Quote Originally Posted by Karshan View Post
He never claimed so, on the very contrary he said it was absolutely not a number discussion, it's a gameplay mechanics one.
A lot of people also misunderstood his statement about dots. He knows they're 20% of our damage, when he says they don't do anything he means that except fester and bane (lol) nothing interacts with it.
Which is not entirely true (ruination) but maybe now people understand more.

All he says about pets is quite right as well.

That was my fear when they buffed SMN : that people say "it's buffed, stop complaining" when really it is not the concern for some of us ; the grievance is that it doesn't feel instinctive or nice to play anymore, with all those containments between rouse, AF, DWT, Baha. It is clunky, and I maintain that statement "emotion from the expansion free" after 6 months of trying it out on various fights.

The fact players work around the clunkiness to make great parses doesn't say "it's not clunky" it only says "we do well despite that".
Fair enough. When I posted, some of the since-edited posts went so far as calling it broken or the most recent set of nerfs unnecessary and unfair.

I'll agree completely that current Summoner seems, even on paper, to be clunkier and far less cohesive than it ought to be. Sadly, the sheer number of things that have seemed wrong with it on paper haven't been enough to encourage me to level it in SB; it will likely be my very last job (pair) to 70, or before only AST (and that reluctance, too, stems merely from a mechanical issue; my Draw always instantly self-spends, even if the key is only clicked/queued once, unless I can perfectly clip my oGCD queue with another skill).

:: I mean, I play Monk. We perform well, but short of very short GCDs, our rotations are a conflicting, wasteful mess, and no matter our gear a good portion of our toolkit remains a conceptual garble.

I felt the same way both on the SMN and now the BLM buffs, though at least the latter touched on a couple mildly useful QoL points, whereas only the effective penalty of death changes were especially reassuring for Summoner.

To better hold to the topic this time, I can only really say from my limited experience mostly just what Ellie has already said before. At best, I can suggest merely that cast times be removed from pets, their spell animation locks be reduced, their abilities be treated as pet oGCDs, and their base movement speeds increased. I'd also suggest that, across the board, auto-attacks should be initiated by spell casts and that any active auto-attack cycle ought to trigger similarly hostile behavior by your pets against the given target (at least in the absence of a current pet target as set by your last instance of damage dealt to an enemy). This would allow Bahamut to attack immediately, even without being ordered to, as you'd already be in an aggressive state towards your target when Bahamut spawns.

I'd also suggest, as a minor QoL, that players should enter and reenter (from death) instances at full stacks of any time-generated resource that does not require combat, such as Aetherflow, Ammunition, and Chakra. I realize this is scarcely an issue, as one can wait the mere 30-45 seconds, but it's still only fair.

I'd personally also perfer that DWT merely apply an attack speed buff, rather than a damage buff, making its DoT reapplication timings more flexible, but, more importantly, allowing from a balance perspective Fester, Painflare, and Energy Drain to again be used from inside DWT, opening the way for Aetherflow to be used within as well, assuming sufficient balance changes. I'd assume this would not be without contention, though, as many will have gotten use to the current consequent timings of DWT and SB burst phases, and may dislike a more frequent but less powerful Bahamut, or one that takes 4 Trances to summon instead, etc.