Yet ANOTHER Sumooner rework/revamp

[Valmaxian]

Yes! Thank you - I'm sure I missed a lot in terms of numbers and mechanic subtleties... I hope players like the overall concept!

[Connor]

I agree! I hadn't really considered Integrating Carbuncle more, but that could be fun and interesting.

Personally I think it’d be cool if rather than the current ‘stands there but does very little’ thing Carbuncle does, they turned it into a standard summon. But instead of being offense oriented like the others, it could be a more defensive/utility summon like it is traditionally. It could have things like Reflect(ga), Radiant Aegis, possibly Searing Light.
It could have its own LEGO piece thing too for demis which could mean you could use it in the place of any of the main three if you wanted to focus on defense/utility over say mobility from Titan or w/e.

Or you could even have it that the demi summoned is based on the combination of gems I.E standard three end up with Summon Bahamut, throwing Carbuncle in ends up with Phoenix, etc. idk just spitballing lol

[Mikey_R]

I think you have messed up Ramuh's description? You say it grants Lightning Attunement and Ramuh's Favour, but, you have the GCDs (normally uses Attunements) spending none, and then Fury of the Fey spending Attunements, which is normally where the Favours are spent, but you also haven't stated where the favours ARE spent at all. So, for the next bit, I will assume 1 Attunement and 1 Favour. I also believe you have Shiva's single target potency wrong, as it is weaker than the AoE version, I will assume 240 potency.

Done some calcs, no idea how balanced you wanted to make these, but there are clear winners. First, by allowing the free use of summons, you instantly open up the door to some not being used. Running the numbers, the clear winner is Leviathan, coming in at 2600 (before any reflect damage) potency over 8 seconds, next is Ifrit at 2200 potency over 11 seconds, then Titan, Shiva and Garuda last at 1790 potency over 9.5 seconds.

Ramuh is an odd one as not enough info was supplied in order to accurately judge how much it was doing. First, how quickly are the charges being built? Most stacks (meditate, improv etc.) are added every 3 seconds, however, that seems way too long to be casting for 18 seconds. So I done calcs for stacks at 1 second and at 0.5 seconds, assuming the cast is going all the way to max stacks. It comes to a total of 2100 potency over 9.5/6.5 seconds, which puts it third. I did also calculate if you were to just instantly cast without building up stacks, which is a total of 1645 potency over 4.5 seconds.

Now, without knowing exactly how you wanted things to be structured, I assumed every minute you would be using both Bahamut/Phoenix and Odin/Alexander. If we assume 15 seconds each, that leaves 30 seconds to get 3 summons in plus any filler. At standard GCD speeds, Ifrit is going to lose 3 seconds and Titan fits perfectly. The others, I have worked out how many casts of Ruin 3 they can get in, roughly. With that, Leviathan gets in 2 Ruin 3s for a total of 8600 in 29 seconds. Your next one is Ramuh with stacks coming in at 0.5 seconds and 4 Ruin 3s coming in at 7900 potency over 29.5 seconds. It is worth noting here that the Ramuh calcs for the full stacks have the auto crit/DHit already factored in, so Levi, in theory, will be higher than what I am listing. That is a 700+ potency difference between the 2.

Now, working out the rest, quick fire, Bahamut is 5460 (assuming 1 Necrotize), Phoenix is 4980 (haven't counted in Brands Aflame as it doesn't affect self), Odin is 6267.25 (with the 5% from Zantetsuken) and Alexander is 5920 (not doing anything with the additional effect). This means, combined, Bahanut/Odin do 11,727.25 potency and Phoenix/Alexander doe 10,900 potency. With an 800 potency difference, it comes down to whether the buff from Brands Aflame gives more potency or the debuff from Zantetsuken. I would say Zantetsuken wins out.

This then brings an interesting dilemma, to get Odin, you need to use either Ifrit, Garuda or Titan. Titan does the most damage without going over, add that to Bahamut/Odin and you get a total potency of 17,727.25 (just to add, you can skip 1 favour for 0.5 seconds spare or 1 Attunement for 0 seconds spare, it's ~80 potency difference max though). Then, with Leviathan, Phoenix and Alexander it is 19,500, that is a total of 1772.75 potency in favour of Phoenix and Alexander. Now, whether the extra 5% from Zantetsuken is going to gain an extra 1772+ potency including taking into account the Brands Aflame buff and any extra damage from Reflega would need to be calced, and I do not want to do that. I just got carried away and 'solved' your Summoner down to 2 choices. I also hope I have highlighted why I think SE makes you go through all 3 of Titan/Ifrit/Garuda before you can summon Bahamut etc. otherwise, you will just pick the strongest. By making you go through all 3, it also introduces a choice, which order do you use them in, as opposed to the free choice where it is this one summon you have to work around, or it is being done wrong. If I were to improve your design, I would introduce such a restriction, maybe make it so that in a 2 minute window, you can only cast each one once, or by finishing Odin/Alexander, it gives random ones so you have to think on the fly on where you want to place them for the fight. I think that would be a more interesting concept than a free choice personally.

Now, for other criticisms, DoT potency is always a multiple of 3, even things like Ninja's Doton and Dark Knight's Salted Earth. For the calcs above I assumed 21 seconds for the DoT duration.

Having HP be a resource to spend is not a good idea. Just from the GCDs from Odin alone, you lose 30% of your HP, assuming Execute is an oGCD (which is what I did for the calcs), you are losing a total of 40% of your HP in 15 seconds. That healing has to come from somewhere and does a healer want to use resources to keep you topped up during burst? Especially if we look at things like Ultimates. There is a reason Black Mage lost the HP cost on Convert. Wouldn't matter if Alex comes out on top damage wise though.

There are currently no damage actions that are under 1.5 seconds in recast time, which would mean your Shiva ST spell would be, at minimum, 1.5 seconds.

And last, as a thematic thing, there is no 'Dark' or 'Radiant' aspected damage in the game. Attacks can either be one of the 6 elements (Fire, Wind, Ice, Water, Earth, Lightning) or unaspected. Things that could be considered either 'light' (Glare, Dia, Holy) or 'dark' (Unleash, Stalwart Soul, Edge/Flood of Shadow) are all unaspected. Reason being, light and dark are more descriptions about how the other elements behave and not an actual element in themselves, so someone can correct me if needed.

[Valmaxian]

Quote

Hey Mikey! First, I REALLY appreciate your work on the damage calculations - I confess, I'm NOT very good with numbers... I tried to base potencies off of siimilar abilities. The goal here was to try and create a viable rotation, while shocasing how it could be interesting to allow more flexibility in Summoner's rotation based on what we already have. Abiltiies and spells would be balanced so that players would choose basic rotation summons based on the needs of the moment, be it movement, utility, etc. My hope was to create a version of the job that isn't as...circular as it is now, but branches out with possibilities based on the situation. In a global sense, My thought was to have Alexander be the heavy hitting AoE summon (dungeons or trash), while Odin is the ST destroyer (raid bosses). Then, the standard gem rotations would give players the choice to use whatever is best at the moment, while building toward either Bahamut or Phoenix. The next basic rotation would build up to the other (B or P respectively), then allowing the Summon of Alexander or Odin, completing the cycle.

Again, thank you for your excellent work witht he damage calculations!

Regarding Ramuh's "missing" Attunement costs, these are not included on the ST and AoE abiltiies because those are channeled, and it would be very punishing to lose out on those stacks. Insteead, I put the Amethyst Attunement into the "Slipstream" abilitity for the Ramuh phase, so they get expended. I suppose it wouldn't even be necessary to include Attunement for my version of Ramuh, I was just trying to be consistent, but clearly there are some flaws.

[Mikey_R]

Hey Mikey! First, I REALLY appreciate your work on the damage calculations - I confess, I'm NOT very good with numbers... I tried to base potencies off of siimilar abilities. The goal here was to try and create a viable rotation, while shocasing how it could be interesting to allow more flexibility in Summoner's rotation based on what we already have. Abiltiies and spells would be balanced so that players would choose basic rotation summons based on the needs of the moment, be it movement, utility, etc. My hope was to create a version of the job that isn't as...circular as it is now, but branches out with possibilities based on the situation. In a global sense, My thought was to have Alexander be the heavy hitting AoE summon (dungeons or trash), while Odin is the ST destroyer (raid bosses). Then, the standard gem rotations would give players the choice to use whatever is best at the moment, while building toward either Bahamut or Phoenix. The next basic rotation would build up to the other (B or P respectively), then allowing the Summon of Alexander or Odin, completing the cycle.

I do think I understood where you were coming from and trying to have utility at the cost of damage is a 'trap' people do tend to fall into. From the game dev side, they do not want a fight that makes a job mandatory to complete, so any utility needs to be on everyone of the same role (role actions) or they are just a nice thing to have, but not mandatory (Magick Barrier on Red Mage). This then comes into play when people start to maximise damage on a job, does using the utility reduce the jobs damage in any way,? If so, avoid at all costs. This is ultimately why everything was reduced to pure damage numbers.

Now, as a more casual Summoner, I too would like to see other summons and in general and I did like what you had attempted to do. However, I also didn't want to do something boring like just cycling between Ifrit/Titan/Garuda and then Leviathan/Ramuh/Shiva, which is why I suggested random summons. It forces you away from just picking the strongest ones to use and instead think about how the summons do damage and how you can fit it around a fight. Maybe some of the utility can be helpful if you happen to get it, at the right time. How Bahamut, Phoenix, Odin and Alexander fit into this, I do not know, I admittedly, didn't get that far initially. Should they have some sort of random element, should they be fixed or some other system. However, I hope I have given you an insight about how the devs approach things and how the playerbase approaches things (for better or for worse).

Again, thank you for your excellent work witht he damage calculations!

Always take the opportunity to make a spreadsheet, can never beat a good spreadsheet.

Regarding Ramuh's "missing" Attunement costs, these are not included on the ST and AoE abiltiies because those are channeled, and it would be very punishing to lose out on those stacks. Insteead, I put the Amethyst Attunement into the "Slipstream" abilitity for the Ramuh phase, so they get expended. I suppose it wouldn't even be necessary to include Attunement for my version of Ramuh, I was just trying to be consistent, but clearly there are some flaws.

The reason I pointed it out is because, under your current system, there is technically no limit to how often you can use the Rite/Catastrophe from Gemshine. With the summons, the amount of times you can use the Rites is then dictated on how many stacks of Attunement you have, which you did do for Levi/Shiva. On the flipside, Favours are used by Astral Flow and they tend to have different effects. Notably, long cast, gap closer combo or an oGCD follow up. This means, with different summons, you can have different ways to proc a Favour. Garuda and Ifrit just give a Favour outright, but Titan gains them from using Topaz Rite. However, why stop there? For Ramuh, you can do something that might be interesting. You channel the Rite and however many stacks you got to when casting the rite changes something about Fury of the Fey, like reducing the cast time or adding a scalable DoT. For Shiva, as something that came to mind, I personally see the Astral Flow as a waste, however, if I were to change it, whilst keeping the concept, the ice floor is automatic upon summoning Shiva, as you use the rites whilst in this ice patch, it ticks damage on every enemy in the ice patch (similar to Ninja's Doton being proced by certain actions), then the Favour is used at the end as a final big hit, similar to Dark Knight's Salt and Darkness.

In short, Attunements and Favours are ultimately there to restrict how much you can do in each summon phase and effectively force you to use the next summon, how that happens, doesn't matter, just that it does.

To be clear, if it wasn't obvious, I'm not wholly against your ideas and to be honest, it is one of the better job suggestions I have read. However, upon writing this, I realised I forgot to include the actual summon time in the calcs in the previous post, oh well.

[ShariusTC]

at this point i just hope we can get alexander but fat chance we will get another palette swap of phoenix, lemme guess a lunar phoenix?

[Carighan]

at this point i just hope we can get alexander but fat chance we will get another palette swap of phoenix, lemme guess a lunar phoenix?

Solar Phoenix, as we had Lunar Bahamut.

Wish is angry Temu got to supply the crappy new summon last time, so they want to weight in.

[ShariusTC]

Solar Phoenix, as we had Lunar Bahamut.

Wish is angry Temu got to supply the crappy new summon last time, so they want to weight in.

didn't it call solar bahamut?

[Carighan]

didn't it call solar bahamut?

Could be. Granted. As if I acknowledge Temu Bahamut enough to bother reading its actual name, that'd unduly legitimize it. Looks lunar-y though.