Revamp Summoner idea

[Stormblessed9000]

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What you're talking about with the mods is essentially just having another hotbar activate when you press a button. You could make a keybind to swap hotbars in game now and get the same effect. Also, if they actually implement something properly, they'd need to get graphics designers involved, make sure it plays nicely with all the other UI elements, and do extensive testing and iterative design on it. Making UI elements is easy. Making good UI elements is more involved.

Also, as I said earlier, the button bloat issue is also related to the fact that classes only get class actions at level intervals and the number they get in one interval is very small.

As for the gauges, I may have misinterpreted the OP, but this new summoner already has a bar for each element.

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Again, people will just choose whatever summon that gives the best DPS. Things like paralysis or DoTs vs direct damage are mostly inconsequential in raids. Even if they do have compelling options, they'll decide which element to build up right at the start since the system doesn't favor switching easily. After that, the rotation you suggest is very set since there will be a cycle that is best at building the appropriate element, meaning you'll just cycle mindlessly through your buttons until you can summon something. There's only one instant of decision making in the whole rotation.

You'd need to add other mechanics to make it necessary to deviate from the standard rotation. Samurai does this by having both sen building and big buffs tied to their three combos, so you need to balance sen generation, buff uptime and buff priority. This means that, especially when buffs fall off due to mechanics and the need to have exactly 1 sen with at least your damage buff up every minute to re-apply your DoT, you need to constantly be thinking about your next combo.

You need to add some sort of dynamic element that will promote these second-to-second combat decisions without removing control over which element the player builds.

[IveraIvalice]

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I disagree that it doesn't favor switching easily. The idea is designed around alternating between them based on what your fight requires. If you have no need to use a Levi heal then you don't have to use it in a raid but that's not limiting in my opinion because there are other fights in the game that would benefit from using that or dots or refresh.

The idea of the job just seems different then what your hoping for. While Sam has you focusing on a lot of things to keep you thinking, this job isn't like that. This would be in the category of easy to learn difficult to master because the difficulty is planning what your going to do by knowing the fight. It's not second by second decision making it's planning for the longer term, maybe 30 seconds ahead, but the rotation means you will always have at least 2 summons ready to go at once.
I can't deny that people will find one way to get as much dps in the shortest rotation because that's true, but that doesn't mean that the benefits of using the other summons goes away. Like what works in a raid wouldn't be the same as what you might use in a dungeon.

It's basically what I've been saying that you choose what to use based on the fight. In a raid when a lot of things are covered by the other team mates you probably won't have much use for heals or shields or even refresh if your mages have no problem, then you can focus on whatever rotation gives you most dps but in a dungeon when it helps to assist the team then you may use a different rotation or just use whichever you want.
In the end that's really a number balancing issue because I think the incentives to switch along with the cool down requirements are there.
The intention is for them all to be pretty balanced between them but if some rotation is marginally better then the rest then people may use only that but I think the buffs are useful enough to make people switch around enough. I mean I think there is good variation in the design and to prefer a single simple rotation is possible if that's what you want but it would be boring in my opinion, I personally wouldn't play focusing on a small increase to dps over the utility of buffs and debuffs.
To be fair the same is true with any job, everyone goes for the best rotation that has the highest dps output but that's not really a bad thing and is kinda an impossible task to have it 100% balanced, but again the buffs and debuffs are useful so if a slight dps increase (which is the balancing intention) is more appealing then the other benefits then there isn't much I could do about that

[Ghanbaatar]

I think the idea of having the summons do various things is a good one too, you just need to flush the ideas out more. The idea of DoT's is good but sadly status effects don't seem to do much in raids/dungeons so I would stay away from those. Maybe each summon does its own debuff with attacks? This would make a multi-SUM party have to figure out which order to do their summons in. So for instance Ifrit does really good single target damage and lowers the enemies armor due to heat, Titan does AoE and lowers their earth resist, Shiva does targeted AoE like the Freeze spell, and Garuda could speed up allies attack/caste speed? These are just what jumps out at me to make sure all the summons would have a place and still be at least a bit unique.

[IveraIvalice]

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That sounds cool, currently it was either a debuff on the target(s) vs normal attack damage and they all give some sort of buff to the party, but if dots aren't as useful as an enemy attack/debuff they could all add an elemental vulnerability to that specific element along with a party wide buff. The idea behind that is based on your mention of ifrit heat lowering armor or defense and Titan lowers earth resist. Since there is no actual elemental damage benefits in this game like previous FF games, this might be a cool way to make elemental vulnurabilies a thing through the Smn job. I like the idea of using spells based on the element they become weak to but there's the problem that some elements used by other jobs aren't really used as strong offense spells such as water. But it could still be useful for the smn themselves to increase their own damage.

I like the idea of a party haste buff for using Garuda and I haven't given much thought as to which moves would be aoe vs single target but I think all the summon openers (the one that gives the party buff at the same time) would all be aoe and then as you control the primal for its duration you would have a few aoe or single target attacks to use as you want.

I also like the idea of gaining a Crystal as you fill a bar to max that would eventually lead to summoning bahamut, in that way you don't need all bars full at the same time to summon him, you just need all crystals at one time and that would incentivize using all the primals at least once just to gain the crystals.

Very cool ideas, the more it gets fleshed out the more I wish it was real lol

[Stormblessed9000]

I disagree that it doesn't favor switching...

The problem with the long-term strategy stuff is it two fold. Firstly, it changes very little once you know what's best for the fight, so any decision making is gone once someone figures out the "optimal" strategy. The second is that there's absolutely no depth to the gameplay between summons. With the current static optimal rotation system, you could just bind each ability in sequence and literally just roll through your hotbar until you get a summon. There has to be more than one decision every 30 seconds.

Every class has something that makes moment-to-moment gameplay interesting. Monks have positionals and buffs, black mages have to plan ahead of AoE and ration their mobility skills while doing their rotation, red mages need to watch for procs while making sure their mana doesn't unbalance. You need to add something to make it interesting between summons. Perhaps making abilities to proc two of three possible other elements instead of the same two each time? Or you could add buffs or DoTs to some spells so that you'd need vary from the otherwise optimal sequence to manage their re-application.

[IveraIvalice]

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I'm honestly not sure how to respond because it seems like it already does what your asking for and the examples you give are things that the current idea is already doing. I mean I mentioned that Garuda and ramuh would add dots to make use of times when you had to move, you'd plan for that or have those built up on standby for when you need them. But you said dots aren't useful in raids. The spells that you use to build up the summons makes you alternate with the procs as their main function along with just doing damage but for me, having some be very different then others is what would make it an easy job because that is when you simply learn rotations and don't have freedom anymore.

I just don't know if we will agree on one thing, that using whichever spells you want to build whichever gauge you want will lead to a set easy rotation. In my opinion, once you start adding in things you need to do and upkeep you gotta follow, that's when it becomes a non thinking job and takes away the freedom. The examples you mentioned specifically blm and rdm are similar to how it is now where you have to keep your movement spells ready for when you need them (Blm), in this case it's not spells it's the summon (Garuda/ramuh) and their abilities that are easier to use when you gotta move because they add dots. For rdm you aren't trying to keep from being unstable in the smn job but you are making use of procs that take you around the elements.

In rdm's case it's only 2 elements, in this case it's 6 and although it's not random which ones you will get, it still allows for planning and control along with a way to cycle around to all the elements if you choose or focus on just 3. Because you are cycling 3 at the minimum that would mean that you would have at least 3 summons ready to go at one time, that's the choice, it wouldn't be build up one bar enough to summon then start from scratch on another one. Having that reserve of summons and using them when you need to is the quick decision making your asking for. It's just not your standard spells, it's your summons.

Having the elements proc randomly is fine but I think that would make it too random and not allow you to control which summons you want anymore. Like if you are trying to build Leviathan fast but the spells just won't proc water that takes away the strategy. It's also fine if the regular spells can have some specific things like dots but to me that also makes it more of a standard rotation kinda thing because now you aren't choosing to use that spell to summon that primal your only using that spell to keep its dot or status effect up.

I think your seeing the smn spells as what should keep the combat interesting as far as the differences between them but they are simply a means to the real meat of the job. Similar to how blm had to stack astral fire 3 or umbrella ice 3 to make full use of those fire or ice spell powers, you build stacks and you can then use better spells that only come from the third stack. It's similar in that way. It's not a perfect job since there are no complimentary actions to speed those up and the timing of things aren't set to get the exact feel of the speed of combat but it's not having 1 decision every 30 seconds, it's having many options available to you at once and when you use one option you have to be prepared to not use that again for at least 30 seconds. If you using one summon but suddenly need another you could dismiss early to quickly summon another that you already had built but then those 2 would be on cool down back to back sooner then normal so that could leave you without 2 summons when you only would have had 1 on cool down.
There's risk/reward in that way too.

I'm open to any ideas I just think that anything that forces you to do something to keep up dps is what makes the job have a set optimal rotation that everyone will just use that. I think what your asking for is leading to what you don't want but maybe we just don't see eye to eye. This isn't meant be be any sort of disrespect towards your ideas, I just think we don't agree on what the problems are

[Stormblessed9000]

I'm honestly not sure how to respond because it seems like it already does what your asking for and the examples you give are things that the current idea is already doing. I mean I mentioned that Garuda and ramuh would add dots to make use of times when you had to move, you'd plan for that or have those built up on standby for when you need them. But you said dots aren't useful in raids. The spells that you use to build up the summons makes you alternate with the procs as their main function along with just doing damage but for me, having some be very different then others is what would make it an easy job because that is when you simply learn rotations and don't have freedom anymore.

The difference between DoT and straight damage isn't significant in raids as long as the resulting damage is the same. Movement shifts the balance in DoTs favor, but it's still ultimately just a balancing game. The real point of adding DoTs is that they add depth to the gameplay since you actually need to manage them. If they just come passively when you summon one of your six summons there's no management aspect.

I just don't know if we will agree on one thing, that using whichever spells you want to build whichever gauge you want will lead to a set easy rotation. In my opinion, once you start adding in things you need to do and upkeep you gotta follow, that's when it becomes a non thinking job and takes away the freedom.

The issue is that there is no more freedom in what you suggest. There will be lots of possible options, but there either will be one builder combo that will be superior to the others in a given encounter, and you'd just spam that over and over again for 30 seconds, or the sequence actually doesn't matter and you can just rotate through them mindlessly. Either way it's the illusion of choice.

I'm afraid forced management and rotational busywork is a core part of tab-targeted MMO gameplay. The skeleton of the game is incredibly simple so you need to add dot/buff management, resource management, positionals, cast times ect. to actually involve the player. Having a choice of way to spend resources is fine, samurai does this very well with it's sen by having the option of a DoT, an AoE, and a direct damage option, but there needs to be something in between the spenders to keep people engaged.

The examples you mentioned specifically blm and rdm are similar to how it is now where you have to keep your movement spells ready for when you need them (Blm), in this case it's not spells it's the summon (Garuda/ramuh) and their abilities that are easier to use when you gotta move because they add dots.

The problem is that your summons aren't reactive in the way skills like tripplecast are. With your summons, you'd just bring them as soon as you can since holding onto them will hurt your DPS.

For rdm you aren't trying to keep from being unstable in the smn job but you are making use of procs that take you around the elements.
In rdm's case it's only 2 elements, in this case it's 6 and although it's not random which ones you will get, it still allows for planning and control along with a way to cycle around to all the elements if you choose or focus on just 3. Because you are cycling 3 at the minimum that would mean that you would have at least 3 summons ready to go at one time, that's the choice, it wouldn't be build up one bar enough to summon then start from scratch on another one. Having that reserve of summons and using them when you need to is the quick decision making your asking for. It's just not your standard spells, it's your summons.

Again, the problem is that the actual decisions will be made for you before the fight even starts. People will work out that using x builders to build up to y summons will give the most DPS in the average fight. Once this happens, there's nothing else interesting about the class.

Having the elements proc randomly is fine but I think that would make it too random and not allow you to control which summons you want anymore. Like if you are trying to build Leviathan fast but the spells just won't proc water that takes away the strategy. It's also fine if the regular spells can have some specific things like dots but to me that also makes it more of a standard rotation kinda thing because now you aren't choosing to use that spell to summon that primal your only using that spell to keep its dot or status effect up.

That's fine, but then you need something else to make the combat more interesting than literally rolling through six or less buttons until you have your highest damage primal and then rotating through the lower damage ones.

I think your seeing the smn spells as what should keep the combat interesting as far as the differences between them but they are simply a means to the real meat of the job. Similar to how blm had to stack astral fire 3 or umbrella ice 3 to make full use of those fire or ice spell powers, you build stacks and you can then use better spells that only come from the third stack.

The difference here is that the build up is very quick and only happens at the start of the fight or as a punishment for letting the timers run out.

It's similar in that way. It's not a perfect job since there are no complimentary actions to speed those up and the timing of things aren't set to get the exact feel of the speed of combat but it's not having 1 decision every 30 seconds, it's having many options available to you at once and when you use one option you have to be prepared to not use that again for at least 30 seconds. If you using one summon but suddenly need another you could dismiss early to quickly summon another that you already had built but then those 2 would be on cool down back to back sooner then normal so that could leave you without 2 summons when you only would have had 1 on cool down.
There's risk/reward in that way too.

I'm open to any ideas I just think that anything that forces you to do something to keep up dps is what makes the job have a set optimal rotation that everyone will just use that. I think what your asking for is leading to what you don't want but maybe we just don't see eye to eye. This isn't meant be be any sort of disrespect towards your ideas, I just think we don't agree on what the problems are

Ultimately you've got a cool idea, but you mustn't underestimate the ability for people to optimize away choice in favor of efficiency. Every job needs to include engaging elements that are still relevant regardless. Some classes have procs, others have timers that are effected by chaotic fight elements, others force you to miss positionals or cancel big casts to avoid AoE. Everything has something that forces them to constantly readjust their gameplay at a GCD-to-GCD timescale.

You're kind of doing that with the summons but they come out far too infrequently to hold up the class on their own. You could argue that changing from building towards DPS summons to building for support summons counts as well, but the build up time means it takes effect too slowly to be a useful reactive decision.

[IveraIvalice]

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Yes but your saying that the summons build too slow to be what your asking for without knowing how fast any of this builds or how often you will be able to summon without knowing cool down or build up information because I haven't can up with details like that.

It seems like your saying you want the job to be safe from having people find a set rotation for it that everyone will just go to therefore make the other spells do stuff to keep you busy but those are different things. Every dps job currently has a set rotation that people figured out that everyone follows, it just involves keeping up buffs and debuffs but there is no actual choice behind them at all and that's why I don't agree with what your saying. Even if the regular spells had things to do between summons, people would make an optimal rotation for those spells and those summons, making it exactly what your trying to prevent, making it exactly like every other job that has a set rotation and no choice. Your not asking for the job to be safe from a set rotation, your asking for it to keep you busy between summons so it gives you more to do. But that's also based on the idea that you don't know how often you will summon or have summons at your disposal.

I still compare the building of bars to both Blm and Rdm. For blm you build the stacks at the start of the fight and then your good until you mess up but that's the same as this version of smn except this is even easier because you won't lose your bars between fights. If you start from all bars being 0% then you will alternate 3 spells and have 3 summons ready to go at roughly the same time, or alternate more and have a slower build but more summons ready to go at the same time, then as you use some you still have others to use without building more, that's what lets it be a reactive thing if you need to but still it's based on planning the progression of the fight more then reacting at a moments notice. I don't see anything wrong with that, I don't think it needs to be a moment by moment decision making, the current way has its difficulties too. Even if there are set rotations that work best for each fight, it's still changing on a fight by fight basis and that's fine, I'm not trying to prevent that

This is all why I get what your saying but I just don't think we see the same things as problems, what you see as a problem I see as totally fine, it's just a different way to play. What you see as a negative outcome to not fixing these problems I see happening to every other job already. So I'm not really sure what else's to say about it. Some of the other ideas around here have been awesome that would change up the way it plays maybe more to your liking. The crystals idea and the thought of having an elemental vulnerability applied to the target sound really cool and a way that might let you go around more elements

[Stormblessed9000]

I disagree completely about other classes not having choices. Some classes need to decide if it's safe to stand in an AoE for half a second longer to get off a spell or positional, to clip a dot since you're not sure you'll be able to apply it at the proper time, or to prioritise reapplying a speed buff instead of a damage one since you think it will make you able to squeeze in an extra GCD, these kind of things do have optimal answers, but their immediacy forces you to actually think about the answers.

On the other hand, this new summoner, in it's builder phase at least, has barely any choices it needs to make. Almost everything you'd need to decide would be decided before you actually step into the fight and the can be written in one sentence/image on a guide. The summons themselves could add some element of decision making if they are well balanced enough that their relative performance varies with the flow of the fight, but even then you're in the same situation as the other classes in that you're just trying to figure out the best option. The only difference is that most other classes give you more choices you need to make and give you more to think about between those choices.

The balance of the summons would also need to be changed every time new content was released. If their situation dependant damage is not close enough in an encounter, all of your choices vanish.

[Shurrikhan]

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Agreed.

It'd take some serious, serious work in order to try to actively thwart the streamlining of macrorotation into something linear in a given fight—or worse, generally.