If you were part of the DEV team what adjustment will you make to Summoner?

[Ayirez]

There are several ideas for elemental wheels for different egis - but after all there are no elemental modifiers in game anymore whats sad - on the other hand it would cause even more balancing problems than we already have.

Just because the Egi's are of different elements doesn't mean that they need to *do* elemental damage. Its just flavour for the class, it makes sense based on the lore of the game.

So this would looks like Bahamuts Shockwave hm? I personally don't think its a good idea taking this mechanic to all egis in general - don't we want to be more flexible and effective in micromanaging our pets? this would cause the opposite they would follow an even more constant rotation if you give them a chaining system... but well thats just my personal opinion. ^^

I'll be honest, I've no idea what Shockwave is aside from that Adobe thing. I'll try to be more clear though so you understand what I mean. Starting with the Summoner, using Ruin I would do just that, deal Ruin I's damage and that's it. Then, as the next GCD move you would use an Ifrit move. If they use the bare minimum that I'd want of 6 moves, it would be one of these. Specifically, perhaps it could branch off from Ruin I into either a single target high potency move or an AoE move. Then the Summoner's Ruin II would be enhanced in damage, where before it does X potency it would now do X+50 because you're comboing it off of Ifrit's move and stuff. Perhaps you could even make bio or miasma also like this. This would continue, going back and forth between Summoner and Egi, until the combo ends. Just like how a Dragoon, Monk, Samurai, etc do their combos, it would be much like this. But the combo for the Egi could change depending on which one it is. Maybe Shiva would have more AoE combos to use than single target, or one could have a DoT, the possibilities are only limited to the mind of the creator in that respect. So, as far as I know that would be sort of like micro managing your Egi? You're telling it what moves to use as if it were an extension of yourself, which it kinda is I think? Not sure, been ages since I did the first 50 SMN quests. As for the constant rotation, there's nothing wrong with a that if it's fun and diverse? Most of the classes in the game have very specific rotations and combos, to the point where there is an absolute perfect and desired combo to use mathematically, but these classes are still lots of fun and played..

[Nuclear_raven]

My suggestion is foremost to remove their pets. Instead I think summoners would be a lot more entertaining and impressive if they summoned their various pets just long enough for them to launch a powerful attack. I imagine that summoning Ifrit and having him launch a single Hellfire and then leaving would look cool and feel more like a traditional summoner. I also think this would allow a greater variety of summons to be used in battles. The individual summons need not strictly be restricted to only launching attacks either, some could perhaps grant the party some form of buff.

This is the only Final Fantasy game I know of where summoners are a pet class and it honestly doesn't make them feel fun to play. I'd take old school summoner any day. That said it'd definitely need some sort of mechanic surrounding them being granted the ability to perform those powerful summoning magics. Not sure how you would go about balancing all that, but I hope some game designer could piece it all together.

[Horobi]

Here's my overall feelings about SMN, what I would change based on what already exists and wouldn't be too difficult to implement :

1- I find Ruin3 to be pretty counter-intuitive. We lower its MP cost by being in Dreadwyrm stance, which should mean we have to cast it only while that stance, isn't it? But no, to get numbers on part with other classes, we have to spam the living hell out of it. It makes NO SENSE, I'd just lock it behind dreadwyrm stance and that's it.

2- Aetherflow. Grey this button when we have at least one dreadwyrm stack. That would be mostly be a quality of life change for airheads like me. xD

3- Bahamut.
* Root him on place already. To watch him move around and toss akh morn 5s after I give the command is infuriating.
* Trigger the dreadwyrm shockwaves only from general cooldown spells. Why do I have to wait up to an extra 20s to have aetherflow stacks, to not feel like I am wasting his potential? To me this is THE clunkiest part of the job.
"I am ready to summon bahamut! yay! Gotta wait! yay... what?"
Raise the Shockwaves's potency to compensate those we lose or, more fun, raise its potency for those coming from casted spells, as in not instant cast ones. Ruin 1's shockwave > Ruin 2's shockwave.

4- Modify Aetherpact, this is where most potential is :
* turn it into an aoe, current 15yalm is good
* cooldown reduced to 60s to line it up with the whole 3 * 20s phases SE seems to want us take. Duration reduced to 10s to balance it out.
* change its properties based on the summoned egi.

Eatherpact properties would be a mechanic to balance the pets out. As it is, Garuda is the "obvious" choice in 90% of the cases in mono-target, because of contagion. When it comes to what a buff can give only 3 things comes to my mind : haste, critical, and damage buff. The last being clearly better than the former ones, I would give the damage buff to ifrit to balance out contagion and as a result give haste or crit to garuda.
The numbers are subject to debate but here's what I'd give :
* Ifrit aetherpact : +5% potency (so it also helps healers a bit)
* Garuda aetherpact : +10% haste (with a 10% healing potency) OR +5% critical hit rates. Higher number on haste just enough to not make Ifrit a clear winner.
* Titan aetherpact : what could be enough to make titan worth using in a party scenario? Would something as overpowered as Reraise be enough? I doubt it.

Overall, this would be a nerf to ruin3 spam, a buff to aetherpact and bahamut not being silly to use (I could accept a nerf for this, anyday)

[Vulcwen]

Alright, with some more thought on it, think I'll share some possibilities here. I'll rule out a complete overhaul as a possibility.

1. Bahamut:
- Allow it being summoned with just 1 bahamut aether
- Make Enkindle also consume bahamut aether (it won't require it to be used, but will deal extra damage when used with bahamut aether)
- Summon Bahamut cooldown increased and Enkindle cooldown reduced to both be at 90s.
- Enkindle cooldown reduction proc removed.
You'd still get bahamut roughly every 2 minutes, but have some flexibility in how it's used, 90s cooldown also provides flexibility in when you want to use it.

2. Ruin 4 upgrades Ruin 2 and is instant cast. Makes it more impactful in gameplay outside bahamut (mobility procs ), while making bahamut a bit easier to pull off.

3. Summon, Summon II and Summon III become abilities that cost no MP, are instant cast and have a 30s cooldown.
It also means recovering from death is easier, and you can switch pets on the fly, making pet-based gameplay more involved.
(I want a similar thing for SCH as well)

4. Increase MP cost of Ruin 3 by 60-80% (outside DWT), increase MP gain from energy drain by 60-80%, increase potency of ruin 3 back to 200.
The intend here is to make energy drain a gain over using painflare on a single target. With Ruin 3 potency back to 200, although at an increased cost to prevent it being a overall DPS buff, it makes DWT more impactful again, as well as making energy drain have an effective 250 potency, placing it between painflare and fester. The MP cost increase can be used to balance the overall DPS output.

Result is that the SMN opener becomes far more powerful, with 2 DWTs, and a (partial) bahamut under raid buff, so it might need some adjustments elsewhere to not make the overall DPS go up too far. It'll take some work to fully understand the implications of those changes however, but I think it'd help with making the job more rewarding and fluid at lower levels of skill, while still offering plenty optimization opportunity.

[Neela]

Summoners have a lot of actions. I'd really like it if the following things happened.

• Have Dreadwyrm Trance change into Deathflare when you cast it, with a small cooldown to prevent doubletapping
• Have Enkindle change to Enkindle Bahamut when you use Summon Bahamut
• While in DWT, change Ruin to Ruin III

DWT and Deathflare are mutually exclusive: you can't cast Deathflare without being in DWT and if you can cast DWT you can't cast Deathflare because you're locked out of Aetherflow in DWT. I would like to have one button instead of two for actions related this way.

Summon Bahamut dismisses your pet while Demi-Bahamut is active, so you can't regular Enkindle, it would be useful to just replace Enkindle with Enkindle Bahamut.

Ruin III's cost is reduced to that of regular Ruin, but still has 50 more potency, so it's just always better in DWT. Outside of DWT, it's fine if there's still a seperate action for Ruin III so you can spend the extra mana for the extra potency if you want, but there's no point in Ruin being around while in DWT.

copy paste from another single thread ^^

[dinnertime]

I've shared my ideal SMN previously but this time I would like to share my personal opinion on how to fix the job.

▪Physick scales with INT and/or Sustain returns as a skill
▪Aetherflow is unavailable when you are under the effect of Aetherflow.
▪You can now stack the effects of Aetherflow and Aethertrail Attunement.
▪Just like the SCH trait, spending Aetherflow stacks reduces Aetherflow's cooldown by 5s or reduce Aetherflow's cooldown by 45s.
▪Revert Bane back from its previous version.
▪Increase Tri-Bind to 50 potency and lower the MP cost.
▪Revert Shadowflare to how it worked previously...or delete it and buff other AoEs to compensate.
▪Ruin upgrades to Ruin III but keeps the MP cost.
▪Ruin IV is reworked from a proc to being only available during Dreadwyrm Trance, which also replaces Ruin III during the trance.
▪Aetherpact and Devotion is either removed or reworked. I prefer it to be an AoE buff with a 180s cooldown.
▪Demi-Bahamut auto attacks on its own, changes target depending on who the Summoner attacks after. He stays still unless the enemy target is too far away from him, NOT the Summoner.
▪Summon Bahamut only requires one Dreadwyrm Aether cost. Adjustments would probably be needed to potencies so SMN is not too powerful.
¤ Honestly I'd love to give Demi-Bahamut a couple more ogcd attacks of his own you can command, short cooldowns (maybe 6s) that are also shared. One is a single-target, one is an AoE but both aren't as powerful as Akh Morn.
▪Enkindle Bahamut's recast becomes 30s.

Pretty much I used the PvP version as an example because it's a lot better to play in my opinion. I'd remove the Egi pets too and make them similar to Demi-Bahamut but I talked about that in my previous post...
The adjustments would hopefully make the job a lot less punishing and a lot more engaging with AoEs. It wouldn't fix the bloat or Ruin-spamming however.

[inhaledcorn]

I think the reason that Ruin III exists in its current incarnation (as in, you can always cast it, but it costs a ton outside of DWT) is because Ruin III is learned before DWT. So, for leveling up, it would be weird that "Here, you learned this skill, but you can't use it yet". We wouldn't have this problem if DWT came before Ruin III. In their attempt to stop Summoner from doing so much damage, they lowered the damage of Ruin III, but it still does more damage than Ruin I.

If they want to fix this, Ruin III really should upgrade from Ruin I at this point. I mean, they could just reduce the potency to Ruin I outside of DWT but make it DWT's 150-200 potency while in DWT (instead of making it cost a ton of MP), or, keep the potency constant at 150 and instead make Ruin IV only active while in DWT.

I think Devotion should be a boost for the Summoner only to somewhat replace the loss of Raging Strikes. I think it would be interesting if Fester extended the duration of DoTs instead of doing damage, but I don't think people would like the loss of the current Fester.

[Razard]

If you were part of the DEV team what adjustment will you make to Summoner?

I would give the the community management team strict instructions to perma ban and delete the account of any player incessantly whining about Summoner. Bleach the entire forum of even the word Summoner. Do it so hard that even the whiny entitled fools who keep popping up every time Summoner has the inkling of being a tiny bit sub par, they come on to vomit their ill informed, tiresome and contradictory opinions, will forget that the class even exists. Also Ban anyone who talks about the feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel of a class because it doesn't live up to their expectations.

But now I'm just being petty.

[Neela]

sounds a bit frustrated? what's the matter? ^^

[Cetonis]

So many overwrought suggestions in here. SMN isn't in that bad of a place, it just has some poor design elements that need to be addressed. I'd go with:

- Bahamut-egi is now stationary

- Wyrmwave is used on its own every 1.5s, like other egi's basic attacks

- Deathflare no longer ends DWT, and changes to a 20s cooldown

- Devotion is targeted (pet will move within range of the target if needed)

- Reduce Egi MP cost to ~1600 (so still more than R3 but less than it is now)

Because if I were the dev team, I'd be looking to make the most straightforward changes possible, not to get into some broader debate about the vision for the job.

The above might amount to a slight buff or nerf overall, but numbers tweaks can solve that as needed. The important part is to make the intuitive decisions the better ones.

Otherwise, it keeps the fundamentals of the kit intact. Personally I'd also like the R4 dynamic to work a bit differently somehow, but it's not strictly necessary.