How to fix summoners.

[Grimoire-M]

I'm honestly content with how SMN plays right now. Do I understand the complaints? Yes. Yet despite that, SMN feels more like SMN than it ever has thematically, has similar punishment for jump phases/downtime compared to its other caster DPS, and for the first time ever doesn't feel like it's sacrificing its fluidity to do any of that. It's not perfect by any means, but I'd rather not see any rotational changes. For the first time since HW, my only concern is the numbers.

Even so, if SE wants to restore what people liked about SMN's gains from downtime before, what I'd like to see them do is add charges on DWT/Tri-disaster/Energy Drain (while also boosting Tri-Disaster's cooldown to 1 minute), lock them to 1 charge on instance transition/reset, and only let them charge during combat, akin to WHM's Lilies. I feel that's a good compromise overall. The only other thing would be allowing Devotion to be used by Bahamut/Phoenix if people really think that's needed. I don't feel it is, but the option's there.

Numerically, I'd like to see Ruin II and IV buffed by 20 potency each (basically copy Ruin I to Ruin II, and up the base potency of Ruin IV), a 10 potency increase on each of their DoTs (as it's less problematic to adjust compared to Ruin III), and allow Ruination to affect Fountain of Fire/Brand of Purgatory, Phoenix's spells. As far as I can tell it doesn't appear to right now. If it does, update the tooltips to communicate that.

[Myon88]

SMN feels more like SMN than it ever has thematically, has similar punishment for jump phases/downtime compared to its other caster DPS

Could you explain how you think BLM is similarly punished during downtime now?

Polyglot continues to tick while combat is paused, and with the addition of an extra charge it's now essentially a skill with 3 charges. Impossible to overcap if you're playing properly. It's a very valuable resource as xenoglossy is one of the most powerful tools they received this expansion.

They have also always been able to regenerate MP in downtime at their leisure, ensuring when combat restarts they begin with a full MP bar instead of however much they had when the downtime happened. Umbral soul makes things even more convenient, as no longer do you have to juggle between af1 and ui1 with transpose. Instead you can simply keep yourself in umbral ice, build up to ui3, and generate umbral hearts to boot. This lets you skip b4 when combat restarts, as well as enter fire with a fast f3 by virtue of being in ui3. They now regain their max output state extremely quickly after downtime because of this.

[Grimoire-M]

Could you explain how you think BLM is similarly punished during downtime now?

Polyglot continues to tick while combat is paused, and with the addition of an extra charge it's now essentially a skill with 3 charges. Impossible to overcap if you're playing properly. It's a very valuable resource as xenoglossy is one of the most powerful tools they received this expansion.

They have also always been able to regenerate MP in downtime at their leisure, ensuring when combat restarts they begin with a full MP bar instead of however much they had when the downtime happened. Umbral soul makes things even more convenient, as no longer do you have to juggle between af1 and ui1 with transpose. Instead you can simply keep yourself in umbral ice, build up to ui3, and generate umbral hearts to boot. This lets you skip b4 when combat restarts, as well as enter fire with a fast f3 by virtue of being in ui3. They now regain their max output state extremely quickly after downtime because of this.

This may come as a shocker, but recovery has very little to do with it. The problem isn't BLM's ability to recover at all. Most of BLM's damage is still tied up in Fire IV itself. Downtime just naturally hurts them more, but Xenoglossy/Foul and their cooldowns still tick during that period, which are frankly minor compensations compared to what some classes get, relatively speaking.

RDM similarly loses the ability to generate and spend B/W Mana but this is minorly offset by Contre Sixtre/Fleche/Displacement/Corps-a-Corps. The bulk of their DPS still remains in their spells.

In SMN's case they now lose Energy Drains if the downtime is long enough, which effectively costs two festers/painflares as well. If the downtime occurs at the right time and is upwards of 50s in length, it can eat into Egi Assaults and more importantly, Trance windows. Either by way of making Bahamut align poorly (which you can compensate for by just blowing DWT early), or simply by delaying when you get to use Phoenix, which is the bigger deal imo. SMN still focuses on its burst windows relative to the other two casters, but SE's changes going into ShB have been targeted at their filler in an attempt to make it as important as the other caster DPS. And it shows in their numbers, for the most part. If you're getting full Bahamut/Phoenix value, using Ruin IV to move around and weave Fester/Painflare/Assaults, and keeping Energy Drain/Trance on cooldown, and always casting Ruin III otherwise, you're generally parsing well right now.

It's just numbers that are a concern, and in that matter Zerathor has the right of it. We're solidly middle of the pack. Something that hasn't been true of SMN since ARR to my knowledge.