Which part of summoner's rotation am I meant to find satisfying?

[Deveryn]

the issue is you cannot command summons anymore you get a one time attack or an auto rotation (bahamut phoenix) and thats it. cause they couldn't fix ghosting or AI (which is all people wanted really not an entire ducking rework). it's why i suggested PSO2s pet combat where you essentially have a snappy movement start casting the pet jumps onto the enemy and sticks on the enemy until you change targets or recall them/replace them with another summon. you could even take this a step furhter by having the summons themselves have cast bars for certain abilities allowing you the summoner to do an extra instant cast while they're building up their cast bar

As nice as that might be, I think it's a bit late for new AI.

This new mode of summoning really isn't all that new. FFXI more or less had it as well as summons were a significant drain on MP to maintain. (The same is true here, as we learned of how primals work.) It had you cycling through for different effects. I think that's where some of the excitement came from, aside from the flash factor.

[pikalovr]

As nice as that might be, I think it's a bit late for new AI.

This new mode of summoning really isn't all that new. FFXI more or less had it as well as summons were a significant drain on MP to maintain. (The same is true here, as we learned of how primals work.) It had you cycling through for different effects. I think that's where some of the excitement came from, aside from the flash factor.

nah what we have now is no different than life of the dragon and reapers shroud form previous SMN was a truly unique job that actually acted as most other MMOs pet job. the issue is that they chose the absolute worst way to do pets. instead of making the summoner itself the secondary character they made the pets themselves secondary characters which shouldn't have been the case. and is prolly why they never bothered to actually fix the ghosting and AI issue cause you were never really "using" the pets as much as you should've. and it's never too late for better AI, people want beastmaster as a limited job and if yoshi-p is ever willing to entertain that idea they better be getting their pet Ai situation under control or we'll get something more like a shaman where we call upon the beasts to transform ourselves into the beasts

like i said multiple times issues that get completely reworked or gutted for no logical reason when there's simple changes or improvements that could've been made is not a good thing, and we shouldn't be promoting it thats how you devolve combat, thats how you turn a pet job into a stance dancer which sadly is what current SMN is

[fulminating]

Casting titan egi instead of summoning it and having nothing to manage while spamming ruin are two pretty severe problems. I don’t think anyone would call egi assaults perfect but at least they existed. Maybe they could have gotten away with being able to tie the egi to the boss’s movement as a pet action to reduce ghosting in most fights?

I’m not particularly convinced astral flow feels like anything other than busywork. This might be because you don’t fill the gauges, just spend them so it doesn’t really have any connection to your performance. Even gunbreaker (and samurai and warrior!) has a more involved gauge system

[Deveryn]

Casting titan egi instead of summoning it and having nothing to manage while spamming ruin are two pretty severe problems. I don’t think anyone would call egi assaults perfect but at least they existed. Maybe they could have gotten away with being able to tie the egi to the boss’s movement as a pet action to reduce ghosting in most fights?

I’m not particularly convinced astral flow feels like anything other than busywork. This might be because you don’t fill the gauges, just spend them so it doesn’t really have any connection to your performance. Even gunbreaker (and samurai and warrior!) has a more involved gauge system

Boss fights weren't such a problem. It was the dungeons and the varying clusters of mobs and things being moved around. Ifrit had a cone attack which you could never hope to line up right. They weren't even taking damage anymore, but they could definitely get you some aggro if you targeted the wrong thing. There was also that delay where they were done attacking a target and then had to be sent to another. We needed more control of our DPS. There was so much wrong with SMN, but maybe some folks liked that. It would keep people away if it was buggy and not as fun as other jobs. SMN may seem too simple, but the DPS output and flexibility is consistent, compared to how it used to be.

Gauge filling is nothing more than a variable cooldown. We don't need it on every job. Gunbreaker is probably the least involved. You go through 2 or 3 combos and you're done and in earlier content you're probably not using in that much in favor of the AOE damage.

[Dahlinea]

Casting titan egi instead of summoning it and having nothing to manage while spamming ruin are two pretty severe problems. I don’t think anyone would call egi assaults perfect but at least they existed. Maybe they could have gotten away with being able to tie the egi to the boss’s movement as a pet action to reduce ghosting in most fights?

I’m not particularly convinced astral flow feels like anything other than busywork. This might be because you don’t fill the gauges, just spend them so it doesn’t really have any connection to your performance. Even gunbreaker (and samurai and warrior!) has a more involved gauge system

Most of the ghosting problems were because of pet auto-attacks. Let's say the summons stay in the field, don't auto-attack but apply some kind of effect to SMN or party. If they only do what we command I guess most of the ghosting would be gone, especially if those summons abilities are ranged. Unless, of course, you decided to used one of their abilities at the end of their timer... but that would be a player problem and not the system, like what used to happen when players forget to use second Ahk Morn or Revelation during Demis...

Would also be interesting to see old pet actions back as field effects. For example, if Ifrit is out Radiant Shield is applied to all party members doing that counter shield effect. If Garuda is out, Contagion is applied to all enemies in a certain range increasing the damage they take from SMN. If Titan is out Earthen Ward shield is applied to party members...

[Deveryn]

Would also be interesting to see old pet actions back as field effects. For example, if Ifrit is out Radiant Shield is applied to all party members doing that counter shield effect. If Garuda is out, Contagion is applied to all enemies in a certain range increasing the damage they take from SMN. If Titan is out Earthen Ward shield is applied to party members...

I think we have enough shield effects floating around. How about a damage down from Titan? (I thought slow / bind at first, but bosses would ignore it).

[Dahlinea]

I think we have enough shield effects floating around. How about a damage down from Titan? (I thought slow / bind at first, but bosses would ignore it).

This works too. Damage down for a certain percentage on enemies, or even damage reduction for a certain percentage on party members. Any type of damage mitigation we usually attribute to earth is fine, i guess.

[CasterSvarog]

Most of the ghosting problems were because of pet auto-attacks. Let's say the summons stay in the field, don't auto-attack but apply some kind of effect to SMN or party. If they only do what we command I guess most of the ghosting would be gone, especially if those summons abilities are ranged. Unless, of course, you decided to used one of their abilities at the end of their timer... but that would be a player problem and not the system, like what used to happen when players forget to use second Ahk Morn or Revelation during Demis...

Honestly given the new gemstone system the whole ghosting problem could easily be fixed with proper cooldown times. An idea I’ve had more recently was to have you start with Bahamut, then you get the choice to summon one of the three Egi’s until you summon Phoenix, and the cycle repeats. From there you can bring back Egi assaults to give your elemental attunements and the elemental favours. You could have the favors give different buffs, like Ifrit gives a strength buff, Titan a defense buff to be the support pet, Garuda could maybe be haste buff or a dot.
Would certainly help it from being more then just a 1 button mashathon

[Kolsykol]

Imo I think the foundation of SMN is great, it just needs more buttons to be less spammy.
It almost feels like you're playing a Healer dps LOL...

Searing Light also feels tacked on imo, there's nothing interesting about it.
I think maybe they could remove it and make up for it with new skills instead, I rly don't think like every Job needs a party damage CD...
There's just too many of them imo, just put it into more personal damage.

I think the sequences are too short too, you're cycling through the summons so fast..
I dunno about buffs with all of the summons tho.
Ifrit at the end could put a burning dot on the target, Garuda could give you a Sps buff at the end and Titan could maybe turn Ruin IV into a Mountain Blaster-esque ogcd for a short period after he ends.
Or just a big upgrade hitter.

But yeah, the summons feel like they have a lack of impact imo because of how you're rushing through it.

[Rolder50]

Gauge filling is nothing more than a variable cooldown. We don't need it on every job. Gunbreaker is probably the least involved. You go through 2 or 3 combos and you're done and in earlier content you're probably not using in that much in favor of the AOE damage.

At the moment, FF14 only really has two styles of job design: Fill a gauge that powers your burst phase, or use cooldowns that conveniently line up around a 2 minute burst phase. SMN is, of course, the latter. We need more variation in job design period, in my opinion.