Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[Taranok]

It's not a bug, Garuda had better scaling than the melee pets did in SB. The difference is the melee egis previously had auto attacks to compensate (which were removed for some reason). I do wish they would normalise pet potency as well and just adjust the potencies of their skills, but pet scaling is definitely not bugged atm.

I mean, it wasn't a bug in Stormblood, it's a bug in Shadowbringers.

[CecMiller]

I tried UCOB and UWU on SMN the other day - There was a significant drop in dps. I do well in both fights so it was interesting to see it from a firsthand perspective.

To put it plainly, when I was using Ifrit on SMN (in UWU) before shadowbringers he was doing:

2.9k per burning Strike
1.2k per auto.

Total: 4.1k per gcd

After Shadowbringers:

1.4k per burning Strike
0 per auto (non-existant)

Total: 1.4k per GCD

% Change = -66% in DPS from GCD differences of the pets.

The lack of an ifrit auto is one of the reasons for SMN's low dps in level 80 content and synced content at 70 (I was being outdps'd by a tank at some points in UCOB)

Also the new normal fights require you to be on point with your Energy Drain/AF uses before you lose a use via boss transitioning. Its said more changes will come in 5.05 and hopefully will address some of our issues or tone us up a bit before bigger potential changes in 5.1.

As for the pets: I really really hope that they base it off player potency. I want to see the player potency number - Not have to do some math and try and figure out their potency.

[CecMiller]

Somewhat unrelated, but something that has crept up on me again as I was playing Summoner after a short break.

With the removal of Contagion, there is no longer any magical party buff - However, physical only party buffs still exist. Why is this? Why do 2 physical party buffs exist (embolden and brotherhood) when magical only party buffs were removed? (rip contagion)

I think the best way to go about it is to make all the buffs "magic and physical" party buffs so people wouldn't "feel" less inclined to run with jobs that don't buff them for instance. Whilst I'd hope this isn't a pervasive thought, its one of the reasons that caused some jobs to be locked out in the 4.0 - 5.0 raid series ie. the lack of bringing buffs or the wrong kind of buff. I just dont see a reason why physical only party buffs can exist but magical ones cannot.

Either way, I guess we just wait now and see what happens. I'm levelling SMN again on my alt and I'm having the same frustrating experiences (Pets despawning, Energy DrainTtrance timing frustrations, Dot frustrations, Demi Bahamut AI etc)

[Dyvid]

Somewhat unrelated, but something that has crept up on me again as I was playing Summoner after a short break.

With the removal of Contagion, there is no longer any magical party buff - However, physical only party buffs still exist. Why is this? Why do 2 physical party buffs exist (embolden and brotherhood) when magical only party buffs were removed? (rip contagion)

I think the best way to go about it is to make all the buffs "magic and physical" party buffs so people wouldn't "feel" less inclined to run with jobs that don't buff them for instance. Whilst I'd hope this isn't a pervasive thought, its one of the reasons that caused some jobs to be locked out in the 4.0 - 5.0 raid series ie. the lack of bringing buffs or the wrong kind of buff. I just dont see a reason why physical only party buffs can exist but magical ones cannot.

Either way, I guess we just wait now and see what happens. I'm levelling SMN again on my alt and I'm having the same frustrating experiences (Pets despawning, Energy DrainTtrance timing frustrations, Dot frustrations, Demi Bahamut AI etc)

That is odd, I would have thought they would have just made it a flat rate dps buff. Oversite perhaps?

[Taranok]

That is odd, I would have thought they would have just made it a flat rate dps buff. Oversite perhaps?

I'd say it's more that single-caster meta is basically expected, and the devs didn't even think about the ramifications of having physical-only buffs when they removed magic-only buffs. Of those 2 jobs, 1 is already a caster, and the other one is monk, which, well, the devs basically don't even pay attention to monk as far as I can tell at this point, whereas the expected comp is 2 melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster for DPS, so the thought of running RDM with a BLM or SMN is basically unheard of to them.

It's bad design though to have an ability that innately favors 1 job over another. This is part of the reason why the meta in SB was basically Ninja Dragoon Bard Machinist, and was a driving force behind removing specialty damage buffs like piercing from Dragoon.

[Higashikata]

It's just sad. Summoner is so hard to play effectively and I just have a machinist friend who just trounces my damage with half the effort I put in...

[Taranok]

Machinist is one of the 3 selfish DPS in the game. They are always going to trounce on any class that has any level of support, by design.

And Machinist takes a fair amount of effort, but they do a couple things SMN does not that makes the class, despite being busier than SMN, feel a lot easier overall:

• You have 2 abilities, both on multiples of 20 seconds, that act as your clock. Drill, and Air Anchor, with emphasis on Drill.
• Every other mandatory timed ability operates on this clock. From Reassemble to Wildfire and Barrel Stabilizer. (As a note, why isn't barrel stabilizer just combined with wildfire if they both are functionally going to be used at the same time?)
• Every ability that is not listed on the 20s clock, has a massive amount of wiggle room on when you implement it. You have 10 full GCDs, or 25 seconds, to get Hypercharge out, and your twin oGCDs Gauss Barrel and Ricochet stack up to 90 seconds worth of casts, so you really can use them whenever as long as you don't clip it during Hypercharge itself.
• If anything gets desynced from Drill, you can forcibly resync it. Even minor amounts of skill speed will allow for Drill and Air Anchor to gravitate towards each other, and everything else you can just delay. Because of how it's delayed, as long as you didn't die, typically it will stay synced with other DPS classes in the game anyways.
• Since everything is instant cast, your oGCDs can be played basically whenever you want without penalty, provided you use the correct corresponding GCD for that moment.
• And the only timers that regularly might get screwed up is Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire. BS because you might overcap it, and WF because you're trying to keep it synced to BS. Which I'm honestly not even certain is a serious problem since I am not a great machinist yet.

The class flows really well because of all of this. You basically do this: About to enter Hypercharge? Check Drill. Just left Hypercharge? Check drill. Drill about to come off cooldown? Check Air Anchor and Reassemble. About to cast air anchor? Check battery (it will almost never be a clip, you either forgot to cast it or are about to cast it perfectlyt, it times stupidly well with Air Anchor).

And you just casually pay attention to Wildfire/Barrel Stabilizer because they're also tied to reassemble a bit, but you're scanning so much of the bar regularly that you just will pretty much always notice them even without specifically checking for them.

It's busy, but it flows. It has a tiny bit of clunkiness to its flow with regards to Barrel Stabilizer and how Drill/Hypercharge line up, but because you have so much wiggle room on Hypercharge except when BS is involved, that you can delay it to keep Drill rolling, and then Hypercharge and not care.

Machinist really exemplifies how a busy class should be designed, even when it's a bit rough, compared to SMN. Because you have ONE clock that everything else gets slaved to naturally, and everything else can fall in line or be nudged back in line if it ever falls out of line.

Meanwhile, over in summoner land, the class has TWO clocks (Trances and Energy Drain/Siphon), the timings are weird even outside of those clocks, things tend to just not line up well or feel unnatural, and it has to watch so much more because of its bizarre timings and sheer volume of buttons. It has a completely unnatural and inorganic rotation because of how Ruination works with FBT and having very few actual instant cast GCDs to safely cast at times of movement or when using oGCDs, and it ends up having a choppy, uneven flow. And those clocks will nautrally get desynced, but when desynced you can't forcibly resync it because so much damage is tied up in both of them.

To put it another way, Machinist beats Summoner at its own game. Having good-great damage on top of it is just icing.

[Rakith]

Machinist is one of the 3 selfish DPS in the game. They are always going to trounce on any class that has any level of support, by design.

And Machinist takes a fair amount of effort, but they do a couple things SMN does not that makes the class, despite being busier than SMN, feel a lot easier overall:


[

Yes I agree but Mch was in such a bad spot till now that what they did to make it good should not be undone.
I m happy for my fellow mch.
Regarding SMN, they should clearly revamp the job. Everything has already been said in that respect.

[HeulGDarian]

Regarding SMN, they should clearly revamp the job. Everything has already been said in that respect.

Revamping was what got us here. but not everything is bad , trance changing our abilities was a great idea and it feels great, Insta summoning is also great even though we need more incentive than heres for aoe here's for single target and here's the one you still wont use ever . I believe they just need to go a bit backwards and give the old style aetherflow system sure it had problems but it also had benefits . they egi actions are a bit hit or miss but if they just make them good the fact that we can't use them while casting would become irrelevant . I still believe that getting the old buffs as devotions on different pets like enkindle would be a good reason to swap pets as long as the numbers are balanced in between them. I think that smn should be more of a support
caster cause if the pets are not situational then you will stick to the one that does most dps . On the other hand id like smn to get his AOE king status back.... stupid 50% aoe reductions TT

[dinnertime]

I wish they just gave us 3 extra slots of Aetherflow (while still keeping Aetherflow 3 stacks per use) and called it a day instead of a complete rework, which wasn't really needed when the job was in a respectable place already. The only good thing about this rework was the pet responsiveness but everything else is just...unnecessary and frustrating.