Dusting off the Tome: Summoner Feedback for 4.1

[Flana]

Meetings and Greetings. Some of you might remember me from a previous post where I mentioned shelving the class due to poor cohesion and design. Well, I'm back after toying around with the 'new' Summoner in weekly Omega Savage runs and some experience with Shinryu Extreme. I'll go ahead and put this at the beginning since we all know this will be rambly:

TL;DR: 4.1 was an acceptable step, but the job still has problems.

With that said, let's start with the positive changes.

The Good:

The changes to Ruin III and Ruin IV actually made a much bigger difference than I originally gave them credit for. By discarding the mana-dump philosophy that Summoner developed in Heavensward, it is now much easier to assist allies with Mana Shift and Resurrection. Ruin IV becoming an instant cast proc breaks up the monotony of Ruin Spamming by giving me something to actually look out for. It also allows for a "free" gcd of movement, which is great if you luck out and have one ready for certain times.

Changing Ruin III to be instant has also massively shifted the design of Dreadwyrm Trance from being a turret heavy phase to being hyper mobile. It's significantly easier to deal with ogcds like Rouse or Enkindle cycling during Trance, as you no longer have to burn a Swiftcast to force them out. It also makes the ending feel much more satisfying, since you can really run down the clock on Trance and not have to feel like wasting the last couple seconds. This has also hilariously shifted the peak damage phase to being the best time to do mechanics, since everything you need is either instant or ogcd. It feels incredibly satisfying.

Tri-Bind is no longer garbage, and actually feels pretty good to use in Trance.

The reduced cast time and mana cost on Summon I/II/III is a gods send, as it's no longer possible to die and then be blocked from summoning your pet back. It also makes resummoning in case of an accident much less painful.

Sustain is also back, which is great since AOE in dungeons is basically a coinflip if it will do damage to the pet or they just completely ignore it. Old dungeons are especially awful at this, so it's nice to have for synced roulettes.

The Bad:

While the gameplay feels smoother and more engaging, none of the cohesion issues I brought up in my original post have been addressed. It's far too late at this point to really do anything about that, but I am pedantic enough to point out it still feels like a problem.

Summon Bahamut continues to remain a problem, since trying to control him is like trying to ease an overloaded garbage can down a hill using only one stick and a weak magnet. Bahamut still likes to ignore your orders and run to your location if you get too far away from him. This is especially noticable with Enkindle Bahamut more so than anything else. Dude has serious performance anxiety and doesn't like to fire alone. Some times you can ram enough orders down his throat that Wyrmwave will continue to go off for a bit be he will eventually start winging it to you.

It's also ridiculous that Addle still contributes to Bahamut's dps. I shouldn't have to choose between doing something for the raid, or throwing away a raid utility cooldown just to force my airhead pet to poke the enemy an extra time.

Pet AI also continues to be a general problem, since the pets have a sluggish queue system. It's annoying to hit Devotion and then see my pet whack the boss a couple of times before putting it's buff up on the raid, especially if it comes up just before a mechanic where a little extra healing or damage reduction wouldn't hurt. It's also still possible to lose Enkindle because the pet has to move, or if you cram too many orders down it's throat at the wrong time. Enkindle will go on cooldown, but never go off. It's a rarer occurrence now, but still incredibly frustrating.

The pet delay also makes using specific abilities like Radiant Shield or Contagion on command extremely frustrating. The pet can just decide to ignore you for an extra attack or two. Or it could immediately cast. You have no way of knowing which will happen.

In addition to that, Aetherflow and Aethertrail continue to be a massive annoyance because they remain mutually exclusive. Your first Trance of the fight is effectively worthless since you have to throw it away to get Aetherflow rolling on cooldown to get to Summon Bahamut. This also crops up midfight during any encounter with a long enough intermission, like Grand Cross Omega. It feels awful to build up to what is supposed to be a higher-power moment only to throw it away because most of your kit is locked behind it.

Those three things are the major problems with the Summoner's current kit, and make it feel far more frustrating than it needs to. Smoothing out the bumps would go a long way to making the job feel more fun and fluid, without being constantly frustrated by the roadbumps that get thrown in your face over the course of a fight.

It may not sound like much, but Aetherflow is the core mechanic of the entire class, and Demi-Bahamut represents a large chunk of your damage over a fight. Being frustrated by such an important feature is not fun, and it comes up repeatedly. Sometimes multiple times in the same fight.


Okay, So What Would You Do About It?

This is something I saw a bit in my previous thread, pointing out that while I aired a list of complaints I never actually proposed any kind of solutions. With that said, here is what I would try to alleviate these problems.

Summon Bahamut:

Solution One: Reduce the potency of Wyrmwave. Once you summon Demi-Bahamut, he will turret up to that location and never move. Additionally, Wyrmwave will automatically cast at your most recent target every 1.5 seconds, without needing to be forced by the player. This solves the problem of him skipping attacks or missing out because you had to move, or had to use Addle for the raid instead of padding personal dps.

Solution Two: Rework the ability. Delete Enkindle Bahamut and Wyrmwave. Demi-Bahamut will now show up, cast a single high-damage spell, and then leave. This also alleviates the problem of him moving, or of missing some damage during Summon Bahamut time, but would give the Summoner positively massive damage spikes every two minutes. I would prefer if he got a new, more flashy spell to go along with this, but I could settle for Akh Morn.

Pet AI:

This is something I don't ever see being fixed, sadly, but the problem could be alleviated for Devotion at least. The way it should function is Summoner casts Aetherpact -> buff radiates out from the pet.

The way it currently acts is Summoner casts Aetherpact -> Pet has to then cast Devotion -> buff radiates out from the pet.

Make the ability one that the Summoner casts and originates from the pet, rather than this three-step logic that delays the order by a variable amount of time. This is only going to get worse as the game goes on if the dev team decides to add more "order" type abilities, where you could clog up the pet queue and end up with the Summoner losing abilities through random chance.

This would also have the added benefit of making Devotion instant, perfect for actually lining it up with raid buffs or raid mechanics.

Aetherflow and Aethertrail:

This one is actually a bit difficult, simply due to Summon Bahamut existing. However, I think that Dreadwyrm Trance locking abilities and not Aetherflow might help with the problem.

The way it currently works, once you use Dreadwyrm Trance, you are completely locked out of hitting Aetherflow. What I propose is that you can use Aetherflow during Dreadwyrm Trance, but not the abilities Fester, Bane, Painflare, or Energy Drain. This is a pretty ugly stopgap, but it would allow you to get Aetherflow on cooldown and rolling instead of having to wait until Trance ends.

With that said, those are my impressions of the job after the changes in patch 4.1. I find it not-unplayably frustrating now, largely due to the changes to Ruin Mastery for bosses and Tri-Bind for dungeons (and sustain for older dungeons). It still remains frustrating to play at times, and I often find myself glaring and thinking terrible things towards Bahugmit or being frustrated by the complete stop-and-go Aetherflow and Dreadwyrm Trance sometimes cause. Even with all of that, though, I do enjoy it enough to take the job back into Savage and Extreme trials.

I hope that the remaining problems can be ironed out.

If you actually stuck through to the end, thank you for reading. If you have thoughts or comments, I'd be interested to see them.

[Karshan]

Agreed with most of it, especially "Dreadwyrm Trance locking abilities and not Aetherflow"

Lock the abilities like fester during transe to avoid usage, cause that's not what we are asking indeed, but allow us to cast aetherflow ANY Fing TIME, please for the love of all that is holy

[Leukka]

Agreed with most though at this point I'm used to the exclusive Aetherflow/Aethertrail lockouts. It's like as you say, dumb to burn the first DWT into a quick Deathflare but after the initial usage it doesn't bother me because it cleanly forces 20 second rouse/aetherflow/dwt/bahamut windows where you're on a clock to get things done or prep for the following phase - a gameplay style wholly unique to SMN compared to other classes. It was clunky after 4 years of SMN but it has grown on me.

As it stands the biggest issue I have with SMN is Bahamut and if I had my way I'd root him to the ground similar to how Machinists use their Turrets and have him act identically as he does now with the exception of Addle being a gain and lowering Wyrmwave's recast to .5 to 1 second to make it feel smoother and less punishing for those with high ping. I like the idea of fighting alongside my Summon and having my attacks trigger it's attacks so an autocasting Wyrmwave wouldn't be ideal; however, what we have now just isn't working.

And lastly I really don't like the RNG nature of Ruin 4 being tied to a pet. Sicfrit is strong enough as it is, but I don't like how using Garuda and taking the time to micro her with Obey yields less Ruin 4s on average. If they must make it RNG, make it a crit proc on the SMN's spells similar to BRD or (ideally) make it auto-proc off of Painflare, Fester, Deathflare and Akh Morn usage.

[Llugen]

I only skimmed your OP, and while I agree that Bahamut is annoying to handle particularly while moving and that Rouse is slightly counter-intuitive with the timings, SMN is insanely powerful now and if anything needs a nerf sooner than anything more quality of life. If you don't believe me, go check my log page.

If it was up to me I would have allowed "infinite" Aetherflow within Dreadwyrm Trance (So you could Ruin III > Fester > Ruin III > Painflare/Energy Drain > Ruin III > Fester, etc "fueled" by the trance) and Summon Bahamut to upgrade Ruin II to Ruin IV for the whole duration, instead of procs, and lastly just for Wyrmwave to happen only with damage (Fester) and not with ANY targeted off-GCD (Tri-D, Addle).

Also the initial setup/opener is frustrating (basically blowing through stacks and dumping the first DWT) and feels very.... not the way they intended the class to work. I think it functions a lot better in PVP where there is the Aetherflow phase, the DWT phase, and the Bahamut + Aetherflow Phase, and I might have adjusted it to work like that in normal content as well (Bahamut after every trance and only one Akh Morn per).

[Ariomi]

Aetherflow and Aethertrail[/B] continue to be a massive annoyance because they remain mutually exclusive. Your first Trance of the fight is effectively worthless since you have to throw it away to get Aetherflow rolling on cooldown to get to Summon Bahamut. This also crops up midfight during any encounter with a long enough intermission, like Grand Cross Omega. It feels awful to build up to what is supposed to be a higher-power moment only to throw it away because most of your kit is locked behind it.

While I agree with most of your post, I have to disagree with how you suggest aetherflow be fixed.
Dreadwyrm with how it is currently is built perfectly to weave aetherflow in. Ruin 3 being instant in dwt, would give you the perfect time to weave fester. I think aetherflow (the action) and the actions associated with it should be used freely in dreadwyrm trance, however not get the damage increase from it.

I only skimmed your OP, and while I agree that Bahamut is annoying to handle particularly while moving and that Rouse is slightly counter-intuitive with the timings, SMN is insanely powerful now and if anything needs a nerf sooner than anything more quality of life.

If the OP had his quality of life Changes, Summoner would be more balanced as a result. Wyrmwave padding, and ahk morn would be tuned to balance out the class. Getting less Wyrmwaves, or less damage but getting them consistently without getting frustrated is a happy trade off to me. One massive ahk morn for 950 potency would be better in my opinion then 2 ahk morns for "680 Pet potency"

The only reason summoner is "insanely powerful" is cause Square Enix nerfs something into the ground (See machinist) then overbuffs it to compensate.

People like me will still hate Summoner no matter how powerful it is, if they play style is still god awful to play, and a clunky mess when most classes have been smoothed out. I can't think of a single class that is clunky like Summoner is clunky. The long delay on pet skills, and the chunkiness, just replace fun with frustration.

[Flana]

Agreed with most of it, especially "Dreadwyrm Trance locking abilities and not Aetherflow"Lock the abilities like fester during transe to avoid usage, cause that's not what we are asking indeed, but allow us to cast aetherflow ANY Fing TIME, please for the love of all that is holy

Menphina please, I would love to have it usable early on.

And lastly I really don't like the RNG nature of Ruin 4 being tied to a pet. Sicfrit is strong enough as it is, but I don't like how using Garuda and taking the time to micro her with Obey yields less Ruin 4s on average. If they must make it RNG, make it a crit proc on the SMN's spells similar to BRD or (ideally) make it auto-proc off of Painflare, Fester, Deathflare and Akh Morn usage.

This is something I feel like will ultimately become a major problem for Summoner somewhere down the line. Contagion is good, but the random pet delay makes it awful for lining up with raid buffs. You want to control when it goes up for maximum burst, but sitting on an action just lowers your potential damage from lost Ruin IV procs.

I mentioned this in another thread, but as long as pet ai is going to be as awful as it is, they shouldn't have powerful effects that benefit people. It will never be completely satisfying. Just give them to the Summoner in a new spell and let it's effect change based on what pet is out, in my opinion. That or make the things actually listen to me for once. Having a crit based proc could be interesting, but I'd don't know how I'd feel about only getting 3 Ruin IV procs per minute. It could be worse now because of RNG, but I like having something to react to. Crit's proccing them seems like it might be the way to go to replace it.

I only skimmed your OP, and while I agree that Bahamut is annoying to handle particularly while moving and that Rouse is slightly counter-intuitive with the timings, SMN is insanely powerful now and if anything needs a nerf sooner than anything more quality of life. If you don't believe me, go check my log page.

Oh believe me, I've noticed the damage increase lately. It should be pretty easy to drop without hurting the core of the class if they just brought down the dots or Ruin damage.

Off topic, but I tried bolding the important parts per section to help skimming. Did it actually help at all with getting the main points across?

While I agree with most of your post, I have to disagree with how you suggest aetherflow be fixed.
Dreadwyrm with how it is currently is built perfectly to weave aetherflow in. Ruin 3 being instant in dwt, would give you the perfect time to weave fester. I think aetherflow (the action) and the actions associated with it should be used freely in dreadwyrm trance, however not get the damage increase from it.

Believe me, I would love for it to work like that. It's basically the perfect evolution of Heavensward Summoner, which I still believe was completely superior to Stormblood's iteration.

That said, the dev team has been adamant about not giving us that ability back, so that was me trying to meet in the middle. If it were up to me, there wouldn't be a lock, period, and Aetherflow/Aethertrail would go back to working like Heavensward for the most part.

[Ariomi]

Believe me, I would love for it to work like that. It's basically the perfect evolution of Heavensward Summoner, which I still believe was completely superior to Stormblood's iteration.

That said, the dev team has been adamant about not giving us that ability back, so that was me trying to meet in the middle. If it were up to me, there wouldn't be a lock, period, and Aetherflow/Aethertrail would go back to working like Heavensward for the most part.

This is the change I hope the dev make. Keep in mind that they said Sustain was never coming back either. Call me optimistic, But I'm hoping that if people are persistent enough, the dev cave and make summoner an evolution of what it was, instead of stripping everything away.

But until then, I would settle for anything. Especially Aetherflow never being gated. (Doesn't much flow. at all.)

[DaulBan]

re: pet actions not working:

For Ifrit (because Garuda is too much of a pain to bother with) if you're going to be queuing enkindle/devotion/radiant you should slot them about 2 gcds apart depending on what you're doing. Ifrit will almost always prioritize oGCD -> Burning Strike -> oGCD and because of that you will often get your enkindle or devotion refunded if you try and either double weave them or weave them back to back. It's just the way the AI tries to manage its CDs. Just spread out the commands like you would on your regular gcd and you'll be fine.

Garuda on the other hand... 1.5s Cast times or whatever + long oGCD animation lock... Yuck. Ifrit is OK though just glance at the gcd for burning strike and you'll be fine.

Also I'm taking bets on whether or not they'll implement Bahamut just autoing like a MCH turret while he's out regardless of what you do. They love raising skill floors right? Right? (though personally I'd like the change because losing 5 wyrmwaves because the fight decided it was going to be suck can be annoying but that's just DPS life.)

[Neela]

Uhm im a bit confused about your overall-pet opinion... you gave hints how to avoid pet-skill chaining issues - so you actually like micro managing them even Sic-frit who doesn't need management at all. Garuda I admit is a bit more challenging to fit con in your rota but there like you said you just have to consider that pet skills can't be chained cause they are always followed by an pet-autoatk. People who aren't be aware of that are most likely the ones who feel pet-management "clunky". But if you go like pet-ogcd->-gcd/ogcd->pet-ogcd it isn't that clunky at all.

on the other hand you want Bahamut less interactive..? How do both likings fit... just wondering : /

edit: me myself would also like the removal of the auto-wws but instead making him a turret give him a single and an aoe skill with short cds which are kinda spamable as ogcds so he would reacts more fluently without that weird auto-atk mechanic. And we can use Addle the way it should be used in the first way : o

[Flana]

Uhm im a bit confused about your overall-pet opinion... you gave hints how to avoid pet-skill chaining issues - so you actually like micro managing them even Sic-frit who doesn't need management at all. Garuda I admit is a bit more challenging to fit con in your rota but there like you said you just have to consider that pet skills can't be chained cause they are always followed by an pet-autoatk. People who aren't be aware of that are most likely the ones who feel pet-management "clunky". But if you go like pet-ogcd->-gcd/ogcd->pet-ogcd it isn't that clunky at all.

on the other hand you want Bahamut less interactive..? How do both likings fit... just wondering : /

I said nothing about liking it at all, and in fact think it's god awful. Which is why I said Devotion should not be a pet-casted ability, and be a buff the Summoner applies from the pet. That completely solves the pet queue delay issue and makes it an instant, responsive buff like all of the other ones in the game.

Even if you have Ifrit-egi on sic, it doesn't matter because he will always try to spam his moves, thus delaying your input by a random amount of time. It's clunky by design and they keep adding on to it by adding "order" type abilities. First it was Enkindle (which can still fail, and that is absolutely unacceptable) and now we have Devotion. The more of those skills they add, the worse this is going to get in the future.

I also don't think Radiant Shield or Contagion should exist at all in their current state, but that's another topic all together.

Bahamut should be less interactive because Wyrmwave adds virtually nothing, and instead forces you to waste a raid utility just to pad your damage, falls victim to any kind of movement of more than 3 feet (even though Bahamut's range is 100 yards), and is virtually impossible to know if you achieved maximum damage.

Either make Wyrmwave flat, consistent damage so it can be appropriate balanced and accounted for, and not siphon out a role skill, or just delete the entire thing and make him Ahk Morn once for 2k potency.