Summoner and the upcoming changes

[artemos7]

After that, switching pets to get a damage buff for magic damage (ourselves and healers... and maybe another caster) or physical damage (rest of the party) should overcome the DPS loss from the Egi not attacking once or twice.

Why would our opener need to have a summon and resummon, and who is giving us all this time for summoning, unsummoning, and resummoning pre and post battle? Because last time I checked, I barely got a protect or stoneskin before someone runs in and starts the battle, not to mention having to switch summons again, and wasting my swiftcast. I guess if the devs somehow made it obvious we need to summon and resummon as part of our rotation, but that isn't the case. They just made these changes with a lot of things in mind it seems, but not with Summoner in mind. A lot of these changes feel like gimping SMN's DPS ability to make others standout more much like MNK who was one of the best DPS and is now starting to take a backseat.

[Fyce]

-snip-

I'm not talking about casual roulettes. I'm talking about extreme trials and raids. Pre-pull countdowns are very common in these types of content.
About Swiftcast, since the changes to Shadowflare, its availability went up a lot. Besides, improving party DPS is absolutly not a waste of a 60s cooldown.

The changes made to Contagion and Radiant Shield, plus being able to use both buffs at the same time, and the change to Shadowflare (indirect Swiftcast usage modification) are definitly obvious enough to make some theories about using these buffs.

If you don't see that and don't have experience regarding endgame content, then it's probably not as obvious for you.

Anyway, doing this pre-pull is completly doable and mostly free. If people don't do it, it's a clear and objective DPS loss for the group.

[Brinzy]

Anyway, doing this pre-pull is completly doable and mostly free. If people don't do it, it's a clear and objective DPS loss for the group.

Assuming you get several ticks from it, then yeah. You need four to make up for an extra Ruin 3 under Dreadwyrm. Assuming you get about 15 seconds worth of the shield in this manner, you also need to add a bit of delay from Rouse (relatively minor), your pet starting its attack, and pre-casts. It's possible we open with Tri-Disaster at 0 seconds, thus eliminating pre-casting; I haven't thought about it yet. I'd say five ticks are the bare minimum you need to get from the shield for it to be worth it - even if you got four and got the 200 potency, you lose out on a bit to holding for Ruin 3 thanks to delays.

There are few bosses - none I can think of immediately - that will damage players five times in the first ~15 seconds of the fight. It's an option if such a fight exists, but I wouldn't say it's a clear and objective DPS loss.

[Brinzy]

There's a good chance our best opener will be based on multiplicative stacking, so we'll likely be using Contagion in tandem with Dreadwyrm and Tri-Disaster for Ruination. I don't know for sure because I haven't theorycrafted any of this and my math is trash, but Ruin 3 with all three of these up is hitting for 150*1.1*1.1*1.1 = 199.65 potency, so basically old Ruin 3. Ruin 4 would be hitting for 266.2 potency. Would love for someone with a deeper grasp on this than me to confirm this or slam these numbers.

With that said, I wasn't aware that Contagion and Radiant Shield didn't share a CD. I know that, at some point, SCH fairies shared CDs across certain abilities, so I'm surprised to hear that these two don't. Honestly, I haven't tried it. Also, there's generally so little damage at the start of fights that RS probably won't be worth burning Swiftcast over, which could instead be used to fit in another Ruin 3/4 during Dreadwyrm.

[Feves]

I've now obtained level 70 on Summoner and I still think the job is very clunky. Trying to get your contagion to go off at points of high burst and it failing you - with the old contagion there was at least a little bit of leeway. Furthermore, playing with Bahamut if you even have to move a tiny pixel to avoid a mechanic/AoE then your bahamut moves with you instead of staying static like the other egis. Ideally you would want to use contagion just before you go into DWT + Tri-Disaster correct? To gain buffed dot damage + ruination + further damage with your Ruin III/IV, however it just really doesn't co-operate and is just really disappointing to play. I think I've made my decision and think I will scrap playing Summoner from now on unless there's some significant changes to the job.

One positive note though, I do love how Lucid Dreaming works with Summoner - using it at points means you can get a very high Ruin III output while outside Dreadwrym, which does add a level of actual interesting gameplay to the job, I would have loved to have that ability on level 60 summoner before the expansion.

[Bigcat9715]

My biggest problem with Smn as it stands is the Aetherflow lockout. I understand why the lock out is there, but slowing down Smn seems like a really bad design choose. Unless we were using the Job in a unintended way all along, and the expansion was their way of patching the job?

[ShaolinMike]

Unless we were using the Job in a unintended way all along, and the expansion was their way of patching the job?

You actually might be on to something here, cuz I remember when they first unveiled Dreadwyrm Trance, Yoshi-P was saying the idea behind it was to give SMN something to do while Aetherflow was on CD aside from just Ruin spam. Hmmm...

[Len]

Finally Lv.70! Hurray.

Our egis need some kind of passive health regeneration. Something.

If our egi is going to be a core, integral part of our job then it needs to be kept alive

I'm NOT about to micro-manage my pet to pull it out of the endless circle, line, and sometimes a combination of both AoE markers.

I also hate the fact that on knockback, your egi's Enkindle and Aetherpact/Devotion will be interrupted.

[PotatoTree]

Today I was moving my pet while I was doing Aetherpact and the ability went off but the buff was never applied. WTF. This job is such a clunky mess right now.

Yes I know we can still do some decent damage with it, but it's like trying to hammer a nail with a bowling ball. You have to constantly wrestle with the AF lockout, bahamut locking AF (even though you can still use stacks if you used it before bahamut, like where's the consistency?), pet lag (try moving the pet to a player and doing Aetherpact, rouse, and contagion...), bahamut locking pet actions (rouse, enkindle), and bahamut is just a twitchy mess. Plus all the timings are now super tight, as in you will miss your deathflare if you try to cut it close like before, and you will defiantly miss bahamut's 2nd flare if you want to hold it for a few seconds at the end not because you ran out of time, but because bahamut sometimes takes it's sweet time to do your actions because it likes to twitch around and follow you. And if you ever mess up a single AF stack now you are screwed for the next two minutes.

It feels like SE just wants you to play SMN this specific way. You are not allowed to change the rotation. "You will use your AF and then use DW to fill the remaining time, no mixing the two, and you will like it" is what they would say.