Smn Rework Suggestions After LL

[Roda]

Basically this seems to be correct. Demi's act as Aetherflow on a 45 second timer that refresh semidemis, I'll just call them Wind, Earth, and Fire Stance. Demi Bahamut seems to add the elements of DWT to it replace 1 and 2 with ??? and deathflare. It seems you just pick whatever stance you like then summon Phoenix to repeat the process giving you a 60s rotation. Based on the gameplay shown; you'll use Wind Stance for AoE, Earth Stance for heavy movement situations, and Fire Stance for non movement heavy dps situations.

No you're expected to cycle through all three stances because the charges (you get access to 13 gcds between them + the three summon gcds themselves). You get to pick the order you use them in, but you're going to be using them all. (They all seem to have 1 ST gcd and 1 AoE gcd that consumes a charge on use, like a cherry/lime/lemon flavored aetherflow with gcds, and 1 "signature move" that can be either a 2 part gcd chain, a gcd cast, or an ogcd granted by the ST/aoe skill. No clue if the signature skill is aoe or st, tho. Slipstream is probably aoe tho.) Using all of the charges and those signature moves, I think you have like ~1 gcd more before you go into another demi phase? (depends on if the tooltip is final for demibahamut's duration, or if the gameplay timer is final.)

[Cabalabob]

this new XIV summoner fits in perfectly with how FF summoners have been. Let's look at two of FF's most iconic Summoners (if not THE most iconic ones) Yuna and Rydia. Yuna is a primarily summoner/healer who brings out a big ass summon who does some big power attacks then leaves if it is defeated. The summons are very similar to demi's in that way, the only difference being the summoner takes the place of the party. Rydia on the other hand just calls on a summon, it comes in, does a super move and leaves. This is very simmilar to the new summon gems.

Oh yeah and let’s not forget those famous parts where Yuna and Rydia started using meteor strike and dashing into melee range with their fire charge for the next 30 seconds after summoning ifrit to do his one move.

That is my issue with this new design. The thing I’ve hated most about SMN since HW has been trance. It was a bandaid fix for the janky pet AI to put all the focus on the caster. They started to move away from that with demi summons and I was happy with that, we started having decent sized pets using powerful attacks while also attacking in tandem with their summoner casting filler ruin spells with egi assaults (more pet attacks) between demi summons. Trance started to feel like the bandaid was starting to peel off and I was hopeful that for endwalker it would be gone entirely and replaced with more demi summons.

But the rework has gone in the complete opposite direction and put all the focus back on the caster. The pet is only there for a second followed by the summoner doing all the work while his carbuncle literally sits and watches.

Why couldn’t these new primals just work similar to demi primals? Just stay out and when you press the next attack button, instead of the spell coming out of YOU it comes out of the summon? There would be absolutely no change to how the job functions, it would be a purely aesthetic change that would make the summoner into a summoner rather than a discount black mage. And if screen clutter from the big primals is a concern, make it so they elementally enhance carbuncle and do the same thing with him.

In the end my issue is one of aesthetics and you can argue that it’s a minor gripe, but aesthetics are important. If they made black mage into a melee job that mainly attacks with their staff and casts one spell every 5 minutes, it doesn’t matter how fun to play the job is, or how viable it’s rotation is, any real black mage player would not be happy with it, because that’s not a black mage.

So...
Distracting from the argument over who deserves to be happy with the game....

Is it just me, or does the flow from phase to phase feel... off? Like the progression is backwards?

This did cross my mind but we’ll just have to wait and see on that front. When I have some spare downtime in endwalker I’ll probably start a new character and see how the job progresses from level 1 AND see how/if they changed the SMN job quests around the rework.

[Cebo]

Aesthetically and thematically, the changes look great.

Mechanically, I am fearing the worst about what's going to happen to the job that I've mained and prog'd with since ARR.

Every expansion, there seems to be even less pet management, which is the same complaint SCH's had in ShB. Long gone are the days of lining up Contagion with your raid buffs/debuffs. It's like they heard our complaints about how janky pet actions were, and instead of improving them, they just started gutting them. The job trailer and gameplay video we saw makes it seem like Carbuncle is now going to be nothing more than a perma-Robot Queen turret, with very little interaction between SMN and pet.

And I get DoT's were not everyone's cup of tea, but a lot of players who DID main SMN played it because we enjoyed DoT management. Otherwise we would've played another job. Yeah, ShB DoT management became braindead easy with all the Tri-disaster resets, but it was still another resource we had to track and monitor to maintain 100% uptime. They also added subtle nuances/changes to our gameplay whenever we dealt with boss phase transitions or dual/triple-target adds that we could DoT up.

Now from the looks of it, this class is just going to faceroll over its 5-button rotation on a single target, and appears much less busy than in the past. I hope I'm wrong, but I went from excited by the Job trailer, to totally deflated once Yoshi-P started going into detail on the SMN changes.

[SchrodingersWaffle]

Honestly this is a big step in the right direction in regards to flavor, visuals and core mechanics, and I whole heartedly approve of getting rid of the Egi system as it existed, but I feel like it just needs a couple more things.

1)There needs to be more buttons to press. I feel like with the amount of buttons that this rework is removing, having Ruin III and Outburst transform into different skills was the wrong way to go, even though I understand that they're trying to reduce button bloat. Rather have a set of like 3-4 buttons that do different things while each Summon is active and mess around with the order and type of activation of those buttons in order to make it feel different between the different Summons.

1a) We need more weaves. With the sheer amount of Instant cast GCD abilities, we need *something* to do between those casts, otherwise it's gonna get Dancer levels of boring. There's just not enough depth to what we're seeing so far, very few optimization points for gameplay, even more so than the step down from StB SMN to ShB SMN.

2) We need some kind of buff or timer management, though it seems like they're getting rid of that as a mechanic, as it's going away for pretty much every class except Bard and Reaper, but there needs to be something to keep track of outside of just how many charges you have on your Summon abilities.

3) Removing the differentiation between Bahamut mode and Phoenix mode is a mistake in my opinion, since prior to EW there was at least some difference between how they played. Maybe keep Fountain of Fire->Brand of Puragtory gameplay, and add something similar to Bahamut like a 1->2->3?

[Truen]

I just miss being able to tank through my pet...I hate the robbed us of that.

[ShadowNyx3]

What I got from Yoshi's demonstration was that I really hope this job is unfinished because there are some really suspect things upon initial inspection.

It appears as if the goal for redesigning Summoner was to keep the burst phases, remove DoT management, and replace Ruin spam with more interesting filler phases that contain the flashy Summon attacks people have been clamouring for, but what I saw from some of the Gem Summons was extremely underwhelming.

First off, the only Summon that appears to function is Titan, which clearly offers a lot of mobility while adding high-damaging weaved abilities when executing the main GCD. A little basic but I can't really say much about this.

Next we have Garuda who offers a 3s cast of a ground AOE and four GCDs with the rare 1.5s recast timer. Upon first glance we see that the purpose of this ground AOE is to be able to cast this when we know the boss will stand within it for the full duration, which is fine, it's almost like bringing back Shadow Flare. However, the potency of this attack is about the same as a cast of Ruin III which really begs the question why we should even bother with it. As for those 1.5s GCDs...what is the purpose of them being 1.5s long? They don't appear to do anything or interact with any other mechanics of the job. Machinist's Heat Blast has the purpose of fitting into Wildfire and lowering the cooldown on Gauss Round and Ricochet for a fast paced segment of weaving in the rotation. But these don't appear to do anything but go fast for a few seconds and there certainly won't be anything to weave between them with only two Festers that will have been long used up by this point.

And lastly there's Ifrit who just makes no sense whatsoever. There's really not much to say about the gap-closer and melee attack besides just being a weird thing to add. I suppose the player will have to plan this around mechanics that keep you out of melee range when this is available, which I guess is fine because Red Mages deal with that too. But the real abomination here is the two charges of the elemental GCD. In what is essentially two casts of Fire IV, we have two spells that deal that same pitiful damage that's less than just casting (a shorter) Ruin III. Seriously, that cannot be the correct potency of this attack. Given that it appears you can summon Bahamut or Phoenix even while you have charges on a Gem, you would never bother casting these Fire IVs if you could just use Ifrit last, spam the more potent Ruin III, and wait until your Demi was off cooldown to refresh your Gems.

I'm very much looking forward to what kind of build they send out for the media tour because this looks like a real mess upon first glance.

[Roda]

...you would never bother casting these Fire IVs if you could just use Ifrit last, spam the more potent Ruin III...

You would if it was aoe, because he was using the aoe spell of the ifrit phase. It's a slightly more potent outburst, now tridisaster (~5 more potency per second of cast). Ifrit would have another single target "fire IV" that yoshi p didn't show us. (Animation here)

And once again I repeat:
There is confirmed at least one skill that yoshi p didn't have on his bar. We 100% do not know all the tools.
This doesn't change the flow of the rotation from what we can gather, but I wouldn't be too worried about potencies when he was deliberately using the AoE part of the kit. (and also because numbers aren't real right now)

[MagiusNecros]

Well Summoner is going to have...

Ruin series of spells
Outburst (AoE damage skill) upgrade
Carbuncle support skills ( Some kind of shield as well as a Carbuncle version of devotion)
5 summons with their own elemental themed attacks/actions for the Summoner
Aetherflow generator skills that proc a buff for a single use of Ruin 4
Fester and Painflare
Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix
Physick and Resurrection
Deathflare as an action under Bahamut
New active buff under Phoenix

What Summoner seems to have lost...

All DoTs
Tridisaster
Dreadwyrm/Phoenix Trance
Use of standard Egi's and their skills.
Egi Assaults

Everything revolves completely around summoning now.

Which makes you wonder how the leveling progress will be for new players.

It's really looking at endgame that there is going to be a gameplay loop of a 5 summon system with Bahamut/Phoenix refreshing Ifrit/Titan/Garuda.

[MercuryD]

Well Summoner is going to have...

Ruin series of spells
Outburst (AoE damage skill) upgrade
Carbuncle support skills ( Some kind of shield as well as a Carbuncle version of devotion)
5 summons with their own elemental themed attacks/actions for the Summoner
Aetherflow generator skills that proc a buff for a single use of Ruin 4
Fester and Painflare
Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix
Physick and Resurrection
Deathflare as an action under Bahamut
New active buff under Phoenix

What Summoner seems to have lost...

All DoTs
Tridisaster
Dreadwyrm/Phoenix Trance
Use of standard Egi's and their skills.
Egi Assaults

Everything revolves completely around summoning now.

Which makes you wonder how the leveling progress will be for new players.

It's really looking at endgame that there is going to be a gameplay loop of a 5 summon system with Bahamut/Phoenix refreshing Ifrit/Titan/Garuda.

This is a good breakdown. My only (possible) correction is we won't be LOSING DWT/FBT we will learn it which gives us access to new skills/a finisher (like they already do before you get demis) and when we get the demi it will be summoned along with trance.

Also, Tridisaster is still there, it's a straight damage aoe attack. It upgrades to Astral Impact under DWT just like Outburst changes to Flames of purgatory under FBT

So we have 2 summon trances, 3 elemental phases.

[Caitlyn]

They should replace Phoenix with Alexander.

Why do we need a fire bird, when we got Ifrit already?