My Thoughts on the 5.0 Media Tour Build of SMN

[CecMiller]

Stuff that isn't too important and my thoughts on them:

Energy Siphon (AOE form of Energy Drain):

Why does this exist?

It shares a cooldown with Energy Siphon and has the exact same requirements as Energy Drain. The only difference is that it offers AOE damage whilst also giving you 2 Aetherflow stacks.

Could you not have simple wrote on Energy Drain the following?:

Deals unaspected damage to a target and all enemies around it with a potency of 100 for the first target and 50% less for all other remaining enemies nearby it.

You now have Energy Drain perform the function of Energy Siphon. Energy Siphon is button bloat and could have existed in the form of additional text on Energy Drain. I don’t understand why this ability took form as an actual individual spell available to Summoners when the solution was obvious.

Physick/New Everlasting flight “Heal”:

It is my wish that SMN to become a class which does not have access to healing spells in any form. We are a DPS class. We do not need heals. RDM has white magic and is more appropriate for them. We are SUMMONERS, not scholars.

To begin, why in an expansion which details so many changes to 5.0 SCH and includes several of their abilities pre-30 to be SCH only, does physick still exists as a tool for SMN?

More spells than ever before have become segmented between SMN and SCH. Our Bio/Bio2 differ in potency. Miasma has been outright removed from Scholar. Yet, we were unable to remove physick from SMN or at least make it accessible to only ACN (Arcanists) and SCH. This would have preserved it for low level scholars to use as a form of healing pre-30 whilst removing it from SMN’s toolkit. The addition of Earthen Armour from titan egi (a better form of mana-ward, at the cost of a dps loss) exists for SMN as a defensive measure now.

Everlasting flight is a new “Medica 2” type affect attached to FBT/Summoning Phoenix. This surely has to be purely for flavour. The heal also scales off INT with a small cure potency at 20 meaning its effectiveness is miniscule (2.4k hp was recovered over the entire duration it was active on a 71k hp SMN). There is NO situation I would want to be in as a SMN where a healer asks me to “Delay my phoenix for heals” nor would I want other summoners to think this was a good idea given the consequences with regards to the SMN cycle. Further, whilst not important, it would be the only regen type effect that was not a multiple of 3 as Phoenix lasts 20s and not 21s.

Heals and/or mitigation that comes from summoning Phoenix isn’t ideal as FBT isn’t a planned affair with regards to mechanics whereas heals and mitigation can be, and optimally should be. It is instead pressed on cooldown to make sure you do not drift from your summoner cycle. Whilst there is “no need” to make everlasting flight do something meaningful/effective, I think there are things that could be more flavourful whilst also serving a more meaningful non-healing related purpose.

Examples of what could be useful/more flavourful:

• Give it the old DWT Magical Bonus whilst Phoenix is out – 10% magic increase (or whatever %) for the duration of phoenix. This would be like the Phoenix blessing you get for golden if you meet the DPS check on Bahamut. This would be both flavourful and useful in comparison to a heal or mitigation as you would ALWAYS make use of the benefit.
  
  
• Make Phoenix apply Contagion onto the target as soon as you use a targeted spell. Contagion is removed in 5.0 and was the ONLY source of a magical DPS boost to the party. As current the timing of FBT is strict, this would result in probably less than optimal contagion placement for other magic users and probably the first idea would be the smarter one to implement. I will miss contagion, however.

Demi Summons and Wyrmwaves(WW)/Scarlet Flames(SF):

I’m part of the crowd that liked the WW/SF interaction with our Aetherflow abilities and even Tri-disaster (but not addle). I feel as if it has become a bit more boring without this interaction going into 5.0. I didn’t think it was overly complex, but I would have been all for removing addle to trigger a WW. Now you just spam ruin 3’s which will be the majority of our “interaction” with it.

Egi’s and Egi Assaults::

I think Egi Assaults and their guarantee of generating a Ruin 4 proc is one of the best ideas for 5.0 SMN - It's great!

I like the introduction of the Ruin 4 stack mechanic otherwise the abilities themselves are not overly powerful nor interesting. The abilities also look more responsive which is welcome news. The only comment I will add now is that it did introduce more buttons for the summoner to press as many summoners were content with leaving the Egi’s on “Sic”. For them, "pet management" may have increased (even if you argue that they are now “Summoner actions", they still correspond to pets performing them). Without the Ruin 4 trait, I would not have enjoyed using the Egi Assault actions unless they were more meaningful. It is important to remember this point going forward as I think that the removal of Egi Assaults generating Ruin 4’s would instantly make the moves boring and might as well be able to be automated under “Sic” without the Ruin 4 mechanic.

Egi Roles:

The actual decision making required for which pet is more appropriate is as simple as:

• Do you need to AOE and dont have a demi summon? Use Garuda
  
  
• Do you want to deal the most damage to a single target? Use Ifrit.
  

There is no other incentive for pet swapping, and this alone can be good enough. I feel it does leaves Titan Egi in an awkward place where it does neither of the two well and infact loses damage via Egi Assaults as one of its moves has no potency (the shield).

Overall, I think the decision-making regarding pet swaps is not too different to what many summoners were doing now. Garuda was preferred when there were frequent downtimes to take full advantage of our burst inside Contagion (10% magic vulnerability for 15s) with Ifrit closing the gap on high uptime fights. Instantly pet swapping is a welcome addition along with its mana cost removal, though I am a bit sad that the magical and physical debuffs from Garuda and Ifrit have been removed with special mention for Contagion being the only source of a magic-only “party buff” in the game.

Titan Egi:

Titan Egi deserves his own mini segment. He has been changed and his use cases have delightfully improved from before (as far as raiding is concerned). To preface all of this, I honestly don’t think he needs additional changes or any, but further uses for him would be more than welcome.

For raiding, Ifrit is strictly better for single target DPS, Garuda strictly better for AOE cleave situations/add phases. On the other hand, Titan Egi can be defined by one move only:

• Earthen armour – A 20% shield of your maximum HP that lasts 30s has a 30s CD and has 2 charges.

This is the only reason to use this Egi.

This move does have certain caveats – you must have an Egi Assault available to use it and you are forced to use titan for at least 10s (as you cannot swap to another Egi for at least 10s after you summon one) which further results in DPS loss besides the Egi Assault having no potency. That said though, having a 20% shield of your Maximum HP every 30s is extremely strong. The only thing negative I have to say about it is that it’s the only notable purpose of Titan Egi as the other two Egi’s have well defined roles.

Titan, in its current state, would see only niche use. During raids, perhaps during prog fights, but ultimately only see use during “downtime” unless the player had the presence of mind to save an action specifically for an upcoming mechanic or just incase something went wrong with healing.

For solo play, the good news is that he will still be the best tank pet as he does allow the SMN to get “tankier” and Ifrit’s “Crimson Cyclone” has lost its stun. I honestly think titan is now fine as he is, even if he will still see minimal use. His worth has gone up assuredly. I just feel an opportunity has been lost here to have him be defined by strong Egi Assault actions.

Some suggestions:

• His second move could enhance solo capability such as making his second move do an AOE stun furthering his defensive utility.
  
  
• His second ability could "Enhance your next Ruin cast potency by 100/Tri-bind by 50". To balance this, the Egi action would have its potency removed. He already is the best Egi for downtime so maybe a second ability could amplify this even if not really needed.

I guess the only complaints I have now is that, if you could remove the entire pet and simply have Earthen Armour from Titan, you would not be missing anything from losing Titan Egi. If you did this, solo play would improve as you would do more damage, whether it be AOE or Single Target, and it would have almost no effect on all other pieces of content as Titan’s role seems relegated to “Downtime Egi” due to, arguably, the strongest Egi Assault action in the game. Ifrit and Garuda are strong in their clearly defined roles despite their abilities whereas Titan Egi is defined by one of his.

Player Skill and Complexity with regards to Summoner:

“Job effectiveness is dependant on player skill”

An obvious statement in retrospect, but one I want to discuss. I do believe SMN did effectively make the DPS gap larger between good and average summoners than can be seen in 4.1+ SMN's iteration. I actually will enjoy this personally speaking. But I did want to note how this seemed to almost be in contrast to a lot of the other classes which received simply quality of life or had their classes become “easier” or had the gap shrink in some way or form.

First, the benefits of casting a Ruin 3(150) vs. a Ruin 2(80) is now a 70 potency gain instead of 20 and Ruin 4(200) is now a 120 potency gain over Ruin 2. This alone is a big change. Many average SMN's over-used Ruin 2 and will now do less DPS as a result. I am a big fan of this change as I felt ruin 2 for mobility should always come with a bigger draw back. We have become a bit more like blackmage, but this could also alienate some players.

Secondly, having dots maintained on the target was very important for Summoner and they, sometimes, failed to even do this simple task. Dots themselves have gone down by 10 potency each resulting in a net 200 potency decrease, but the need for maintaining our dots has actually increased as all your Ruins will be doing 50 potency more per dot on the target (totalling 100).

Overall, this is not an issue for good SMN's who were already hardcasting Ruin 3 when possible and maintaining dots. but I'd argue this will result in the gap between an average SMN's DPS and a good one's growing instead of shrinking. The removal of demi-summons interacting with OGCDS for WW/SF which good SMN's made use of has been removed and now almost all SMN's will do the same amount. Whilst you can argue the WW change will make the gap “smaller”, the changes to our Ruin spell potencies and their interactions with our dots have widened the gap more in more ways extra WW’s ever did.

Actual Final Words:

The 5.0 iteration of SMN has some obvious design implementation issues in the system (AF vs. DWT pre-pull, Ruin 4 stacking pre-pull) and I personally don’t like some of the changes with regards to how “strict” the rotation/cycle has become or our newly created downtime weakness. That said, I’m still super looking forward to the new 5.0 SMN. I love the new direction and just hope some of the major issues with it are remedied in some way. I liked the older more flexible playstyle in all areas of content (not just raiding) and I’ve been pretty vocal on still having it. I made this thread in the hopes I would be able to steer SMN in a direction which is fun for me. The new SMN is arguably more complex to maximize now than it ever was in 4.x. But hell, it sure looks fun. I hope you have as much fun with it as I will : d