Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[Madoka]

This is not the thread to beg for sweeping, vast changes to SMN to make it into a completely different class. The devs clearly aren't ever going to do that considering they've had 3 expansions and dozens of patches to try and move it that way. This is a thread to try and make SMN less garbage in its current state because there's 2 years before the next expansions and another try from them to completely rework things.

I was a SMN main for all of 2.x and recently came back for ShB. I'm not 80 yet but it's felt terrible the whole way there. What I read about 4.1+ SMN sounds perfect and all the awfulness are recent changes. These are what I feel needs to happen sometime soon in no particular order

1. Egi Assaults need to be used automatically on sic again, or merged into one. They do jack but have some animation locks that require weaving with ruin 2 or DWT.

2. Aetherflow needs to come back. Energy Drain/Siphon don't even suck HP/MP for us anymore and are negligible damage. It's hilarious to me that SCH has both aetherflow and the proper energy drain after the last patch. Also hilarious to me that SCH gets an instant cast AoE with 160 potency so they can weave just fine and the SMN aoe is 70 potency and hard cast.

3. Pet potency needs to go up. SMN dps used to be spread pretty evenly between the pet, dots and ruin spam. Now it's like 80% ruin/fester and the pets are negligible until you get bahamut and phoenix.

4. DWT needs to not be locked to being used in battle. Often your party can be slapping stuff and you can have just used tri-disaster but the game isn't quite ready to say you're in combat so you can't use DWT and throw out a quick ruin 3 for weaving while ruination is still up and its just wasting seconds of it at the start of encounters.

5. And probably the most important thing that all the players who went into ShB at 70 aren't even aware of. Every single Arcanist/SMN duty that relied on Topaz/Titan-egi tanking needs to be reworked or have some sort of NPC tank added in. Or just let only Topaz/Titan-egi still be target-able for duties/soloing content. Earthen Armor does not make up for having a meatshield tanking for you in the content that was designed around it. Hell the big ifrit-egi in the lv63 SMN quest has made me wait for lv70 or better gear before I go back for it because it just kills me by the time I get it to half HP. and physick healing for 500-600 isn't going to do anything when it hits for 2k+

I have some more grievances but these are the big ones. Can't wait til I hit 80 and find out how awful things really are.

[Taranok]

Also less stuff makes balancing harder. Also Also its easier to simply revert the changes the arguement of this is bad, lets delete it and since we started lets rework the whole class especially since youve already said that the class is not to your taste and even more so when the job functioned nearly perfect before those changes and all it needed was polish goes to say how forcefully youre trying to shoehorn a rework. Youre not making an arguement youre throwing a fit of how much you disliked summoner and how you still do. Youre literally playing with the pain those Who liked it feel.

I suppose this means Black Mage is the hardest class in the game to balance because its rotation is the smallest in terms of unique actions per minute. Oh, wait, it's the opposite of that.

[Dyvid]

Well I'm going on record now in saying that it's time for Demi's to end. Two is enough and it's clear adding more is just going to complicate the job even more. From 81-90 it's time to add another layer to SMN that would be one and done summon spells, Tempus. Tempus Odin would appear, do a straight line attack then disappear. Tempus Alexander would do an AoE attack. In this way we would have permanent pets; Egi. Our rotational pets; Demi. Then burst damage pets: Tempus.

But before that, SE needs to lock down our Demi/Trance rotation and make Egi damage worth the effort of having the commands on the hotbar.

[Taranok]

Well I'm going on record now in saying that it's time for Demi's to end. Two is enough and it's clear adding more is just going to complicate the job even more. From 81-90 it's time to add another layer to SMN that would be one and done summon spells, Tempus. Tempus Odin would appear, do a straight line attack then disappear. Tempus Alexander would do an AoE attack. In this way we would have permanent pets; Egi. Our rotational pets; Demi. Then burst damage pets: Tempus.

But before that, SE needs to lock down our Demi/Trance rotation and make Egi damage worth the effort of having the commands on the hotbar.

You realize the biggest reason people are complaining about Summoner right now is that it has too many layers, and that the layers aren't very interesting or worthwhile, right? Unless your goal of "adding layers" is adding thematic layers instead of rotational layers, in which case I could get on board with that.

And having these types of summons would allow the devs to get crazy if they wanted to (no surprise that they probably won't) by summoning these temporary super summons outside the arena itself and do the attack from outside kind of like how A12 does. (This is why it probably would never be done).

That said, we can have more demis without the rotation getting overcomplicated. But you need to design 4 relatively simple rotations of varying complexity that you have the ability to custom tune off of the base jobs to do it.

Imagine if you took Ruin3, Ruin 2, Outburst, Egi Assaults 1 and 2, and Enkindle and started turning them into different abilities when different summons were out. It need not be 6, but it can be that many, more, or fewer. Then you can turn each trance (demi) rotation into its own unique rotation with as many GCDs and oGCDs as you want. It could be 1 like DB (Akh Morn), 3 like DP, (FoP/FoF/Rev), they could make a powerful demi summon do 5 separate unique actions flavored after the demi, and the kicker is these abilities need not be that different from each other in terms of potency much like how DP is a reskin of DB. How you execute it can be more important than the damage, as it will sate a class style that Summoner kind of does now, but not quite, in that it is a class that changes its rotation based on what summon is out, making the summon have a unique texture to it even if its substance is very similar.

Having temporary summons that do one-off or short duration effects would be fine as well to mix in with this system, but so would keeping the class at 2 summons and finding ways to make the rest of the class more interesting without making it frustratingly overbearing and disjointed.

EDIT: At the very least, these are long term goals, not short term ones. Right now, as I've brought up before, Summoner just flat out needs to play smoothly. But looking forward, having a rework to focus on the primal summoning and interaction aspect of the class should be the way to go.

[Exodus-E]

Snip.

I mostly agree with everything on your list.
Just some things I'd like to comment on, though:

1. Egi Assaults need to be used automatically on sic again, or merged into one. They do jack but have some animation locks that require weaving with ruin 2 or DWT.

Merging them into a singular one (that doesn't proc' a Ruin IV) would be best, so its charges aren't wasted when switching between pets when the situation calls for it (like say, wanting Titan-Egi's Earthen Armor).

2. Aetherflow needs to come back. Energy Drain/Siphon don't even suck HP/MP for us anymore and are negligible damage. It's hilarious to me that SCH has both aetherflow and the proper energy drain after the last patch. Also hilarious to me that SCH gets an instant cast AoE with 160 potency so they can weave just fine and the SMN aoe is 70 potency and hard cast.

Personally, I feel like having both Energy Drain and Energy Siphon is redundant.
They could've just gave us only Energy Siphon which would deal 100 potency damage on the first target, and 40 potency damage for the rest.

3. Pet potency needs to go up. SMN dps used to be spread pretty evenly between the pet, dots and ruin spam. Now it's like 80% ruin/fester and the pets are negligible until you get bahamut and phoenix.

Couldn't agree more.
Especially Ifrit-Egi, who is meant to be the "Attacker" one (thus, focused on single target).

5. And probably the most important thing that all the players who went into ShB at 70 aren't even aware of. Every single Arcanist/SMN duty that relied on Topaz/Titan-egi tanking needs to be reworked or have some sort of NPC tank added in. Or just let only Topaz/Titan-egi still be target-able for duties/soloing content. Earthen Armor does not make up for having a meatshield tanking for you in the content that was designed around it. Hell the big ifrit-egi in the lv63 SMN quest has made me wait for lv70 or better gear before I go back for it because it just kills me by the time I get it to half HP. and physick healing for 500-600 isn't going to do anything when it hits for 2k+

Yeah, for (pre-Lv.50) solo instances it'd be nice if there was a dedicated NPC tank to help out.
Either that, or improving Titan-Egi's Earthen Armor (by either increasing the barrier's potency, or by adding more charges).

Well I'm going on record now in saying that it's time for Demi's to end. Two is enough and it's clear adding more is just going to complicate the job even more.

Not necessarily.
Post-Lv.80, they could always rework them so they fulfill a certain function (similar to BRD's songs, as in, rotating between them all in a "sequence").
Probably culminating into a high burst damaging one, like "Worm Trance" (ie. Shinryu's) or something.

[Shougun]

Well I'm going on record now in saying that it's time for Demi's to end. Two is enough and it's clear adding more is just going to complicate the job even more. From 81-90 it's time to add another layer to SMN that would be one and done summon spells, Tempus. Tempus Odin would appear, do a straight line attack then disappear. Tempus Alexander would do an AoE attack. In this way we would have permanent pets; Egi. Our rotational pets; Demi. Then burst damage pets: Tempus.

But before that, SE needs to lock down our Demi/Trance rotation and make Egi damage worth the effort of having the commands on the hotbar.

I could see some more summons added in this spirit, big ol one time casts in the classic pre-pet spirit of primal summons (so like most of the FFs lol). Would add an excuse for some epic visuals like those classic summons (well to be fair full size bahamut and his special is pretty epic too, but you know what I mean). Far less often than Black Mage's big spells but makes black mage's big spells look like little spells lol.

An aside on scale and all that but in Diablo 3 they had it so other people's pets and such were optionally transparent so it didn't fill your screen, that might be helpful for other players (like how summoner can scale bahamut down).

Could be a fun idea! Plus Tempus sounds kind of neat . Would each Tempus be a separate skill or a rotation? Maybe to save hotbar space there are three tempus that replace your egi summon buttons (if Tempus is ready to fire I mean, I don't mean remove Egi altogether lol), that way the bloat doesn't go wild but we can get a bunch of options. Might make changing to another egi you need a bit of a pain without forcing a player to throw out their tempus though ;/ . . Still I think we're approaching critical buttons so we should be careful lol.

So far we have seen delete DoTs, delete pets, delete cast times, delete ruin..... Is it any wonder SE can't figure out what the community wants? It's basically delete SMN right now.

I lol'd

I didn't hate Summoner's mechanics but I've long rallied for primal themes, and each expansion SE has added and shifted summoner more towards that so I'm happy. If they need to smooth/adjust mechanics out that doesn't really bother me, the key to me was just how un-summoner it used to look and feel (subjective feeling/imo of course) and I feel they're making that better each expansion.

I've been content watching them for a while now. I still would like to see them add more primal things, very interested in this glamour system that's been in the works for a while, but if they keep doing what they're doing I think all is well (each expansion adding more dollops of primal then I have no worries at all).

[Dyvid]

You realize the biggest reason people are complaining about Summoner right now is that it has too many layers, and that the layers aren't very interesting or worthwhile, right? Unless your goal of "adding layers" is adding thematic layers instead of rotational layers, in which case I could get on board with that..

The problem isn't the layers, it's the layers just aren't working together with the job. But I've already giving plenty of feedback on how to get all this mechanics to mesh together in function. I'm saying it just a spell with recast timer. No flashy mechanics needed for it.

Not necessarily.
Post-Lv.80, they could always rework them so they fulfill a certain function (similar to BRD's songs, as in, rotating between them all in a "sequence").
Probably culminating into a high burst damaging one, like "Worm Trance" (ie. Shinryu's) or something.

It just starts to become an even more crowded field at that point, one that would require more rework, more takeaways, and ultimately more problems when it finally drops because of the unnecessary rework. A solid two Demi rotation is good. We are become more and more akin to BRD as it is. Each job needs its own identity with it's own unique playstyle.

[HeulGDarian]

I suppose this means Black Mage is the hardest class in the game to balance because its rotation is the smallest in terms of unique actions per minute. Oh, wait, it's the opposite of that.

W8 actually. You got a point there i actually phrased it wrong let me rephrase it . a job that has less options to achieve something makes it hard for that something to be balanced. ill take the example you had given to remove the dots and add them to ruin and also make ruin instant . With that change beside the utility lost I've stated means that changes to it would have more of an impact . let's say you want to nerf 10% gcd damage let's say that your gcd is 40% and the ruin does 300 . Your only choice is nerfing ruin to be 225 potency . let's say we have 2 actions. now we can do 10 different nerfs to achieve this status . with 3 actions i need to refresh my advance calculus to give you the number . Ofc this isn't all there is in balancing but it's something to consider.

[Taranok]

The problem isn't the layers, it's the layers just aren't working together with the job. But I've already giving plenty of feedback on how to get all this mechanics to mess together in harmony. I'm just saying it just a spell with recast timer. No flashy mechanics needed for it.

Point taken. But if we're adding this, we need a lot of somethings removed in the process or meshed together. Having Egi Assault retrapped as a Odin dropping in the center of the arena and shooting off a Zantetsuken won't fix the issues the class has now, except by making the class thematically more AWESOME than it already is.

So my wishlist of goals:

Short Term:

1. Egi Assault or Energy Drain. Choose one, completely remove the other. OR
2. Egi Assault AND Energy Drain: Merge EA 1 with EA2, rework ruin 4 to be fair and fun as necessary. Either merge ED and ES together and give it a 60s cooldown (rework fester/pf as needed) OR delete both mechanics and tie Aetherflow stacks to trances specifically so you trance to get aetherflow and never concern yourself with it otherwise.
3. DoTs can stay for now, it would be too difficult to augment that many co-dependent mechanics, but increase their duration from 30 to 33 seconds OR reduce Trance cooldown timers to 55 seconds so that it's vastly harder to accidentally clip DoTs because you reapplied T-D a second too early.
4. Delete ruination, either add its damage directly into DoTs or into all of the Ruins. ALTERNATIVELY make ruination benefit Fountain of Fire and Brand of Purgatory so you're not punished for using it during FBT and just limp the class along until it can be reworked.
5. Egis can stay, DP and DB can stay in their current state, just make it, if possible, so that Ifrit-egi can charge the boss with their innate auto attack like Automaton Queen does, as well as making it so DB and DP stay rooted once summoned. Consider merging DP with DWT, or making it so DP and DB function like Automaton Queen does in that it just does its own thing once summoned.
6. Drop devotion to a 2 minute timer, adjust its damage boost accordingly, OR make it so that the effect can be summoned centered on the summoner itself and cast at any time regardless of the presence of an egi.
7. Consider dropping T-D to a 28 second cooldown instead of adjusting ruination so that we apply DoTs exclusively through it (you know, like a bard...kind of).

All of these changes can "reasonably" be done mid-expansion, as it primarily concerns with adjusting timings, changing mechanics that already exist at just a numbers basis, deleting things outright, or adding mechanics that have existed in the past but were disabled. Not all of this list would need to be done, even a handful of it would fix the class a lot as is and we wouldn't need to touch arguably the worst mechanics that make up the core of the class, just make it slightly less frustrating to work with and ease up on the skill floor a bit.

Long term:

1. Remove or alter egis, remove DoTs.
2. Emphasize the trance and primal-based rotation from a very low level.
3. Any DoTs added should function like GNB DoTs in that they're put up on a cooldown where thematically appropriate.
4. More demis!
5. Fixed demis that aren't a pain to work with!
6. Temporary one-shot summons!
7. Basically a ground up rework of the class to focus on demi primals and things that can make the summoner feel more thematically like a summoner, with all mechanics designed from the ground up to actually focus on and fit with this thematic style so the class feels thematic.

Unlike short-term changes, long term changes require substantial redesigns to the class, its rotation, its flow, its very feel at a raw gameplay level and will require a lot of time to implement. As with the short term wishlist, it need not be all of these things, but at the end of the day it would still be a rework of the class to actually focus up the class and make it feel like a summoner. I'm intentionally being vague because I don't have an exact vision of how it should work, only a vision of how it might work, and would rather the devs looked at the feedback from the class and went: "Let's rework the class to make it feel like a summoner" instead of "Oh, the class really likes egis or dots or summons or this or that" and focuses the class in too many directions. Demi-summons are the core of Summoner's thematic identity, and everything should thematically revolve around that.

[HeulGDarian]

You realize the biggest reason people are complaining about Summoner right now is that it has too many layers, and that the layers aren't very interesting or worthwhile, right? Unless your goal of "adding layers" is adding thematic layers instead of rotational layers, in which case I could get on board with that.

And having these types of summons would allow the devs to get crazy if they wanted to (no surprise that they probably won't) by summoning these temporary super summons outside the arena itself and do the attack from outside kind of like how A12 does. (This is why it probably would never be done).

That said, we can have more demis without the rotation getting overcomplicated. But you need to design 4 relatively simple rotations of varying complexity that you have the ability to custom tune off of the base jobs to do it.

Imagine if you took Ruin3, Ruin 2, Outburst, Egi Assaults 1 and 2, and Enkindle and started turning them into different abilities when different summons were out. It need not be 6, but it can be that many, more, or fewer. Then you can turn each trance (demi) rotation into its own unique rotation with as many GCDs and oGCDs as you want. It could be 1 like DB (Akh Morn), 3 like DP, (FoP/FoF/Rev), they could make a powerful demi summon do 5 separate unique actions flavored after the demi, and the kicker is these abilities need not be that different from each other in terms of potency much like how DP is a reskin of DB. How you execute it can be more important than the damage, as it will sate a class style that Summoner kind of does now, but not quite, in that it is a class that changes its rotation based on what summon is out, making the summon have a unique texture to it even if its substance is very similar.

Having temporary summons that do one-off or short duration effects would be fine as well to mix in with this system, but so would keeping the class at 2 summons and finding ways to make the rest of the class more interesting without making it frustratingly overbearing and disjointed.

i agree with you on this as well . with the exception of the 1 hit summons . this is what the devs are trying to do but for the gcds to transform you need to have the gcds . you don't have to get enkindle and devotion mixed to demis if they actually fix the egis we will be able to have a constant but a bit weaker demi . This is what they're trying to do for future summons we don't have to remove everything to achieve that status we only have to fix what went wrong and in my opinion they should find away to dechain the demi summons so that we can pick which one we want but if they can't balance the egis how would we hope for them to balance the demis . Restore the status queue that 4.1 brought and add the new demi ideas and focus on fixing the pet balance so that they become rewarding as well. You can't begin to imagine how happy i am for this one comment you have made.