Summoner 5.0 changes - summoning -

[KaerisKlyne]

snip snoop

I'd be more inclined to be okay with it as is if the egi were actually entirely autonomous, but this doesn't hold up at all levels of play. Bahammy DOES feel special. I love it! The only thing I'd like them to address is Baha's unnecessary prioritization of movement to stay close to the caster when in essence, it's just a harder hitting Garuda-egi that doesn't NEED to move. Nor does that forced immobility lend itself to the scripted mechanical execution of encounter design.

I don't think I was really comparing it to Summoners of other games, either, but it really can't be denied that our DoTs are absolutely leftover filler. The only problem I have with summoner is that it's the only job with such a split focus in concept. Either lean in hard on being the build-up DoT mage, or lean in hard to trances and evoking primal energies, but one is definitely filler damage building toward the real heart of SMN gameplay right now. The entire problem at hand right now is what Summoner "is", and the quick answer is "it's a bit of a couple things but not really either thing specifically".

[Jandor]

I like this idea. I would still want the pet AI to be reworked, but I agree that the current kit isn’t wrong, just clunky. The original summoner was based on a turn based system, which is not happening in 14. So I think we would lose a lot of what makes the class unique. Mobility and utlity being the first. I would always want more summons, but I’m willing to wait :P, but yeah I think the current kit can be streamlined down into something that fits the idea of a classic summoner, while still maintaining our current standards.

Well, to go a little more in-depth. In my revised system, regular egi would function a bit like demi-bahamut does now, he tries to cling to your butt, he auto-attacks what you attack, and you have regular buttons on your regular bars to give orders.

Demi form 1, upgrading your egi, plants it in place. Replaces Dreadwyrm trance, you still get your no cast time for Ruin III bonus. Deathflare replaced with Enkindle II, which orders your pet to use a big signature move (like say Infernal Nail for Ifrit) and then revert to egi form.
The pet button Heel would still exist, as a SMN ability, just in case you need to move your demi to your current location for whatever reason.

Demi form 2, summoning your big ultimate primal, is much the same as demi 1 apart from the summon is Bahamut (or an elder primal glam) and does even bigger damage.

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Only problem is I'm not sure where I'd actually go from there in ShB.
You can't just keep adding stages on top of stages, it makes SMN very punishing if you die, although I suppose depending on how you shift the potency numbers and cooldowns around, 3 stages might be ok.
Maybe access to a long CD that lets you skip a step would help?

[Archwizard]

So, I'm still leveling my SMN and you can take my opinion with a grain of salt.

But.

Personally the design of SMN is... bizarre to me. I get that a lot of it is because of the holdover from Arcanist but it never made sense to me why a job that ostensibly specializes in summoning has such high focus on DoTs. If SCH had been a DPS job it would've made sense to make it the DoT job, but SMN should focus on the pets and temporary summons.

I'll grant that it's not up to me, but if it had been, I'd have started with eliminating Egis, making the Carbuncle the primary pet and utilizing all six of the original elemental Primals as Demi-Primal cooldowns. Give each of the Carbuncles a mix of unique utility skills (like their current damage de/buffs, Ruby Light reflective barriers, free Erases, potentially even being SMN's source of Resurrection) and balanced damage skills, limit each Demi-Primal to only be available when a specific Carbuncle is active (2 per), then have each Demi-Primal temporarily "evolve" your Carbuncle and have a different stance or effect on specific spells. Have the SMN's main skillset be based on swarming the field, and swapping or powering up their Carbuncle while their summons are inactive as a means to reduce the downtime of their other summons, even reducing their cooldowns while their associated Carbuncles are active. Use Aetherflow skills to issue commands to your current Carbuncle, with each swap replenishing one Aetherflow outside of the cooldown, the SMN's main attack having a chance to replenish one, and stronger utilities or Demi-summons consuming multiple Aetherflow on top of their CDs.
No buildup to Demi-Bahamut, just trying to cycle all of their Demi-Primals as quickly as possible, with Demi-Bahamut being just their strongest cooldown/LB3 not associated with any Carbuncle.

Idk, just me dreaming pie-in-the-sky ideas that would require way too much change I suppose.

At the very least they could allow more reskins of the existing Egis.

[Llugen]

Better be careful with that logic you have there Archwizard, or people will flame you for "having an IQ of 300" in this thread


Interestingly, the way that BRD currently works was what I'd originally envisioned for SMN before 4.0, rotating through the primals as summons on 30 second cooldowns and while they're up you can use a certain rotation or set of skills that give various benefits to yourself and possibly the group.

[Dyvid]

DoTs.

Well first BLM was the straight nuker so they wanted SMN to play different in 2.0. Second SMN is a pet job so having DoTs allows players to have more room to do pet commands; original theory anyway.

[AdamChattaway]

Egi's look ugly as... It doesn't even feel like a summoner. Why didn't they give us proper summon like in FF games or even FF11? apparently they said they don't want loads of little ifrits on screen so instead they dump us with loads of the same ugly as f egi's which just look like crap? people want FF summons as pets not a yellow floating god dam rock thing... or if thats too much then like someone else said make summon like the sp games that you build up then summon and they come onto the field do 1 big attack then leave. that would feel more summoner than this trash fake wannabe.

[Grimoire-M]

SMN's role is as a machine gun/tactical nuke mage. Their baseline is comprised of lots of little hits that combine together to achieve a solid amount of DPS which is then punctuated by burst cooldowns.

The Machine Gun aspect comes from three components, pets, DoTs, and Ruin spells. Pets are in essence a single target only DoT. Bio/Miasma III are DoTs that can be spread across multiple targets at your own discretion, Ruin spells fill out the base rotation. Each individually equates to a similar and minor amount of DPS on their own, but in tandem they add up to far more than people realize. They're your baseline, and when used optimally just those three components are comparable to RDM's baseline rotation without cooldowns or the melee combo factored in.

The Tactical Nuke aspect comes from all of SMN's cooldowns. The Egi cooldowns are a minor factor in this but Enkindle, Rouse, Aetherflow, DWT, and Bahamut all add significant damage when combined together. DWT's raw bonus is minor but the Tri-Disaster reset adds free Ruin spells that you wouldn't get otherwise and Deathflare is significant. Rouse is hindered by pet potency but its damage bonus is still stronger than DWT's and Enkindle benefits from it. Aetherflow abilities like Fester and Painflare add a lot of chunk when you need them, while Bahamut hits even harder with just his Akh Morns. When Wyrmwave is fully exploited he's worth 30-40% of your total DPS by himself, depending on crit RNG.

The biggest problem with SMN is they lack meaningful synergy between the disparate elements of their kit, at least in terms of how it affects their base rotation. There are certainly things that feed into one another, such as Contagion benefiting all of SMN's kit, Ruin IV procs adding into the SMN's Ruin damage while also enabling the Egi's DPS via Enkindle, and the core of SMN's cooldown package is focused on charging up Bahamut. However, it becomes muddled when there are equally potent anti-synergies baked into the kit as well. DWT cannot be used with Aetherflow abilities despite being a ghetto version of Bahamut. Bahamut overrides your Egi and therefore can kill Rouse earlier than intended. The Ruin IV proc barely adds any more actual gameplay to the core rotation and makes Enkindle awkward and less important. The various Ruin Spells used to have individual purposes that are then dismantled by the SB changes and those along with the Tri-Disaster/DoT changes essentially created a 1-button GCD rotation that leaves a lot to be desired.

And you can't see your Egi damage text whatsoever without parsing it, so you don't feel anything your Egi actually does.

I want to see some of the SB changes reverted back to HW with a different approach put into SMN to make them feel distinctive again. Namely, consolidate all of their cooldown phases into one universal burst window every minute (either Rouse/DWT or Bahamut/DWT, with you cramming aetherflow and Enkindles in alongside the use of stronger Ruin spells), and then add more into the GCD rotation, with explicit pet synergies that enhance both you and the Egi when working in tandem with one another.

[Gallus]

After experiencing Demi-Bahamut I feel like I no longer want any Egis. Just give us a perma demi-bahamut that replaces egis altogether, no more my pet dies to random garbage bs because bahamut isn't targeteable. We can have the "every time an action is cast on a target demi-bahamut casts wyrmwave on that target" I like that, and it's a lot more convenient when switching targets instead of the stupid egi sticking to one target even when the SMN starts hitting something different.
Reduce aetherflow to 30 seconds, replace dreadwyrm trance for bahamut trance, which lasts 15 seconds too and turns bahamut into Red. Other than Akh Morn, Bahamut can cast Gigaflare and Teraflare (OGCDS). When bahamut is in normal status, you have access to Gigaflare. When it is in trance (red), you have access to Teraflare. Perhaps even give more spells to Bahamut, something like Earthshaker or AkhRai, what I'd like here is that Bahamut did like 80% of the damage, and the SMN maybe can have the other 20% through dots and ruin spam. That would actually feel like a real SMN.
Right now it's the opposite.

And for the love of god don't give us garbage irrelevant spells that almost hurt to bind such as aetherpact.

[AdamChattaway]

I just think the devs have no clue how to mask a pet class (Common in asian mmo's) and have no interest in learning. WoW Hunter and Warlock are how it's done. Pet's that are unique, look cool and deal most of the dmg.

[Haxaan]

Interestingly, the way that BRD currently works was what I'd originally envisioned for SMN before 4.0, rotating through the primals as summons on 30 second cooldowns and while they're up you can use a certain rotation or set of skills that give various benefits to yourself and possibly the group.

I would personally love this tbh. I think if SMN played similarly to how it plays but instead of having egi's you had 30 second windows of different primals to call out on a timer, that each had their own personal effect you could weave together to either add buffs or debuffs to the target, would be great. I will say that I think the biggest problem most people have with SMN is that it does not have much visual summoning representation. If SMN played exactly how it does now but it's spells looked like primals were doing them (Dissidia Yuna) then I think most people would be happy. SMN as it stands is isn't a bad job, in fact it's pretty damn fun to play, but it does NOT feel like a Summoner because the egi's are garbage visually and Bahamut is the only real summon we get.