg and gaining 1 Aether (Fire, Wind, Ice) per summon.
-Ramuh, Leviathan and Titan are advanced summons, requiring Fire-, Wind- and Ice- Aether to be executed, gaining Lightning-, Water- and Earth-Aether instead.
-Elemental Wheel as new Job Gauge. Can stack up to 2 of each element's Aether.
-Second Job gauge is a bar right under the element Wheel, collecting elemen-neutral Aether (Like the Fairie Gauge from Scholar, dont know how to explain it otherwise)
-ogcd's are used to improve summenings, improve Aether generation and raid utility.

Skills/Traits:

(I'll post the Elemental Wheel here for easier imagination of the Job Gauge)

https://www.tale-ffxiv.com/boards/up...c446fde437.png


Summon Ifrit:
Casttime: 2.4 sec.
Inflicting Fire-elemental Dmg to the target. Gaining 1 Fire-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Garuda:
Casttime: 2.4 sec.
Inflicting Wind-elemental Dmg to the target. Gaining 1 Wind-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)
Decreasing your casttime by x% for x seconds.

Summon Shiva:
Casttime: 2.4 sec.
Inflicting Ice-elemental Dmg to the target. Gaining 1 Ice-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)
Decreasing enemys magic resistance by x% for x seconds.



Summon Ramuh:
Instant. 2.4sec. cooldown. Consumes 1 Wind- and 1 Fire-Aether to be executed.
Inflicts Lightning-elemental Dmg to target and applies DoT effect. Gaining 1 Lightning-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Leviathan:
Instant. 2.4sec. cooldown. Consumes 1 Wind- and 1 Ice-Aether to be executed.
Inflicts Water-elemental Dmg to target. Gaining 1 Water-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Titan:
Instant. 2.4sec. cooldown. Consumes 1 Ice- and 1 Fire-Aether to be executed.
Inflicts Earth-elemental Dmg to target. Gaining 1 Earth-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Bahamut
Casttime: 4.0 sec.
Consuming all Elemental-Aether gained and inflicts heavy Dmg to target and all enemys nearby.
The more Aether is spend, the stronger the blow.



Aetherflow:
Casttime: Instant (Ocgd)
Effect: Gaining instantly 1 Fire, 1 Wind and 1 Ice Aether.
60 Sec. Cd

Aethermanipulation:
Casttime: Instant (Ocgd)
Effect: Transforming
1 Fire- into 1 Earth-Aether
1 Ice- into 1 Water-Aether
1 Wind- into 1 Lightning-Aether
60 Sec. Cd

Trait:Aetherpreserve:
Effect: Everytime Fire-, Ice-, or Wind-Aether are consumed, element-neutral Aether is gained.

High Summoning:
Casttime: Instant
Effect: Consumes element-neutral Aether to improve next summoning, increase it's Dmg dealt by x%.

Elemental Force
Casttime: Instant
Effect: Consumes element-neutral Aether to improve next summoning, dealing it's Dmg and Effects to target and all nearby enemys.

Playstyle:
Ifrit, Shiva and Garuda are used to gain Fire, Wind and Ice Aether.
Fire, Wind and Ice Aether are spend, to summon Ramuh, Leviathan and Titan, gaining Lightning, Water and Earth Aether, as well as element-neutral Aether.
Element neutral Aether is used to improve next summoning for aoe or stronger single target Dmg.
Summoning Bahamut unleashes a big attack, consuming all elemental-Aether.

Sidenotes:
-Summoning Bahamut with full power takes need of 24 casts (without the usage of Aetherflow and Aethermanipulation) beeing about 58 seconds.
-Balancing can easy be made by adjusting dmg numbers and add/remove additional effects on/from summons.
-ogcd abilitys for extra Dmg, Raid Utility can easy be added (Rhavana and Bismarck *cough*)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

The main gap right now on players is because people either can't do the opener, can't do WW properly or fail in cycling each of SMN's "phases".

---

I agree the changes in 4.1 are reducing the skill gap, I was talking 4.0 in regard to 3.5.
And I seem to agree with you on the three major causes, although the third one is very wide and contains a lot of plausible mistakes.


For instance, I don't have trouble with the opener double weaving (practice from HS as well) or the wyrmwaves, because I practiced those things a lot for I identified them as crucial. So even in the heat of the battle, that I can manage (maybe not the 12, but 10 is the very minimum laid). However, on O1S, I end up 700 DPS under what I do on a dummy. 96% uptime on the dots, ruin iV procs used so no real problem here...sure a fight isn't a dummy but a few untargetable moments shouldn't account for 700 DPS... so it must be this last cause, this "cycling" that is at stake.

Before, in HS, opener and trance were crucial as well. The rest : dot managing and ruin spam. So Back then, I managed all. So I shouldn't meet any problem here either ? Well, 700 difference between an almost dummy fight and an actual dummy. Bummer. So I really don't understand that fall off. When I look at it, I see troubles in the cycling phase : dot clipping (tri-disaster available when dots still have 18seconds), rouse, etc. Sometimes you just don't know what is best, never happened in HS. I feel more at ease with the opener than these supposed "off" phases, isn't it odd ? I'd really like more of a Dragoon cycle, with things ligning up. Ruin spam might not be fun, but things were easier to track.

@Kreyd : I'd suggest you look up the thred of SMN's suggestions, and add your contribution here. I'd also like more use of the primals, maybe yours is a bit complicated though (and what happens to your stacks when you die, huh ? :D)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Karshan

@Kreyd : I'd suggest you look up the thred of SMN's suggestions, and add your contribution here. I'd also like more use of the primals, maybe yours is a bit complicated though (and what happens to your stacks when you die, huh ? :D)

---

Is there an actual SMN suggestions thread? All I found were feedback threads like this one and I didn't want to start another thread about SMN. I'm sorry if I hit the wrong thread.^^"

Well, what happens to the Job Gauge of other Jobs, when they die? Not dying is a pretty good strategy in commen I guess. :D
It's actually pretty simple. Your maingoal would be to build up as many stacks as possible for a strong Bahamut summon. Just imagine it like SAM's rota.

Hakaze->Yukikaze grants Setsu
Hakaze->Shifu->Kasha grants Ka
Hakeze->Jinpu->Gekko grants Getsu
Iaijutsu consumes them for a big attack.

Summoner would be:
Ifrit + Garuda allows Ramuh -> granting Lighting Aether
Ifrit + Shiva allows Titan -> granting Earth Aether
Shiva + Garuda allows Leviathan -> granting Water Aether
Bahamut consumes them all for a big attack.

After all it's just an Idea I thought a few hours or so about. No offense if you don't like it, I just enjoy talking about this kind of stuff. :D

Yes but your build up is 2 mins, like now actually, and death is a major problem on Smn more than other classes (always has been and worsened in SB) and it wouldn't go down the fixing path :)

The idea of elements is good but the design needs improvmrnts ;)

I see your point there, but actually it's about 58 seconds. (24 casts each 2.4 sec.) I mentioned it at the end in my sidenotes, maybe you overlooked it :)
Also, if you use Atherflow and Aethermanipulation, which grant 1 Lightning-, Water-, and Earth-Aether and (just like the actual Aetherflow) should be permanently on Cd, it would be down to 15 casts and 38 seconds for a full build up. So it's even faster than an actual DWT now.
Actually it seems a bit fast for me. After all, it's freaking Bahamut, doing it's signature move. We have to work for it! :D
What do you think would be a proper build up time?

But I noticed something else. Having all summonspells 2.4 seconds casttime, would making movement fights very difficult, so i changed Ramuh, Leviathan and Titan to instant casts, not affecting the build up time, but increasing the SMN's movement by a lot. :)

You know, it's funny...
Whenever (some) people suggest ways to "improve" SMN's play-style by outright changing how they summon to begin with, they always tend to ignore/forget one (or both) of these two main points:

Egi(s)
The concept of the SMN job "summoning" Egis is deeply rooted in this game's lore, and in turn, the job's own quest-line.
Changing that would require a complete re-write of its lore, which would be a massive undertaking to say the least (especially since it was already solidified in the Encyclopedia Eorzea).

And before you point that out, yes: I know the concept of "Trance" exists, but as far as we know we're limited to only one (thus far), and that's Bahamut's.
It's entirely possible that we could get more trances, but until then, our main way of "summoning" are Egis.

"Summon" variety

Aside the classic FF staples (ie. Ifrit, Ramuh, Shiva...), there has been plenty of other "summons" introduced in this game.
If the classic ones were to be "tied" to skills, then what would happen to any other "summon" introduced later on (ie. Ravana, Bismarck, the Warring Triad...)?
I feel doing that would limit us even more as to what we could get later on.

Really, I think they just need to keep pushing the whole Egi glamour thing so we can get the skins of every other Primal we defeated thus far (and beyond).

Although, we'll run into yet another lore-related problem (as in, these being completely different from the Carbuncle "justification", especially with some Egis being of different aspects entirely) unless they make a brand new quest specifically for them...