Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[ShadowNyx3]

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The broader point that I would like to make about this is that simply adding Bahamut to DWT isn't doing enough. No matter which of the two scenarios is chosen, there are many, many other things that would have to be adjusted to make things work; I simply believe that separating Phoenix allows for more freedom in design.

Summoner needs a phase like DWT to weave everything that it has and give the player some relief when it comes to unpunished movement and that phase needs to be able to be used freely. You say that FBT provides you with 20s of mobility, which it does, but that mobility still comes attached to your biggest damage output (thus can't be delayed) and is still punished because of the Demi-summons and their problematic movement that can cause the loss of their auto-abilities. Add Bahamut to DWT and now you have the same problem on both ends of the rotation and no simple instant-cast phase to give you any relief. If Demi-summons could ever be fixed to not drop their abilities when you move or have an arbitrary delay upon their summoning where they won't respond to your action, then these phases would be free of any movement punishment, but that still leaves us with a very problematic 40s of downtime between them (to say nothing of those damage phases being tied to the strict 60s cycle still). With only being able to weave Energy Drain and Fester/Painflare during a Demi phase, this means that all four Egi-Assaults must be used in the 40s between trances, along with Enkindle, Devotion, Tri-disaster, and the other ED and its two actions, with only the four Ruin IV procs, swiftcast, and a hard-casted Bio III to use as means to not lose damage while weaving. Even if you try to mitigate this by removing Egi-Assaults, what does the rotation become at that point? Even more of a Ruin III spamfest with even less interactive pets?

Removing Phoenix from its trance breaks the cycle into more manageable parts and that is the point I'm trying to make. Imagine the rotation at that point in its simplest terms: Trance -> Demi -> Filler -> Repeat. You begin with a trance to weave in all of your Egi-related abilities, you move into a heavy-hitting Demi-summon, then you fill the gap before your next trance with whatever needs to be done. Except that's being rather restrictive, as the only thing that can't be changed (If trances are still tied to a 60s CD) are the trances themselves. Those Demi-summons could be used at any point in the 60s cycle, as long as you're not delaying the use of your next trance. It's my belief that turning the rotation back into something like this allows for much better design going forward, as each phase in this case can be adjusted more freely to feel better to use while trying to come up with new mechanics to ease the 40s downtime phase in the other scenario could create even more problems.

[HeulGDarian]

The broader point that I would like to make about this is that simply adding Bahamut to DWT isn't doing enough. No matter which of the two scenarios is chosen, there are many, many other things that would have to be adjusted to make things work; I simply believe that separating Phoenix allows for more freedom in design.

Removing Phoenix from its trance breaks the cycle into more manageable parts and that is the point I'm trying to make. Imagine the rotation at that point in its simplest terms: Trance -> Demi -> Filler -> Repeat. You begin with a trance to weave in all of your Egi-related abilities, you move into a heavy-hitting Demi-summon, then you fill the gap before your next trance with whatever needs to be done. Except that's being rather restrictive, as the only thing that can't be changed (If trances are still tied to a 60s CD) are the trances themselves. Those Demi-summons could be used at any point in the 60s cycle, as long as you're not delaying the use of your next trance. It's my belief that turning the rotation back into something like this allows for much better design going forward, as each phase in this case can be adjusted more freely to feel better to use while trying to come up with new mechanics to ease the 40s downtime phase in the other scenario could create even more problems.

this would give if I'm not wrong 15 seconds if they make fbtrance have the same duration . I'll be honest I've been pumpered by stormblood summoners mobility where using ruin 2 to weave or for mobilty wasn't a huge loss. it sounds like a decent idea but introducing more abilities sounds like a tough thing . i think spreading the abilities on the 2 mins window is less appealing than condensing the 2 min rotation . this could happen by reverting energy drain to aetherflow with 2 stacks and 30 second cd and having trance chained to it like it was before this would reduce the dead zone of ruining till trance comes up again off .Making trance be a 2 stacks ability and reducing the cd would also be a sudo fix and would keep the energy drain. sure tridisaster and devotion are the biggest offenders of getting fcked by cool down but cooldowns are the easiest to be fixed . the egi actions Don't really have trouble since you got a 60 seconds period before having to use one to not lose dps if they are at 0 stacks and 30 if they are at 1. there is a good reason to have this ruin spam at the end, it helps adding more summon periods for when and if they add more of them that's why still need 2 mins before Demi pheonix like you needed 2 mins for bahamut in stormblood.

[ShadowNyx3]

If during Bahamut they increase Ruin II potency to Ruin III potency or allow free Ruin IV casts (as it is with PvP SMN, like dinner said), then it will improve a bit that phase.

This is definitely the easiest and most reasonable thing that can be done to smooth out Bahamut for right now. Down the line, I would like to see the Demi-summons be the force that changes the Summoner actions to things like Fountain of Fire and Brand of Purgatory. Who wouldn't love to cast Flare Breath from their character while Bahamut is present?

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Essentially, what I outlined is actually only a 1 min cycle because Bahamut and Phoenix would then be mirrors of each other, so it couldn't be condensed any further than that without causing problems with the desired 60s building blocks that all rotations have. Obviously, having Bahamut and Phoenix do the same thing would not be all that interesting mechanically, but again, my point is that each aspect is able to exist on its own while being able to be designed into something entertaining in the future. Because you can have different Summons filling the Demi-role and potentially different Egis viable for the filler role, you open the design up to making something that flows naturally. For example, Phoenix has given us an ability like Everlasting Flight as potential utility. Obviously the devs intended that to be useful in some regard, but its not because of how restricted its timing is. Open your mind to seeing how an ability like that could be used on another Demi...say Bahamut having a Lohs Daih ability that puts a 3% magic damage increase on nearby enemies and you've just created a window where other magic users in your party are waiting to see the Dreadwyrm appear to pump out some heavy magic damage. And all that is possible because you keep Bahamut free of your strict rotational cooldown. And by making Phoenix do the same, you grant that freedom to Everlasting Flight too, where maybe during your 1 min Phoenix cycle you aren't expecting any damage buffs, so you delay the Phoenix Summoning a bit to help a particularly heavy healing section.

I do agree that the old Aetherflow system is the best the rotation could ever hope to being unrestricted, as a trance tied to a 60s CD still needs to be used on cooldown to not lose any potential Demis, I only offer this solution as a compromise between where SMN seems to want to go and where it needs to maintain its roots.

[HeulGDarian]

This is definitely the easiest and most reasonable thing that can be done to smooth out Bahamut for right now. Down the line, I would like to see the Demi-summons be the force that changes the Summoner actions to things like Fountain of Fire and Brand of Purgatory. Who wouldn't love to cast Flare Breath from their character while Bahamut is present?


I do agree that the old Aetherflow system is the best the rotation could ever hope to being unrestricted, as a trance tied to a 60s CD still needs to be used on cooldown to not lose any potential Demis,

A lot of people agree with that including me and hopefully the devs will see that and actually reverse that change.

[NovaBismarck]

Honestly FBT feels good to me too. It's the one sigh of relief in this rotation. I think if you are going to run a frantic rotation there should be at least two good comfortable pauses. R3 phase doesn't feel like a pause, still a lot of timing and tedium. Precast feels frantic, bahamut clunky a bit.
The bahamut rotation doesn't feel bad on the dummy but get it into real content where movement is required and it seems to throw things out of alignment. It does feel clunkier the FBT. I still say there's one ball too many to juggle, too many buttons. It's fine when things are going right but when things go wrong everything becomes problematic. Overall, on the dummy the rotation is busy but doable with enough practice (a lot of practice), but trying to learn content on this job is not particularly fun. I'm very much not a fan of the tight rotation timing now and how when I have to slow cast rez a second healer when things go bad so the whole party doesn't wipe, that my whole rotation gets mucked up. Recasting dots (when tri is down) to do anything is never fun.

I'm in favor of doing something better with egi assaults too. Either that or deleting something else. While I'm reaching for the 20 keys I have to press in the first 16.5 seconds of my rotation I get agitated by something that just feels like busywork. Maybe they could delete something else, I don't know, but with ED, Dots, Fester/Painflare, four ruin 4 procs to track and six pet buttons (with 2 additional spam buttons every 30 sec), on top of DWT, FBT, Bahamut, and R3 phases that require turreting and then forcing movement as needed seems excessive. The job just requires too much visual tracking for me to find it fun.