Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Trensharo]

Might be harder for people on keyboard i can see that. It is an ABSOLUTE breeze for me however with the DS4. No issues here.

I use a Razer Naga and Tartarus to play MMOs. Everything is one button, even secondary hotbars that use modifiers, with another button that toggles shifts while depressed so I can do things like heal and DPS using the same keys on Scholar. Very efficient. No controller can compete with that, and I sacrifice nothing in targeting/movement fidelity to get it.

Experienced players are not keyboard crawling across the number rows, esp. with [CTRL] modifier keys, etc. for the other hot bars. Summoner cannot be played from one hot bar only. They key bind... Pretty standard in all MMOs that have for historically had lots overkill bloat - so the control it will lose to any hip-hop playing on a budget mechanical KB, anyways.

That's why the game was sort of needed for console players, and not the other way around.

This class has more skill bloat than an EQ2 Necro, and that's quite an accomplishment. Except it has 3x as many mediocre skills that exist for no reason but to artificially inflate the "skill cap" (what the forums call it).

Which, honestly, is little more than a "twitch reaction cap" than a skill cap, since "set rotations" are nothing more than muscle memory tests, anyways.

If you do it enough you will "get it," but getting it doesn't mean it's bad. It just means you wasted enough time doing it over and over again to make it less overwhelming or clunky through familiarity.

[Aomine1992]

I must say I agree with how crazy the job feels. Especially coming from playing RDM throughout Stormblood, the amount of pressure there is for OGCD and how bad it feels compared to the smoothness of RDM has been very tricky to adjust to. I've been mostly playing by ear and really have no idea if I'm even doing it right.

The other issue is that the lack of pet tanking made the lvl 60-70 SMN job quests extremely difficult. It required chocobo companion, titan shields, and potions to complete and I still died a couple times. I'm not sure if they retuned these quests to compensate for the lack of a meatshield Titan.

Overall, I'm tempted to go back to RDM but I told myself I'd get to 80 on SMN and main it this expansion and I'm sticking to my guns for now.

Don’t do this to yourself lol I’m over here wishing I was a RDM main currently and wishing I wasn’t so invested into SMN as my class of choice. Our job is a disaster on release like it was last xpac. It isn’t just busy it’s a complete mess with nothing synergizing well...dots are all clunky as hell and don’t time well with anything, Bahamut has gotten worse cause he can’t be locked into place by ogcds.

You are constantly weaving the crap out of stuff Clipping into Ruin cast, I still don’t get why ruins potency is still crap, we are now the least mobile caster, which is wrong. BLM is currently outclassing us in every kind of way besides raise but guess who outclasses us there? RDM. so there is just very little gained for a lot given currently:/

[Rydia_Misuto]

I've been maining SMN since 2.4 and this new summoner is so miserable to play I miss doing World of Darkness back in the day because at least then I didn't have to struggle with pet AI that is comically incompetent. New SMN feels so bad I can't tell if it's intentional or not that I consume stacks of egi attacks when I try to chain them but the egi doesn't do the thing. Our APM has been cranked through the roof so we can do less damage than we ever have, it doesn't feel rewarding to get down the mechanics and I legitimately don't understand what the goal is here design-wise if it isn't "make it more complicated so it's more complicated". Stormblood summoner was a good place, and the only complaints I had then were that Demi-Bahamut being glued to us and unable to cast Akh Morn while moving feels bad.

Pet AI, especially pathing AI, has always been the weakest aspect of the job and I don't understand the decision to make it even more prominent. Being unable to stack aetherflow out of combat and the stacks being dropped from 3 to 2 feels like a pointless downgrade that exists to be annoying.

SMN is too painful to play past 70, I've given up on it for now, but I don't want to main RDM either because its casts feel too slow. I miss being able to run and spam spells like I'm a ranged DPS and not lose anything for it. Maining MCH til this gets fixed because at least there when I have to weave OGCDs constantly I know that I press the button and the attack happens.

SMN feels like I have to put in three times the effort for less benefit than a RDM or BLM both, and both feel more satisfying to pull it off than SMN. Please give me my favorite job back, so much of Shadowbringers is fantastic, I just want to be able to enjoy this and Astro again.

[NovaBismarck]

I don't believe anyone is arguing that there were good changes to summoner, bane, instant cast pets and the like.

Even high percentile players feel like the rotation is off. If someone who can execute the class to such a high degree is not particularly jazzed about the flow, something is wrong. The problem is flow and if flow is off then the whole quality of life of summoner is off. It definitely needs some rework.

I know the rotation, I'm following Tsundere's rotation as of now. I understand the breakdown of the rotation and I still am not a fan. There are too many clunky issues that just don't integrate smoothly. Reading through Balance discord is enlightening as far as understanding how the class stands. I'll still be on the forums complaining about QoL changes until we get them.

[Miskatonic]

Don’t do this to yourself lol I’m over here wishing I was a RDM main currently and wishing I wasn’t so invested into SMN as my class of choice. Our job is a disaster on release like it was last xpac. It isn’t just busy it’s a complete mess with nothing synergizing well...dots are all clunky as hell and don’t time well with anything, Bahamut has gotten worse cause he can’t be locked into place by ogcds.

You are constantly weaving the crap out of stuff Clipping into Ruin cast, I still don’t get why ruins potency is still crap, we are now the least mobile caster, which is wrong. BLM is currently outclassing us in every kind of way besides raise but guess who outclasses us there? RDM. so there is just very little gained for a lot given currently:/

To update, I gave up on SMN after getting it and RDM to 80. Now I'm getting all the other jobs up, sort of rudderlessly looking for a job that really speaks to me. Not sure yet what I'll eventually settle on, might wait until 5.05 to know for sure. I'm hoping they do something amazing with SMN

[Len]

I'm hoping they do something amazing with SMN

Get comfortable on Red Mage, because you're going to be waiting till 6.0 for the developers to possibly do something "amazing" with Summoner: a full rework.

They had the development cycle for Shadowbringers to take the feedback they received in Stormblood and apply it. During this time, the developers took a deep enough look at Summoner for a partial rework, and they still came up short. At this point, I really have zero faith in the developers regarding Summoner going forward.

[Nyoraii]

Get comfortable on Red Mage, because you're going to be waiting till 6.0 for the developers to possibly do something "amazing" with Summoner: a full rework.

They had the development cycle for Shadowbringers to take the feedback they received in Stormblood and apply it. During this time, the developers took a deep enough look at Summoner for a partial rework, and they still came up short. At this point, I really have zero faith in the developers regarding Summoner going forward.

I'm not touching SMN again until they change it. On the bright side, I'm having a blast with WAR which IMO is much better designed than current SMN.

Sometimes I think they're just trying to make SMNs start playing SCH to solve the lack of healers haha.

[Taranok]

Sometimes I think they're just trying to make SMNs start playing SCH to solve the lack of healers haha.

Maybe if the devs actually made it so all 3 healers healed people in fundamentally different ways, there wouldn't be this problem. But that's a can of worms, and an entire thread, unto itself.

I don't personally like the WAR change, but I basically got sick of WAR's base rotation in ARR and, well, its base rotation basically hasn't changed, at all, since then outside of berserk being 5 fell cleaves in a row and other rage related things. Also fracture no longer exists, but we don't talk about that.

[dinnertime]

BLM is a lot more mobile than the other casters now and it's sad. The only thing SMN and RDM is good for atm is rez and it's so niche. I guess it's time to ditch SMN after 5-6 years of maining it, and come back to my og starting job BLM. I've been through thick and thin with SMN and its awful reworks but this was the last straw. I might come back if it's actually fixed but I don't think it can top the level of good design BLM is in right now.

Also I tried PvP SMN and imo it's honestly so much better. It doesn't have a lot but I think the idea of having no Egis, frequent Demi summons, DWT/Deathflare being tied to summoning Bahamut and then having Ruin IV replace Ruin III (although I wish it was instant cast) is something I want for PvE SMN.

[Taranok]

BLM is a lot more mobile than the other casters now and it's sad. The only thing SMN and RDM is good for atm is rez and it's so niche. I guess it's time to ditch SMN after 5-6 years of maining it, and come back to my og starting job BLM. I've been through thick and thin with SMN and its awful reworks but this was the last straw. I might come back if it's actually fixed but I don't think it can top the level of good design BLM is in right now.

Also I tried PvP SMN and imo it's honestly so much better. It doesn't have a lot but I think the idea of having no Egis, frequent Demi summons, DWT/Deathflare being tied to summoning Bahamut and then having Ruin IV replace Ruin III (although I wish it was instant cast) is something I want for PvE SMN.

Don't forget that PvP summoners use Energy Drain specifically to get 1 stack of Aetherflow each, and they need 2 stacks of Aetherflow to enter a trance, whereas Fester is a means of spending Aetherflow when you can't trance, and similarly has a cooldown as well. It's clunky but somehow feels better than maintaining the PvP DoTs.

It is certainly a unique take on the current Summoner, and if they deleted the DoTs outright in PvP, it would certainly be an interesting, if bizarre, rotation as everything is tied to building aetherflow moreso than spending it.