Summoner and the upcoming changes

[Caduagm]

They basic killed summoner.
"Ahh, but your AoE was so high".
AoE was all we had.
"Ahh, but you got Bahamut".
Which can be summoned each 2 MINUTES.
"Ahh, but contagion has raid utility now".
If Garuda AT LEAST responded faster to our commands would be fine.
The nerfs on Bane, Aetherflow lock on DwT, Ruin 3, Deathflare, Shadowflare, lost of Spur and lost of a third Dot basically killed our AoE and our single target damage.
Was running susanoo ex today and ALL of the compos with SMN/BLM, BLM was at least doing 800 dps more than us.
So what? Now BLM has the best single target and the best AoE?
Is that just because the director of this game has BLM as his main?
Summoner was amazing to play in 3.0 and now they simply killed it.

[GerrardCapashen]

I'll try to keep an open mind until I get to 70 and do some content, but I am concerned.

My concern is not about the DPS numbers. Those can be trivially fixed.

My primary concern is about the new design of the summoner class, as described to me, here and elsewhere. It seems that the class now resolves much more around ruin spamming, which is just super boring. It's not fun to play. I liked having to manage DOTs. It's way more fun than ruin spam.

I also just fundamentally disagree with design philosophy of making the game easier. The game was already pretty easy, and it was close to not keeping my interest. Making it easier still just means that the longtime players, who I assume are the majority of their money income, will stop playing. I don't know if I'm at that point, but I don't like where the game is heading.

Surely there is some way to throw a bone to the super casuals, without also destroying the fun for the hardcore players? Apparently the devs disagree. ~sigh~

[SyraLeo]

Was running susanoo ex today and ALL of the compos with SMN/BLM, BLM was at least doing 800 dps more than us.

800 more? if you are using the new ACT FFXIV plugin, you should note it's in beta and a lot of DoTs from summoners and some healers are not detected.

It's also having a host of other issues, I suggest waiting til the official release before wondering if our dps is truly that bad.

[Talec]

I get the feeling, that SMN is not a very PS4-friendly Class. Managing the pet is so super hard on Controller. Moving it out of AoEs in time seems like impossible, moving him closer to a Person who should benefit from Aetherpact takes at least a couple of seconds for me. During this time I cannot do dmg, which is a huge DPS-loss.

[Dyvid]

I get the feeling, that SMN is not a very PS4-friendly Class. Managing the pet is so super hard on Controller. Moving it out of AoEs in time seems like impossible, moving him closer to a Person who should benefit from Aetherpact takes at least a couple of seconds for me. During this time I cannot do dmg, which is a huge DPS-loss.

Don't do either. Unless they change devotion, just cast it and let the cards lay where they may. No matter what you are help the party with a buff be it dps or healers. As for AoE, when you "de-summon" Bahamut you should have a fresh new Egi with full health again.

[jlaul]

Just got SMN to 70. Definitely not anywhere near mastering the job but here are my thoughts:

-Lucid dreaming allows SB SMN to spam Ruin 3 much more than HW SMN
-Not being able to aetherflow during trance makes the class much less flexible and is very annoying, and you now have to trance ~15s before aetherflow comes back
-Devotion seems useless and I use it to simply fish for Ruin 4 procs
-Ruin 4 procs often enough, especially if you use your pet abilities on cooldown
-Bahamut tends to "miss" a lot of wyrmblasts. For example, hardcasting Ruin 3 into Ruin 2 + a fester halfway through the GCD would only yield 2 wyrmblasts while just using two Ruin 2's with a fester would yield 3. For this reason, it seems that Ruin 2 spamming with the occasional R4 proc is the way to go during the Bahamut phase
-Contagion is now a less braindead skill; timing it correctly for burn phases is much more rewarding than mindlessly hitting it after tri-disaster (although I really wish the duration was extended for a bit longer than 15s)
-The tri-disaster reset is definitely interesting. While I have mainly been using tri-disaster around once a minute, it may be worth it in certain fights to delay your trance timing in order to make full use of the tri-disaster reset.

Overall, I am pleased with the SMN gameplay at 70 and the job would be even better if they fix the pet responsiveness. Yes, SB SMN is less dot-centric than HW SMN. However, it's not like dot management in HW was difficult considering tri-disaster minimized dot hardcasting to once per minute. Bahamut adds to the complexity of the class because now you have to optimize another phase that only occurs once every 2 minutes (the Bahamut phase) in addition to dreadwyrm trance. Coming into SB, my biggest fear was that SB SMN would be even more braindead than HW SMN, however it seems that SB SMN will require much more fine-tuning in order to achieve the best result for different fights.

[Cherub]

Snip.

I pretty much agree with all of this.

I had feared SB SMN would be braindead ruin 1 spam but keeping aetherflow apart from DWT is keeping me on my toes while making the best out of tri.
As for Demi Bahamut, remember that wyrmwave has a 1.5 second recast. It might be better to just go into melee range and auto attack while ruin II spamming. Having Bahamut summoned doesn't warrant Ruin III or Ruin spamming in anyway. If you have a Ruin IV it should still be cast however because of Enkindle.
I keep using 1 OGCD (3 Festers, 1 Addle) between the Ruin II's while auto attacking. And yes it is absolutely worth Auto attacking, it can trigger wyrmwave and it'll be an additional 160 potency if Bahamut responds.
I think the maximum might be around 10-13 wayrmwaves per summoning since Akh Morn also takes up time to use.

Pet responsiveness needs to get better. Especially now where timing your pet is way more crucial than it ever was. Garuda at least that is. I absolutely hate how much I need to spam Contagion before it goes off.

It'd be nicer if we would still get Aethertrail attunement even if our attacks miss because if we do miss an attack, we're effectively locked out for 2 mins. This is way too punishing and I think this is the only job that is this unforgiving.

And don't trust parsers. DoT's aren't being tracked yet. I was 1000 DPS behind the BLM in our Susano farm. In fact, I was also way behind other jobs. Even the offtank at some point.

Aetherpact needs a buff, it's pretty terrible as of right now. I keep using it from start to finish but I'd lie if I said it's not for Ruin IV proc fishing. 5% for 15 seconds every 90 seconds and then you can't even control which person should get it....

[Feves]

Today I've been farming Susano and Lakshmi extreme with summoner. It's a lot more.. interesting in 8 man content, but my FC mates complained a lot about Bahamut being too large and making it hard to see mechanics. Playing with a Bard is fun because you can just Ruin III spam all day with proper usage of Lucid Dreaming + Refresh.

We need changes to Contagion and Devotion immediately. Devotion only gives itself to healers and trying to get Contagion to go off when you want it is just so difficult that I use it whenever and don't care anymore.

[jmdude]

I think this job needs a complete overhaul after these changes. They deleted so many skills and gave us two in return, one of them is a buff that's not interesting. I'm glad we got a new summon but it doesn't make up for everything else we lost. They should just make summons more like bahamut, you summon them for a short time to do their ultimate ability and you rotate between them, have them require less mangement and let bahamut do autos on his own.

Also lore wise why bahamut? We already have deathflare in the form of DWT, we didn't we learn a new trance? Instead we got an overglorifed egi to do the same thing we've been doing.

[CodeAscalon]

Also lore wise why bahamut? We already have deathflare in the form of DWT, we didn't we learn a new trance? Instead we got an overglorifed egi to do the same thing we've been doing.

These were my concerns from the day we saw the ability preview.... I guessed that the only thing we will get is a small version of bahamut for a few seconds and thats it. I mean come on, my f**ing Ruin IV procs seldom, sometimes not even once, 64 skill is kinda trash atm and the only thing we got is better version of our dots. All in all I was kinda thrilled by the footage, but my dreams got crushed by bare hand. Having Bahamut is kinda nice but nothing really new, you know what I mean? and making your most powerful single target GCD rng by 15 ridiculous percent, seems very unsatisfying..

However that being said, I just love the pose whilst casting and executing Ruin IV. My SMN looks so badass with it, letting his weapon float for a few moments and taking it back in his hands like a really cool bastard. This is made really great. I want more of these. The only thing I wish now are some tweaks to some actions.