Summoner and the upcoming changes

[Tsukaasa]

Q: I have one question to all summoners, who like and accept the new mechanics and are leveling currently: Do you use Garuda or Ifrit-Egi? With the new changes made, I cannot decide which one is the better option on current meta.

I prefer to use ifrit on big pulls/trash mobs since radiant shield will hit back any mob attacking the tank, and on bosses garuda for contagion.
But i think this decision might change according to 8 man party composition. (whether there is more magical dps or physical ones and also movement heavy fights)

[Sunako]

Did some Susano extreme farms today and players seems to hate my Bahamut there because it is too big and players can not see mechanics. Is there any way hide that pet?

[artemos7]

Having played SMN since its release until now, this feels like a major downgrade back to what it was pre-HW. I am certain by 70 I will enjoy it more, but I can't imagine leveling it up now with the little ability it has at lower levels. Even with the cross-role abilities/actions on my bar...there is no coherent rotation or anything that will truly buff my damage numbers without having to spam, which isn't what I was hoping for at all. I understand trying to balance the class to make it more equal to others...but this isn't balance, it is gimping. I love SMN, so please do something about this, because I felt tempted to switch to another class, and I haven't felt that way before.

[Fyce]

Q: I have one question to all summoners, who like and accept the new mechanics and are leveling currently: Do you use Garuda or Ifrit-Egi? With the new changes made, I cannot decide which one is the better option on current meta.

I would say that, in theory, we need to use both. Since Radiant Shield and Contation don't share the same cooldown, you can use Contagion with Garuda and then swap to Ifrit with Swiftcast to use Radiant Shield. Or the other way. In fact, Ifrit doing Radiant Shield during pre-pull and then swapping to Garuda for Contagion a few seconds before the pull is probably the best thing since Garuda doesn't have to move.
But finding the optimal opener will require some theory crafting. Quite a lot actually.

Whatever the case, every minute you can use both Contagion and Radiant shield.

SMN is quite a busy job now in terms of priority management.

[Brinzy]

I can't imagine that we would ever use two abilities, post-pull, not directly related to damage (and many seconds of pets not attacking) in our opener. We most certainly wouldn't go from Ifrit to Garuda if that's the case, because you would either have to burn up Rouse when switching out Ifrit after Enkindle, or you'd have to wait to use Garuda's. Rouse is generally used pre-pull anyway.

Also, shoutout to this guy:

I am aswell one of those people who love the new summoner. Tough I have to admit that I didn't play mine before SB

for criticizing SMNs for not liking the way SMN is now while admitting he didn't play SMN before. But thanks for your expert analysis.

[Fyce]

I can't imagine that we would ever use two abilities, post-pull, not directly related to damage (and many seconds of pets not attacking) in our opener. We most certainly wouldn't go from Ifrit to Garuda if that's the case, because you would either have to burn up Rouse when switching out Ifrit after Enkindle, or you'd have to wait to use Garuda's. Rouse is generally used pre-pull anyway.

That's why I said "pre-pull", and not "post-pull".

Like, 5 seconds before pull, using Radiant shield>Swiftcast>Summon Garuda>Rouse>and then either Contagion or start the opener (depends on when Contagion is best used... Probably during the first DWT, but at this point I'm not sure, the opener seems to have quite a few radically different options). Note that using Contagion just as the pull starts is a good way to make it quite responsive, since the pet isn't doing anything at that moment.

After that, switching pets to get a damage buff for magic damage (ourselves and healers... and maybe another caster) or physical damage (rest of the party) should overcome the DPS loss from the Egi not attacking once or twice.

[Brinzy]

There's a good chance our best opener will be based on multiplicative stacking, so we'll likely be using Contagion in tandem with Dreadwyrm and Tri-Disaster for Ruination. I don't know for sure because I haven't theorycrafted any of this and my math is trash, but Ruin 3 with all three of these up is hitting for 150*1.1*1.1*1.1 = 199.65 potency, so basically old Ruin 3. Ruin 4 would be hitting for 266.2 potency. Would love for someone with a deeper grasp on this than me to confirm this or slam these numbers.

With that said, I wasn't aware that Contagion and Radiant Shield didn't share a CD. I know that, at some point, SCH fairies shared CDs across certain abilities, so I'm surprised to hear that these two don't. Honestly, I haven't tried it. Also, there's generally so little damage at the start of fights that RS probably won't be worth burning Swiftcast over, which could instead be used to fit in another Ruin 3/4 during Dreadwyrm.

[Feves]

I've now obtained level 70 on Summoner and I still think the job is very clunky. Trying to get your contagion to go off at points of high burst and it failing you - with the old contagion there was at least a little bit of leeway. Furthermore, playing with Bahamut if you even have to move a tiny pixel to avoid a mechanic/AoE then your bahamut moves with you instead of staying static like the other egis. Ideally you would want to use contagion just before you go into DWT + Tri-Disaster correct? To gain buffed dot damage + ruination + further damage with your Ruin III/IV, however it just really doesn't co-operate and is just really disappointing to play. I think I've made my decision and think I will scrap playing Summoner from now on unless there's some significant changes to the job.

One positive note though, I do love how Lucid Dreaming works with Summoner - using it at points means you can get a very high Ruin III output while outside Dreadwrym, which does add a level of actual interesting gameplay to the job, I would have loved to have that ability on level 60 summoner before the expansion.

[artemos7]

After that, switching pets to get a damage buff for magic damage (ourselves and healers... and maybe another caster) or physical damage (rest of the party) should overcome the DPS loss from the Egi not attacking once or twice.

Why would our opener need to have a summon and resummon, and who is giving us all this time for summoning, unsummoning, and resummoning pre and post battle? Because last time I checked, I barely got a protect or stoneskin before someone runs in and starts the battle, not to mention having to switch summons again, and wasting my swiftcast. I guess if the devs somehow made it obvious we need to summon and resummon as part of our rotation, but that isn't the case. They just made these changes with a lot of things in mind it seems, but not with Summoner in mind. A lot of these changes feel like gimping SMN's DPS ability to make others standout more much like MNK who was one of the best DPS and is now starting to take a backseat.

[Fyce]

-snip-

I'm not talking about casual roulettes. I'm talking about extreme trials and raids. Pre-pull countdowns are very common in these types of content.
About Swiftcast, since the changes to Shadowflare, its availability went up a lot. Besides, improving party DPS is absolutly not a waste of a 60s cooldown.

The changes made to Contagion and Radiant Shield, plus being able to use both buffs at the same time, and the change to Shadowflare (indirect Swiftcast usage modification) are definitly obvious enough to make some theories about using these buffs.

If you don't see that and don't have experience regarding endgame content, then it's probably not as obvious for you.

Anyway, doing this pre-pull is completly doable and mostly free. If people don't do it, it's a clear and objective DPS loss for the group.