Summoner likes and dislikes, an attempt to compilate thoughts on Summoner.

[Trensharo]

I agree with everything, except your comment about raise for dps. I've saved so many parties from wiping with my raise abilities, especially if i'm on red mage.

The only reason why people want caster DPS to have raise is because healers in this game think they are DPS as well. So yea, slug out that Swiftcast Ressurrect… I'm casting Broil, ATM /s

But, that is more a fault of the content design than the player themselves; since, without DPSing, they'd probably fall asleep at the keyboard.

I'd probably have just switched to SCH if healing in this game wasn't so mind-numbingly boring outside of high-end raiding.

[NovaBismarck]

Level 80 Summoner
Likes:
- Bane not being connected to Aetherflow. ......
- The visual impact and large numbers from Demi-Bahamut and Phoenix really propels that class fantasy to the next level. .....
- Changing egis now no longer requires MP or a cast time. .....
- Having an AoE spell in Outburst is great, but this spell will also have a mention in the dislikes section.
- No longer needing to use precious GCDs to heal egis.
- Egi responsiveness is better (but still needs a lot of work, to be honest).

Dislikes:
- The rotation is all over the place and filled with bloat. It's like the class was designed by 3-4 different people who all had different ideas of what this job should be and none of them could agree so they compromised by smashing all of their ideas together. Nothing seems to line up elegantly, double weaving is now the standard just to fit all the bloat in, and none of it fits together thematically. ....
- Egi Assaults are weak and annoying to have to weave. We didn't need to weave pet abilities before but now we do and there is no real payoff for it apart from Ruin IV procs we used to get without needing to micromanage and double weave.
- Demi-Primals are slow, sluggish, and drop their WW or SF way too much.
- Outburst, our spammable AoE spell, is too hard to use during AoE which is also completely unacceptable. If you want to use Garuda's Egi Assaults, Painflare, Tri-Disaster, Bane, Enkindle, Devotion, etc outside of a Dreadwyrm Trance, you basically have to clip. Outburst should always have no cast time. Clipping or using Ruin II/IV feels terrible in AoE situations.
- The amount of pointless ogcds is staggering. ....Fester and Painflare can be deleted and their damage folded into our DoTs and/or Ruins, and to top it off, our trance with a Demi-Primal can make you sit on Egi Assault charges if ill-timed because, again, they are two different systems with no synergy. .....

.....Choose a focus and design everything around that focus. Personally, I think they need to remove one of the following: 1) DoTs and Aetherflow 2) Egis and Egi Assaults 3) Trances and Demi-Primals.

Seconded. This sums up how I feel more eloquently than I could say it. Something should be dropped, trimming the fat and we definitely need a focus. I personally don't like the lockout on phases. I do not like getting stuck in a low dps place on an important phase of a fight. I guess you could say it's my fault if I don't have the timing lined up but it's definitely punishing. I could push phases more easily before. The only thing I don't want is to loose is raise. DPS still feels low to me. It feels like I pay a high price for minor mistakes. I don't feel that way on the other classes I've been playing with.

[Aeloria]

I tried to play smn since it has been my main for so long but I seriously think unless there is major fixes I will be sticking with dancer during ShB and maybe forever. I wanted to enjoy my favorite FF job so much but I seriously was exhausted after everything I ran with it. My hands crapping trying to hit all the things. Then I would just have brain farts starring at my crossbar trying to decide what to push. Bahamut feels just absolutely awful right now. I really dread that phase of the rotation. Phoenix feels okay. DWT and no demi/trance time are just too damn busy. All the smn things seperately look nice and wow this is a smn but nothing fits together super well except well phoenix phase. Good luck to any aspiring summoners out there though. I'm sure at some point it will receive necessary adjustments. Maybe later I will edit this post with some more detailed things but I wanted to get some basic thoughts out here considering I had only been lurking lately.

[AceofRains]

I started playing Summoner and I’m level 73. I see where the rotation is going and it’s clear it’s not heavily complex 70-80. In my opinion, Summoner is colorful and exceptionally well thought out. It took me a little fiddling with my cross hotbar set up to figure it out comfortably, but now I understand and can always keep a well flowing rotation. Any clipping I experience is my own blunder like any other job.

Double cast Ruin 3 and Ruin 2/4 back to back and weave OGC skills and Egi Assault. It’s rare to have to hard cast Bio and Miasma, but when you do, double weave it in the same way you do Ruin 3 and 2/4. When Trance is up you wont have to double cast. It’s very simple and I think people are making it more complicated than it has to be.

I have 3 issues with Summoner:
1) Brand of Purgatory is a pain in the ass to access. Hellish conduit should be removed so BoP can be a direct upgrade to Outburst. It seems silly that I need to cast the single target spell to combo into the AoE.

2) Demi-Phoenix’s Everlasting Flight should have been an upgrade to Ressurection, allowing it to be cast free of MP while D-Phoenix is summoned.

3) I’m so tired of waiting for Egi glamours. I’m rather curious how it will work out, considering elemental properties are tied to Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda. But elemental property is negligible in this game, so I’d expect that to be flexible. Because “Tri” is such a common theme, I could almost see other Egi’s grouped in Trios
The Ultima Trio (Ifrit, Titan, Garuda)
The New Era Trio (Leviathan, Mog, Ramuh)
The Dragonsong Trio (Ravana, Bismarck, Shiva)
The Warring Trio (Zurvan, Sephirot, Sophia)
The Far East Trio (Tsukuyomi, Susano, Lakshmi)

[Jikillia]

LVL 80 SMN

Likes
1. Pet responsiveness. While I agree it needs more tuning, it does react much better and I can actually que up the actions
2. Ruin & Dot interaction. Dots are no longer simple checkpoints for our fester but also interacts with our ruin. With ruination, Tri-D management along with the dots are much more interactive
3. Bane. Now it is separated from the aetherflow AoE dots are much less of a problem and can reserve aetherflow stacks for damage
4. Firebird Trance. I love the idea of this and how we attune to our summons. Regen of FB feels more of a flavour than anything but I have to say I like it

Dislike
1. DWT and Bahamut. I used to be okay when I was still more comfortable with SB SMN of DWT and Bahamut were seprate. But now that I experienced FB trance, DWT feels a real missed opportunities. Now FB Trance changes our spell, we can also have DWT changing our spell with no cast time as well to make it easy for us to attack with our oGCDs
2. Too many oGCD. We have 4 Egi Assaults, 2 Festers/Painflare, 1 Energy Drain/Syphon, 1 Devotion, 1 Tri-D, 1 Bane, and aside from Devotion we pretty much use them every 30 seconds minus Bane in if its a single target. We definitely need to trim them. I believe Energy Drain/Syphon can go with Fester and Painflare having 15cd charing cooldown.
3. Egi needs to be more punchy. Ifrit on single target doesn't seem to deal strong damage. Garuda on AoE feels descent but would like to see dmg bumped up just little damage. Titan-egi serves no purpose at this stage and needs another extreme make-over
4. General bump in the damage. We have Devotion as a buff which is nice but far from impressive and with radiant shield and contagion gone, our utility dept has seen a huge nerf. I would like to see our damage bumped up a bit in compentation

[Pyroclastic]

I think if Outburst would be an instant cast it would make the aoe rotation much less clunky, because of 2 things:

- you would be able to weave all those 15 million ogcd's, without clipping your GCD nonstop
- you would not have the problem anymore of not being able to finish a single outburst cast during a big dungeon pull when all the mobs are low health and just need one or 2 more hits to be finished

[Silkerin]

lv 80, titania farmed, innocence not even stepped inside because my damn vpn is fuky atm, and playing the current smn with the latency i have without is even worse than most imagine. Overall, When you get to Phoenix trance, it feels great and like how a smn should be on ff14 (probably), but before that, it is just a job with identity crisis, is it a dot mage? a gimped beastmaster? a summoner? who knows? not the devs who were in charge of it.... So I say, get rid of the beastmaster aspect entirely, and leave it for the future beast master job (who we all know will be a damn limited job that will be useless and soon after release forgotten).

LIKES:

• Bane: The changes were good, the ruination spread was especially nice;
  
• Phoenix trance with Phoenix: This is how the trances show have been from start, especially nice that it isnt a ruin spam like how dreadwyrn/bahamut;
  
• DOTs: They powering up ruins as well is great;
  (Desired change: make it power up all of our damaging moves * pets included *, but... well.. considering the job is currently a ruin spam machine, it kinda already powers up 75% of the actions used...)
  
• Outburst: Finally an aoe spam spell;
  (Desired change: With the current aoe capabilities of smn, this needs a slight potency buff and maybe a cast time reduction even outside of trance);
  
• Ruination: 30s increase was good;

DISLIKES:

• Egi assaults: Terrible. While a finer control is needed for sch, for smn, I dont particularly see it being needed. They refresh so quickly, and there are very few good windows to weave them in (almost only dreadwyrm trance);
  (Desired change: Just make Egis be on Sic and let them use the moves automatically and get rid of egi assaults and give us something good isntead)
  
• Ruin 4: Terrible too, being tied to the clunky egi assaults makes this annoing to use by association;
  (Desired change: Just make it a charge spell, give us the 4 or something charges, and when it runs out of charges it becomes ruin 2 until it has a charge again * but is this doable? dunno *)
  
• Energy Drain/Syphon: I get it, it was the lazy solution so people dont have to wait for aetherflow, but theres really no reason for needing 2 versions of the same skill;
  (Desired change: I wont say to give back aetherflow the way it was, just make energy drain become energy syphon with a trait, 100 potency to the target and 40 to those around it.)
  
• Lucid Dreaming: Having to use it every 60s is kinda annoying, the current cd is really not needed considering that it doesnt affect aggro anymore;
  (Desired change: How about having double the refresh potency on double the cd?);
  
• Painflare: Now that we are moving away from bahamut, this could have been renamed to something different, and considering the current smn aoe, this needs a buff;
  
• Egis: they dont make you feel like a proper smn the way the are now considering that drk and mch can call temp pets;
  (Desired change: Make carbuncle the pet you keep summoned 100% of the time, and isntead, you call egis temporarily, having both out at the same time, the 3 sharing the recast timer and each having their niche. basically a pet that is always out and the egis/bahamuth/phoenix being the temp pets you call alongside it.)
  (Desired change 2: if above is not possible, make it so enkindle also make them "demi" versions, for 20s or so upgrades them to their demi forms and finish with their signature move.)
  
• Dreadwyrm trance: While the changes to cast time were nice, when you get firebird trance it feels lacking;
  (Desired change: make it call bahamut during dreadwyrm trance and skip "bahamut phase" entirely * basically copy firebird trance but dreadwyrm *, it would synergize well with the cast reduction and speed up their rotation. My ideal would have been calling 1 egi from the change i mentioned above, and after it is done you can get into this new trance and from there the firebird trance.)
  
• Bahamut AND Phoenix: like mentioned constantly, they are clunky needy children;
  (Desired change: Just make them autoattack by themselves and dont having to be so close to you all the time, or at least make the priority to be attacking instead of moving.)
  
• Aetherpact: for what it does, it needs a shorter cd;
  
• Enkindle(s): Why there are still 2 separeted enkindles? is it not possible to have it become the enkindle for bahamut and phoenix and still remember the cd for the normal enkindle?;
  (Desired change: if the changes i wanted to egis arent possible, make THIS the thing we can use more often for them, not the weak skills, but the ones they are famous for, also having the same 10s cd like the enkindle for the big guys, so all "3" enkindles can be condensed in 1 action.)
  
• It also needs an overall potency buff.
  
• Physic: just... why? either make it good, or get rid of it.

This is what i remember form the top of my head.... but you know what could have helped this whole thing? with all jobs? if they actually made a poll or some sort of research with the player base about what they feel the jobs are lacking or should be about, get a few select players to give their inputs and beta test the jobs (maybe the people from world first) and a few others who obviously would have to sign a temp non disclosure thing. That way they would avoid the so many reworks that happen iand the "we made this, hopefully it is good, we didnt have time to test it, so...." moments.

[Anvaire]

There's so much more I dislike and I may update it later, but overall I think they need to start trimming the fat away from Summoner. Choose a focus and design everything around that focus. Personally, I think they need to remove one of the following: 1) DoTs and Aetherflow 2) Egis and Egi Assaults 3) Trances and Demi-Primals.

Something has to give. I would prefer for DoTs and Aetherflow to get the axe.

I cannot agree with this more, and I think if the Dots and Aetherflow went that would really make an impact to flow of the job. Id Like them to unify the trance and Demi-Primals either trance summons the Demi Primal or the demi primal is a separate thing, but not the way it is now, though I'm starting to get to grips with the flow of it now.

[Taranok]

I cannot agree with this more, and I think if the Dots and Aetherflow went that would really make an impact to flow of the job. Id Like them to unify the trance and Demi-Primals either trance summons the Demi Primal or the demi primal is a separate thing, but not the way it is now, though I'm starting to get to grips with the flow of it now.

The nice thing about removing DoTs and Aetherflow, and possibly even Egis and Egi-assault, is that if they were to push away from those 2 concepts, then they can turn the class into constantly summoning different primals, such as DP and DB. DWT has a completely different rotation than DP, even if it's the difference of spamming 1 button versus rocking 2. You could have a class built entirely around this concept, so instead of maintaining pets and DoTs and a bunch of weird oGCDs, you can instead focus the class around an ever-shifting style, which is something I've noticed SMN kind of did but became more pronounced as the class slowly updated.

Plus, because of the nature of how primals work, you would 100% expect a primal like Ifrit to behave completely differently from Bahamut, so having a different rotation while Ifrit is out compared to Bahamut makes a lot of thematic sense as a summoner. You just need to either program the demi-primals to stand still and just cast at the boss (or charge in if melee), or make it so whenever the primal is commanded to do anything, it instantly does it overriding movement.

In this way, you could hypothetically swap between 4 separate summons with 10 seconds between them and 20 second durations each, and see 4 separate mini-game style rotations. It won't be necessarily as tight as, say, the current Samurai or Black Mage is, but it would capture the feel of Summoner a lot better than a 100% consistent rotation that doesn't really change much like what the tanking rotation is.

It wouldn't even need to be busy, since constantly swapping styles would be the type of thing that makes a class feel more complex than it actually is, and it caters to a type of skillset not exactly seen on other jobs either, which is flexibility in execution, opening up an entire field of possibilities moving forward.

But these are long-term thoughts. In the short term, the here and now, I feel that we can basically get one big thing from summoner, and the rest would have to come from the next expansion. DoTs are too ingrained in the class, they're probably here to stay for ShB. Yet, because of how desynced Fester, Painflare, and ED/ES are from the entire rotation, you could practically delete all 4 of those abilities and shift the damage into other things, such as DoTs or ruin, and it wouldn't matter outside of low level content feeling like absolute crap possibly, which isn't exactly a unique problem, as most classes feel awful at lower levels. It constitutes 1400 potency per minute, or a little under 60 potency per GCD that needs to be shifted around, and 680 potency per target per minute AoE potency that needs to be shifted around, or a little under 30 potency per GCD per target. You can practically boost Outburst to 100 potency per GCD and not quite be neutral (DP and DB kinda screw with it) and get the AoE rotation mostly where it needs to be, and bump all of the ruins+FoF/BoP by 60 potency and it should about break even on the change.

And then every last idea for poison mage, such as Fester, Bane, and so forth can be turned into a completely new class in the next expansion (or so) to allow for a DoT management and manipulation class style, since Summoner hasn't been this since SB and never really fit as it to begin with.

[dinnertime]

Level 80 SMN. I'll keep it simple.

Likes:
-Pet responsiveness, pets are instant and don't require MP.
-The new Trance trait (instant on everything).
-Demi-Primals are the best part of the job, although it needs work.
-Bane being it's own CD, No more Shadowflare, Outburst is an improvement to Tri-Bind.
-Ruination's duration increase.

Dislikes:
-The job is busy but for the most pointless of reasons and there are way too many things to keep track of. The job just feels chaotic in general.
-It's also chaotic because there's so many parts SMN has to deal with, with Trances, Demi-Bahamut, DoTs, Aetherflow and Egi. It's like they don't know what they want SMN to be.
-SMN is a lot less mobile than it used to be, especially with Ruin II being more detrimental now.
-Button bloat still persists and more than ever.
-The new Aetherflow. It's pointless now that it's not tied to a core mechanic of SMN. Might as well implement charges on the Aetherflow skills while sharing a cooldown or something.
-Egi feel weak and Egi Assaults hit like wet noodles. They are also bugged.
-Titan-Egi still doesn't see much use despite its rework.
-Festerruins. It's inconvenient and makes SMN more reliant on DoT management which is understandable, but it's not fun.
-Trance being a flat CD. I think this is what broke SMN's attack flow and flexibility in general. I liked the idea of earning Trances via spending Aetherflow better, even though it had issues.
-FBT can summon Phoenix but DWT and Demi-Bahamut are separate? Why?
-Demi-Bahamut isn't fun to use anymore, with Ruin II being less than ideal for the phase and weaving ogcds for Wyrmwave not being possible anymore.
-Demi-Primals still have issues like the responsiveness and for following you when they have a 100 yalm range for their attacks, which leads to delayed/erased commands.
-I don't get why SMN does such low damage now. Is it because of its support? Or lack thereof when two of them got removed and Devotion is garbage now.

Honestly I thought they were in the right direction with SMN after 4.1. Yes, 4.1 SMN wasn't perfect and had issues like how people play the job differently than what's intended, but instead of improving upon those issues, they tried preventions that made things worse. Idk what else comes to mind but that's it for me, for now.