The Shadow Summoner: Bringer of Patch 4.4 Feedback

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.

Personal Feedback:

As I said before, this section is more for my own personal feelings about both the job and its current direction. Obviously I don't expect the dev team to cater to my every whim, but I would still like to at least provide an outlook as to why I don't like some things and am not as satisfied with the current job's design. All of the above in the fundamental section apply down here as well, so I will try not to repeat myself too much.


Summoner is a thematic mess:

Starting off strong I suppose. Give me a second to explain myself though.

Right now, Summoner has a lot of different mechanics and themes at play, but all of them are incredibly shallow and have little interaction with each other.

It's supposed to be a DoT job since ~21% of your total damage comes from just them, but they do basically nothing for you except invisible damage. No part of your kit does anything interesting with them (except Bane, but that's an Arcanist ability), and the only thing they have an impact on is deciding if you Fester has any effect or not. You don't even need Fester to deal damage to go through the complete rotation now. Imagine trying to play BLM without using Fire or DRG without Mirage Dive.

Managing them has become really shallow since they both default to 30 second durations and Dreadwyrm Trance resets the cooldown on Tri-Disaster, so you always have them ready to go anyways. The add nothing to job now, and instead siphon power away from other parts.


It's supposed to be a pet job, except the pets are basically throw aways that you have virtually no way of interacting with. Out of roughly 24 abilities for job, you have... one buff that's just a cooldown. One attack that's just a much longer cooldown. One utility spell that's just a middling cooldown. Oh, and one heal over time that we'll probably lose at the same time random AoEs start doing damage to the pet, again. I'm not counting Sustain for this since the pets are basically immune to damage at this point, but they always start taking huge amounts of damage during the leveling process. At the very least your pets interact with you since they are the vehicle for Ruin IV procs, but for being such a core part of the experience they are very hands off and mostly just there in the background. You really do nothing with them.

It's also supposed to be another pet job, but the two pet types have anti-synergy between them. In order to summon Demi-Bahamut at all, your current pet has to die and remains dead as long as he's active. This results in wasting time if Enkindle comes off cooldown while he's out, since it's a completely different pet. Rouse and Aetherpact are likewise worthless, since neither can be used in conjunction with Demi-Bahamut. Why are the pets of the pet job competing so hard against each other and come with their own mutually exclusive spells? Why does Bahamut have to forced just to auto-attack, otherwise he stands still doing nothing? At least the basic pets can be ordered to go beat up something for your amusement. They can also walk away from you, which is more than Demi-Bahamut can muster.

The only thing that really ties any parts of the job together is ironically the most boring part. Being the Ruin Mage. Outside of your brief trance and Bahamut periods, you're just hammering Ruin and waiting for the fun to happen. However, the Ruin part is the only one where things play together. Your pets have a random chance to give you a Ruin IV proc (which is actually fun, I do like this), and that proc also reduces the cooldown on the spell you use to command the pet to do its ultimate attack. There's a synergy here between the different parts that really doesn't exist anywhere else. Your pets and dots don't care about each other. Your pets and other pets really don't care about each other. I want to see more of these interactions to tie the job together in the future.

Pick something and build a more coherent and interesting job out of it. Make the pets a more engaging part of the kit. Make the dots do more than a binary Yes/No check on Fester. Make Ruin Mage some unstoppable evil, just pick something and expand on it.

Being a Bahamut Mage isn't interesting to me:

Now I know this is going to get some people riled up, so I'm going to repeat myself here: this is my opinion. If you like being a bahamut mage, good for your then. Enjoy it. I don't like the overreliance on bananadragon, and this is why:

Bahamut is really starting to overshadow any other part of the Summoner job and it's making it feel really shallow and uninteresting to me as a result. The big main draws of the job are all Bahamut related now. Deathflare and Dreadwyrm Trance, Summon Demi-Bahamut and Ahk Morn. Even the limit break is more Bahamut. I didn't mind it originally, but now it's just getting overbearing.

I really feel like this is crowding out more interesting parts of the world and history of hydaelyn that we could be putting into the mechanics of the job. Tri-Disaster is supposed to be a spell referencing the Warring Triad, but literally the only connection there is it has Tri in the name. There is no mechanical link to the Goddess, Fiend, or Demon; or to any of there associated themes like Balance, Life/Growth, and Eternity/Infinity. We're not really seeing anything interesting about our adventures around the world and the primals of different cultures or origins, like Thordan in Heavensward or Susano in Stormblood. At best we might eventually get an egi-glamour out of it. It also feels really underwhelming to get all this Bahamut stuff when the lore book confirms that basically anyone on Aldenard could learn the same things given a soul stone and enough aether. Everyone got a dose of dragon dust when his body exploded in Cartenau, but only we have been traveling the world and seeing new kinds of primals. I would really like to see something that reflects our journey here, but that's just me.

Also as a side note here: I miss being a DoT mage. That fantasy really resonates with me and the focus on Bahamut really pushed it to the wayside. Really don't have much else to add, I just miss the playstyle.

Demi-Bahamut:

I really, really do not like this mechanic. It's really uninteresting to me to have the blue banana follow me around airhumping the enemy and occasionally throwing out a slightly bigger Deathflare. If he is going to be a part of the kit, I would rather he do something more unique and interesting.

A lot of people like to talk about Summoner in XIV not fitting the "theme" of classic Summoners in Final Fantasy, and I feel like this spell would have been the perfect place for that to happen. Have Demi-Bahamut show up and cast one big, impressive spell, and then leave. That's literally what the summons were all the way up to Final Fantasy X, so this would have been the perfect homage to that original fantasy. They could have even given him Teraflare (and renamed the Summoner limit break to Megaflare as that is basically what it is), since that is the most impressive and powerful spell he used in XIV, both in the fight itself and in the End of an Era cutscene. There was potential here and what we got was a secondary pet that can't share and needs constant supervision.

Personal Conclusions:

Looking forward I'm very cautious about the changes Shadowbringers will, uh, bring. I like that they tried to give the Summoner more pet interaction through Aetherpact, but the implimentation makes it occasionally frustrating to deal with. I didn't mind Bio and Miasma III at first, but the change to Tri-Disaster has had a knockon effect of erasing most DoT control from the job. Upkeep is extremely easy now and very infrequent compared to before, but they are still incredibly potent and limit the power other parts of the job could have while being effectively invisible. I don't like the implementation of Demi-Bahamut, and am worried about future changes to the job adding more mutually exclusive pets or stapling more mechanics on to Aetherflow without letting the spell cycle properly at the beginning of battle.

If I had to be optimistic about something, I would like to see where they decide to take the job in the future. There is a rich setting here to have a job that visually represents our journey through the world, similar in a way to the Dark Knight story showing the impact we have had on the people of the world and vice-versa. There is potential here to really dig in to some lore and integrate mechanics and thematics of primals that we face, like Tsukuyomi having a duality to her, or Bismarck giving us the ability to eat all the restaurants in Limsa Lominsa out of business.

If you managed to get through all of that, thank you for taking the time to read it all. I hope something is able to spark an interesting discussion, and that the changes coming in the expansion are solid and enjoyable.

I totally agree with you. For me, SMN is the one job where SE did not only not manage to sustain the job fantasy many people had from early games (I-IX), but they also failed to give it an interesting job design.

It's literally a ruin-mage with two burst phases put on top of each other.

It was kinda fun in ARR since it was the dot class and felt good if you liked that sort of playstyle.
In HW they were like:"Don't know what to do with this job...Let's put a burst phase on it..."
In SB they were like:"Don't know what to do with this job...again...Let's put another burst phase on it and scrap some dots..."

I still think SMN would be way more fun with the summons beeing actual spells of your rotation, building up resource for a big attack (Bahamut, Alexander, Phoenix etc.).

I feel giving them some burst was a good idea, as they had pretty much none in ARR, which made dungeons and soloing a slog.

But now that they have more burst than they need, I think it would be good for them to get some of that "DoT mage" flavor back and further look at their pets to make them feel more like a summoner.

This was a good read. I agree with the problems you've addressed. SMN is a thematic mess to put it simply, and a lot of the mechanics and design choices are frustrating, but somehow it's my favorite job in the game (well, for now).

Honestly, I'm glad the focus is less on the DoTs now. I didn't mind it especially in HW, but I think it's not what SMN should be about. It should be more about summoning, which brings me to Demi-Bahamut.
I like Demi-Bahamut. I feel it's pet summons done right...Well, just barely. Demi-Bahamut feels better to use than the Egis because you have to be actively controlling him in such a short time, his damage is very high and he looks cool unlike Egis that are just puny, forgettable and do small (but consistent) damage. There's a lot of glaring issues with Demi-Bahamut like you mentioned, but with tweaking, maybe adding more skills to him for variety and making him appear more frequently than every 2-3 minutes, this style of summons will be more favorable than Egis. I'm all for Egis getting removed from the game, too.

I have mixed feelings with SMN's future. I'm one of those people who want more Demi summons so this interview and that they've mentioned before that they're struggling with fixing pets gives me hope that they'll scrap pets in favor of more Demi summons (also the fact that they haven't done anything to Egi glamours makes me believe in that even more), but at the same time I'm also concerned that they won't fix the problems they do have right now, or even worse, add another mechanic to the already messy pile it has and dumb down the others in favor of this new one. I wouldn't like it to be more of a Bahamut mage than it was before, too. Give the other Primals some love!

Hopefully they know what they're doing this time. I hope for the 4.0 BRD treatment with SMN. All of the problematic jobs, actually.

I don't *mind* how the job plays now - I am the sort who plays the cards that are handed to her. You've given me a couple of items to gnaw on, I hadn't thought about. As you said, no reason for Demi-Bahamut to trail along behind like a giant helium balloon on a string -

I agree I would rather have seen the Summoner played like the traditional FF Summoner - Eikon, Summon, Primal-Egi, what have you - in a way, as you said, we manage resources to the point we fill a gauge, or fulfill some other set of conditions, which lets us pull out that One Big Summon every XX seconds, for various effects. Shiva, Ifrit, Titan, Ramuh, Leviathan, Odin, Alexander, Knights of the Round - making the one you choose be the strategy game...

Perhaps in FFXVI...

I just want Garuda/pets in general to be more responsive.
Mashing the same button during 6s and hoping the skill queued properly is boring and stressful, especially with Contagion where you don't want it to be delayed.

I also don't like Bahamut phase. Because you have no visual representation availaible for wyrmwave (except knowing what to do in your rotation) and Bahamut doing what he likes.
Akh Morn being a instant oGCD but needing you to stand still is weird. I mean, at this point, i'd prefer casting it myself, at least, if I have to move for whatever reason, I know it'll be my fault for missing it,and not Bahamut's who need like 4s to eventually find a good spot where he can cast his thing.

Yes,SMN is really mobile and all, this is good, but if something require me to don't move, at least, give me a true visual representation of what's really happening so I know how to adjust.

I personally am hoping to see some changes for 5.0 to incorporate more active summons (not egis) that act as a buffer - ends with massive attack then swap for another buffer. Probably more suitable if it was self-buffer but some active primal usage would be appreciated.

I'd ditch the DoTs completely. Diseases have always felt more like the Scholar's thing, anyway. Instead, focus on the interaction between the player and the summon. Perhaps make them respond via player action, a la Demi-bahamut, or have our aetherflow abilities directly affect the pet. Just a thought, but perhaps the player could rotate through summons the way a bard rotates through songs, each summon interacting differently with the game.

I know this may be unpopular, but I like the way PvP handles dreadwyrm trance. Your instant-cast ruin III turns into ruin IV, which is twice as powerful but has a short cast time. It really makes you feel powerful, which I prefer over the "mobility" button we have now.

My suggestions here might seem to limit the flexibility and mobility that makes the job popular, but I'd really like to see them nail the job identity and feeling of being powerful that I know the job is capable of.

I don't know where, but I have thrown some ideas around a more "primal flavoured" SMN somewhere on the forum. Basically I suggested that instead of being a pet job (which is tedious for all the reasons that have been listed above), I'd have "primal stances" similar to Bard songs but without any timers. Each stance would have a core value (Ifrit DPS, Titan defensive buff, Garuda offensive debuff?), and basic SMN kit actions would be altered based on that stance you are in (firey high potency fester if you are in Ifrit, Windy DoT if you are Garuda, dunno for Titan lol).
This would get rid of all clunky pet interactions, make it more SMN-esque than having a bland Ifrit/Garuda floating around, and would add more logic to the job itself, because it would be about managing burst windows around buff and debuff utility.

I mean it's a personal rambling about what I'd like to see the job move into. The focus would be to get rid of the pet itself, as the way it currently works does not make any sense in regard to the SMN overall rotation.

I actually quite enjoyed Dreadwyrm Trance in Heavensward. I feel like it gave the job a nice cadence and build up to this really explosive damage phase that really doesn't exist anymore with Stormblood. There are two big reasons why.

The first is that they locked Aetherflow out of Trance and made Aetherflow and Aethertrail mutually exclusive. Part of what made Trance feel so powerful in Heavensward was getting to go all-in on your high damage spells. You got massively reduced cost Ruin III's and juicy Festers. They've since changed it so you can never Fester in Trance and Ruin III was heavily nerfed to make it a basic Ruin upgrade. You always cast Ruin III now, it's your filler spell. Having a slightly stronger filler doesn't make Trance feel as powerful as it used to.

The second is the introduction of Demi-Bahamut. Trances feel less like their own thing now and just a stepping stone to the real high power phase of Demi-Bahamut, but since he takes so long to get to you're left with several low phase and two mediocre phases before you cash in on that high. In addition to that, while you can't Fester in Trance anymore, you can Fester while Demi-Bahamut is out, which further shifts the power balance in his favor.

This to me makes the job feel kind of lackluster in that you need a lot of buildup over several minutes just to get one really good burst phase.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I just want Garuda/pets in general to be more responsive.
Mashing the same button during 6s and hoping the skill queued properly is boring and stressful, especially with Contagion where you don't want it to be delayed.

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I just wanted to highlight this since it also plays into one of my complaints about how the current Summoner is a mess of shallow disconnected themes. The old Contagion actually had a specific tie-in to your kit, and was a link between your pet and your DoTs. It wasn't amazing, but it was there. The lag was also less of a problem because she had at least 15 seconds to tag your DoTs and then it was good to go. Not like now where a 5 second delay means you've missed part of the trick window or just want to move on with your rotation but are stuck waiting for her bland magic vuln to apply.

I honestly don't like the new Contagion because of those reasons. Yes, it is undeniably stronger, but it lost all of the Summoner-specific flavor it had before. Now it's just... there. It does everything for every caster job, except for auto-attacks.

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Originally Posted by Ad_Hoc

I'd ditch the DoTs completely. Diseases have always felt more like the Scholar's thing, anyway. Instead, focus on the interaction between the player and the summon. Perhaps make them respond via player action, a la Demi-bahamut, or have our aetherflow abilities directly affect the pet. Just a thought, but perhaps the player could rotate through summons the way a bard rotates through songs, each summon interacting differently with the game.

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I mentioned it in one of my previous threads, but neglected to bring it up here for the sake of brevity. I honestly think Bahamut would have been more interesting if he actually responded depending on which Aetherflow abilities you use, instead of just casting a generic Wyrmwave for everything. If I remember right it was Flare Breath for Painflare and Bane, and Flatten for Fester and Energy Drain. Do you think that would have given him at least more personality depending on the situation? Would that be a more engaging way to tie demi-summons to the core aetherflow mechanic?


Edit:
I mentioned it up above but didn't really elaborate, so people new to the game or just Summoner in general might not know what I'm talking about in regards to Heavensward Summoner. I'll post that here just to be clear.

In Heavensward, your filler spell was Ruin. It had a potency of 80. Ruin III had a potency of 200 but cost around triple the MP as a single Ruin. While Dreadwyrm Trance still gave the same 10% buff, it also reduced the cost of Ruin III down to a normal Ruin. You could not just spam Ruin III the entire fight or you would run out of mana. This meant you had to use the 80 potency Ruin as filler and you absolutely noticed the shift in Dreadwyrm Trance to the heavily discounted Ruin III's.

With Stormblood they buffed Ruin to 100 and eventually nerfed Ruin III to 120 to make it a straight Ruin upgrade. This means you are always using your filler spell and there is no consistent major spike in damage like there was back in Heavensward. Ruin IV kind of fills the gap, but those are random and subject to chance. You could get 4 back to back in a Trance. You could also get none. They kind of re-added this mechanic back in with Tri-Bind, but personally it doesn't remotely feel the same since AoE isn't really a thing in raids, trials, or most fights in alliances. It is great for dungeons though.

This is why I feel like Trance got a lot less valuable as a 'burst phase,' because they normalized a lot of the damage.

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Originally Posted by Jikillia

I personally am hoping to see some changes for 5.0 to incorporate more active summons (not egis) that act as a buffer - ends with massive attack then swap for another buffer. Probably more suitable if it was self-buffer but some active primal usage would be appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

I still think SMN would be way more fun with the summons beeing actual spells of your rotation, building up resource for a big attack (Bahamut, Alexander, Phoenix etc.).

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yeah I would like to see a rotation- or combination-system like Ninjutsus or Brd Songs - giving the skills aar-primal animations like Nins Frog *quakquak* (=> Yuna Dissidia) which would raise the summoner-feeling by themselves a lot... and still building up resources for Bahamut, Phoenix, Alex, War-Triads in your burst phase.

I love that I am not the only person who thinks that summoner is an aesthetic identity crisis. I feel like they need to pick a theme and run with it. If Egi's are the focus then make the job feel more like an actual pet job and give us more Egi glamour. If we are going to go the Trance direction then give us different trance types and have each one based on a different primal and make out attacks do different things based on the primal. If we are going the Demi-Primal route then again, give us more Demi-Primals and make them each unique in what they do.

I really like the idea of having either Trances or Demi-Primals used in a cadence like the Brd songs, but without such a long timer. There would be a non linear combo that would allow you to built up "stacks" with each use, and each summon would have different effects based on the Primal you have out. One could have a strong single target burst, another an aoe burst, another a party defense/attack buff and so on. The final attack in the combo could be Bahamut/Alexander/Odin to do your big combo finisher. I feel like this would not only give the Summoner more of a traditional feel while allowing it to have a unique enough play style, while still feeling like it fits within the "Holy Trinity". It would almost feel like a mix of Brd, Ast and Blm without stepping on the toes of any of them to the point where Summoner becomes a party requirement. If anything it could feel like a substitute for Brd or Ast while still working well with them and not feeling redundant. Anyway, just an idea.

Pets absolutely need an overhaul on their response. It was less a hassle the last few patches while Sicfrit was still the preferred pet choice, but with the changes to Radiant Shield making Garuda the better overall option it's a different story. Now you have to essentially fight with Garuda's AI to time out everything effectively (especially while timing Contagion), and if you don't have a fast network connection and/or have weaker hardware (or in my case, on console/controller), it's going to make things even less manageable.

Bahamut's inability to stay put and other factors also hinders its effectiveness greatly. There's nothing more disheartening than losing out on an Akh Morn because Bahamut didn't feel like acknowledging your constant slamming of the Enkindle Bahamut command in time before peacing out. Not to mention the impact it can have on the number of Wyrmwaves. If you have to move for mechanics, or gods forbid there's any kind of lag (looking at the recent DDoS attacks...), that's going to hurt this entire process bit by bit. Really, lag of any kind is also going to hurt SMN in pretty much every way, even in it's own non-pet toolkit. SMN is a class that is built in a way that timing is absolutely essential: any delay of an action will reduce your effectiveness in a number of ways, whether it's down to DoT timing, managing OGCDs, etc. Wrestling with pet AI shouldn't make this more difficult.

Making Bahamut stationary at the position where your pet was at the moment of switching it out could mitigate some issues, especially given it's attack range. Also, allowing queued pet commands to be cancelled to immediately execute a command given while a pet is set to Obey, including Enkindle/Aetherpact, could also be a solid improvement. That said, I do think that pets lack a bit of interactivity. Honestly, I don't see why Titan even still needs to be a "tank" at this point. Sure, it's sort of useful for solo quests, but given that we have our Chocobo companions and may possibly be able to use the upcoming trust system to aid with such quests (though I'm not positive to what extent they plan to use this system tbh), shoving the tank role on a pet for a job that's heavily damage-based seems like a waste. Might as well rework Titan into maybe a physical ranged fighter, and give it a proper party utility skill while you're at it. This shouldn't really affect the lore at all, and depending on the utility given to it, could make Titan a consideration based on party composition or the fight at hand. Garuda's Wind Blade should be turned into an instant cast skill as well, as there's not much reason for it to remain as it is. I feel like others would probably have better suggestions, but that's what I've got for now.

EDIT because I don't want to make a separate post: Sharing some ideas I have, I'd like to see the most is an overhaul with the summoning mechanic. Removing Egis in favor of Demi summons. I think for this to work better is for Demi summons to appear more frequently by needing only one phase of Trance like PvP SMN. You have 3 summons to choose from and rotate through (due to a long cooldown). I'd like to fit a 4th summon to be the most powerful one (Demi-Bahamut) and requires a different build-up, not necessarily Trance costs but I don't know. Also it would be good if the summons stay put and the timer is longer like 30 secs or even 25 secs to prevent commands being obeyed too late...or somehow they make it so the timer counts down for the amount of commands you can squeeze and the summon disappears when it's done everything instead of being the amount of time the summon can be on the field.

Also BLU gave me this idea, but it would be nice to have a spellbook feature for SMN but it's for choosing the 3 summons you want to use in battle. For simplicity we can have the 6 ARR Primals (minus Mog and Odin) with different, situational yet balanced kits. Having ALL the Primals would be good, too.

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Originally Posted by Flana

I mentioned it in one of my previous threads, but neglected to bring it up here for the sake of brevity. I honestly think Bahamut would have been more interesting if he actually responded depending on which Aetherflow abilities you use, instead of just casting a generic Wyrmwave for everything. If I remember right it was Flare Breath for Painflare and Bane, and Flatten for Fester and Energy Drain. Do you think that would have given him at least more personality depending on the situation? Would that be a more engaging way to tie demi-summons to the core aetherflow mechanic?

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It's a good idea. I think to improve this idea further, they should give SMN free Aetherflow stacks during Demi-Bahamut phase except it doesn't count for Dreadwyrm Trance and remaining stacks disappear afterwards. Yeah, it might require damage balancing and locking Aetherflow from yet another mechanic (in exchange for a free stack though) but it would remove the need to wait for Aetherflow to maximize damage on Demi-Bahamut and reduce the downtime/waiting phases SMN gets, which is one of the things I hate about the job.

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Originally Posted by Neela

yeah I would like to see a rotation- or combination-system like Ninjutsus or Brd Songs

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

EDIT because I don't want to make a separate post: Sharing some ideas I have, I'd like to see the most is an overhaul with the summoning mechanic. Removing Egis in favor of Demi summons. I think for this to work better is for Demi summons to appear more frequently by needing only one phase of Trance like PvP SMN.

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On the contrary, I'd prefer it if Summoner didn't get anything like this at all. Bard and Ninja already exist. We do not need to dip into their mechanics when we already had a well designed and functioning job in Heavensward, with clear ways to improve on it with Stormblood. In Heavensward we had DWT as our spike window, and Bahamut is that same window now rather than an extension of DWT. One of those things that HW SMN did well was having plenty of meaningful downtime inbetween that spike, that let you focus on the small things needed to maintain your flow. It made the spikes in our rotation actually mean something, whereas on Bard you just feel needlessly busy except in Paeon, which feels like too short of a break with no real payoff for taking it. Right now, the pseudo-phases we have with DWT, Aetherflow, and Rouse feel forced. Incredibly so. They are not a good fit for this job, given what we had before.

On the inverse of that, however, compare HW SMN to SB Machinist. MCH has a 10s spike window on the same 1-minute timer HW SMN had, and a decent (if RNG focused) filler rotation, but the spike window is far too short and frustrating to set up and execute, and because they don't have to care about heat generation except when they have too much skill speed, they don't get any enjoyment out of it beyond follow the procs. Is that interesting when optimized? Not really. Like HW SMN, they have a lot of different buttons to press within a short period in order to optimize their damage, and like Contagion now on SB SMN, they're actively fighting against the server in order to properly execute it thanks to Flamethrower.

We want to aim for something better than that.

To me, the problems with Summoner right now are the same ones with Monk. Lots of little different parts, that don't (or aren't allowed to, in the case of Bane) add up to much as a whole. Unlike Monk however, some of those parts that you would call synergistic that were added in Stormblood specifically actually actively make the job worse to play, and have clear ways to improve on them. Tri-Disaster's reset mechanic is probably the most innocuous of them. It reduces the activity in our filler for a frankly minor amount of dps gain, and makes the job more tedious and boring to play overall with it there.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I just want Garuda/pets in general to be more responsive.
Mashing the same button during 6s and hoping the skill queued properly is boring and stressful, especially with Contagion where you don't want it to be delayed.

I also don't like Bahamut phase. Because you have no visual representation availaible for wyrmwave (except knowing what to do in your rotation) and Bahamut doing what he likes.

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

Pets absolutely need an overhaul on their response...
...Bahamut's inability to stay put and other factors also hinders its effectiveness greatly...
...That said, I do think that pets lack a bit of interactivity...

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Honestly, I'd rather not worry about the unresponsiveness of pets too much. They are what they are. They can certainly be changed, don't get me wrong, but we shouldn't focus so heavily on that one fact. That's on SE to fix via engine tweaks, and people have been hammering on that one point since ARR's launch, and SE knows it. It's still in the works. Until that point, SE should be making design choices that fit with how pets function currently. If you want the pets to feel less clunky in the meantime, then remove all of Garuda/Ifrit's utility (stun/knockback in addition to the vul up debuffs), root Bahamut at the point he's summoned at, and retweak him so he only attacks when you cast a spell but still gives a similar amount of damage output. Seriously, that's all it takes to fix all of their issues, without copious amounts of engine work. Is it interesting? No. But it solves the problem in the interim. Until SE actually shows us a major pet overhaul, we should not expect it.

Regarding fixing pets now, how would I want to see Radiant Shield fixed? Easy. Return the spikes effect on it, but as a DoT, with no initial potency, in exchange for the Vul up getting removed. That fixes most of the ridiculous damage it gave you by instead delaying and overwriting the majority of it, while also making it visible to the player using Ifrit. For Garuda's Contagion, give her a similar but far stronger single target DoT to help make up for the base damage difference between the two. Both will wind up relatively balanced against one another that way, and if you want to use her on obey to line up with Rouse it's easily doable without being frustrating. And that way SE doesn't have to change anything else on them until they've fixed the engine or put in a proper overhaul.

That isn't to say I don't care about the Egi or Bahamut, but I recognize their current weaknesses. Might as well work around them by instead baking synergy from them into how SMN's personal kit works, rather than requiring the pets themselves to carry it. A good example of how to do this would be Tri-Disaster and DWT/Bahamut. Make the third debuff change based on what pet you have out, and whether you're in DWT/Bahamut or not. It can keep the cruddy Ruin buff if you're not in DWT or Bahamut. Bahamut himself can apply a straight Vul Up, with DWT checking your current pet to give it Phys/Magic Vul Up or Damage Down, for Garuda/Ifrit/Titan respectively.

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Originally Posted by Flana

I actually quite enjoyed Dreadwyrm Trance in Heavensward. I feel like it gave the job a nice cadence and build up to this really explosive damage phase that really doesn't exist anymore with Stormblood.

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I agree with this sentiment regarding DWT, as well as your notes on Ruin III's role in making it feel good to use. The Aetherflow lockouts in my opinion were the worst change made this expansion, and still remain so. I'd also like to point out that Ruin III still had value outside of DWT too. Your mana bar was just as much of a resource back then as it was at Stormblood's launch. The problem with that was the Role Action changes essentially made Ruin III 100% spammable, not necessarily that that interaction existed in the first place. I get why SE made the change to Ruin III in 4.1. Ruin III in HW was initially 120 potency too. It was later buffed to 200 potency I believe in the middle of the first raid tier in order to shore up some of SMN's weak single target damage (plus people would use Ruin II & Shadowflare over it to avoid clipping Aetherflow since it was just plain worth it) and in general just made it far more noticeable. And as noted, the most irritating part of it all is we basically use Bahamut now the same way we used DWT then. Cram your micro-phases in, and enjoy your spike window once every two minutes. It doesn't make sense to me that that's the case. Unlike MCH or BRD's updates that actually sped up those jobs nicely (admittedly to the detriment of MCH), it feels like we've slowed down too much just to fit the power of one cooldown into our kits.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

It's a good idea. I think to improve this idea further, they should give SMN free Aetherflow stacks during Demi-Bahamut phase except it doesn't count for Dreadwyrm Trance and remaining stacks disappear afterwards.

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I somewhat agree with the idea that bahamut should affect Aetherflow abilities somehow. However, adding more aetherflow like this is just free damage we don't need, and would cause more issues than it would help with. To me, the solution is pretty simple. Combine DWT, Rouse, and Bahamut into one button, with Bahamut retaining his requirement of using DWT twice before he can appear. Replace Enkindle with Enkindle Bahamut while he's out, and then remove the lockouts. Yes,this would mean you only see Bahamut every 3 minutes instead of 2, but given how much value he has in our current kit it's honestly warranted. We need to make room for the quality of life tweaks that will ultimately increase damage elsewhere, otherwise we have the Malefic II AST issue crop up. We're already beating out the other caster DPS. We should not push it even further.

The issue then becomes: What is our filler? How do we make DWT feel noticeable again? If SE doesn't like the mana issue (and to be frank, I don't either) why not kill three birds with one stone? Let's change the Ruin IV/Enkindle proc we have now, and instead give SMN a resource that lets them use the old Ruin III plus Ruin IV outside of DWT. I specifically say a resource because part of the appeal of the high mana cost on Ruin III in HW made it so you actually cared when you chose to dump your mana into it outside of DWT. It acted as a non-aetherflow-based way of adding burst to your rotation when you needed it, while also making DWT itself feel impactful. I'd like to see Ruin I/II charge it reliably in addition to the pets getting to use the same Ruin IV proc to charge it as well, and use that as a way to balance all four spells against one another. Ruin I/III are hardcast but efficient damage, while Ruin II/IV allow you to be mobile and add some quick burst but are expensive and not as good, while the pet proc is free damage that changes up your decisions, particularly if Enkindle's cooldown reduction remained. Though I'd like it not to. A different approach that comes to mind is to make Aetherflow accelerate Enkindle instead, or just reduce Enkindle's cooldown to a minute at 68 and make Enkindle Bahamut share a cooldown with it, assuming all the above happened that wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

As for how to improve on that for Shadowbringers? With the level 80 cap, add a personal defensive cooldown (say, a ghetto cover with your pet, that made them immune to damage but share some of yours), a trait to improve the potency of Aetherflow abilities during Bahamut only, a buff to Tribind's MP cost and potency outside of DWT (mostly the former, latter is fine), a way to spend Aetherflow that doesn't require a target that is only available inside combat, shared cooldowns for all aetherflow skills that are then normalized to 4s (standardizing your opener), and another Enkindle-style pet oGCD on a 20-40s cooldown that would consume the same resource I suggested for Ruin spells.

I pretty much like the idea of Demi-action timer - give them auto-atks and a personal demi-enkindle, which remove the summon after its iconic skill. Yeah kinda like Mchs turret selfdestruction or schs fairy-sacrifice :3

Another idea im dreaming of is to change Demi-Summons in a Palace/HoH Pot-style system: after summoning a Demi your char leaves the battleground and u take full control of the Demi like u can control Manticore/Succubus. But that would mean a whole rework, new skins and animations... so yeah I don’t see SE would take the needed afford for a system like that :/

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

I totally agree with you. For me, SMN is the one job where SE did not only not manage to sustain the job fantasy many people had from early games (I-IX), but they also failed to give it an interesting job design.

It's literally a ruin-mage with two burst phases put on top of each other.

It was kinda fun in ARR since it was the dot class and felt good if you liked that sort of playstyle.
In HW they were like:"Don't know what to do with this job...Let's put a burst phase on it..."
In SB they were like:"Don't know what to do with this job...again...Let's put another burst phase on it and scrap some dots..."

I still think SMN would be way more fun with the summons beeing actual spells of your rotation, building up resource for a big attack (Bahamut, Alexander, Phoenix etc.).

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I personally struggle to get what the idea's "job fantasy" is. It's readily apparent in other FFs. In this game, it's almost like a "throw in the kitchen sink" mage, even though that's what you'd think BLU is by nature. This is the biggest issue I have with SMN and why I tend to stick to BLM, even though it has some design issues as well. I do like its "job fantasy" a lot more but I could be swayed to switch to main SMN if it had a more coherent theme.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

I personally struggle to get what the idea's "job fantasy" is. It's readily apparent in other FFs. In this game, it's almost like a "throw in the kitchen sink" mage, even though that's what you'd think BLU is by nature. This is the biggest issue I have with SMN and why I tend to stick to BLM, even though it has some design issues as well. I do like its "job fantasy" a lot more but I could be swayed to switch to main SMN if it had a more coherent theme.

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To put it pretty bluntly, Summoner's theme is still the Damage over Time/Tactical Nuke Mage. Lots of little incremental hits, with occasional spikes that you build up towards and plan around. Your pet is primarily a single target only DoT that you can interact with. Shadowflare is an AoE DoT cooldown. You have two main DoT spells that you can spread around, either by manually dotting multiple targets or with Bane. Ruin spells are your filler and don't hit for much by themselves compared to the other mages. Everything there essentially combines to turn you into a gatling gun of damage, rather than a cannon. That's your baseline, and it's very similar to Bard in a lot of ways. Where it differs from Bard is pretty obvious though. Bard focuses on chaotic proc management that is fuelled by their DoT ticks. Summoner allows you to plan its burst out ahead of time, and Aetherflow specifically allows you to change that up as required to fit a fight. The Egi and Bahamut don't fit in with this mechanically, but personally speaking, I'd like them to, eventually. I just don't see it happening in the current engine unless SE completely throws them out and redoes their functionality from the ground up minus their animations.

I gave an idea in the past that they should look at in terms of giving it the identity that it should have in the game. I'm going to quote it here.

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Originally Posted by Inosaska

My feedback on the job

-Remove archetypes on pets and give them unique abilities that can be used in a majority of situations.
-Add more pets.
-Remove the dots and add unique new abilities for the summoner itself that gears it away from arcanist.
-Add the ability to switch through abilities like when switching jobs to the summons themselves and use the summon to fight your battles while you cast supporting skills. Most of your core used abilities should be done through the pet and not the caster itself which would follow better in line with the summoner style from final fantasy.

If they did these the class could be a lot better and won't make it difficult to design new abilities in future expansions but as of right now they will run into a problem with making new abilities that will just push it further away from the core summoner style from final fantasy.

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Originally Posted by Inosaska

Make the summoner class an actual summoner and not the current non-sense they have made up for it. With them revamping the combat system in the game that means now is a good time for them to review the summoner and overhaul it.

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This second quote holds very true with shadowbringers bringing about another review at the combat system and thus should take a look at the summoner and revamp it. The demi system in place that can be used instead having the summon active all the time that it basically allows for more summons with some abilities that you command to use and then can perform to ultimate move just like demi-bahamut does and this would solve the identity crisis that the class has right now.

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Originally Posted by Inosaska

-snip-

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It's less an identity crisis and more of a lack of synergy. We have an identity. We deal damage over time, and micro manage burst that is spread between ourselves (DoTs/Aetherflow), our Egi, and Bahamut. DoTs and Aetherflow are part of this identity, and should not go away just because it doesn't 'feel' like Summoners of the past. We try to contribute just as much as our Summons do, and it's only by working in tandem with them that we see our best results. The problem is very little of the disparate parts of our kit are allowed to interact with one another in a meaningful and fluid manner. In other words, the Egi and Bahamut do not enhance us enough, nor vice versa. The abilities that currently have any direct interaction between the Summoner and a Summon are Sustain, Rouse, Enkindle, Contagion, DWT, Devotion, the Ruin IV/Enkindle proc, Wyrmwave, and Enkindle Bahamut. That's it. Bahamut carries the bulk of the meaningful interaction between any part of our kit now, taking over the role DWT had prior to Stormblood. That's why I believe consolidating Rouse, DWT, and him into one button and removing the Aetherflow lockouts would help out a ton with our flow. It leaves only the egi themselves to worry about, that way.

While I hope they fix the egi to work better, I sure as hell don't want them to work exactly like Bahamut. He has flaws too. He's actually worse than both of them, and hits even harder in order to make it more aggravating. Imagine Garuda chasing after you in-between each of her 1s spell casts when her GCD is 3s. Or Ifrit doing the same in-between autos. All the while they keep the same clunky delay on abilities that we order them to do, that we've been trying to get fixed since ARR's launch. That's what Bahamut does currently. It would actually be a step backward, not forward, to implement how he works into their kits. The one thing that's near-universally agreed on is that the Egi overall don't feel impactful, but I don't think embracing Bahamut along with his flaws is the way to go about fixing that problem though. I've talked about it in my prior posts in this thread, however, so I'd advise reading those instead for more details.

For the Summons overall, simply consider two Quality of Life adjustments to how they should work. Make all Summons, including Bahamut, auto-cast the way Bahamut currently does, but only when you use an appropriate spell. Not on any oGCD skills whatsoever, unless they specifically state that they command your pet to do something, like Devotion and both Enkindles do. All of the auto-cast spells would be instant, and have a 1.5s recast timer. Ifrit/Titan would not auto attack either. Similarly, make Bahamut root himself the same way Garuda does. As long as he is in range of the same target you attacked, he shouldn't move, at all.

Another thing that would be nice is if the text for Damage over Time and pet damage from a pet that belongs to you showed up the same way GCD and auto attack text does. With the ability to delineate between those types by changing their colors if you wanted, provided they were your own. That way you could see the damage your DoTs are doing and whether they're critting or not. I guarantee we'd appreciate DoTs and Pets more if we could see their damage flying up constantly alongside our own. In general it would be nice to fiddle more with the floating damage/healing text of this game, to fix issues like that.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Another thing that would be nice is if the text for Damage over Time and pet damage from a pet that belongs to you showed up the same way GCD and auto attack text does. With the ability to delineate between those types by changing their colors if you wanted, provided they were your own. That way you could see the damage your DoTs are doing and whether they're critting or not. I guarantee we'd appreciate DoTs and Pets more if we could see their damage flying up constantly alongside our own. In general it would be nice to fiddle more with the floating damage/healing text of this game, to fix issues like that.

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It's pretty ridiculous this isn't a thing yet, and goes a long way into how dissatisfied I am with the dots now. They're so passive you don't do anything with them outside of Festers dummy-check and you can't even tell what they're doing for damage. I think they appear red on the target but don't stand out at all aside from that, so good luck finding it in the blue blur of numbers from the other people in the group plus your pet wailing on the target. As for the pets, I also think showing you the real numbers would actually hurt how people look at demi-bahamut once they realize that 600 potency is a essentially a fake number due to pet potency. On average it barely hits harder than Deathflare, which really takes away from the power of the moment when you pull back the curtain on the whole thing.

Also I've been thinking for days about what they could do with Titan-egi and nothing satisfying ever comes up without requiring overhauls to the way pets are handled. Pet swapping mid-combat is still annoying without swiftcast, and even if you do swap all of their cooldowns are synced between the pets. You might not even be able to use the cooldown you wanted on support Titan-egi because Garuda-egi used her aoe 20 seconds ago. The pet system is just such a mess it really needs an overhaul at some point.

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Originally Posted by Flana

It's pretty ridiculous this isn't a thing yet, and goes a long way into how dissatisfied I am with the dots now. They're so passive you don't do anything with them outside of Festers dummy-check and you can't even tell what they're doing for damage. I think they appear red on the target but don't stand out at all aside from that, so good luck finding it in the blue blur of numbers from the other people in the group plus your pet wailing on the target. As for the pets, I also think showing you the real numbers would actually hurt how people look at demi-bahamut once they realize that 600 potency is a essentially a fake number due to pet potency. On average it barely hits harder than Deathflare, which really takes away from the power of the moment when you pull back the curtain on the whole thing.

Also I've been thinking for days about what they could do with Titan-egi and nothing satisfying ever comes up without requiring overhauls to the way pets are handled. Pet swapping mid-combat is still annoying without swiftcast, and even if you do swap all of their cooldowns are synced between the pets. You might not even be able to use the cooldown you wanted on support Titan-egi because Garuda-egi used her aoe 20 seconds ago. The pet system is just such a mess it really needs an overhaul at some point.

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I don't think Titan-Egi needs a massive rework. He's a solo option, and while not a very good one, he has his uses. I think giving him more advantage over the other pets in solo situations in order to make him better at that but also not be a tank replacement is fine. Stuff like increasing Sustain's potency, or giving him automatic +1 aggro over you via his short cooldowns with very little effort on his part, and maybe another mitigation tool would be enough. It'd probably be Rouse, or that Tri-Disaster rework I suggested earlier. He doesn't need a lot to serve that function well. But push on it too much and suddenly we have Titan Egi main tanking bosses again.

Regarding the pet cooldowns, I feel they need an overhaul too. Though my opinion is to instead put all of the pet-utilities on the same buttons to ensure they share the same cooldown. This is mainly to prevent the double-swap openers based on getting Radiant Shield and Contagion up at the same time alongside the pet you actually want out. I agree that it makes him and the Egi overall feel clunky but I'm fine with him being a useless pet in raids, especially when he lets you solo unsynced Coil, which is something most DPS classes can't even do.

As for the pet potency discrepancy, that should be addressed anyways. Very little would change if SE simply changed the potencies in the tool tips to accurately reflect how much they would be if we were casting them ourselves, though I think I recall secondary stats affecting pets at the same rate they do us. It's only the main damage stat/weapon potency that's altered, right? I only mention that because SCH feels it too regarding Fairy healing.

I think my disdain for Titan-egi just boils down to the fact they've rendered him useless by stapling more abilities at the 'top' of the class which I am just not a fan of. Honestly if they just didn't kill the pet that would go a pretty long ways in fixing his usability since it prevent summoning Demi-Bahamut from being a total aggro wipe. I also had a thought of Titan-egi having a sort of passive Shadewalker while active and if that wouldn't solve most of his problems right away. Not a complete 100% enmity transfer, but enough so that you're helping him maintain aggro to sort of tie you and this specific pets niche a little closer together. It would still be awful for party content since your tank just vanishes every couple of minutes or the Summoner hobbles themselves by not summoning Bahamut. That might be okay since my impression of the Titan-egi incident back with Ramuh is just that he was too good at soaking damage and able to ignore certain mechanics. I wasn't around back then so I could be completely wrong on what made him overpowered.

I mostly meant that as a response to some earlier posts about Titan-egi's identity and place in the kit, but didn't have a solid quote to differentiate that from my direct response to you, so I apologize if that was unclear or it seemed like I was abruptly trying to change the conversation. I recall a couple people thinking it might be better if he changed to just a utility pet, but then he's just competing against contagion/radiant shield. If his utility isn't good enough, he'll never be used anyways. If it's too good, you'd never use anything except him. I would agree his current place is fine, I just don't like the forced obsolescence or forced clunkiness that Bahamut ends up bringing to his niche.

For pet discrepancy, I hadn't actually thought about checking secondaries until you mentioned it. I went and looked through just a couple random parses my static uploaded and it seems like critical hit and direct hit are roughly equal to my overall percentages. Oddly one or the other has a huge boost, but it's never both in the same parse. In one Ifrit has like 10% more crit than me but the same dhit. In another Garuda's windblade has the same crit chance but almost twice my direct hit rate. I think it evens out overall but I'm terrible at statistics and can't say for sure.

Fair enough. I think we both agree he needs some work regardless, and I do agree that bahamut messes with him badly. I don't think there's a good way to fix it for solo play that winds up being satisfying or a quick thing to do, unfortunately.

As for the Ramuh days he basically didn't take damage due to pets getting additional damage reduction towards certain things on top of high mdef inherited from the Summoner. Once people decided to experiment with him in Coil SE quickly pulled the plug during the next raid tier.

My guess on the discrepancy thing is that some of the raid buffs on you didn't get phased out during the pet's stat recalculation. Which can work for and against you. Iirc Rouse, Bahamut, Potions, and Resummoning (whether via the hotbar or post-Bahamut) triggers the recalculation. I know some raid buffs affect the pet as well though I believe it's done via checking if it affects you as well. It's kinda muddy overall.

Make summoner great again! Overhaul it’s ass
Get rid of the shitty egi’s.
Change It’s core mechanics so that we can actually use more of the primals that we have in the game. Instead of just having the same 3 egi’s we’ve had from the start.