The Shadow Summoner: Bringer of Patch 4.4 Feedback

[Flana]

I actually quite enjoyed Dreadwyrm Trance in Heavensward. I feel like it gave the job a nice cadence and build up to this really explosive damage phase that really doesn't exist anymore with Stormblood. There are two big reasons why.

The first is that they locked Aetherflow out of Trance and made Aetherflow and Aethertrail mutually exclusive. Part of what made Trance feel so powerful in Heavensward was getting to go all-in on your high damage spells. You got massively reduced cost Ruin III's and juicy Festers. They've since changed it so you can never Fester in Trance and Ruin III was heavily nerfed to make it a basic Ruin upgrade. You always cast Ruin III now, it's your filler spell. Having a slightly stronger filler doesn't make Trance feel as powerful as it used to.

The second is the introduction of Demi-Bahamut. Trances feel less like their own thing now and just a stepping stone to the real high power phase of Demi-Bahamut, but since he takes so long to get to you're left with several low phase and two mediocre phases before you cash in on that high. In addition to that, while you can't Fester in Trance anymore, you can Fester while Demi-Bahamut is out, which further shifts the power balance in his favor.

This to me makes the job feel kind of lackluster in that you need a lot of buildup over several minutes just to get one really good burst phase.

I just want Garuda/pets in general to be more responsive.
Mashing the same button during 6s and hoping the skill queued properly is boring and stressful, especially with Contagion where you don't want it to be delayed.

I just wanted to highlight this since it also plays into one of my complaints about how the current Summoner is a mess of shallow disconnected themes. The old Contagion actually had a specific tie-in to your kit, and was a link between your pet and your DoTs. It wasn't amazing, but it was there. The lag was also less of a problem because she had at least 15 seconds to tag your DoTs and then it was good to go. Not like now where a 5 second delay means you've missed part of the trick window or just want to move on with your rotation but are stuck waiting for her bland magic vuln to apply.

I honestly don't like the new Contagion because of those reasons. Yes, it is undeniably stronger, but it lost all of the Summoner-specific flavor it had before. Now it's just... there. It does everything for every caster job, except for auto-attacks.

I'd ditch the DoTs completely. Diseases have always felt more like the Scholar's thing, anyway. Instead, focus on the interaction between the player and the summon. Perhaps make them respond via player action, a la Demi-bahamut, or have our aetherflow abilities directly affect the pet. Just a thought, but perhaps the player could rotate through summons the way a bard rotates through songs, each summon interacting differently with the game.

I mentioned it in one of my previous threads, but neglected to bring it up here for the sake of brevity. I honestly think Bahamut would have been more interesting if he actually responded depending on which Aetherflow abilities you use, instead of just casting a generic Wyrmwave for everything. If I remember right it was Flare Breath for Painflare and Bane, and Flatten for Fester and Energy Drain. Do you think that would have given him at least more personality depending on the situation? Would that be a more engaging way to tie demi-summons to the core aetherflow mechanic?


Edit:
I mentioned it up above but didn't really elaborate, so people new to the game or just Summoner in general might not know what I'm talking about in regards to Heavensward Summoner. I'll post that here just to be clear.

In Heavensward, your filler spell was Ruin. It had a potency of 80. Ruin III had a potency of 200 but cost around triple the MP as a single Ruin. While Dreadwyrm Trance still gave the same 10% buff, it also reduced the cost of Ruin III down to a normal Ruin. You could not just spam Ruin III the entire fight or you would run out of mana. This meant you had to use the 80 potency Ruin as filler and you absolutely noticed the shift in Dreadwyrm Trance to the heavily discounted Ruin III's.

With Stormblood they buffed Ruin to 100 and eventually nerfed Ruin III to 120 to make it a straight Ruin upgrade. This means you are always using your filler spell and there is no consistent major spike in damage like there was back in Heavensward. Ruin IV kind of fills the gap, but those are random and subject to chance. You could get 4 back to back in a Trance. You could also get none. They kind of re-added this mechanic back in with Tri-Bind, but personally it doesn't remotely feel the same since AoE isn't really a thing in raids, trials, or most fights in alliances. It is great for dungeons though.

This is why I feel like Trance got a lot less valuable as a 'burst phase,' because they normalized a lot of the damage.

[Neela]

I personally am hoping to see some changes for 5.0 to incorporate more active summons (not egis) that act as a buffer - ends with massive attack then swap for another buffer. Probably more suitable if it was self-buffer but some active primal usage would be appreciated.

I still think SMN would be way more fun with the summons beeing actual spells of your rotation, building up resource for a big attack (Bahamut, Alexander, Phoenix etc.).

yeah I would like to see a rotation- or combination-system like Ninjutsus or Brd Songs - giving the skills aar-primal animations like Nins Frog *quakquak* (=> Yuna Dissidia) which would raise the summoner-feeling by themselves a lot... and still building up resources for Bahamut, Phoenix, Alex, War-Triads in your burst phase.

[Haxaan]

I love that I am not the only person who thinks that summoner is an aesthetic identity crisis. I feel like they need to pick a theme and run with it. If Egi's are the focus then make the job feel more like an actual pet job and give us more Egi glamour. If we are going to go the Trance direction then give us different trance types and have each one based on a different primal and make out attacks do different things based on the primal. If we are going the Demi-Primal route then again, give us more Demi-Primals and make them each unique in what they do.

I really like the idea of having either Trances or Demi-Primals used in a cadence like the Brd songs, but without such a long timer. There would be a non linear combo that would allow you to built up "stacks" with each use, and each summon would have different effects based on the Primal you have out. One could have a strong single target burst, another an aoe burst, another a party defense/attack buff and so on. The final attack in the combo could be Bahamut/Alexander/Odin to do your big combo finisher. I feel like this would not only give the Summoner more of a traditional feel while allowing it to have a unique enough play style, while still feeling like it fits within the "Holy Trinity". It would almost feel like a mix of Brd, Ast and Blm without stepping on the toes of any of them to the point where Summoner becomes a party requirement. If anything it could feel like a substitute for Brd or Ast while still working well with them and not feeling redundant. Anyway, just an idea.

[ChaoticCrimson]

Pets absolutely need an overhaul on their response. It was less a hassle the last few patches while Sicfrit was still the preferred pet choice, but with the changes to Radiant Shield making Garuda the better overall option it's a different story. Now you have to essentially fight with Garuda's AI to time out everything effectively (especially while timing Contagion), and if you don't have a fast network connection and/or have weaker hardware (or in my case, on console/controller), it's going to make things even less manageable.

Bahamut's inability to stay put and other factors also hinders its effectiveness greatly. There's nothing more disheartening than losing out on an Akh Morn because Bahamut didn't feel like acknowledging your constant slamming of the Enkindle Bahamut command in time before peacing out. Not to mention the impact it can have on the number of Wyrmwaves. If you have to move for mechanics, or gods forbid there's any kind of lag (looking at the recent DDoS attacks...), that's going to hurt this entire process bit by bit. Really, lag of any kind is also going to hurt SMN in pretty much every way, even in it's own non-pet toolkit. SMN is a class that is built in a way that timing is absolutely essential: any delay of an action will reduce your effectiveness in a number of ways, whether it's down to DoT timing, managing OGCDs, etc. Wrestling with pet AI shouldn't make this more difficult.

Making Bahamut stationary at the position where your pet was at the moment of switching it out could mitigate some issues, especially given it's attack range. Also, allowing queued pet commands to be cancelled to immediately execute a command given while a pet is set to Obey, including Enkindle/Aetherpact, could also be a solid improvement. That said, I do think that pets lack a bit of interactivity. Honestly, I don't see why Titan even still needs to be a "tank" at this point. Sure, it's sort of useful for solo quests, but given that we have our Chocobo companions and may possibly be able to use the upcoming trust system to aid with such quests (though I'm not positive to what extent they plan to use this system tbh), shoving the tank role on a pet for a job that's heavily damage-based seems like a waste. Might as well rework Titan into maybe a physical ranged fighter, and give it a proper party utility skill while you're at it. This shouldn't really affect the lore at all, and depending on the utility given to it, could make Titan a consideration based on party composition or the fight at hand. Garuda's Wind Blade should be turned into an instant cast skill as well, as there's not much reason for it to remain as it is. I feel like others would probably have better suggestions, but that's what I've got for now.

[dinnertime]

EDIT because I don't want to make a separate post: Sharing some ideas I have, I'd like to see the most is an overhaul with the summoning mechanic. Removing Egis in favor of Demi summons. I think for this to work better is for Demi summons to appear more frequently by needing only one phase of Trance like PvP SMN. You have 3 summons to choose from and rotate through (due to a long cooldown). I'd like to fit a 4th summon to be the most powerful one (Demi-Bahamut) and requires a different build-up, not necessarily Trance costs but I don't know. Also it would be good if the summons stay put and the timer is longer like 30 secs or even 25 secs to prevent commands being obeyed too late...or somehow they make it so the timer counts down for the amount of commands you can squeeze and the summon disappears when it's done everything instead of being the amount of time the summon can be on the field.

Also BLU gave me this idea, but it would be nice to have a spellbook feature for SMN but it's for choosing the 3 summons you want to use in battle. For simplicity we can have the 6 ARR Primals (minus Mog and Odin) with different, situational yet balanced kits. Having ALL the Primals would be good, too.

I mentioned it in one of my previous threads, but neglected to bring it up here for the sake of brevity. I honestly think Bahamut would have been more interesting if he actually responded depending on which Aetherflow abilities you use, instead of just casting a generic Wyrmwave for everything. If I remember right it was Flare Breath for Painflare and Bane, and Flatten for Fester and Energy Drain. Do you think that would have given him at least more personality depending on the situation? Would that be a more engaging way to tie demi-summons to the core aetherflow mechanic?

It's a good idea. I think to improve this idea further, they should give SMN free Aetherflow stacks during Demi-Bahamut phase except it doesn't count for Dreadwyrm Trance and remaining stacks disappear afterwards. Yeah, it might require damage balancing and locking Aetherflow from yet another mechanic (in exchange for a free stack though) but it would remove the need to wait for Aetherflow to maximize damage on Demi-Bahamut and reduce the downtime/waiting phases SMN gets, which is one of the things I hate about the job.

[Grimoire-M]

yeah I would like to see a rotation- or combination-system like Ninjutsus or Brd Songs

EDIT because I don't want to make a separate post: Sharing some ideas I have, I'd like to see the most is an overhaul with the summoning mechanic. Removing Egis in favor of Demi summons. I think for this to work better is for Demi summons to appear more frequently by needing only one phase of Trance like PvP SMN.

On the contrary, I'd prefer it if Summoner didn't get anything like this at all. Bard and Ninja already exist. We do not need to dip into their mechanics when we already had a well designed and functioning job in Heavensward, with clear ways to improve on it with Stormblood. In Heavensward we had DWT as our spike window, and Bahamut is that same window now rather than an extension of DWT. One of those things that HW SMN did well was having plenty of meaningful downtime inbetween that spike, that let you focus on the small things needed to maintain your flow. It made the spikes in our rotation actually mean something, whereas on Bard you just feel needlessly busy except in Paeon, which feels like too short of a break with no real payoff for taking it. Right now, the pseudo-phases we have with DWT, Aetherflow, and Rouse feel forced. Incredibly so. They are not a good fit for this job, given what we had before.

On the inverse of that, however, compare HW SMN to SB Machinist. MCH has a 10s spike window on the same 1-minute timer HW SMN had, and a decent (if RNG focused) filler rotation, but the spike window is far too short and frustrating to set up and execute, and because they don't have to care about heat generation except when they have too much skill speed, they don't get any enjoyment out of it beyond follow the procs. Is that interesting when optimized? Not really. Like HW SMN, they have a lot of different buttons to press within a short period in order to optimize their damage, and like Contagion now on SB SMN, they're actively fighting against the server in order to properly execute it thanks to Flamethrower.

We want to aim for something better than that.

To me, the problems with Summoner right now are the same ones with Monk. Lots of little different parts, that don't (or aren't allowed to, in the case of Bane) add up to much as a whole. Unlike Monk however, some of those parts that you would call synergistic that were added in Stormblood specifically actually actively make the job worse to play, and have clear ways to improve on them. Tri-Disaster's reset mechanic is probably the most innocuous of them. It reduces the activity in our filler for a frankly minor amount of dps gain, and makes the job more tedious and boring to play overall with it there.

I just want Garuda/pets in general to be more responsive.
Mashing the same button during 6s and hoping the skill queued properly is boring and stressful, especially with Contagion where you don't want it to be delayed.

I also don't like Bahamut phase. Because you have no visual representation availaible for wyrmwave (except knowing what to do in your rotation) and Bahamut doing what he likes.

Pets absolutely need an overhaul on their response...
...Bahamut's inability to stay put and other factors also hinders its effectiveness greatly...
...That said, I do think that pets lack a bit of interactivity...

Honestly, I'd rather not worry about the unresponsiveness of pets too much. They are what they are. They can certainly be changed, don't get me wrong, but we shouldn't focus so heavily on that one fact. That's on SE to fix via engine tweaks, and people have been hammering on that one point since ARR's launch, and SE knows it. It's still in the works. Until that point, SE should be making design choices that fit with how pets function currently. If you want the pets to feel less clunky in the meantime, then remove all of Garuda/Ifrit's utility (stun/knockback in addition to the vul up debuffs), root Bahamut at the point he's summoned at, and retweak him so he only attacks when you cast a spell but still gives a similar amount of damage output. Seriously, that's all it takes to fix all of their issues, without copious amounts of engine work. Is it interesting? No. But it solves the problem in the interim. Until SE actually shows us a major pet overhaul, we should not expect it.

Regarding fixing pets now, how would I want to see Radiant Shield fixed? Easy. Return the spikes effect on it, but as a DoT, with no initial potency, in exchange for the Vul up getting removed. That fixes most of the ridiculous damage it gave you by instead delaying and overwriting the majority of it, while also making it visible to the player using Ifrit. For Garuda's Contagion, give her a similar but far stronger single target DoT to help make up for the base damage difference between the two. Both will wind up relatively balanced against one another that way, and if you want to use her on obey to line up with Rouse it's easily doable without being frustrating. And that way SE doesn't have to change anything else on them until they've fixed the engine or put in a proper overhaul.

That isn't to say I don't care about the Egi or Bahamut, but I recognize their current weaknesses. Might as well work around them by instead baking synergy from them into how SMN's personal kit works, rather than requiring the pets themselves to carry it. A good example of how to do this would be Tri-Disaster and DWT/Bahamut. Make the third debuff change based on what pet you have out, and whether you're in DWT/Bahamut or not. It can keep the cruddy Ruin buff if you're not in DWT or Bahamut. Bahamut himself can apply a straight Vul Up, with DWT checking your current pet to give it Phys/Magic Vul Up or Damage Down, for Garuda/Ifrit/Titan respectively.

I actually quite enjoyed Dreadwyrm Trance in Heavensward. I feel like it gave the job a nice cadence and build up to this really explosive damage phase that really doesn't exist anymore with Stormblood.

I agree with this sentiment regarding DWT, as well as your notes on Ruin III's role in making it feel good to use. The Aetherflow lockouts in my opinion were the worst change made this expansion, and still remain so. I'd also like to point out that Ruin III still had value outside of DWT too. Your mana bar was just as much of a resource back then as it was at Stormblood's launch. The problem with that was the Role Action changes essentially made Ruin III 100% spammable, not necessarily that that interaction existed in the first place. I get why SE made the change to Ruin III in 4.1. Ruin III in HW was initially 120 potency too. It was later buffed to 200 potency I believe in the middle of the first raid tier in order to shore up some of SMN's weak single target damage (plus people would use Ruin II & Shadowflare over it to avoid clipping Aetherflow since it was just plain worth it) and in general just made it far more noticeable. And as noted, the most irritating part of it all is we basically use Bahamut now the same way we used DWT then. Cram your micro-phases in, and enjoy your spike window once every two minutes. It doesn't make sense to me that that's the case. Unlike MCH or BRD's updates that actually sped up those jobs nicely (admittedly to the detriment of MCH), it feels like we've slowed down too much just to fit the power of one cooldown into our kits.

It's a good idea. I think to improve this idea further, they should give SMN free Aetherflow stacks during Demi-Bahamut phase except it doesn't count for Dreadwyrm Trance and remaining stacks disappear afterwards.

I somewhat agree with the idea that bahamut should affect Aetherflow abilities somehow. However, adding more aetherflow like this is just free damage we don't need, and would cause more issues than it would help with. To me, the solution is pretty simple. Combine DWT, Rouse, and Bahamut into one button, with Bahamut retaining his requirement of using DWT twice before he can appear. Replace Enkindle with Enkindle Bahamut while he's out, and then remove the lockouts. Yes,this would mean you only see Bahamut every 3 minutes instead of 2, but given how much value he has in our current kit it's honestly warranted. We need to make room for the quality of life tweaks that will ultimately increase damage elsewhere, otherwise we have the Malefic II AST issue crop up. We're already beating out the other caster DPS. We should not push it even further.

The issue then becomes: What is our filler? How do we make DWT feel noticeable again? If SE doesn't like the mana issue (and to be frank, I don't either) why not kill three birds with one stone? Let's change the Ruin IV/Enkindle proc we have now, and instead give SMN a resource that lets them use the old Ruin III plus Ruin IV outside of DWT. I specifically say a resource because part of the appeal of the high mana cost on Ruin III in HW made it so you actually cared when you chose to dump your mana into it outside of DWT. It acted as a non-aetherflow-based way of adding burst to your rotation when you needed it, while also making DWT itself feel impactful. I'd like to see Ruin I/II charge it reliably in addition to the pets getting to use the same Ruin IV proc to charge it as well, and use that as a way to balance all four spells against one another. Ruin I/III are hardcast but efficient damage, while Ruin II/IV allow you to be mobile and add some quick burst but are expensive and not as good, while the pet proc is free damage that changes up your decisions, particularly if Enkindle's cooldown reduction remained. Though I'd like it not to. A different approach that comes to mind is to make Aetherflow accelerate Enkindle instead, or just reduce Enkindle's cooldown to a minute at 68 and make Enkindle Bahamut share a cooldown with it, assuming all the above happened that wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

As for how to improve on that for Shadowbringers? With the level 80 cap, add a personal defensive cooldown (say, a ghetto cover with your pet, that made them immune to damage but share some of yours), a trait to improve the potency of Aetherflow abilities during Bahamut only, a buff to Tribind's MP cost and potency outside of DWT (mostly the former, latter is fine), a way to spend Aetherflow that doesn't require a target that is only available inside combat, shared cooldowns for all aetherflow skills that are then normalized to 4s (standardizing your opener), and another Enkindle-style pet oGCD on a 20-40s cooldown that would consume the same resource I suggested for Ruin spells.

[Neela]

I pretty much like the idea of Demi-action timer - give them auto-atks and a personal demi-enkindle, which remove the summon after its iconic skill. Yeah kinda like Mchs turret selfdestruction or schs fairy-sacrifice :3

Another idea im dreaming of is to change Demi-Summons in a Palace/HoH Pot-style system: after summoning a Demi your char leaves the battleground and u take full control of the Demi like u can control Manticore/Succubus. But that would mean a whole rework, new skins and animations... so yeah I don’t see SE would take the needed afford for a system like that :/

[Lauront]

I totally agree with you. For me, SMN is the one job where SE did not only not manage to sustain the job fantasy many people had from early games (I-IX), but they also failed to give it an interesting job design.

It's literally a ruin-mage with two burst phases put on top of each other.

It was kinda fun in ARR since it was the dot class and felt good if you liked that sort of playstyle.
In HW they were like:"Don't know what to do with this job...Let's put a burst phase on it..."
In SB they were like:"Don't know what to do with this job...again...Let's put another burst phase on it and scrap some dots..."

I still think SMN would be way more fun with the summons beeing actual spells of your rotation, building up resource for a big attack (Bahamut, Alexander, Phoenix etc.).

I personally struggle to get what the idea's "job fantasy" is. It's readily apparent in other FFs. In this game, it's almost like a "throw in the kitchen sink" mage, even though that's what you'd think BLU is by nature. This is the biggest issue I have with SMN and why I tend to stick to BLM, even though it has some design issues as well. I do like its "job fantasy" a lot more but I could be swayed to switch to main SMN if it had a more coherent theme.

[Grimoire-M]

I personally struggle to get what the idea's "job fantasy" is. It's readily apparent in other FFs. In this game, it's almost like a "throw in the kitchen sink" mage, even though that's what you'd think BLU is by nature. This is the biggest issue I have with SMN and why I tend to stick to BLM, even though it has some design issues as well. I do like its "job fantasy" a lot more but I could be swayed to switch to main SMN if it had a more coherent theme.

To put it pretty bluntly, Summoner's theme is still the Damage over Time/Tactical Nuke Mage. Lots of little incremental hits, with occasional spikes that you build up towards and plan around. Your pet is primarily a single target only DoT that you can interact with. Shadowflare is an AoE DoT cooldown. You have two main DoT spells that you can spread around, either by manually dotting multiple targets or with Bane. Ruin spells are your filler and don't hit for much by themselves compared to the other mages. Everything there essentially combines to turn you into a gatling gun of damage, rather than a cannon. That's your baseline, and it's very similar to Bard in a lot of ways. Where it differs from Bard is pretty obvious though. Bard focuses on chaotic proc management that is fuelled by their DoT ticks. Summoner allows you to plan its burst out ahead of time, and Aetherflow specifically allows you to change that up as required to fit a fight. The Egi and Bahamut don't fit in with this mechanically, but personally speaking, I'd like them to, eventually. I just don't see it happening in the current engine unless SE completely throws them out and redoes their functionality from the ground up minus their animations.

[Inosaska]

I gave an idea in the past that they should look at in terms of giving it the identity that it should have in the game. I'm going to quote it here.

My feedback on the job

-Remove archetypes on pets and give them unique abilities that can be used in a majority of situations.
-Add more pets.
-Remove the dots and add unique new abilities for the summoner itself that gears it away from arcanist.
-Add the ability to switch through abilities like when switching jobs to the summons themselves and use the summon to fight your battles while you cast supporting skills. Most of your core used abilities should be done through the pet and not the caster itself which would follow better in line with the summoner style from final fantasy.

If they did these the class could be a lot better and won't make it difficult to design new abilities in future expansions but as of right now they will run into a problem with making new abilities that will just push it further away from the core summoner style from final fantasy.

Make the summoner class an actual summoner and not the current non-sense they have made up for it. With them revamping the combat system in the game that means now is a good time for them to review the summoner and overhaul it.

This second quote holds very true with shadowbringers bringing about another review at the combat system and thus should take a look at the summoner and revamp it. The demi system in place that can be used instead having the summon active all the time that it basically allows for more summons with some abilities that you command to use and then can perform to ultimate move just like demi-bahamut does and this would solve the identity crisis that the class has right now.