Dusting off the Tome: Summoner Feedback for 4.1

[Kreyd]

I spend half of last night thinking about SMN and how it could work with actual summons as regular casts and talking via discord with a friend ,who plays SMN too, over my ideas. She liked it and sad I should post it on the forum. Let me hear what you think about it.

TL;DR:
-Dot's, Ruin-casts and permanent Pet's are scrapped.
-Summonings now work as regular casts, inflicting dmg and add diverse aspects such as buffs, debuffs and Dot's upon you or your enemys.
-Ifrit, Garuda and Shiva are basic summons, inflicting elemental dmg and gaining 1 Aether (Fire, Wind, Ice) per summon.
-Ramuh, Leviathan and Titan are advanced summons, requiring Fire-, Wind- and Ice- Aether to be executed, gaining Lightning-, Water- and Earth-Aether instead.
-Elemental Wheel as new Job Gauge. Can stack up to 2 of each element's Aether.
-Second Job gauge is a bar right under the element Wheel, collecting elemen-neutral Aether (Like the Fairie Gauge from Scholar, dont know how to explain it otherwise)
-ogcd's are used to improve summenings, improve Aether generation and raid utility.

Skills/Traits:

(I'll post the Elemental Wheel here for easier imagination of the Job Gauge)




Summon Ifrit:
Casttime: 2.4 sec.
Inflicting Fire-elemental Dmg to the target. Gaining 1 Fire-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Garuda:
Casttime: 2.4 sec.
Inflicting Wind-elemental Dmg to the target. Gaining 1 Wind-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)
Decreasing your casttime by x% for x seconds.

Summon Shiva:
Casttime: 2.4 sec.
Inflicting Ice-elemental Dmg to the target. Gaining 1 Ice-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)
Decreasing enemys magic resistance by x% for x seconds.



Summon Ramuh:
Instant. 2.4sec. cooldown. Consumes 1 Wind- and 1 Fire-Aether to be executed.
Inflicts Lightning-elemental Dmg to target and applies DoT effect. Gaining 1 Lightning-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Leviathan:
Instant. 2.4sec. cooldown. Consumes 1 Wind- and 1 Ice-Aether to be executed.
Inflicts Water-elemental Dmg to target. Gaining 1 Water-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Titan:
Instant. 2.4sec. cooldown. Consumes 1 Ice- and 1 Fire-Aether to be executed.
Inflicts Earth-elemental Dmg to target. Gaining 1 Earth-Aether (up to a maximum of 2)

Summon Bahamut
Casttime: 4.0 sec.
Consuming all Elemental-Aether gained and inflicts heavy Dmg to target and all enemys nearby.
The more Aether is spend, the stronger the blow.



Aetherflow:
Casttime: Instant (Ocgd)
Effect: Gaining instantly 1 Fire, 1 Wind and 1 Ice Aether.
60 Sec. Cd

Aethermanipulation:
Casttime: Instant (Ocgd)
Effect: Transforming
1 Fire- into 1 Earth-Aether
1 Ice- into 1 Water-Aether
1 Wind- into 1 Lightning-Aether
60 Sec. Cd

Trait:Aetherpreserve:
Effect: Everytime Fire-, Ice-, or Wind-Aether are consumed, element-neutral Aether is gained.

High Summoning:
Casttime: Instant
Effect: Consumes element-neutral Aether to improve next summoning, increase it's Dmg dealt by x%.

Elemental Force
Casttime: Instant
Effect: Consumes element-neutral Aether to improve next summoning, dealing it's Dmg and Effects to target and all nearby enemys.

Playstyle:
Ifrit, Shiva and Garuda are used to gain Fire, Wind and Ice Aether.
Fire, Wind and Ice Aether are spend, to summon Ramuh, Leviathan and Titan, gaining Lightning, Water and Earth Aether, as well as element-neutral Aether.
Element neutral Aether is used to improve next summoning for aoe or stronger single target Dmg.
Summoning Bahamut unleashes a big attack, consuming all elemental-Aether.

Sidenotes:
-Summoning Bahamut with full power takes need of 24 casts (without the usage of Aetherflow and Aethermanipulation) beeing about 58 seconds.
-Balancing can easy be made by adjusting dmg numbers and add/remove additional effects on/from summons.
-ogcd abilitys for extra Dmg, Raid Utility can easy be added (Rhavana and Bismarck *cough*)

[Karshan]

The main gap right now on players is because people either can't do the opener, can't do WW properly or fail in cycling each of SMN's "phases".

I agree the changes in 4.1 are reducing the skill gap, I was talking 4.0 in regard to 3.5.
And I seem to agree with you on the three major causes, although the third one is very wide and contains a lot of plausible mistakes.


For instance, I don't have trouble with the opener double weaving (practice from HS as well) or the wyrmwaves, because I practiced those things a lot for I identified them as crucial. So even in the heat of the battle, that I can manage (maybe not the 12, but 10 is the very minimum laid). However, on O1S, I end up 700 DPS under what I do on a dummy. 96% uptime on the dots, ruin iV procs used so no real problem here...sure a fight isn't a dummy but a few untargetable moments shouldn't account for 700 DPS... so it must be this last cause, this "cycling" that is at stake.

Before, in HS, opener and trance were crucial as well. The rest : dot managing and ruin spam. So Back then, I managed all. So I shouldn't meet any problem here either ? Well, 700 difference between an almost dummy fight and an actual dummy. Bummer. So I really don't understand that fall off. When I look at it, I see troubles in the cycling phase : dot clipping (tri-disaster available when dots still have 18seconds), rouse, etc. Sometimes you just don't know what is best, never happened in HS. I feel more at ease with the opener than these supposed "off" phases, isn't it odd ? I'd really like more of a Dragoon cycle, with things ligning up. Ruin spam might not be fun, but things were easier to track.

@Kreyd : I'd suggest you look up the thred of SMN's suggestions, and add your contribution here. I'd also like more use of the primals, maybe yours is a bit complicated though (and what happens to your stacks when you die, huh ? )

[Kreyd]

@Kreyd : I'd suggest you look up the thred of SMN's suggestions, and add your contribution here. I'd also like more use of the primals, maybe yours is a bit complicated though (and what happens to your stacks when you die, huh ? )

Is there an actual SMN suggestions thread? All I found were feedback threads like this one and I didn't want to start another thread about SMN. I'm sorry if I hit the wrong thread.^^"

Well, what happens to the Job Gauge of other Jobs, when they die? Not dying is a pretty good strategy in commen I guess.
It's actually pretty simple. Your maingoal would be to build up as many stacks as possible for a strong Bahamut summon. Just imagine it like SAM's rota.

Hakaze->Yukikaze grants Setsu
Hakaze->Shifu->Kasha grants Ka
Hakeze->Jinpu->Gekko grants Getsu
Iaijutsu consumes them for a big attack.

Summoner would be:
Ifrit + Garuda allows Ramuh -> granting Lighting Aether
Ifrit + Shiva allows Titan -> granting Earth Aether
Shiva + Garuda allows Leviathan -> granting Water Aether
Bahamut consumes them all for a big attack.

After all it's just an Idea I thought a few hours or so about. No offense if you don't like it, I just enjoy talking about this kind of stuff.

[Karshan]

Yes but your build up is 2 mins, like now actually, and death is a major problem on Smn more than other classes (always has been and worsened in SB) and it wouldn't go down the fixing path

The idea of elements is good but the design needs improvmrnts

[Kreyd]

I see your point there, but actually it's about 58 seconds. (24 casts each 2.4 sec.) I mentioned it at the end in my sidenotes, maybe you overlooked it
Also, if you use Atherflow and Aethermanipulation, which grant 1 Lightning-, Water-, and Earth-Aether and (just like the actual Aetherflow) should be permanently on Cd, it would be down to 15 casts and 38 seconds for a full build up. So it's even faster than an actual DWT now.
Actually it seems a bit fast for me. After all, it's freaking Bahamut, doing it's signature move. We have to work for it!
What do you think would be a proper build up time?

But I noticed something else. Having all summonspells 2.4 seconds casttime, would making movement fights very difficult, so i changed Ramuh, Leviathan and Titan to instant casts, not affecting the build up time, but increasing the SMN's movement by a lot.

[Exodus-E]

You know, it's funny...
Whenever (some) people suggest ways to "improve" SMN's play-style by outright changing how they summon to begin with, they always tend to ignore/forget one (or both) of these two main points:

Egi(s)
The concept of the SMN job "summoning" Egis is deeply rooted in this game's lore, and in turn, the job's own quest-line.
Changing that would require a complete re-write of its lore, which would be a massive undertaking to say the least (especially since it was already solidified in the Encyclopedia Eorzea).

And before you point that out, yes: I know the concept of "Trance" exists, but as far as we know we're limited to only one (thus far), and that's Bahamut's.
It's entirely possible that we could get more trances, but until then, our main way of "summoning" are Egis.

"Summon" variety

Aside the classic FF staples (ie. Ifrit, Ramuh, Shiva...), there has been plenty of other "summons" introduced in this game.
If the classic ones were to be "tied" to skills, then what would happen to any other "summon" introduced later on (ie. Ravana, Bismarck, the Warring Triad...)?
I feel doing that would limit us even more as to what we could get later on.

Really, I think they just need to keep pushing the whole Egi glamour thing so we can get the skins of every other Primal we defeated thus far (and beyond).

Although, we'll run into yet another lore-related problem (as in, these being completely different from the Carbuncle "justification", especially with some Egis being of different aspects entirely) unless they make a brand new quest specifically for them...