How I would Rework SMN

Hi there, so to get this out the way quickly, I'm no SMN main, I do play it fairly regularly, but I haven't raided on it (yet, If im ever allowed off tank). But I was just having a brainstorm the other day and thought up what could be a SMN rework so away we go. Obviously It will never happen, this is just for fun on my end.

I'm essentially only changing how Egi's work within the rotation.

Removed

Summon
Summon 2
Summon 3
Egi Summoned Requirement for Demi's

New

Summon Support- GCD, instant, 60s recast
Summons Titan egi to perform a sequence of Earthen Armour-> Rock Buster-> Mountain buster

The idea here is that you have a DPS loss* GCD that provides some survivability to SMN

Changed

Egi Assualt- GCD, 2.5s cast, 30s recast, charged action 2 charges (Don't know if GCDs with cooldowns can be charged actions, but oh well).
Summons Gaurda Egi to perform a sequence of Wind Blade-> Aerial Slash-> Wind Blade-> Slipstream.
Grants 1 Stack of Further Ruin

Egi Assualt 2- GCD, 2.5s cast, 30s recast, charged action 2 charges
Summons Iftrit Egi to perform a sequence of Burning Strike-> Crimson Cyclone -> Burning Strike -> Flaming Crush.
Grants 1 Stack of Further Ruin

Enkindle- Ability, 120s recast.
Grants Enkindle Ready Buff 30s. When under the effect of Enkindle Ready, the next cast of Egi Assualt 1 or 2 will cause the Egi to perform Hellfire or Aerial Blast instead of their usual attack sequence

Aetherpact- Ability, 180s recast
Grants Devotion Ready Buff 30s. When under the effect of Devotion Ready, the next cast of Summon Support will cause Titan Egi to perform Devotion instead of Earthen armour.
*In this scenario Summon Support is a dps gain due to party buff.

General Gameplay
What this would change about SMNs general gameplay is it puts more emphasis on the summon part of the kit, whilst also reducing the busyness of the kit. I've not put potencies on here cos theres no way in hell I could balance the numbers, but in general I'd imagine the Egi Assults would hit way harder in this set up due to being GCDs now and making up for the removal of the egi auto attack. This applies doubly to enkindle, which would now hit way harder due to replacing an entire sequence of attacks, making it a more impactful part of your kit.

I would still make it so you cannot use egi assult when a demi is summoned, but and egi performing its sequence wouldn't be cancelled. Also if you cast egi assult while the corresponding egi is still summoned, it will perform its sequence again when its done with its first set before unsummoning, also you can summon multiple egi's, ie Egi assult -> Egi Assualt 2 will summon both Garuda and Ifrit for their sequence.(I know this messes with lore stuff, but job changes has messed with lore/ quests already)

Aesthetics
With Summons not being permanent, the Egi's could get a size bump to their boss fight size potentially, scaling with the Bahamut Command.

Pro's
-Places more emphasis on Summoning in the Kit
-Uses all 3 egis as part of the rotation
-Makes the Egi's more Impactful
-Reduces Busyness

Con's
-Egi Assualts as GCD's with casts will potentially reduce mobility
-Who knows what pet ai rubbish will happen
-More to be added from comments

Future
This system could lead into replacing egi's entirely next expansion, and upgrading Egi Assualts with Demi Assualts.

So yeah, there's my thoughts, now tear it apart.

My problems with this...A lot.

The GCDs. Personally I see SMN as the caster that barely does any casting, which is true because most of its skills and damage come from oGCDs. Literally our only (relevant) casted spells are Ruin III and Miasma III, Ruin III being only its spam-able filler spell because it somewhat needs to cast things as a caster. Adding more GCDs would honestly just mess with the job identity, plus SMN already has mobility problems.

The pets. I really don't like the idea where they do attacks in a sequence by themselves. Even though I hate Egi Assault, I still like that I can control my summons. Also the Egi Assault rework really doesn't fix the problem, since they're still a frequent 30s for both but now it's not a oGCD so it's more annoying to manage.

Then there's Aetherpact/Devotion. You basically just made it worse because it's now a cooldown on top of another cooldown now that the pets aren't permanent. It'll make it even more of a hassle to time it nicely.

Quite frankly, I want less emphasis on the summons and more trances.

It's a really great concept and shb was a step in the right direction with fusion between trance and demi summon

I can agree that moving it to a gcd might not be to someones tastes, but having them as a gcd does not make them more annoying, as they would just be replacing a ruin 3 in the rotation. I wouldnt say it ruins the identity either as it used to have more gcds in previous expacs and that didnt ruin smns identity

Again the control thing is purely subjective, I currently dont really feel in control of them, because egi assualt just feels like a ruin 4 proc button. So i prioritised the assaults being impactful over "in control", plus it brings them in line more with how summons worked in classic ff.

I dont understand your final complaint, they should line up perfectly fine. As a gnb main lining up ogcds for your timered gcds isnt an issue ever, and with egi assualt 1 and 2 being charged and summon support being a dps loss otherwise, it seems like a relatively easy and painless thing to track. Only thing i would say is maybe just have devotion summon titan to do the ability in this case would work fine

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Endariel

Quite frankly, I want less emphasis on the summons and more trances.

It's a really great concept and shb was a step in the right direction with fusion between trance and demi summon

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Same here. I'd even rather... ditch pets entirely. Have burst phases with Bahamut and Phoenix, and have a filler rotation where we would cycle through "Trance Garuda, Trance Ifrit and Trance Titan". Pets just won't work with annoying queuing, stubborn AI, ghosting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Endariel

Quite frankly, I want less emphasis on the summons and more trances.

It's a really great concept and shb was a step in the right direction with fusion between trance and demi summon

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I was personally not too keen on the trances, but the fusion with demi was a good idea.

The only thing that I think is a bit awkward is the demi summons desire to follow you, giving me instant casts but penalizing me for actually moving? Make the demi a turret that stays where he is summoned.

Personally I would have liked a "primal trance" where your current pet gets the demi treatment and the Summoner gets some themed abilities for the duration, with the cap ability merging Bahamut and Dreadwyrm trance.



I'm kinda bias though, I just don't like Phoenix that much...
A: he was the sub-boss before Bahamut.
B: we were supposed to never speak of him again.

Oh sorry, I meant more cast times instead of GCDs. I keep messing the two. Still, it also somewhat applies to that. Remember old Shadowflare? Even if it only replaced a Ruin in your rotation, applying it was pretty annoying until they made it an oGCD. It felt smoother to use after that change. DoTs are also the same. People find them annoying to apply manually but they replace a Ruin in the rotation. Why? Because it's designed to be something you constantly need to keep track of, which also contributes to how busy the job feels. That and SMN isn't very linear like BLM and RDM. Egi Assaults being GCD won't really help with anything.

I hate Egi, always will. They're even worse now, but still you can design the pets to have both control and impact, and it's literally in the game already. Demi summons are a good start to what the summons should be, and with Phoenix it impacts in a way where both the summoner and summon are in sync with each other, the summoner channeling Phoenix-themed attacks while Phoenix attacks in unison and it attacks hard. That's what I hope the devs achieve with summons in the future.

And for the last one, it's irrelevant if GNB doesn't have problems lining up things, because SMN in itself does. Devotion already lines up pretty badly with SMN's burst damage phases because of the very long cooldown, and people are already annoyed by the delay so this would just potentially cause more problems with how jankier it'll work. People have already suggested to just have Devotion to be applied by the summoner and that's a better approach to it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

Oh sorry, I meant more cast times instead of GCDs. I keep messing the two. Still, it also somewhat applies to that. Remember old Shadowflare? Even if it only replaced a Ruin in your rotation, applying it was pretty annoying until they made it an oGCD. It felt smoother to use after that change. DoTs are also the same. People find them annoying to apply manually but they replace a Ruin in the rotation. Why? Because it's designed to be something you constantly need to keep track of, which also contributes to how busy the job feels. That and SMN isn't very linear like BLM and RDM. Egi Assaults being GCD won't really help with anything.

I hate Egi, always will. They're even worse now, but still you can design the pets to have both control and impact, and it's literally in the game already. Demi summons are a good start to what the summons should be, and with Phoenix it impacts in a way where both the summoner and summon are in sync with each other, the summoner channeling Phoenix-themed attacks while Phoenix attacks in unison and it attacks hard. That's what I hope the devs achieve with summons in the future.

And for the last one, it's irrelevant if GNB doesn't have problems lining up things, because SMN in itself does. Devotion already lines up pretty badly with SMN's burst damage phases because of the very long cooldown, and people are already annoyed by the delay so this would just potentially cause more problems with how jankier it'll work. People have already suggested to just have Devotion to be applied by the summoner and that's a better approach to it.

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Again, purely subjective, I liked shadowflare on the GCD, and I honestly didn't hate manually applying dots, and it still felt different to BLM and RDM.

Devotion working like how I stated it there would actually reduce delay as it has no queueing or ghosting to worry about in the pet ai, as long as it came out with the summon cast it'd work the same/better. Only reason I didn't say have devotion on the summoner itself, is that imo a summoner should revolve around the summons.

Well how you'd want SMN to be is purely subjective, too. Isn't it? I'm simply stating what I personally think and what I've observed about the playerbase. That's how opinions work.