Summoner is a Final Fantasy 14 summoner (not a warlock wow clone)

[zcrash970]

I think Roda hit the nail on the head. There's died need to be more Carby interaction...the rest of the stuff they said was spot on too.

I completely agree. The only thing that good about this new smn is it's pretty and easy to play.

Honestly once you strip away the theme and aesthetics, the job is pretty bland and poorly designed. I see it changing quite a bit in the first few weeks.

Why not remove energy drain and have your trances grant aetherflow stacks and ruin 4? Not to mention fester doesn't really fit in anymore. Painflare somewhat does
Why have ruin4 once a minute if it's not even that's strong? Mobility? We have plenty of it. Aoe? We DEFINITELY have plenty of that
Why all the instant casts? We have nothing to weave outside of titan. We don't need that much mobility
Making the CD for the demi phrases scale off spell speed are a horrid idea.
No interactions with your summons.
Having Searing Light center around you with a small range means we need to be on the boss when we pop it.
Carby is literally there to be cute.
Phoenix astral flow is nothing but flavor. It doesn't add anything.
The rotation is so stagnant. Let's face facts please. We are back to spamming one button with occasional presses of another.
So many buttons you hit once a minute.

We are essentially a physical range DPS with occasional casting now

I just see this version of smn unrewarding and stale on delivery. It hurts that I have to say this about smn too

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

We don't need that much mobility

With how movement heavy EW is looking to be, the first dungeon would like a word with you, you're gonna need all that mobility. RDM and BLM are definitely going to have a harder time in that place.

[zcrash970]

With how movement heavy EW is looking to be, the first dungeon would like a word with you, you're gonna need all that mobility. RDM and BLM are definitely going to have a harder time in that place.

So we are judging an entire expansion off of one dungeon?
If they really changed it to a game where you need to stay mobile at all times then that would be completely unfair to melees, the other casters, whm, and ast.
Let's not forget that during 5.0 fanfest nearly identical things were said.

[Taranok]

I think Roda hit the nail on the head. There's died need to be more Carby interaction...the rest of the stuff they said was spot on too.

My contention with this is, there is 1 (one) skill that is time sensitive that senior buncle needs to handle in a snappy manner. The replacement for aetherpact. If it's anything less than press oGCD->acquire buff, it will be a serious design flaw of the class considering the next thing you want to do is cast summon demi.

I can understand the disappointment of the pets not doing anything, but there's a lot of problems with the pet design that the current version exemplifies. But the biggest entirely revolves around it being desummoned to bring out the demis, allowing for skills to be clipped and effects thrown away while being put on cooldown, especially important skills like aetherpact or enkindle (which as far as I know, the latter won't exist in 6.0).

If it's sitting there, minding its own business, that's fine. If it can do player commands while a demi is out, I wouldn't mind bringing it back. But if it exists even remotely like ShB's carbuncle, hard pass.

[rewd]

With how movement heavy EW is looking to be, the first dungeon would like a word with you, you're gonna need all that mobility. RDM and BLM are definitely going to have a harder time in that place.

You say 'harder', I say 'more engaging'.

[Grimoire-M]

My contention with this is, there is 1 (one) skill that is time sensitive that senior buncle needs to handle in a snappy manner. The replacement for aetherpact. If it's anything less than press oGCD->acquire buff, it will be a serious design flaw of the class considering the next thing you want to do is cast summon demi.

I can understand the disappointment of the pets not doing anything, but there's a lot of problems with the pet design that the current version exemplifies. But the biggest entirely revolves around it being desummoned to bring out the demis, allowing for skills to be clipped and effects thrown away while being put on cooldown, especially important skills like aetherpact or enkindle (which as far as I know, the latter won't exist in 6.0).

If it's sitting there, minding its own business, that's fine. If it can do player commands while a demi is out, I wouldn't mind bringing it back. But if it exists even remotely like ShB's carbuncle, hard pass.

I disagree with this assessment only because the job really hasn't altered the AI in a significant manner throughout its lifetime, just how we interface with it. Because of this it is not only reasonable, but expected that when we encounter any significant period of downtime with new Summoner we are left vulnerable to a situation where you have two back to back ghosting instances, specifically Summon Egi Avatar into Devotion into Summon Bahamut/Phoenix. It's a big reason I want at least Bahamut to remain as an oGCD so you can space it out with a lateweave. Even if the avatars had to remain a GCD in that situation you could space it out with Avatar -> Ruin IV (early weave Devotion) -> Ruin II (Lateweave Bahamut) at worst. It could be worse than that but SE doesn't let you use back to back Avatars unless you have zero Attunement stacks. Whether it's even worth spending your last stack on each phase remains to be seen, but the likely scenario this is a problem in only needs about...12 seconds of downtime? It's really small and clunky.

Functionally back to back Avatars and new Devotion is the exact same ghosting issue we have with current Devotion on Carbuncle, apart from the lack of auto-attacks -maybe- making it more responsive. I'm not expecting that to actually work as intended. I am expecting to need to early-weave it to account for GCD Bahamut as the current opener late-weaves both to intentionally avoid this problem. I can say that because that's how little SE is willing to change things regarding pets. Demi-Egi took three expansions to get Egi Auto attacks added to their rotation. If the Avatars were at least oGCD I think they would be way better, though that comes at a potency cost most people really don't want to accept. I think the flexibility and downtime gains outweigh it enough to matter.

[MagiusNecros]

With how movement heavy EW is looking to be, the first dungeon would like a word with you, you're gonna need all that mobility. RDM and BLM are definitely going to have a harder time in that place.

BLM? With Slidecasting, Triple, Swift, Leylines warp and Aetherial Manipulation warps, and instants with procs and Xenoglossy? BLM by far has the most mobility of any of the casters. BLM will be fine.

[Taranok]

I disagree with this assessment only because the job really hasn't altered the AI in a significant manner throughout its lifetime, just how we interface with it. Because of this it is not only reasonable, but expected that when we encounter any significant period of downtime with new Summoner we are left vulnerable to a situation where you have two back to back ghosting instances, specifically Summon Egi Avatar into Devotion into Summon Bahamut/Phoenix. It's a big reason I want at least Bahamut to remain as an oGCD so you can space it out with a lateweave. Even if the avatars had to remain a GCD in that situation you could space it out with Avatar -> Ruin IV (early weave Devotion) -> Ruin II (Lateweave Bahamut) at worst. It could be worse than that but SE doesn't let you use back to back Avatars unless you have zero Attunement stacks. Whether it's even worth spending your last stack on each phase remains to be seen, but the likely scenario this is a problem in only needs about...12 seconds of downtime? It's really small and clunky.

Functionally back to back Avatars and new Devotion is the exact same ghosting issue we have with current Devotion on Carbuncle, apart from the lack of auto-attacks -maybe- making it more responsive. I'm not expecting that to actually work as intended. I am expecting to need to early-weave it to account for GCD Bahamut as the current opener late-weaves both to intentionally avoid this problem. I can say that because that's how little SE is willing to change things regarding pets. Demi-Egi took three expansions to get Egi Auto attacks added to their rotation. If the Avatars were at least oGCD I think they would be way better, though that comes at a potency cost most people really don't want to accept. I think the flexibility and downtime gains outweigh it enough to matter.

The difference is you presumably can just straight up skip entire minor summon phases. Most of the damage is in the Demis, and the problem with pet interaction is that, having not changed it, clipping things because the pet wants to do something else and is on cooldown is a problem I will never tolerate when that pet has important abilities on it. It sucks having to cast aetherpact, wait for the pet to finally be ready to cast the buff, and have to delay other mechanics because it's powdering its nose.

Or, to put it another way, the average PPS of both ifrit and garuda is about 184 and 187 per second at current known potency values. Titan is at closer to 200 or 220 and is a definite outlier. Ruin 3 is a paltry 124. So as long as you're not dumping the minor summons for more ruin 3s, there isn't a problem in downtime clipping it. Provided you also can go into a demi phase.

Expounding further, short of critical buffs dropping due to a boss intermission, such as Huton, AF/UI, BotD, GL and such, every class sees a reset with intermission that usually turns into a new reopener, with some classes (BLM, NIN) potentially getting hit much harder than others (SAM), especially going into EW. And given how the minors are trying to fill out your basic rotation anyways as a theoretically baseline filler of mostly equal abilities, seeing your basic rotation reset isn't going to be that big a concern if you have to throw away an avatar or not. Iterating, provided you can throw it away, since you can do a pretty heavy burst by immediately summoning one like Garuda, then drop into your demi phase. Again, provided you can.

Because of this, it's not actually identical to the current egi system. Reiterating, provided you can straight up skip the minor summons and go straight into a demi during one to keep everything aligned. They don't want you alphadropping all 3 minor summons in 3 GCDs but I'd be very surprised if you also couldn't interrupt a minor to go into a major.

[Taranok]

BLM? With Slidecasting, Triple, Swift, Leylines warp and Aetherial Manipulation warps, and instants with procs and Xenoglossy? BLM by far has the most mobility of any of the casters. BLM will be fine.

Having long ago mastered these arts and seen BLM in tier 3 eden, this isn't always enough and it definitely shows a major disconnect with how encounters are designed and what place they want casters and healers to have in it. BLM can kind of handle it, but it depends on a lot of things. E9S, especially with the popular bramble position surrounding the middle, is very hostile to BLM in general just because you can't slide over void zones safely as it's not a true teleport.

That said, BLM definitely is the most mobile for now, but as soon as the new SMN comes out, with its mobility closely rivaling a MCH or BRD for freedom of movement, it will look a bit suspect for BLMs and RDMs.

However, if this trend keeps up, I seriously won't be surprised at all if they eventually turn casters into an alternate version of rDPS. The devs went on a movement heavy encounter binge in ShB and there's no signs of it slowing down.

[Grimoire-M]

The difference is you presumably can just straight up skip entire minor summon phases.

You can't if you want to Summon the avatars back to back due to Attunements locking them out, something I've always disliked in a DPS rotation, but here it at least halfway makes sense since it's meant to mask the ghosting issues and ensure you don't dump yourself. You can rush to Demi-Summons after a single avatar and be fine. This is mostly irrelevant, however, as my concern with that remains unchanged in either case.

Most of the damage is in the Demis, and the problem with pet interaction is that, having not changed it, clipping things because the pet wants to do something else and is on cooldown is a problem I will never tolerate when that pet has important abilities on it. It sucks having to cast aetherpact, wait for the pet to finally be ready to cast the buff, and have to delay other mechanics because it's powdering its nose.

The only hardclip I can think of was due to Phoenix casting Everlasting Flight, which wasn't even necessary all the time. Heavensward Summoner had some of it but honestly it was at least halfway enjoyable given the Trance window was such a highlight to begin with. But I personally would rather hardclip than do nothing at all. Flamethrower, anyone?

That said, I'm not referring to the Gemstone/Attunement parts of those phases (though it's somewhat relevant if shoddy solution to a number of problems, summons last long enough for Attunements to be an issue when you're trying to execute your rotation around 15-25s periods of downtime). I'm assuming that's the part being skipped in order to focus on the actual issue. The part that becomes a problem because it's a significant gain is Summoning one of the Avatars if you have the ability to do so. You know, the 700 potency GCD that plays the big dumb animation then goes away, effectively summoning twice within a single GCD window. My problem it's it creates the potential for pet ghosting. Nothing else. If they didn't fix that then we have a big problem with going from those into a Demi Summon while trying to use Devotion inbetween, straight up. You'll be coming out of a window where you're gonna want to late weave and go into a window where you want to early weave. That either forces strict timing, a single GCD delay, or you have to shift Devotion ahead of both and risk losing two out of three.

oGCD Demi-Summons is what lets you fix those pet ghosting issues. The amount of nonsense you need to do to compensate for that fits within that one GCD gap if that is the case, but you could have more security and lower downtime punishment with oGCD Avatars as well. Overall, I remain unconvinced that removing Carbuncle's auto attacks fixed that particular problem. Changing the damage portion is only relevant to the oGCD discusion if you care about how much burst those Avatars hit for in relation to your own damage output, something that has been heavily criticized about Summoner's full-on pet iterations in the past despite the new avatars contribute much less than the old pets overall when you actually run the numbers and therefore mean it was a key component to keeping the dps of those Summoners relevant.

Or, to put it another way, the average PPS of both ifrit and garuda is about 184 and 187 per second at current known potency values. Titan is at closer to 200 or 220 and is a definite outlier. Ruin 3 is a paltry 124. So as long as you're not dumping the minor summons for more ruin 3s, there isn't a problem in downtime clipping it. Provided you also can go into a demi phase.

I think you're missing the point that this is about a pet AI issue first rather than a DPS issue. I get how the rotation works. It's why I'm apphrensive about it. I'm gonna let the rest of this post slide rather than muddy the focus when I've given my thoughts to you on some of those opinions in your BLM thread. tl;dr is downtime doesn't bother me. Ghosting does.