SMN is good damage, but still has serious quality-of-life, fantasy, and design issues

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

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Well for 6.0 my ideal design would be a rotation built around two phases; Egi Phase and Demi/Trance Phase. Full rotation would be 2 minutes; Egi = 40s -> Bahamut = 20s, Egi 40 -> Phoenix 20.

Demi Phase
In order to fix Demi A.I Behavior, they have to be set to auto attack. It's the only way to fix them from follow the player around in a fight. This can be done with Attack my Target command devs program in or give Demi a petbar. I'm think Auto Attack would be 2s giving 10 total during the summon window

Demi Bahamut should be more akin to 4.0; Ruin III would become Ruin IV and Outburst to Painflare but you don't alternate like FB Trance. Instead spells and abilities would have a __% chance of upgrade wyrmwave to Akh Morn. His Enkindle would them be changed to Tera Flare since that is his ultimate. Maybe add a small group buff like damage increase by 1% while Demi Bahamut is out.

Demi Phoenix would remain the same.

Egi Phase
This phase is about applying and upkeep of DoTs. Add a third DoT back, Virus. Tri-Disaster (3 DoTs) would work the same but Fester would not only damage but also extend DoT duration by 10s. Fester would be a normal OGCD with 20s recast timer (3 in one minute like 2.0)

This phase is also about commanding your Egi. Egi Assault would use Aetherflow as a resource. Energy Drain would will give you 2 charges of Aetherflow with a maximum stack of 4. Egi Assault would go back to OGCD with 10s recast timer.
Egi would be broken into two groups; Single Target and AoE.
Single Target pet Egi Assualt 1 would have a built in gap closer and Egi Assualt 2 would be a normal attack. This should help keep Egi close to the target and reduce "misses" from Egi Assaults.
AoE Pet would be same.
Enkindle would be reduced to 60c cooldown.
Oh and increase walk speed to 1.5

New Summons:
As mentioned before Egi Assault use Aetherflow for a resource but this would also build up a Gauge = 8 equals full.
A new summon, Tempus, that acts as the one and done attack. You would have two choices; Tempus Odin and Tempus Alexander were as Odin is Single Target and Alexander is AoE. Rather than Aetherflow build up the ability, the gauge would determine the power of the Tempus Summon. They would share 120s cooldown. This would also not desummon Egi or Demi.

Other changes and additions:
Egi Tanks are removed and replace with new spell Sephirot's Boon that gives a defensive shield. Appearance would be a Sephirot spell animation but effect is instant.
Devotion is replaced with Moogle Blessing. Again it's player based instant but with a Good King Mog appearance.

Egi Glamour would be divided into two group: Melee and Caster. Melee would be Carbuncle Red/Gold, Titan, Ifrit, or Shiva. Caster would be Carbuncle Blue, Garuda, Ramuh, or Leviathan. Redesign current Egi to be a little bigger and maybe look something different from Original Primals in the game. This has been the number one complaint since 2.0. You can even add /resize option to help other players with appearance like Demi Bahamut has.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

Meanwhile my biggest gripe with 5.x Summoner is definitely how detached everything feels, all because they changed how Aetherflow, the very foundation of the job, worked. I don't really care if they bring it back or delete it entirely for something that works the same or similarly (but better), Summoner feels like a chore to play ever since these changes along with other lingering problems it has like pet action ghosting, the Egi Assaults, lack of flexibility etc.

People asking for only cosmetic/thematic changes along with design overhauls isn't going to help Summoner in any way, especially when design overhauls just replace things and not necessarily fix the problem. Also the current iteration of FFXIV Summoner already does a good job in making it feel traditional and less of a disease mage like it used to be.

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I'm in full agreement, removing the Aetherflow to me was absolutely something that took a lot of enjoyment out of the class, and worse until the rework to egi assaults made the job nearly unplayable. The rework made the job playable but removed all flow and rhythm to the rotation, and the hilarious thing is, everyone's biggest complaint about the job, how rigid, busy and long the opener was in Stormblood, they actually made it worse. It's even busier, has absolutely no room for a skilled player to adjust on the fly for the mechanics of the fight, and is only a few GCD's shorter to get to your big burst. To me it's hilarious that SMN is the only job that you could remove any of their significant mechanics, like say Egi's, dot's, or aetherflow attacks and it would only take minor reworking to get the others work and keep a similar rotation. That shows how disjointed the job is. If you removed the jumps from DRG, it's whole rotation breaks down. If you removed Ice phase from black mage, the whole job has to be redesigned. Mudra's from Ninja's, Greased Lightning from Monk, Repetioir procs on Bard. Every other DPS jobs mechanics are intrinsically tied together.

But Summoner.... If we removed Egi's today completely. All it would take is replacing the Assaults with Ruin 4 as a charged action and nothing about the job changes. If we removed aetherflow entirely, it literally would have no effect on the overall rotation except making it slightly less busy. Compare that to 4.0 SMN when every mechanic was so perfectly tied together and built on top of each other.... I've had a year to get used to it and I still can't believe how much they mucked it up.