Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[Taranok]

5) i dont mind the high apm if the work is complex and rewarding then i Don't see any reason why it should become more straightforward . rdm exists for that reason not everything needs to be for everyone.

The issue is that RDM was the high-apm caster. SMN was never really that busy. Tedious, micromanagey, but not super busy. You spent more time setting up for contagion than actually doing your burst window. RDM exists to be the high-APM finger-walking caster, and is very well set up to accomplish this role, whereas SMN is not set up to be a high-APM class, never has been, and doesn't feel especially good being a high-APM caster.

You can have complexity in a simple rotation as well. BLM exemplifies this key. Casters in general tend to be complex, even Red Mage has to make some pretty complex decisions, just not to the same degree a Black Mage does, which is fine. BLM specializes in long-term complex decisions, whereas RDM is all about rapid-fire short-term decisions that weave into a complex tapestry by the time it's all said and done.

SMN was ever somewhere between these. Any weirdness it had outside of this was basically due to exploiting mechanics (snapshotting) or micromanaging pets that are difficult to use or unresponsive for no real reason. If you stripped out micromanaging contagion due to poor pet interactions, SMN's SB rotation was fairly simple and straight forward, with a bit of flexibility thrown in.

This is what drives the divisive nature of SMN in ShB. The class is definitely improved, but they took the class, plucked it from the middle ground between BLM and RDM where it existed, and threw it up above Bard. A lot of people coming to the class for the first time like it, a lot of SMN mains from SB found the transition jarring because the class functionally plays very differently with how it feels almost exclusively because of how busy the oGCDing is. And those oGCDs aren't complex. There's very little real decision making to make on a SMN. You basically choose to hold devotion if the phasing lines up weird, and you can choose when to spend festers. You basically have no choice on every other mechanic, they either need to be spent as quickly as possible, or you're not punished for spending them quickly so there's no real reason to hold onto it, especially given how clunky the rotation gets once it does start bogging down with too many oGCDs.

The current SMN isn't that complex, it's just stupidly busy, and you can reintroduce a lot of complexity by actually removing that business.

...the job is already riddled with these damage modifiers like Ruination, DWT/FBT's magic potency buff, Egi Assaults needing to proc Ruin IV etc.

DWT/FBT don't buff magic potency. They removed that as part of ShB. I actually just tested it to confirm it by spamming my ruin 3, which does anywhere between 4300 and 4700 damage per hit, went into DWT, and it likewise did 4300-4700 damage without crits/direct hits. There is no advantage to staying in DWT outside of having instant cast spells (mostly) right now.

[CecMiller]

The issue is that RDM was the high-apm caster. SMN was never really that busy. Tedious, micromanagey, but not super busy. You spent more time setting up for contagion than actually doing your burst window.

Just want to clear up some misconceptions.

SMN absolutely was the highest APM caster in Stormblood no contest. Furthermore, our pet actions with using obey were hidden from our CPM count - so every contagion and every aerial slash and shockwave did not count towards it regardless if you used obey and or not (and obey was used many times over in ultimates by myself for example). As a result our CPM is actually higher than what is shown in our logs aka it would be easily be above 40.

SMN in Stormblood (O9s): 39.2 (without pet actions).
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/6BmdK...ht=7&type=cast


RDM in Stromblood (O9s): 37.1
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/R7YPH...=24&type=casts

There is no doubt over which caster had the most buttons to press and SMN was busy if you were playing it well, but felt easier the better you were at it. Furthermore, I'm certain that I spent more time doing my burst than setting up contagion which is mostly a 3 button thing: Set on sic, then after bahamut, set on obey and wait for a 5 second difference between contagion and aerial slash before putting it on sic again. Thats about the extent of garuda contagion work I did and I had really good results for it.

RDM exists to be the high-APM finger-walking caster, and is very well set up to accomplish this role, whereas SMN is not set up to be a high-APM class, never has been, and doesn't feel especially good being a high-APM caster.

SMN does have access to ruin 2 which is why the myriad of OGCD's hasn't really been detrimental unless a large enough potenct difference of ruin 2 and ruin 3 is generated. Further, we had 2 16(?) second trances a minute to weave any ogcds that weren't Aetherflow actions. It felt better back then as we didnt have to keep double weaving as much as Fester's were always single weaved and you mostly double weaved to rush stuff.

*snip*
This is what drives the divisive nature of SMN in ShB. The class is definitely improved, but they took the class, plucked it from the middle ground between BLM and RDM where it existed, and threw it up above Bard. A lot of people coming to the class for the first time like it, a lot of SMN mains from SB found the transition jarring because the class functionally plays very differently with how it feels almost exclusively because of how busy the oGCDing is. And those oGCDs aren't complex.

I would say the class was improved in the pets/egi department and thats about it. (Bane was improved however too! Welcome change).

Its GCD's are now far more annoying. They do not have a base potency but are reliant on your dots existing and thus are worse for it as this only opens up opportunities to punish you whenever your dots do drop (as they eventually do for ticks)

Its OGCD's are worse as there are more of them and at a rate of 4 a minute, the Egi Assults are a bit pathetic in their own personal contribution outside of generating you a Ruin 4 stack. However, the main reason these are worse to me is that in 4.0, you could use these same abilities whilst casting Ruin 3, they had varying cooldowns and sic was offered.

Aetherflow has undeniably been made worse. It now requires 2 uses per minute and mandates that we be in combat AND have a target as a cherry on top. Its de-linking from the cycle has caused knock on effects to downtime and dots dropping without considering the reduced flexibility. If Aetherflow was the sole 60 second cooldown that we could use whilst not in combat and not requiring a target which kept our cycle flowing as it was in 4.0, a lot of our problems would be instantly solved. This was a great mechanic and extremely underated in what it could. Its power was clear to those that raided with SMN and had full knowledge of how to abuse it with respect to downtime. The changes done were to reduce wait times pre-pull and its my hope that Yoshida corrects this and does the smarter thing - give us full stacks after every wipe instead and re-introduce the old system with some changes if necessary. Even if we're forced to start at 0 stacks, it is still far better than what we have now.

The abilities that keep the rotation going are far worse. Comparing Aetherflow linking our cycle together and DWT/FBT embarasses the latter. We were far better off with the previous system. The good change here is being able to use Aetherflow actions inside trances (though the cycle could have easily been altered to allow you to do so whilst keeping all flexibility). However, with no magical bonus to now offer, the only reason for doing so is using it as a weave window which may be good enough in itself.

Dots are also worse now as a result of the DWT/Aetherflow change. You are forced to drop dots for ticks and have unbuffed ruin 3's just due to drift and how things work. The change to dots buffing your ruin spells has been extremely annoying and punishing for seemingly no reason. Imagine if Fire 4 only did half its potency if you didnt have thunder up - it would feel terrible when those situations were to occur especially when its a question of eventuallity rather than an individual mistake. Further, they do less damage via bane in AOE situatios which is another contributor to our low AOE dps.

Bahamut assuredly feels worse and has less interaction than before - I don't think much has to be said here. Without his OGCD mechanic, he flaps around and doesnt really do a whole lot and still follows you around after you command him to akhmorn (something that was present in 4.0). He just feels bad in general now besides being made weaker.

The main improvement for SMN as a whole is definitely the changes to pets not dying and so we dont have to micromanage their positioning as much as we did before (though they now like to despawn - please someone speed up their god damn movement speed)

Further, as a raiding SMN main in 4.0, I can deal with the Pet OGCDs (though I do agree that it feel like some unnecessary busy work). Thats not the most jarring thing for me. The worst feeling is absolutely Aetherflow and Trances and how they now function. Both are very clearly worse off from 4.0. Aetherflow and Trances and how they function together with respects to the cycle is what needs to be changed. The previously incarnation of SMN flowed extremely well - this one is awful in comparison. But I agree with your other points, these OGCDs are not really complex. The current optimization of SMN comes from being BLM with Ruin 3 whilst also using Ruin 4 stacks in place of Ruin 2 when possible. I'd argue the current SMN is harder than BLM to maximize damage with as BLM got a lot of comfy tools to use with xeno being instant.

There's very little real decision making to make on a SMN. You basically choose to hold devotion if the phasing lines up weird, and you can choose when to spend festers. You basically have no choice on every other mechanic, they either need to be spent as quickly as possible, or you're not punished for spending them quickly so there's no real reason to hold onto it, especially given how clunky the rotation gets once it does start bogging down with too many oGCDs.

I am in agreeement here. The optimization is now minimizing R2 and maximizing double weaves. Aetherflow/Festers optimization is linked to the latter, but every 60s you want it to line up with trick attack and/or chain and other buffs. But these are further than 30s apart so you will have 2 stacks of Aetherflow every 60s which aren't as optimizable as the other Aetherflow stacks. As you said, the other abilities are used on CD with some intial wait on FBT for your second devotion (if mechanics allow). If there is something more than that then it escapes me.

This differs from 4.0 where there was optimization in "rushing" the cycle itself, pairing trances with movement phases, timing deathflare/bahamut to akhmorn a set of adds at some moment, good use of contagion and other pet abilities (though for most SMNs, this was on sic). There was a lot more to consider and more, in my opinion, fun things to consider. These were all removed due to the changes in how our cycle now functions as we can no longer use trances and, therefore, rush bahamut on demand.

If I had to describe the two SMNs to someone, I would say 4.0 SMN was flexible and about maximizing gain, (rushing cycles and aetherflow when necessary, timing trances for movement and big AOE moves for add phases) where as 5.0 SMN was rigid and about minimizing loss (changes to Ruin vs. dots, minimizing R2 over R4, using trances immediately or risk losing dps from delaying). Yes, minimizing loss is maximizing gain, but the former allowed you to make the necessary decisions to maximize gain where as the latter is all about minimizing drift and unecessary ruin 2 casts over ruin 4. I personally found the former far more fun to do - I don't think I like this new "rigid" SMN.

[Taranok]

J*snip*

So that's what it's like to be on the receiving end of a wall of text. Interesting.

SMN wasn't as busy as RDM, RDM may have had fewer buttons to press but SMN was the more laid back class in SB. The buttons more or less pushed themselves and you didn't need to make billions of micro-decisions like you do on Red Mage over which spell to use next. Which is fine. You could argue it's busy, I would argue it wasn't as clunky outside of micromanaging the pet because the pet wasn't responsive with abilities like contagion, and the less clunky a class is, the less busy it ultimately feels, which is what one of the major complaints with the current summoner is.

Ruin 2 is a massive DPS loss over the course of a fight with high movement, which is why it doesn't have the tools to really do this. It cannot simultaneously weave the sheer amount of oGCDs thrown out in addition to movement without giving up several hundred if not thousand of potency during the course of an entire fight. That's why the class doesn't have the tools to handle the rotation. You'll notice that even during SB, SMN had to drop fewer oGCDs during times when they weren't expected to be throwing out instant casts because you basically needed to ruin 2 your way through DB to get full damage out of it whereas now you're expected to hardcast as much as possible, creating that terrible feeling of not having the tools required to handle its own oGCDs. RDNs have nearly 50% uptime of instant cast abilities, SMN is down closer to a third and is punished whenever it touches ruin 2 for movement, mechanics, or otherwise. 6 GCDs 1 minute, 8 GCDs the next, and 4 every minute. 10-12 GCDs it can spare without punishment of 24 GCDs, and it cannot pace these out reliably in a way that allows the class to feel good because, let's face it, giving up damage for any reason doesn't feel good, and SMN gives up a lot to accomplish required mechanics of merely playing the job.

Bane was not improved. It went from an actual (albeit braindead) choice to spend a resource to accomplish a task to a button that exists to insist upon itself and makes an already insanely clunky aoe rotation even clunkier because it's just one more oGCD you need to push in a sea of oGCDs.

Aetherflow was sidegraded. It had its overall number of uses upped by 50% (4 to 6 per minute), needing a target is an okay change, you can love or hate it for different reasons, and allowing more uses can feel good if we didn't also have Egi Assault. The issue with its change is that it can desync from Trance if Trance is ever required to be held, which is a real problem on Titania, but not on Innocence. The desync causes an issue, the lack of charge causes issues that aetherflow had. The real advantage the old SMN had is that Aetherflow was your only clock. Everything revolved around aetherflow. In ShB, you have 2 hard clocks, a hard clock that you don't necessarily care if it desyncs, and a soft clock. Trance, New Aetherflow, Enkindle, and EA1+2 combined, respectively. All of these can desync because you are forced to hold onto Aetherflow or Trance, and once desynced, it makes the problem of casting these abilities without using ruin 2s even harder, if not impossible, which contributes to the clunky feeling of the class and it not having the tools it needs to weave everything effectively. Since, again, every ruin 2 cast is a failure of the job unless you literally cannot optimize it out of the rotation, but that doesn't mean it will ever feel good.

Using aetherflow in trances was never an intended way to use the old Aetherflow system, and indeed contributed to a lot of what broke Summoner in 3.0 at a design level, making the gap between the worst and best players the absolute largest skill gap in the game a class could offer just due to how much you could break the game by eeking out Aetherflow charges inside Trance. Now, with the new aetherflow, it's just damage cooldowns to be used in trance, which is okay but without personal buffs, except Devotion, it's kind of a moot point outside of breaking or improving the flow of the class, and there's something to be said about that.

Bahamut feels better in 5.0. The 4.0 bahamut revolved around exploiting a poorly designed mechanic to eek out 3 extra wyrmwaves in a system that did not give any indication it could do this. What makes DB worse is that you're not expected to ruin 2 during it just to maximize DPS from it, but you still have a ton of oGCDs to cast during it, and as I established earlier, every ruin 2 you cast is a failure unless you flat out cannot optimize it. Well, DB forces you to ruin 2 like mad during it because of ED/ES desyncing from Trance in the rotation, as well as needing to just get more ruin 3s out.

I agree mostly on pets, please give Ifrit a charge to run across the arena to adds faster though. Something it autocasts. Or just delete the egis and focus the class around demi summons entirely, the egis are feeling like a very archaic system despite the massive improvements to them.

I also agree on everything about DoTs and how Egi Assault feels better (when it doesn't error, at least) than Aetherflow. If I had to rip one system out between EA and Aetherflow, it'd be Aetherflow. The current summoner is also definitely harder than BLM, and I don't think it can ever realistically be optimized because, if Titania and Innocence are anything to go on, fights will just have way too much movement to ever avoid ruin 2 casts. The idea is to make it so Summoner doesn't need to use instant cast ruins while at rest as much as it does now, which would at least give it more "free" movement.

I'm also a fan of taking and merging DB into DWT and extending DWT to a 20s duration, deleting deathflare, but possibly adding another DB attack to the mix in lieu of Deathflare just to let us interact with the primal more.

At the end of the day, the one thing the class needs is to be smooth. I'd argue it should have fewer double weaves because double weaving does not feel good on pings as low as even 100, and no class feels good double weaving a lot in general, and it just needs to start flowing again.

I hated 4.0's SMN because bane was a pain to use and contagion doubly so, it had a weird aoe rotation that flowed poorly as well due to relying too much on time-gated mechanics and the like, but if you ignored the parts that were truly awful about the class, such as manually controlling contagion, then the class flowed very nicely. Well, contagion isn't a problem anymore, it's time to drag the summoner back to flowing nicely.

[CecMiller]

So that's what it's like to be on the receiving end of a wall of text. Interesting.

It wasn't a personal shot against you and still isn't. It's just me being overzealous in correcting bad information and going in depth to avoid misunderstandings.

SMN wasn't as busy as RDM, RDM may have had fewer buttons to press but SMN was the more laid back class in SB. The buttons more or less pushed themselves and you didn't need to make billions of micro-decisions like you do on Red Mage over which spell to use next. Which is fine. You could argue it's busy, I would argue it wasn't as clunky outside of micromanaging the pet because the pet wasn't responsive with abilities like contagion, and the less clunky a class is, the less busy it ultimately feels, which is what one of the major complaints with the current summoner is.

If you look carefully, I never once claimed SMN was as busy as RDM (I didnt even compare the "busyness" of the two). I was correcting the misinformation the RDM was the "highest APM caster". SMN was the highest APM caster in Stormblood when you said it was RDM. Whether a job is busy or not mostly come downs to the player with some objectivity to it. If SMN wasnt busy, I would argue you weren't playing it as well as you could have been. For RDM's playstyle, I do think that you have to actively look for if a proc is available vs. the more "planned" playstyle of SMN. Further, I wouldn't exaggerate and say there were billions of microdecisions to be made for RDM. Ultimately, the decision is mostly whether you want to press the optimal white magic button or the optimal black magic button for the situation you're in. You do have to think a few GCDs ahead and account for fight design, but that is true for most jobs played at a high level.

Bane was not improved. It went from an actual (albeit braindead) choice to spend a resource to accomplish a task to a button that exists to insist upon itself and makes an already insanely clunky aoe rotation even clunkier because it's just one more oGCD you need to push in a sea of oGCDs.

This only needs to be brief - previously Bane cost us one of our 3 Aetherflow Actions. Now it costs 0 of our 4. Further, it now spreads ruination when it previously didnt. This is the improvement I'm talking about. The downside is the fact that it is now weaker for 1-7 mobs but stronger above that amount. I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make to justify that the current Bane is not an improvement over the 4.0 design, but it is not a very convincing one.

Yes, we have a lot of OGCDs to press. No, that doesn't mean Bane hasn't been improved. It has been made more usable, but less potent in the majority of scenarios.

Aetherflow was sidegraded. It had its overall number of uses upped by 50% (4 to 6 per minute), needing a target is an okay change, you can love or hate it for different reasons, and allowing more uses can feel good if we didn't also have Egi Assault. The issue with its change is that it can desync from Trance if Trance is ever required to be held, which is a real problem on Titania, but not on Innocence. The desync causes an issue, the lack of charge causes issues that aetherflow had. The real advantage the old SMN had is that Aetherflow was your only clock. Everything revolved around aetherflow. In ShB, you have 2 hard clocks, a hard clock that you don't necessarily care if it desyncs, and a soft clock. Trance, New Aetherflow, Enkindle, and EA1+2 combined, respectively. All of these can desync because you are forced to hold onto Aetherflow or Trance, and once desynced, it makes the problem of casting these abilities without using ruin 2s even harder, if not impossible, which contributes to the clunky feeling of the class and it not having the tools it needs to weave everything effectively. Since, again, every ruin 2 cast is a failure of the job unless you literally cannot optimize it out of the rotation, but that doesn't mean it will ever feel good.

Needing a target is a very large downgrade from 4.0 as is requiring us to be in combat. This causes you to lose total aetherflow uses very easily especially when the cooldown has been halved. When compared to Aetherflow of 4.0, it is very clearly worse in its usability. Yes desync can cause issues with a loss in weaving ability over using the superior Ruin 3 in trance vs. Ruin 2 outside, but that is not the main problem with the new Aetherflow. The problem is how it has been removed from the cycle as the clock which as a result, loses you uses of trances, aetherflow and demi summons over the cause of fights. I'm pretty sure most summoners would lean towards more demi summon usage over less, but thats besides the point.

These hard clocks drifting ARE a concern. Previously, we didn't really drift them anywhere close to the manner they drift in now. They were "on demand". We could Rush out demi summons and trances before a fight ended to prevent them from being "wasted" due to downtime. Now we have to wait on a cooldown. This is a step back from 4.0.

Ruin 2 is our weaving tool of choice when we are not in trances. Its how it has been designed. We've been using it for a long time now as a weaving tool. There is nothing clunky about it to me. This has felt perfectly fine to me and I'm honestly not hearing any arguments about ruin 2 feeling clunky with regards to being forced to use it for weaving outside yourself.

Using aetherflow in trances was never an intended way to use the old Aetherflow system, and indeed contributed to a lot of what broke Summoner in 3.0 at a design level, making the gap between the worst and best players the absolute largest skill gap in the game a class could offer just due to how much you could break the game by eeking out Aetherflow charges inside Trance. Now, with the new aetherflow, it's just damage cooldowns to be used in trance, which is okay but without personal buffs, except Devotion, it's kind of a moot point outside of breaking or improving the flow of the class, and there's something to be said about that.

Oh my god. This is wrong on so many levels. I'm sorry, but it is. It sounds like you never really played SMN in Heavensward with this paragraph if I'm being honest. I played SMN at a high level even in Heavensward as did many of the players I talk with on the regular.

This is me in Heavensward:https://www.fflogs.com/character/id/...ed#partition=5

This is an example of a log from a top SMN that shows you Aetherflow and DWT usage which you can CTRL + F to look through: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/MY8g4...ents&source=40

My count is at 1 Fester inside DWT during the entire duration of the fight with a 99 parse.

I don't want to delve into this too deply but: Most logs from top SMN players contain 1-2 Festers inside DWT. 30 to 60 potency gain will never be "a large contributor" to the skill difference between Good and Bad SMNs. Considering no party buffs, the differene between Good and Bad SMN was managing our mana resource whilst maximizing Ruin 3. However, the REAL reason there was such a stark difference was due to the prevelance of strong party buffs. You weren't going to parse as high as a SMN with a bard with magical foe requiem and an astro padding them with 20% balance. I'm not sure how you drew the conclusions you did about Heavensward but it is evidentally wrong from my own experience and other SMNs.

Bahamut feels better in 5.0. The 4.0 bahamut revolved around exploiting a poorly designed mechanic to eek out 3 extra wyrmwaves in a system that did not give any indication it could do this. What makes DB worse is that you're not expected to ruin 2 during it just to maximize DPS from it, but you still have a ton of oGCDs to cast during it, and as I established earlier, every ruin 2 you cast is a failure unless you flat out cannot optimize it. Well, DB forces you to ruin 2 like mad during it because of ED/ES desyncing from Trance in the rotation, as well as needing to just get more ruin 3s out.

For me and many others, Bahamut definitely feels worse to me - you're free yo have your opinion on things. There is no doubt he does less damage and actions than before leading him to feeling really flat especially in the face of Phoenix. You are free to feel that Bahamut is better, but it is a fact that the demisummon himself does less dps and performs less actions (wyrmwaves) than before and would be better'd by increasing our interaction whether it be by oGCD or by moves similar to phoenix. Many of us have tried our best to optimize SMN in the fights already in the new EX and in so doing, identified the glaring issues in our toolkit irrespective of the Ruin 2 minimization goal we have. This is what we are trying to fix. If you do not like Ruin 2, you will use them less when we have better control over when we want to use trances. I say this as someone who has perfomed well in both current EX fights.

At the end of the day, the one thing the class needs is to be smooth. I'd argue it should have fewer double weaves because double weaving does not feel good on pings as low as even 100, and no class feels good double weaving a lot in general, and it just needs to start flowing again.

If you are in favour of less double weaving, then having control over when we want to enter our trances aka flexibility serves your interests aswell as others. In order for this to take place, the best solution is to go back to a tried and working solution aka the 4.0 SMN cycle based off of 60s Aetherflow. You can make adjustments to this but it is undoubtedly the quickest fix towards doing so as it maintains the 2 minute cycle whilst improving various other aspects as SMN.

I hated 4.0's SMN because bane was a pain to use and contagion doubly so, it had a weird aoe rotation that flowed poorly as well due to relying too much on time-gated mechanics and the like, but if you ignored the parts that were truly awful about the class, such as manually controlling contagion, then the class flowed very nicely. Well, contagion isn't a problem anymore, it's time to drag the summoner back to flowing nicely.

Thats fair enough. Like with most things, some like it, some hate it. Bane exists and didn't really have a lot to do with our cycle in a raid format - this is a dungeon thing. SMNs 4.0 AOE rotation was more involved/more complex than a straight forward 1-2 spam and its something that differentiates it from the other jobs and I would very much like it to to remain that way personally speaking (especially when it means we got to use more Trances/Demi summons than we do now). Whatever your feelings or however you want the job to be fixed, its clear that SMN needs changes and my argument is that the easiest, fastest and personally, best, solution is to re-implent the 4.0 SMN cycle with its dependance on 60s Aetherflow.

[Miralyth]

Couldn't a lot of the flexibility problems for summoner be alleviated by allowing trance to stack up to 2 charges (and reducing its cooldown to 30s)? Tri-disaster could similarly carry 2 charges (with trances restoring one charge), but I'm not sure what a good cooldown would be. Of course, you'd still have to cycle through Bahamut to gain access to Phoenix. I think this would be a good compromise between people who like the current system and people who want to see the flexibility of aetherflow return.

I agree that summoner AoE being complex is enjoyable, but I don't like its current incarnation. If outburst was an instant spell and did not rely on ruination, I think summoner's AoE would be much more fun, still be pretty interactive, and wouldn't interfere with switching back to single target as much.

[CecMiller]

Couldn't a lot of the flexibility problems for summoner be alleviated by allowing trance to stack up to 2 charges (and reducing its cooldown to 30s)? Tri-disaster could similarly carry 2 charges (with trances restoring one charge), but I'm not sure what a good cooldown would be. Of course, you'd still have to cycle through Bahamut to gain access to Phoenix. I think this would be a good compromise between people who like the current system and people who want to see the flexibility of aetherflow return.

I agree that summoner AoE being complex is enjoyable, but I don't like its current incarnation. If outburst was an instant spell and did not rely on ruination, I think summoner's AoE would be much more fun, still be pretty interactive, and wouldn't interfere with switching back to single target as much.

I'm not against this idea at all - your idea is much better than the current situation we're in so it would be a welcome change!

The change I was suggesting was that, on aetherflow refresh (the same 60s CD it was before), the trance immediately became available for use within those 60 seconds. Having 4.0 SMN aetherflow being the gate between the cooler segments of our rotation (trances/demi summons) not only generates flexibility but increased downtime power and more opportunities to weave to account for any missteps that may have occured. It also re-introudces "rushing" opportunities as something that players can do to express their mastery over a jobs capabilties - this is currently not possible with a hard 60s CD or a hard anything CD. If its available for an entire 60s duration for you to use as you wish, it would be an improvement on the 4.0 design.

Charges system was one of the first things I considered, but the condition of 60s for Trance as a hard cooldown was the breaking point. This is because it seems like the intention is for it to be a 2 minute rotation and reducing it to 30s as you suggest would lead it to being a 1 min rotation (unless I'm missing something). Further, with the changes to Trances being a hard 60s, our dots are currently forcibly dropped. This is something that would only be alleviated by allowing flexible Trance timings instead of hard trance timings or a reduction in the Trance cooldown from 60s to 50s say. However, any reduction in the Trance CD timer "speeds up" the cycle meaning it no longer becomes a 2 minute rotation as envisioned. This may not be a bad thing, but I think that 2 minutes is what SE has been aiming for as it has remained the same since 4.0 and not changed in any way since.

[Miralyth]

I'm not against this idea at all - your idea is much better than the current situation we're in so it would be a welcome change!

The change I was suggesting was that, on aetherflow refresh (the same 60s CD it was before), the trance immediately became available for use within those 60 seconds. Having 4.0 SMN aetherflow being the gate between the cooler segments of our rotation (trances/demi summons) not only generates flexibility but increased downtime power.

Charges system was one of the first things I considered but the condition of 60s for Trance as a hard cooldown was the breaking point. This is because it seems like the intention is for it to be a 2 minute rotation. However, with the changes to Trances being a hard 60s, our dots are forcibly dropped! This is something that would only be alleviated by allowing flexible Trance timings or a reduction in the Trance cooldown. However, any reduction in the Trance CD timer "speeds up" the cycle meaning it no longer becomes a 2 minute rotation as envisioned. This may not be a bad thing, but I think that 2 minutes is what SE has been aiming for as it has remained the same since 4.0 and not changed in any way since.

Oh, you're right, I just woke up and my math suffered for it, lol. I think what I intended to say was trances remaining on a 60s cooldown but stacking up to 2 charges. Your idea of aetherflow unlocking trance would function the same, so I'd be just as happy with that - especially if they allowed the trance unlocks to stack up to two charges.

I wanted to touch upon something earlier that was discussed about Bahamut, too. I agree that he is the least exciting phase we have. Phoenix is just amazing and Dreadwyrm trance gives you instant spells, whereas Bahamut just feels like the start of downtime for me. Ideally, I'd like to see Bahamut have instant spells as well, but I don't think the devs will want to do this because it will result in a lot of extra ruin IVs for downtime. I'm not sure what they could do; bringing back wyrmwaves for fester would be okay, but it would add even more of an unforgiving nature to the rotation and force you to spend energy drain/fester around Bahamut instead of dumping it with Phoenix/dreadwyrm during trick attack or the like. Maybe they could allow ruin 3 to be instant after using ruin 4 during Bahamut only. I'm not sure. Bahamut having access to egi-assaults could be okay, too, but then pet animation locks/movement interactions might become even more frustrating. I feel like Bahamut is such an awkward thing to improve right now.

Edit: I take it back. Maybe instant Bahamut spells would be a good thing. It would force aware players to dump Ruin IV charges into the remaining time of ruination before Phoenix so that they don't overcap, and make the "downtime" of summoner feel much more satisfying. We would still have the post-Phoenix downtime of hard-casting to contend with as far as minimizing ruin 2 goes (I'm looking at you, lining up ED with hard-cast DoTs), so I think this would be good maybe?

[ShadowNyx3]

Further, as a raiding SMN main in 4.0, I can deal with the Pet OGCDs (though I do agree that it feel like some unnecessary busy work).

It seems like they tried to make these easier since they're basically forcing everyone to use obey now, but it's clearly not easier at all. It almost makes me think that the only way to solve the pet action input delay was to make these oGCDs (or the only way they could be bothered to attempt a fix). Beyond just being a pain to have to weave these after instant casts, the dropped uses you mentioned are just as annoying as having delayed inputs before, and even then as you say, becoming a serious SMN main allowed you to deal with the old pet quirks once you understood them so I'd take that over the myriad extra oGCDs.


The whole philosophy of trying so many major changes to Summoner was and is completely unfounded and frankly insulting when you compare how much easier and enjoyable other classes seem to be with their QoL changes and additions.

There was zero reason to change trances from being aetherflow-charged to hard cooldowns. The progression of trance from HW to the mid-SB changes was logical, following the trend of making classes less punishing, and the final result was well designed. I will never understand the decision to change this when it was lumped in with MCH and BRD in that live letter as classes that needed major changes. It makes no sense.

[CecMiller]

It seems like they tried to make these easier since they're basically forcing everyone to use obey now, but it's clearly not easier at all. It almost makes me think that the only way to solve the pet action input delay was to make these oGCDs (or the only way they could be bothered to attempt a fix). Beyond just being a pain to have to weave these after instant casts, the dropped uses you mentioned are just as annoying as having delayed inputs before, and even then as you say, becoming a serious SMN main allowed you to deal with the old pet quirks once you understood them so I'd take that over the myriad extra oGCDs.

Yes, I personally view the changes as a downgrade. That said though, they could be upgrades if they didnt feel as busy and did something more meaningful (personal opinion). I just wish that they were even more responsive than they currently are and we can only hope it gets iterated on!

The whole philosophy of trying so many major changes to Summoner was and is completely unfounded and frankly insulting when you compare how much easier and enjoyable other classes seem to be with their QoL changes and additions.

There was zero reason to change trances from being aetherflow-charged to hard cooldowns. The progression of trance from HW to the mid-SB changes was logical, following the trend of making classes less punishing, and the final result was well designed. I will never understand the decision to change this when it was lumped in with MCH and BRD in that live letter as classes that needed major changes. It makes no sense.

I agree with you: "Don't fix what isn't broken". SMN's cycle being decided by the Aetherflow clock didn't need "fixing". The thing that needed fixing was that on Raid Wipe, stacks were instantly generated back to full and AF available to use or a button similar to hide from ninja (Use AF -> Hide (out of combat only) -> AF ready again). The latter might have been way too strong in dungeons and I would have preffered the former aka just giving us the stacks. If the goal was to reduce stress and reduce wait time, I'd argue they went and did the most convoluted changes to acheive something that seemingly should be relatively easy to do (given that you can get full stacks for charged abilities after death).

Yeah there was a trend about making the jobs less punishing and easier to play. I also feel the old SMN simply need to be iterated on vs. this "re-work". I'm not sure why they decided on massive changes either. Our JP friends over the pond have similar inclinations regarding Aetherflow (They're asking for Energy Drain/Siphon to be deleted and getting Aetherflow back in addition to it deciding our cycle again) and a lot of other stuff that matches what I've already stated (they miss the bahamut interaction/he feels weak etc).

We can only hope the devs read our feedback and do something about it! Further, due to the pet (ifrit damage almost got halved! 2.9k burning strikes to 1.5k, dot (2.2k dot ticks vs. 1.5k) and cycle changes (unflexible, can't be planned for movement phases without delaying cycle and forced delaying vs. previous rush ability), the job is really not doing too well inside ultimate in the most recent clears I've seen (usually close to bottom dps). The upgrades to ruin potencies are proving to not be enough to cover the damage that has been done due to a lot of the job changes which arguablly didnt need to happen as you've said.

This was done for several reasons, actually. One, Aetherflow being usable out of combat created situations where players wanted to stack up the mechanic before pulling else it would really mess up the opener. Two, in HW, players used the mechanic in a way flat out not intended by the devs, which was pacing Aetherflow charges to be able to spend 2 of them during DWT for +10% damage. The devs got rid of this in SB, much to the chagrin of the playerbase. The devs desynced it entirely in ShB because in ARR and HW, Aetherflow was your primary mechanic. In SB and ShB, trancing is the primary mechanic, so keeping it tied to a mechanic players don't really use anymore primarily is a strange problem.

The opener wasn't really "messy". It was created to optimally get all our abilities under raid buffs and get us to bahamut as fast as possible. The reasons given for the change as quoted by Yoshida is that it was a "Stress" mechanic and that they wanted to reduce the wait time pre-pull. I can only really say they accomplished the first task. Also, I would refrain from stating what is and what was not intended from the devs without citations - I personally have not heard this anywhere. Aetherflow inside DWT was not "make or break". The major optimization point in HW was always mana management with R3 Maximization. However, buffs and team comps caused large differences to occur, besides the skill differences between good and bad players. Keeping it tied to the cycle is very beneficial when it comes to being able to freely expend the resource and use Trances and demi summons on demand rather than when the cooldown happens to come up. You've touched on Foul Polygot stacks - It has a full 30s you can use them for before it ticks over. This is not so far different from Aetherflow and its stacks. The power in downtime that BLMs generate has been increased whilst SMNs has been effectively sundered.

Here Yoshida talks about Aetherflow:

To Quote: https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...our_interview/

Q: Aetherflow was also separated from the Dreadwyrm Trance/Summon Bahamut cycle.

Yoshida: Regaining Aetherflow was also a stress point, and now we're focusing on the actual act of summoning. Up until now, there was a bit of downtime after summoning Bahamut, so now you can continue on with summoning Firebird, doing a large summon whenever the recast time rolls around. This mechanical change was simply a result of addressing a major cause of stress.

Its ironic then that their changes caused Aetherflow generation to become even more stressful whilst simply changing said stress point into DWT/FBT which are much worse for it due to their "you must use this immediately to gain benefit" function. This is a big reason for our drop in power.

More info can be gleamed from:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...aL704g/preview

We didn’t have time to take a look at Red Mage or Summoner, please tell us more about them

Yoshida: It difficult to describe the new Summoner just using words. All pet summons will be instant, so you can swap between your pets depending on the situation. It feels a lot more like a “Summoner”. After you used “Summon Bahamut” it felt like the rotation got too boring, so now you can summon Phoenix. You will have one of them at each time by your side to fight along with you. We removed the annoying part of stacking your “Aetherflow” pre-pull as well. Pet will execute actions on command as well now, so the confusing parts of Summoner changed and it will feel a lot more like a *true* summoner

Its undeniable that they fixed pre-pull issues for SMN, but its generated more issues when there were more elegant ways to fix said issue in raids as has been discussed earlier.

[ShadowNyx3]

We didn’t have time to take a look at Red Mage or Summoner, please tell us more about them

Yoshida: It difficult to describe the new Summoner just using words. All pet summons will be instant, so you can swap between your pets depending on the situation. It feels a lot more like a “Summoner”. After you used “Summon Bahamut” it felt like the rotation got too boring, so now you can summon Phoenix. You will have one of them at each time by your side to fight along with you. We removed the annoying part of stacking your “Aetherflow” pre-pull as well. Pet will execute actions on command as well now, so the confusing parts of Summoner changed and it will feel a lot more like a *true* summoner

I hadn't read this but I knew this was likely the real goal behind it all. Wanting to feel more like a Summoner is a never-ending source of strife for this job and it honestly makes me wish they'd just remap current Summoner onto a new job like Beastmaster and reincarnate SMN as something else entirely so people can live out their Yuna and Rydia fantasies and stop complaining about the egis. Because it seriously feels like they want to remove the pets but just won't. I thought they were actually going to try and make them more unique with the instant cast change, but they made them worse! Could you imagine being able to instant swap old Ifrit and Garuda as needed, having Contagion and Radiant Shield whenever you needed them? But nope, they made them all extremely similar with even less nuance than it originally appeared with the unexpected low potency of Ifrit.


But yeah, the message is clear what they wanted to do, it's just laughable that they piled on so many issues by making unnecessary fundamental changes and faux "improvements" to existing mechanics, when it could have been made better with simple quality of life changes that so many other jobs got.

Aetherflow making people wait too long? Fill them up after a wipe. It's unbelievable that this couldn't have been done.

Not able to control Ruin IV usage reliably? Just add the stack feature to the old procs...now you can still use them to weave your oGCDs (goodbye four pet actions) but also have some for movement too so that minimizing Ruin II is optimization and not just an unavoidable punishment.

Rotation too boring after Bahamut phase? Well, they did come up with a good order, DWT -> Bahamut -> Phoenix, but why force the 60s Cooldown between trances? They made an even longer gap that completely ruined the fluidity of the Tri->Tri->Hardcast DoT application rotation and tried to fill it with oGCD weaving hell to make it more entertaining.

Doesn't feel like a Summoner? Make Bahamut feel like Phoenix and give the individual egis distinct, optimal features that incentivize summon swapping (example: Ifrit has the highest auto damage, Garuda has a magic buff, and Titan has the strongest Enkindle ability).


I never imagined that so many bad design decisions could be made, implemented and touted as the improvements they were intended to be. I am and forever will be utterly baffled until a developer explains their reasoning in detail.