Yet more ideas for SMN Rework between now and next expansion

[Vulcwen]

First of all, I heavily disagree with the thing that keeps popping up: Merging DWT and bahamut.
That merge achieves the following things:
- A significant loss in flexibility, for both your mobility windows and the use of bahamut on AoE situations.
- It's a plain nerf to dealing with downtime. It'd feel bad in fights with downtime and dungeons.
- Less mobility in DWT/bahamut due to the nature of demi-summons (and you'll have to use it in a bad spot because delaying means losing more later on)
- Complete inability to weave egi assaults, enkindle and devotion in DWT (because bahamut means no egi is out), forcing more R2 uses.
To your credit, you at least granted a method to spend aetherflow stacks in DWT/bahamut by tying akh morn to it.

Now I see you want to delete tri-disaster, but if that wasn't gone, it'd also mean there remains a heavy incentive to use it on cooldown even if a slight drift would work better, else you drop your dots and are forced into an extra hardcast.
I don't like it when the use of our tools is at the mercy of fight design, I miss being in control.

This rant aside, control is not the focus of your designs, so I'll look a bit at what you did intend:

Your aetherflow changes look a bit weird, giving rise to some counter-intuitive design, mainly fester increasing dot duration, while aetherflow is generated off hardcasting dots only if the duration < 10s. It very much depends on the exact potencies what you want to do here, but I can see an issue crop up where you'd never want to use fester or your aetherflow stacks (outside demis), as their mechanics fight each other. I'd suggest you completely remove this aspect of AF generation. The other method at aetherflow generation increases the gap between R3 and R2 due to it not generating from R2 (as far as I understand), is this mobility penalty intended?

Depending on the tuning of this aetherflow gain, you'd probably still be double weaving a lot. This also ties in to the penalty for using r2, and you'll have to weave in r2 or r4 to get your egi assaults off. Of course, it's to be expected that you always have enough R4 procs for your egi assaults after the opener, since there is a chain going from aetherflow generation to egi assault into R4, which if you save up for the next aetherflow can be used to weave the next (2) egi assaults, which would then grant you 1-2 more R4s to use.
With fester on a 20s charge timer and trances reducing their cooldowns, you'd have 3-4 uses of fester per minute depending on how much the reduction is, if it's a reset (grant 1 charge), you'll still be using 4 ogcds per minute on current aetherflow skills.
Depending on how much aetherflow procs you can get, the overall CPM can be both lower and higher than it is currently. If the proc rate is low enough, you might not even want to use any egi assaults (with egis out), and stock all of it for demi-summons because risking not getting maximum ahk morns and revelations out might not be worth the gain of the egi assault + r4, even if you'd end up losing a proc overall.

I suggest you take a look at how things would work out in the rotation, the ideas are interesting at least, but still needs a lot of thought. The changes are also quite ambitious so I'd not think a target within this expansion is reasonable, it'd be an expansion-level rework.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

Thanks for your reply! Pounding out the finer details are why these types of thread are made public, so we can collaborate on that and give fresh opinions.
To address a few of your points,

• First thing to consider with merging DWT and Bahamut: DWT would continue to reduce the cast time of Ruin 3 and Outburst. Additionally, you would skip straight from Dreadwyrm Trance to Firebird Trance, which does the same, and the ability to use Akh Morn means you can stock up Ruin 4 casts for when the Trance ends. Not too worried about being unable to use Egi Enkindle during Trances since its lengthy cooldown means you can easily line it up for use between Trances. Played right you could end up with higher mobility overall.
• As for Devotion, I agree. At the very least that should be usable while Demis are active and I'll be sure to add that.
• Ruin 2/4 continues to generate AF, but at a lower rate than Ruin 1/3 or Outburst. Part of it is to retain some penalty to using Ruin 2, part is to prevent chaining Egi Assaults too frequently. Sample values I had in mind were proc rates like 15%/target for Outburst, 20% for Ruin 2/4 and 30% for Ruin 3, but this is all adjustable (and I didn't want to get too caught up in that).
• Unpopular opinion, but... I'm not actually against SMN having an incentive to hardcast its DoTs at least once or twice per fight. At current, you're encouraged to use Tri-Disaster as a complete substitute for Bio and Miasma, which means the two are effectively dead weight and contribute to the clutter. Having Fester extend the durations of existing DoTs continues at least to provide a means to replicate Tri-Disaster (though admittedly I didn't write actual values for how long they would extend them).
• I had the same thoughts as I was writing it in terms of generating Aetherflow via Bio/Miasma. Initially I put it out of mind by considering that my phrasing was broad enough to encompass using Fester to refresh the DoTs if they were under 10s each, but I may just end up removing that method and returning Energy Drain on a longer CD so you have a means to start a fight with Aetherflow (as well as a safety net for bad RNG strings).
• As far as saving Aetherflow for Akh Morn or Revelation, one thing I had considered was that just activating a Trance gives you full Dreadwyrm Aether and Firebird Aether that only last while you're in the respective Trance, and function like Aetherflow with regards to Akh Morn and Revelation. Or possibly just changing AM/Rev to only function off Dreadwyrm/Firebird Aether.
• As to the thread title, "between now and next expansion", I meant to convey both possibilities of "Next Expanion's Rework" (which would encompass most if not all of the Aetherflow changes) and "anything that could be done for SMN before then" (which could include several of the Egi and QoL changes).

[Mansion]

First thing to consider with merging DWT and Bahamut: DWT would continue to reduce the cast time of Ruin 3 and Outburst. Additionally, you would skip straight from Dreadwyrm Trance to Firebird Trance, which does the same, and the ability to use Akh Morn means you can stock up Ruin 4 casts for when the Trance ends. Not too worried about being unable to use Egi Enkindle during Trances since its lengthy cooldown means you can easily line it up for use between Trances. Played right you could end up with higher mobility overall.

I think what Vulcwen means here is that the current nature of Demis makes it preferable not to move during Trances, because they might ghost Akh Morn / auto attacks if they prioritize moving. One quick fix would be making them Turret-like, rooted somewhere with a comfortable range on both auto-attacks and Akh Morn / Revelation.

[Rika007]

First of all, I heavily disagree with the thing that keeps popping up: Merging DWT and bahamut.
That merge achieves the following things:
- A significant loss in flexibility, for both your mobility windows and the use of bahamut on AoE situations.
- It's a plain nerf to dealing with downtime. It'd feel bad in fights with downtime and dungeons.
- Less mobility in DWT/bahamut due to the nature of demi-summons (and you'll have to use it in a bad spot because delaying means losing more later on)
- Complete inability to weave egi assaults, enkindle and devotion in DWT (because bahamut means no egi is out), forcing more R2 uses.

I would imagine the issues with merging DWT and Bahamut (something I also agree needs to be done, along with the consolidation of Egi-Assaults, to make the job's rotation feel less bloated and spammy) is something that could be solved by them just removing the leash on Bahamut and Pheonix from the player. Fray doesn't follow their Dark Knight all over the field. The Automaton Queen doesn't follow the MCH. I do understand that neither of them do actions based on the user's actions, but this still feels like it would not in anyway interfere with just letting us call a Demi Summon, that demi summon pops out, and then doesn't move from the spot. I understand that would then cause issues with "What if your enemies move out of range?" Well one Demi's range is bigger then anything in this game, and even if it wasn't, that can just be something Players would need to take into account. Black Mage has to take range into effect when dropping Ley Lines. Should be nothing stopping a Summoner from having to plan their useage of summon positioning as well.

Also as for rotational flexibility, their really is none on Summoner already in any actual significant fights. If you're delaying DWT for mobility moments, that means you're delaying Summoning Bahamut, which means your Delaying Summoning Pheonix. Which means you're doing less damage, I can understand dungeon concerns, but every jobs rotation gets screwy in dungeons. Right now the only place Summoner really feels ok in is dungeons (which makes me wonders if the majority of it's playtesting occurs in dungeons). True rotational and downtime flexibility will only come if they give us back untargeting Aetherflow and retie the Demi and trance cycles to the Aetherflow cycle. And at this point Aetherflow is really beginning to feel like a dated mechanic anyway.