SMN Feedback after Savage Launch/Live Letter for 5.08/5.1

[Dyvid]

Why else would they:
A) completely eliminate their cast times for summoning them?
B) reduce their recast timers between pets from 10s -> 3s (as of Patch 5.05)?

Also, even if it's a DPS loss, sometimes you will end up in situations where you'll need further "survivability" instead (ie. swapping to Titan-Egi for its Earthen Armor).
It's all about their "situational" roles.


I agree that them still having different Enkindle potencies/effects is a weird oversight/afterthought.

Potency-wise, though:
A) Aerial Blast has 350 potency
B) Inferno has 200 potency + applies a DoT (20 potency for 15s). 200 + 20 x 5 = 300 potency (total).

Combined with their auto-attacks (Wind Blade's 40 vs. Burning Strike's 80), I'd say Ifrit-Egi is still better for single-targets.
As in, not swapping just for their individual Enkindles.

Unfortunately the job is so busy as it is, pet swapping would make it even worse. I've tried to swap garuda and ifrit for enkindle it just felt awful. Now swapping Titan for shield sin't bad if you have a EA1 ready to use.

[Exodus-E]

Unfortunately the job is so busy as it is, pet swapping would make it even worse. I've tried to swap garuda and ifrit for enkindle it just felt awful. Now swapping Titan for shield sin't bad if you have a EA1 ready to use.

And that's exactly why I'm advocating for removing the Ruin IV proc' from their Egi Assault actions.
Otherwise, we'd get situations where you need its shield, yet you run out of charges for doing that (because you "prioritized" DPS'ing instead).

[Dyvid]

Well I posted this idea in you other read. I'm trying to take player feedback along with all the abilities and work within the confines of the job as SE has laid out. Further more I'm trying to root it into past with, AF > Trance, along with embrace the FBT/Phoenix design. The busiest of the job is two part problem, too many ogcd and those abilities not working together in some fashion. Rather than skill remove how ever I do believe consolidation is better.

• Energy drain/siphon (should we just combine them?) has max of 2 charges and Aetherflow Gauge stacks up to four rather than two. in this way you won't be penalized for refreshing AF when you only have one left This should provide flexibility to the player without punishing them and keep a continuing stream of charges going.

• Aetherflow builds up the Trance gauge with 4 unlocking Trance. This keeps it similar to 3.X and 4.X days where we build toward something. The gauge should be something similar to MCH battery where we won't have a lockout but won't build past 100.

• Egi Assault will use Aetherflow stacks as it's resource. It will no longer grant Ruin IV and have a 7s recast timer. Egi Damage will now be based off of the Summoners spell damage modifiers so we all know what is what. SE can adjust potency only after that is fixed. Egi Assault 1 should be a base attack where as Egi Assault 2 would be a DoT attack. The DoT you could even work into further toward bonus damage to other attacks like Ruin and Outburst. For example: monster inflicted with Gale Enforcer (Slipstream) would take more damage from outburst.

• Dreadwyrm Trance will change Ruin III to Ruin IV and Outburst to Painflare. At 70 DWT will summon Demi-Bahamut. Basically copying FBT/Phoenix design.

• Deathflare will be remove and it's damage will be added to Enkindle. At 50 Enkindle will be just a straight 300 potency AoE attack with 120s recast. At 60, Enhance Enkindle will make it a 500 potency AoE with 50% drop off and 60s recast. This should make it on average with Deathflare and make it easy for Devs to add new Egi Glamour and animate the attack rather than using DoTs and Ground Target Effects. Enkindle feels better, Ahk Morn is unique to Demi-Bahamut again, we don't lose dps because of change.

• Fester is going to be a 20s recast timer and extends DoTs by 10s. If you hit the mark on all Festers this should extend DoT by 60s, right when Tri-D is ready again. With luck with should easy the DoT drop off issue people are having.

• Add a gap close to Crimson Cyclone and change Flaming Crush to single target with DoT. Add pushback and slow to Mountain Buster.

Keep in mind that while I don't dislike your concept of Aetherflow, I'm not going to suggest toward itas there is maybe a 50/50 chance would bring it back. If SE does decide to bring it back I would simple request that it works as a 100 potency AoE attack centered around the summoner. As for Ruin I feel this is some way to compromise on this current design. Why not return Ruins to original potency from 4.5 but add 10-15 potency for Bio and another 10-15 for Miasma? This might even let the Dev increase DoT back to 50 potency.

The only way to fix Bahamut and Phoenix moving is making them auto attack. As for BoP > FoF, I don't mind it, it's a simple 1>2 combo.

Everlasting Flight, I say leave it as is. It just a nice little bonus in groups and nice in solo experiences. Nothing really needs to be changed on it.

Devotion needs 120s recast.

P.S. I do have an post about Egi Damage as an Accepted Bug. Whether this means anything however remains to be seen.

[CecMiller]

Why else would they:


Potency-wise, though:
A) Aerial Blast has 350 potency
B) Inferno has 200 potency + applies a DoT (20 potency for 15s). 200 + 20 x 5 = 300 potency (total)

Combined with their auto-attacks (Wind Blade's 40 vs. Burning Strike's 80), I'd say Ifrit-Egi is still better for single-targets.
As in, not swapping them just for their individual Enkindles.

This is incorrect as you do not understand what pet potency is.

Garuda and ifrit/Titan have different pet potencies. You multiple Garuda by 0.8 to get its real value and ifrits by 0.48. Thus, 350 garuda = 280 player potency and 300 Ifrit is 144 player potency. It is a much starker difference. The same is true for their auto attacks.

40*0.8 = 32 player potency vs. 80*0.48 = 38.4 player potency. Hencer per auto the difference is 38.4/32 = 1.2. Ifrit deals exactly 1.2x the auto of garuda.

As for your earlier comment, I think I've mentioned why they would do so. If they were intent on us swapping mid battle, they would give us more reason to do so and make it more obvious to do so. Currently, the only reason you swap is for adds (in which case you swap to garuda) or for potential greater enkindle potency via garuda. That is the only reason to do so.

[Vulcwen]

This is incorrect as you do not understand what pet potency is.

Garuda and ifrit/Titan have different pet potencies. You multiple Garuda by 0.8 to get its real value and ifrits by 0.48. Thus, 350 garuda = 280 player potency and 300 Ifrit is 144 player potency. It is a much starker difference. The same is true for their auto attacks.

Little caveat here, Enkindle always uses the 0.8 multiplier, even for ifrit and titan. Logic is sound for egi assaults and the standard attacks tho (rip ifrit auto attacks).

[CecMiller]

Little caveat here, Enkindle always uses the 0.8 multiplier, even for ifrit and titan. Logic is sound for egi assaults and the standard attacks tho (rip ifrit auto attacks).

Yep this is right - I made a mistake earlier. So its 280 potency for garuda and and 0.8*300 for ifrit which comes out to around 240 potency but can be larger with respect to your SS

[Connor]

Randomly throwing this out but I really like Everlasting Flight’s effect, but I think it’d work much nicer if it had its own button rather than being auto-activate. Summoner does already have billions of oGCDs but I think having one for Everlasting Flight would make it much easier to coordinate its usage for when aoe is coming out / coordinating with healers / etc. And i mean, if there was a situation where you need to summon Phoenix but don’t want the effect, you wouldn’t have to worry about either wasting the effect or holding the Summon.

The effect of the ability is fine for me, but not being able to control when it goes up means that usually when you do get it it’s not really doing anything except overheal

[dinnertime]

Everlasting Flight should just carry over Devotion's effect since it's ideal to use Devotion for Phoenix anyway, then rework Aetherpact/Devotion into something else.

[CecMiller]

Snip

Some of these ideas I really like.

Gap closer on Ifrit sounds great for sure! Fester sounds similar in affect to old contagion but I'm unsure if they would change an ability so radically mid expansion.

I definately wouldn't mind DWT changing to painflare during DWT. The Deathflare change sounds okay, but I'm unsure if I'll miss the "oomph" from DWT ending. I love the little jump that my summoner does to emphasize the power behind the move - its a shame that the move itself isn't as strong as it used to be.

As for Egi assaults - I'm unsure if influencing GCD damage with dots is the way to go with the current issues with GCD damage and how dots are affecting them in a mostly negative way. I wouldn't mind Egi assaults based off Aetherflow mechanics, but it depends on how its implemented. This sounds a more radical change than the other suggestions.

My idea for aetherflow was simply to restroe flexibility and re-introduce some downtime power and some capability of "rushing". To that end, I didnt want it to be something that required a target or mandated that you be in combat as long as the main offender of pre-pull problems (DWT into bahamut etc) is kept at bay and still unable to be used outside of combat. Energy siphon was suggested to work as you're suggesting now - similar to miasma 2 of old for scholar but let you restore stacks which was something that was discussed in discords and I liked the idea. Its an cost of using Aetherflow on a target and using it for damage for when there is a target. If for example Aetherflow did damage but didn't mandate a target as you suggest, it would be pretty nice.

The 1>2 combo was mostly a complaint from JP side and I've gotten used to it personaly. I've seen them complain a lot about it so I thought is was worth bringing up. The punishing aspect of mistakenly clicking Ruin 3 back to back instead of outburst is a valid complaint I feel though the abilities themselves could be split so we could use one or the other and "spam" them given the situation (single target or AOE) provided that the single target option did more to a single target than it currently does when compared to BoP.

Devotion could be 120s yes, but for example: If you somehow have to delay raid buffs to be inline with the party's burst, but it just so happens you have to phoenix at the same time, it's still an issue as you are unable to use it inside phoenix. I think it should be based on the player but I would be more than happy to accept a reduced cooldown.

Also I can understand where the 2 above comments are coming from with regards to Everlasting flight.

My personal opinion is that I don't want healing on SMN and titan egi shielding is thematically good enough as (as our brother job was scholar which had a strong focus on shields and its an earthern element egi) for self preservation utility. Its incredibly powerful. I don't think SMN should have a medica 2 as a seperate button as we'd be stepping on RDM's toes who are the masters of white and black magic and it makes more sense to give them the move. Something more consistant would be to give Phoenix a damage buff akin to the one you recieve when fighting golden bahamut (though not for the party and a smaller % for the summoner only). This fits a bit better I feel.

As for devotion carrying over in phoenix, the problem occurs when we want to use devotion whilst not necessarily the best usage for us but the best usage for the team. Further, it's best if a button that is a party buff is not linked to our rotation cycle and is a seperate button. This is because we could have segments where it may be right for us to use our phoenix burst but we may want to hold our buffs for after a transition (as an example). Most, if not all buffs are delegated to a seperate button and I think Devotion should be no different.

[Dyvid]

I'm curious on what people want as DPS split though? 1/3 Pet, 1/3 Dot, 1/3 Ruin/Other? 1/2 Pet, 1/4 DoT, 1/4 Ruin/Other? Currently I think it's about 50% Ruin/Other, 35% Pets, and 15% DoTs.