Quote Originally Posted by Dyvid View Post
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.