Quote Originally Posted by SoloWingMetatron View Post
The 4.0 changes to Summoner genuinely are a step in the right direction for me. The focus on poison based DoT's and Egi that barely resemble their Primal counterparts were always things I openly critiqued, despite my love for the job.
I might not be illustrating my thoughts properly. I have no qualms with the fact that the Devs added Bahamut as a summon to SMN. I am perfectly fine with this.

However, what I take issue with is that they took the job from the nice, flexible flow it had and turned it into this burst-y, lockout-juggling, phase-shifting job that is completely unlike what it was before. They significantly sped everything up. I suppose they wanted to cut down on the amount of Ruin casts or something... but to that effect I have two issues.

The slower paced pre-4.0 SMN gameplay was enough that while doing all of my actions (dotting and what-have-you), I could freely control my pet, timing their actions with my own, filling in the time with other spells, ability, or repositioning that I was not entirely hindered by their cast times.

This new 4.0 SMN seems as though the pacing is so much faster that the pet control (with the legacy timing) just seems far too slow and impedes the speed they were trying to gain for the job. I say, personally, that's why pets suddenly feel so much more clunky. The job got sped up but the pets got left behind.

The methodical flow the job had between itself and the pet actions (and player actions in controlling the pet) are all now tripping over one another. But let me say that I completely endorse the implementation of Bahamut, but he needs work, himself. Why no Wyrmwave auto attack? Why is he so close and why does he move when I move if he can hit Othard from Eorzea? Did the devs plan for players to just toss a mitigation ability (Addle) to force a Wyrmwave and the enemy didn't need the mitigation at the specified time? If so, that is very strange by design.

It feels like SMN, as a job along with its pet, is trying to do Salsa dancing to Meringue music when before it was a nice, graceful Bachata.

I know there are SMNs out there who are just riding it out or making it work, but still.