Summoner, Red Mage and Feedback

Hello everyone, since the launch of shaddowbringers I've mostly played SMN RDM and MCH, but I'm gonna focus on the 2 casters with a quick mention for MCH on the SMN feedback.

1. RDM

• The good

Overall the job feels pretty much the same as in Stormblood.

Scorch adds more mobility and good burst. The animation is really good.

No more Scatter spams.

Engagemant was surprisingly good since you can doubleweave it.

• The bad

MP Cost got hit hard and Lucid isn't enough for it. This is a strong nerf to RDM main Utility: Verraise

Enchanted Reprise isn't worth to use. Right now Enchanted Moulinet is a better manadump than En. Reprise.

The new Traits are lacklusters. I dont want to be a crybaby but BLM traits are way better than RDM and SMN traits with a lot of QoL changes.

Emboldem still only buffs magic damage for the caster.

• What to change?

Buff Lucid Dreaming or Reduce the offensive spell MP costs.
If there's no MP Cost change, buff our Personal DPS, since our utility was nerfed.

I still think the AoE combo should be Impact->Verthunder/Veraero II, similar to the single target combo and it should generate more mana.

Buff Enchanted Reprise potency or reduce it recast time.

Change Emboldem to buff all damage instead of only magical.

Add an aoe falloff damage to Verholy/Verflare or make aoe versions of those. They can be casted after 3 Enchanted Moulinets. Those spells should replace Verthunder/Veraero II like the QoL made for the single target versions.

Oh boy, what happend here?
There were so many good ideas but the execution was really bad.

• The good

Aetherflow is gone! *insert John Cena "Are you sure about that" meme here*.

No more huge pre-pull preparations

Fountain of Fire(FoF)/Brand of Purgatory(BoP) combo is nice.

• The (really) bad

Festerruins are bad. The potencies without dots are way to weak. Our dots got nerfed for this?

Ruin IV procs only on Egi Action 1 and 2 isnt enough. If we had to move without double weaving we are losing procs. Why remove the chance of procs on Devotion or Enkindle?

Aetherflow is gone, but Downtime is a thing. Since we cant hit the target during that, it delays our already restricted rotation.

ES is probably the worst skill added on this expansion. The potency is weak, can't be used without a target and it's just one more button to use that most of us forget that exists.

Bahamut still have problems when we have to move. His necessity to hug us and forget to attack need to be revised.

Why the CD for Bahamut fase (And Automaton Queen) starts when it isnt even fully summoned? We loose 1s of Baha and 5s of Automaton Queen.

Egi overall damage is weak. Most of our damage should be from them.

Titan exists, so do something for it. Because of the R4 Procs on EAs, not using them for damage make Titan not worth using.

• Oh boy here we go (Changes)

Remove fester ruins or reduce the penalty without the dots. If they are gone, buff dot potencies.

Ruination should buff FoF and BoP.

Remove completely the R4 procs. Make R2 upgrade to R4. If the potency is kept, increase the MP cost to 600~1000MP.

Deathflare and Enkindle Baha/Phoenix should replace each other. The standard is Deathflare, when on Baha or FBT change to enkindle Baha/Phoenix. Could be the same for DWT and Summon Bahamut

Buff Egi potencies.

I have 2 ideas for Energy Drain and Energy Syphon
Aetherflow change #1: Remove Aetherflow(ED and ES) and make Fester and Painflare charge abilities.
Aetherflow change #2: Make ES to be like Art of War(AoE circle arround the caster), but still needed to be in combat. With this we can get our charges during downtime.

Enchanted Reprise isn't for a mana dump. It's for movement. Sometimes you don't have the luxury to stop and cast something for a second and all your other instants are on cooldown. It's better to use that mana to attack while moving than to sit on that mana for several seconds while you run to the other side of the platform.

Yeah Reprise is good in Titania Ex when you need to run away from your partner with the vine tether, allowing you to still deal damage while moving. It's possible further high end content in the future will see you using it more as well, but don't use it to dump mana as it's a damage loss otherwise.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Yeah Reprise is good in Titania Ex when you need to run away from your partner with the vine tether, allowing you to still deal damage while moving. It's possible further high end content in the future will see you using it more as well, but don't use it to dump mana as it's a damage loss otherwise.

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it's a good crutch and I do the same, but you're better off using moulinet to offset your Dualcast then swiftcast.

When you understand the fight, your goal will always be to avoid Reprise. It's a great crutch, but a crutch all the same.

In its current state it's better to let the GCD clip from movement than to use it for E. Reprise. It's less potency per second than Jolt 2 > Jolt 2 spam, and it costs 10/10 mana to use which on its own devalues the costs of the mana you just spent because of the opportunity costs (2270 potency / 10.2s is a lot of potency per second).

That said if you want to go with the 120s rotation anyway, E Moulinet is a way better option to burn your excess mana. Go ham.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

Enchanted Reprise isn't for a mana dump. It's for movement. Sometimes you don't have the luxury to stop and cast something for a second and all your other instants are on cooldown. It's better to use that mana to attack while moving than to sit on that mana for several seconds while you run to the other side of the platform.

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Like SaberMaxwell said, its better to clip gcd than use it, its a potency loss and misalings the 110s rotation. For the 120s rotation you will need to dump mana anyways, but En Moulinet make a better job on that bc it recast time is lower.

While I don't think it particularly matters which of Verthunder/aero II or Scatter/Impact is the longcast or shortcast, I can at least see the niche advantages of having Verthunder/aero II in their current positions as a means to reliably generate specific Mana types when you're hard-pressed for time (not that there is any scenario where that would be optimal in single-target). Plus, I just generally enjoy that it's at least somewhat unique from the single-target rotation.
I suppose VT2/VA2 each generate more Mana than Jolt at present, but it's a difference of 1 Mana and you lose a significant amount of damage on the main target. As I said, very niche; the bigger concern I have is they generate more than Impact, meaning your Mana gains actually speed up in low-level content.
In fact, I agree that the AoE rotation as a whole feels very slow, largely due to the much smaller amount of Mana being generated than even the days of Enhanced Scatter spam. Yes, Moulinet has lower requirements for Mana and doesn't have a combo to account for, but the fact is that the current setup encourages us to be somewhat conservative with Moulinet in AoE (in spite of its reduced cost), while also encouraging us to use it as a dump in single-target whenever we mean to delay our combo.
Personally in this case, I would argue for Scatter/Impact to have their Mana gains increased -- say, 4/4 Mana per cast of Scatter and 2/2 per target struck by Impact. This would mean our Mana generation increases by ~15% with Scatter or in 2 targets with Impact, and nearly 50% with Impact in 3+ target scenarios, while simultaneously limiting the advantages of Impact to purely AoE (unlike Enhanced Scatter).

Meanwhile, between Reprise's high GCD and low potency, there is no scenario where it is optimal to use it in single-target; even for movement periods it's best avoided as often as possible since it presents a strict damage loss, much like (albeit not to the same extreme as) BLM's Scathe. Many of us looked forward to it as a means to dump Mana in single-target so we could delay our combo to align with party buffs, smack the target at range when we're about to overcap, or mulligan our Mana/procs before entering the combo... but now even at range you'll get more value out of simply overcapping your Mana.
Based on Zyneste's and Rongway's math, Enchanted Reprise needs a value of at least ~115.6-116.8 Potency-per-Second to be worth its Mana cost, which means either increasing its damage to ~260p or higher per 2.2s, or (assuming my math is right) reducing its GCD to 1.88s or lower at 220p (or some mixture therein, like 240p/2.0s, 180p/1.5s, 290p/2.5s, etc). Personally I'm in favor of increasing the raw potency anyway, since maintaining a higher GCD retains the intended leeway of movement phases without arbitrarily forcing a higher Mana consumption based on fight mechanics.

And speaking of targeted damage losses under arbitrary fight mechanics, we come to Displacement and Engagement.
Let's get this out of the way: I understand that Engagement serves to mitigate a damage loss we would have suffered anyway by ignoring Displacement in encounters where the backstep would kill us outright. However, I disagree with creating a new button as a bandaid fix on an inherent issue with a rotational ability that can kill us, particularly one that serves literally no other purpose except to be a weaker version of an existing ability, and ostensibly to maintain a risk-reward value of 50 potency; in any other circumstance we would call Engagement "bloat," and much like Reprise, the optimal scenario is for us to use it as little as possible.
There were ways for the devs to have solved the issue of Displacement killing us without introducing a new button -- adjusting Displacement's backstep to be safer, having Displacement share "charges" with the existing Corps-a-corps, even just removing the damage from Displacement entirely and shifting it onto other abilities so we use Displacement purely for movement, all options that didn't need a new button whose existence actually subtracts from our toolkit.

Which leaves us with the topic of MP consumption. So, here's my hot take:
While it's fine in the hands of healers, I think Lucid Dreaming shouldn't be a role action for casters. BLM has its own means to restore MP so never needs to bind LD, particularly now that it no longer affects Enmity -- so it only affects SMN and RDM. SMN previously had its own means to restore MP via Aetherflow (meaning for the longest time it really only affected RDMs), but that got removed to lump them in with us. And while Lucid Dreaming got its values increased by 20%, so did the costs of literally all RDM abilities sans Verraise and we got a new finisher, so we're living CD to CD on Lucid Dreaming (and the math shows we may in fact be losing MP overall, particularly as spell speed increases and puts us more and more at the mercy of server ticks).
I think each Caster job should, much like BLM, have its own means to restore MP. For SMN, I'm sure a better solution can be found than Aetherflow v2. In RDM's case, I believe that each of our melee abilities should have an associated amount of MP to restore that increases when Enchanted, so we can use the unenchanted combo at a damage loss to kickstart our MP when we die or need to Verraise, and have the MP generation from our Enchanted combo actually scale to a degree with our spell speed to match the needs of our base rotation.

Other changes to consider for summoner:

• Consider letting Miasma or Bio add Ruination.
• Consider deleting ruination outright.
• Either merge aetherflow stack generation with the trances directly, or delete aetherflow as a mechanic outright, and just make us as players spend it during trances. People won't care about downtime as much if the downtime doesn't feel like trash to actually execute. The goal is to mitigate gimmicky crap, which the downtime is full of between Aetherflow stacks and EA.
• Merge Demi-Bahamut into DWT. Make Deathflare automatically cast when casting DWT innately on entering the trance, and just merge DB's summon animation into DWT's animation to make everything nice and neat.
• If Aetherflow as a mechanic is being removed, consider merging Fester and Painflare into DWT as replaces for ruin 3/ruin 2+4.
• Drop devotion to a 2m cooldown or raise it to some multiple of 120s, having it come off cooldown during FBT when you cannot use it is dumb.

The class needs help, but the biggest problems, by far, are caused by the class not having enough instants to comfortably use every single oGCD that it has, and it's too heavily impacted by boss mechanics. Ruination is also a grating issue but it's not nearly as bad as just how awful the downtime parts of the class are to actually run.

Should be Impact as 2s cast like Jolt and Verthunder 2 and Veraero 2 are the 5s casts. It's weird how it's backwards. Scatter and Impact are basically Joltga.

-Reduce DWT/FBT recast time to 45s or 50s
-Give Energy Drains two charges and allow 4 stacks of Aetherflow
-Increase Outburst to 80 potency
-Increase Energy Siphon to 60
-Add Egi DPS boost to DWT
-Add an additional effect to Demi-Bahamut that spells have a % chance to upgrade Wyrmwave to Flare or add back the option that actions cause wyrmwave.

-Increase the damage of Egi Assaults:
* Egi Assault 1 changes
Crimson Cyclone deals fire damage with a potency of 200. Charges at enemy (Gap
Closer)
Aerial Slash deals wind damage with a potency of 100 to target and all enemies nearby
it.
*Egi Assault 2 Changes
Flaming Crush Deals fire damage with a potency of 100 to target.
Additional Effect: Fire damage over time
Potency: 15 Duration: 30s
Slipstream deals wind damage with a potency of 40 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional Effect: Creates a windstorm centered around the target, dealing damage to any enemies who enter
Potency: 15 Duration: 30s
Increase the radius of Slipstream's Gale Enforcer ground targeting

Enkindle Changes
Aerial Blast Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 400 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies.
Inferno deals fire damage with a potency of 500 to target.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Should be Impact as 2s cast like Jolt and Verthunder 2 and Veraero 2 are the 5s casts. It's weird how it's backwards. Scatter and Impact are basically Joltga.

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Okay but... why?
Personally I enjoy it more that we cast V2 into Impact, since while it's not much, it gives some subtle distinction between the single-target and AoE rotations. If it was just "drop Jolt for Scattempact and V1 for V2", then you may as well drop all the extra buttons for a stance that reduces all damage to make all spells cleave... which would just be boring. Not "spam Scatter" boring, but still boring.

Plus the current setup makes Impact feel more... Impactful.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Enkindle Changes
Aerial Blast Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 400 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies.

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Minor nitpick, but since Aerial Blast is tied to Garuda-Egi, then it should be Wind-aspected damage instead.
Of course, that may become moot once they implement proper Egi glamours (thus, their Enkindles changing into their associated aspects) in the future.

Other than that, those are conceptually sound ideas.

Just about everything with RDM's kit seems designed with a specific purpose in mind, but then there's Fleche and Contre. I wish there were more to them than "press these on cooldown".

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Originally Posted by Donnicton

Just about everything with RDM's kit seems designed with a specific purpose in mind, but then there's Fleche and Contre. I wish there were more to them than "press these on cooldown".

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Yes and no. In the resistance meta they would have been great for additional effect: add piercing resistance down, but they serve their purpose as our physical burst. Don't really need a skill to have a purpose if its sole existence is ME SMASH AND ME SMASH GOOD.

Half our skills serve a redundant purpose of gaining white and black mana. Just a reflection of each other.

In my opinion, we could use a skill or two more, since we have much more button space than before. The only 4.x skill that needs re-evaluated is acceleration. The "Uh there was a 50% chance that your skill was gonna work anyways" button [20% on verholy/flare but w/e.]

#bringbackApocandaUsefulErase

I really want corps-a-corps to generate charges so it can be used for mobility instead of just our melee combo.

RDM should either have its damage increased or the costs of their spells reduced.

The current RDM has garbage DMG and the raise utility is only virtual because if you attempt to raise two people you are instantly oom.

I can’t speak for Red Mage as it’s still at 70, but from the time I’ve spend at lv80 on Summoner I’ve mostly enjoyed how it plays. It can feel stressful trying to manage the number of oGCDs, particularly if you’re trying to use up Egi Assault charges for Ruin IV stacks.

But Phoenix is a great addition and I love that we don’t have as much downtime between our ‘job’ mechanics than before.
It does strange how Aetherflow now works separately from Trance, though maybe because I’m so used to how it was before. I really like the effect of Everlasting Flight; I don’t know if it’s any good (from what I remember it’s a 600 potency heal altogether), but it feels really cool to have some unique party utility, even if turns out not to be massively useful

I always forget that you can use Aetherflow during Trances now (though I’ve kinda been assuming that Aetherflow is to fill the downtime between trances

Lastly, I still don’t really understand the kind of situations I’d use Titan-Egi in. The HP shield is nice, but since it only affects the Summoner I don’t feel like there’s much value in it. In solo play it feels like you’d be better off just using Garuda to kill the enemy quicker, and in party play you shouldn’t really be taking damage that the healers haven’t already prepared to heal with using oGCD. Swapping from Garuda to Titan, using Egi Assault I, then back can feel like you’ve got a ton to do but not enough time to do it