Dusting off the Tome: Summoner Feedback for 4.1

[zuzu-bq]

All SMN needed was QoL changes, they got some buffs and that mixed in it. The only real big problem right now are Pet UI which can simply be solved by Sicfrit without much dps loss over a perfectly controled Obey Ifrit and latency dependance. Bahamut design is problematic in its core but I don't see them changing it. SMN is mostly fine right now actually but I can see SE buffing them again because they like doing that.

[Ariomi]

All SMN needed was QoL changes, they got some buffs and that mixed in it. The only real big problem right now are Pet UI which can simply be solved by Sicfrit without much dps loss over a perfectly controled Obey Ifrit and latency dependance. Bahamut design is problematic in its core but I don't see them changing it. SMN is mostly fine right now actually but I can see SE buffing them again because they like doing that.

Most people here would disagree with you.
Name me one class that has itself, gated and locked behind it's own mechanics like aetherflow.

The class itself, (for lack of better example) went from a vehicle with an automatic transmission, to a manual for no rhyme or reason. You can either wait 31 seconds into your opener to use your most important cooldown, (15 seconds it takes to burn three festers, full dreadwyrm duration) to use aetherflow, or you can do what most people do, and burn aetherflow and dreadwyrm as quickly as possible. (A play style that goes against the design choice for the class but does more dps)

Pet ai isn't solved by just using sicfrit. That's like saying "Oh hey, my car can only turn left, so as long as I never need to turn right it's fine!"
Bahamut ai and mechanics are more then frustrating, and Devotion is an action that has a delay, because it initiates another action. As it stands, the squadron Ai is better then pet Ai.

The class doesn't need buffs, it needs smoothing out.

[zuzu-bq]

Gated on its own mechanics in which sense? Theey become locked to be used or you need to use them to do something else later?

On going from manual to automatic, its not for no reason. The reason is really simple. Its SE's way of bringing the average player closer to the top players by not letting the good players use mechanics in unorthodox ways that would provide them a huge advantage. And if the playstyle goes against design choice while being a gain, they will change so we can't do that playstyle anymore. They did that with NIN, why didn't they do with SMN? Maybe because it is being played mostly as it was intended to. If SE didn't like the way SMNs are playing they would have changed it. They did it with NIN and even said they did a change because the rotation players were using was unintended by devs.

The problem on a lot of the smoothing out beggings is that they are unlikely to happen because most of them are stuff that have been constantly asked since ARR days. I do agree it does needs them, but right now SMN had a lot of issues fixed.

[Karshan]

Well the difference between 95% and 10% was 45% in HS, it's 65% now, so much for reducing the gap. The gates are a gap widener ! Good SMN don't mess a thing, lesser ones can (won't always but can) now mess up things few seconds window by few seconds window and not just skill by skill like it was in HS.

Block aetherflow abilities to avoid "unorthodoxy" if must, but not the skill itself ! Separate aetherflow from dreadwyrm aether

[Flana]

I like that wyrmwave works with user inputs, but it should work only with DAMAGE inputs (Ruin II, Ruin IV, Fester, Enkindle Bahamut, and maybelet Tri-Disaster be the exception). This would prevent the usage of Addle for it.

Believe it or not, I agree with you in a sense. It does feel good to actually fight along side your aetherial dudes, rather than just using them as a fire and forget missile. However, I don't think Wyrmwave was the right way to do it. It creates some weird problems.

One of the things I thought about as a sort of half-way point is to make Wyrmwave an autoattack, but have Bahamut react to your Aetherflow commands. If you Fester or Energy Drain, he uses Flatten on the enemy. Painflare or Bane and he vomits Flare Breath.

Obviously this has it's own problems (especially for damage balance), but it might help bridge the gap and make optimal Bahamut play less about button spam and more about accurately using your abilities. What do you think?

You can either wait 31 seconds into your opener to use your most important cooldown, (15 seconds it takes to burn three festers, full dreadwyrm duration) to use aetherflow, or you can do what most people do, and burn aetherflow and dreadwyrm as quickly as possible.

Really, I feel like this right here perfectly shows just how broken Summoner has become. Using your abilities the way the were designed is significantly worse than just vomiting them out as fast as possible just to get the job going. It's broken to the core, as sad as that is.

[Karshan]

That very much. Not delaying AF by any second is not only the way to do high DPS, it is THE ONLY WAY. With current system, best players manage and never get gated, others might struggle until they know fights by heart.
The gate system has a HUGE negative impact when you don't know the fight.

I currently feel like I have to choose : go as SMN but get shitty DPS until the fight is mastered totally, or master the fight in RDM with ok DPS and only go in SMN two months later, to have high DPS, but that's putting my main on a shelf for all progress.

Sorry but having to resort that (at least until you master the fight) on a class you used to main in HS is not an ok thing Stormblood brought.

[Grimoire-M]

snip.

1. Most of these changes (The Aetherflow changes, locking Tri-Disaster within DWT), are focused on returning to HW's iteration of the class.
2. You lose two buttons in Summon: Bahamut and Akh Morn, and instead gain Ruin III/IV as independent buttons again. You no longer have to manage Rouse, and Tri-Disaster replaces Contagion/Radiant Shield's utility, balancing both in the process.
3. All of the necessary Bahamut QoL is present. His numbers were trimmed down a lot to compensate for being integrated into DWT, and the Enkindle/Aetherpact changes save buttons. I don't expect SE to give us the "Dreadwyrm Aether stacks persist through death" mechanic we all want, so making Bahamut's damage matter less relative to your pets evens that out. That power now goes into Garuda/Ifrit via the Enkindle/Aetherpact changes.
4. The filler changes (all that stuff about Further Ruin stacks) is based on what Yoshi-P specifically intended DWT to solve originally. He wanted us to have something to do after spending Aetherflow. It's why we got the lockouts in the first place, and by merging DWT/Aetherflow into one window, we lose that. This was simply my proposed alternative. It's very much like BLM's Astral Fire management, but micro-sized and tuned to line up with the 30s DoTs better.
5. AoE wise we're about the same as before, only you have your burst evened out better across multiple pulls compared to now. Bane is worth using over Painflare again like it was in HW, while still being weaker. I could've nerfed Tri-Bind's potency in DWT instead of the mess with Further Ruin, admittedly, but it seemed like a good way to limit SMN's AoE throughput while levelling.
6. Underneath all of that, it's nerfs. Pure. Nerfs. We're nerfing SMN's output in general, and shifting some of their utility contribution around, all in order to compensate for the additional burst you'd get in DWT with these changes, which are massive.
7. The Rouse change gives SMN a niche as a caster dps with usable hard-CC and specifically lets SE tune it differently for SCH in the future.
8. Tri-Disaster w/ Ifrit is a raid dps buff on single bosses in the right comps, but is a larger personal dps loss, as it should be.
9. I tried to show some of the math involved for a reason, but in general, if played optimally with Garuda on Sic, this iteration gets slightly less personal dps than it would compared to the current SMN with Ifrit on Sic, but has a far better flow.
10. Despite how complicated this all is, all of these changes are actually possible in engine currently. It's a rework that SE could actually accomplish within a patch or two.

[Exodus-E]

snip

I strongly disagree on some of your suggestions (and having longer filler times, especially if you're revived, is more detrimental than a help; hence why we had these QoL recently to begin with).
For example:

You lose two buttons in Summon: Bahamut and Akh Morn, and instead gain Ruin III/IV as independent buttons again. You no longer have to manage Rouse, and Tri-Disaster replaces Contagion/Radiant Shield's utility, balancing both in the process.
I wouldn't consider having all of the Ruins back less "cluttered".
Sometimes less is more (and all that).

Garuda:
- Shockwave's potency increased to 100. Knockback removed.
Garuda's "default" attack (Wind Blade) is Potency 110.
That change would make Shockwave even more pointless.

Really, it'd make more sense if Aerial Slash had a much shorter cool-down, and/or for Contagion to be an AoE debuff (rather than a single-target one).

Ifrit:
- Crimson Cyclone: No longer stuns.
Same problem as Garuda.
Without its added effect, it'd make Crimson Cyclone an oCD move with a Potency 110 (vs. Ifrit's "default" Burning Strike of 135).
No one would use it.

Bahamut:
- No longer moves from his summoned location.
On that particular one I agree, especially considering that it has a very long reach/range anyways.

Goodbye Devotion. We didn't need ye.
Why?
With its recent change, now it's on par with SCH's Fey Wind (ie. a minor buff that becomes more relevant in Full Parties), which helps SMN have more utility.

[Ariomi]

Gated on its own mechanics in which sense? Theey become locked to be used or you need to use them to do something else later?

Aetherflow is gated behind dreadwyrm trance. (it originally wasn't)

So let me give you an example. You start a pull and have full aetherflow. If you play the way the class was designed, you burn all three charges of aetherflow on fester. (15 seconds) You cannot use aetherflow even if you spent all your aetherflow charges. Gate #1 If you use aetherflow after you burned all your charges you don't get any aetherflow stacks refilled. Then you enter dreadwyrm trance. Dreadwyrm lasts 16 seconds. Gate #2. Aetherflow is locked (unusable in dreadwyrm) Aetherflow is Summoner's most important cooldown, and you are holding it for half of it's cooldown. Holding aetherflow for a total of 31 seconds. Aetherflow has a 60 second cooldown.) It takes two full sets of aetherflow to summon bahamut. So every high end summoner parse out there, Burns aetherflow as fast as possible, then ends dreadwyrm almost immediately, so they use can use aetherflow sooner.

The reason is really simple. Its SE's way of bringing the average player closer to the top players by not letting the good players use mechanics in unorthodox ways that would provide them a huge advantage.

And here is where you are mistaken. The gap between the average summoner and the top players has only gotten larger. The "optimal usage" of summoner goes against what most players assume. Dreadwyrm trance is a 10% damage increase for summoners. You would assume you would want to get as much of that damage increase as possible, but if you don't end the first dreadwyrm as quickly as possible, you set back your other skills. It's not worth waiting that extra 31 seconds just to get every drop out of dreadwyrm trance.

Summoner isn't being played as it was intended. You aren't intended to end the first dreadwyrm trance as soon as possible. It's as unorthodox as it's ever been. You use addle, during demi-bahamut as a dps increase. It's never been more unorthodox. (Addle does no damage, but contributes to dps as summoner.)

Really, I feel like this right here perfectly shows just how broken Summoner has become. Using your abilities the way the were designed is significantly worse than just vomiting them out as fast as possible just to get the job going. It's broken to the core, as sad as that is.

If they removed the gating on fester, Smn would be closer to Heavensward, and would make the gap smaller between the top smns and the average person. (Unless the average person knows not to play the class like it was intended.)

[Neela]

Gated on its own mechanics in which sense? Theey become locked to be used or you need to use them to do something else later?

well Eirene covered it very well I guess I'll just copy paste the analysis for the "lockout" system of his guide in general – its not only about AF and DWT but about way more lockouts which actually set the base of your rota.

1.1 General Workflow / Lockout System

The job mechanics can be split into 4 parts:

1) Aetherflow
2) DWT(Dreadwyrm Trance)
3) Bahamut
4) Rouse

1.1.1 Aetherflow

The core mechanic behind SMN is aetherflow. Without aetherflow, you are basically losing the ability to execute the majority of your other job mechanics, namely DWT and Bahamut. Therefore, it is extremely important to highlight that the no.1 priority of SMN is to attain the maximum number of aetherflow stacks. In order to achieve this, it is highly favourable to keep aetherflow on cooldown as soon as you can in most cases; the odd case being speed runs where you should have already pre-planned a kill timing. This is something that I feel some of the other rotations neglect. Although it may appear logical at first sight to fit in 3 festers and make full use of your first DWT, refreshing your aetherflow at ~20+ seconds opens up a huge possibility of you losing an aetherflow usage at the end of the fight. I will not go too much into the numbers, but it should be very clear that losing an aetherflow usage, which translate into a Tri-d, DWT and possibly even a bahamut is an overall potency loss.

So what locks out or prevent you from using aetherflow? DWT. With the new changes to SMN in 4.0, aetherflow stacks can only be gained after you have used up your dreadwyrm stacks.

1.1.2 DWT

With DWT having a duration of 16 seconds, in order to prevent ourselves from locking ourselves out from using aetherflow once it’s cooldown is up while still enjoying the full use of DWT, we have to use DWT at least 16 seconds ahead of aetherflow cooldown. Following this concept, a general rule of thumb is that you should be using your DWT when your aetherflow cooldown is at ~ 18-20 seconds.
So what locks out or prevent you from using DWT? Bahamut. In Bahamut trance, you are able to use aetherflow stacks but are unable to use DWT.

1.1.3 Bahamut

Here, we are further extending the interaction of ‘lockouts’ between DWT and aetherflow. With a duration of 20 seconds, you have to use Bahamut 20 seconds before your DWT lockout timing (i.e 20 seconds on Aetherflow CD). This brings us to our next rule of thumb, you should be using Bahamut at the very latest when aetherflow has 40 seconds left on its cooldown.

So what locks or prevents you from using Bahamut? Rouse. As Bahamut de-summons your pet, you should be trying to maximize the use of your pet abilities before using Bahamut trance.

1.1.4 Rouse

You should know the routine by now. The next rule of thumb is to use Rouse 20 seconds before Bahamut to get the maximum usage of Rouse before de-summoning your pet. This brings us to a full circle where you should be using Rouse at the very latest when your aetherflow has just finished its cooldown.

personally I don't think the lockouts/gates are that bad at all and i don't wanna them to open up af/dwt again but I can see why people are into that... ^^