Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Shurrikhan]

I have no desire to keep spamming sustains into a pet while the BLM next to me is blowing up the boss with Fire IVs.

Except pets already took some 80% decreased damage from AoEs, which is all the damage they could take without tanking. They could have simply increased that to 100% or offered increased natural HP regen and maintained the ability to tank with one's pet. Having a pet which can tank does not have to equate to lost uptime in any way. It only does so if made specifically poorly.

[JarenCorax]

Please stop with the "my pet can no longer die so this does not feel like a pet class anymore", this reasoning is very poor and a very own personal thing of yours. I have no desire to keep spamming sustains into a pet while the BLM next to me is blowing up the boss with Fire IVs. If you are gonna complain about something please try to be a bit coherent.

It's not a question of reasoning, especially when the word "feel" is quite pointedly used, because guess what: It is a personal opinion.

[Gallus]

It's not a question of reasoning, especially when the word "feel" is quite pointedly used, because guess what: It is a personal opinion.

Yeah whatever let's get into a manners debate that is sure as hell very interesting in a SMN's thread. My point is you want something that does not make any sense. No commited DPS wants to spend their time throwing heals to a pet while the other DPS classes can DPS just fine. If you want to babysit people you can always play a healer and if you don't care about doing subpar DPS you can always be an Ice Black mage.
SMN right now is easily one of the hardest jobs to be good at. The amount of OGCDs and things to keep track of is very overwhelming. You want to add your pet dying and sustain so that you can feel a real SMN? Thanks but no, and I really hope SE keeps the egis untargeteable and fixes the real issues here like egi assault spell queueing like @Taranok has well spotted or Devotion being tied to your pet for no reason.

[Taranok]

So here's how you can realistically recreate clipping EA1/2. If you cast Enkindle, and follow it up with both EA 1 and 2, it will clip the last of those abilities outright, burn the cooldown, but net no actual damage, in addition to throwing an error. All it takes is casting Enkindle, then ruin 2/4 (or other instant GCD), then combining EA1/2 in a double weave. That's it. It's really easy to accidentally clip it. If you double weave EA1/2 followed by another double weave EA1/2, that should also cause it to break.

Before, when you tried commanding the egi to do something it couldn't do, it would error and refund the attempted cast, so a similar system will need to be put in place to prevent this.

[Gallus]

So here's how you can realistically recreate clipping EA1/2. If you cast Enkindle, and follow it up with both EA 1 and 2, it will clip the last of those abilities outright, burn the cooldown, but net no actual damage, in addition to throwing an error. All it takes is casting Enkindle, then ruin 2/4 (or other instant GCD), then combining EA1/2 in a double weave. That's it. It's really easy to accidentally clip it. If you double weave EA1/2 followed by another double weave EA1/2, that should also cause it to break.

Before, when you tried commanding the egi to do something it couldn't do, it would error and refund the attempted cast, so a similar system will need to be put in place to prevent this.

Ok so I've been testing and you are correct, though not entirely, double weaving both egi assaults twice in a row does not necessarily mean your pet will skip one action, but it can happen, this is true (though you are still given the Ruin IV stack). It only happens if you go completely nuts though. If you double weave 2 pet actions and only wait for 1 GCD more to double weave another 2 pet actions then as far as I have tested it works fine. The pet is quite responsive and obedient lol, it performs those attacks with barely any delay.
I completely agree devotion shouldn't be tied to the pet, as it only adds salt to the wound.

And yeah, job feels hard. A zillion of OGCDs, keeping track of dots, egi assaults, energy drains, festers, ironically phoenix will get easier at level 80 because you won't be able to weave egi assaults there anymore...while you can now, but on the other hand it will add complexity in the sense you'll have to make sure you've used them before.

[Taranok]

I'm thinking it's not directly related to "going ham," so much as it's related to server tics. Even the best opener rotations I've seen would inherently put the egi at risk of dropping abilities, and it's basically impossible to account for without pacing out the oGCDs to be further apart.

And when designing these classes, you should basically expect that the player is going to fire off every oGCD in any order possible as fast as possible, I'm trying to find an optimal rotation but when I'm in a dungeon having gotten my 15th "Your pet cannot execute this action" error, in addition to tunnel visioning so hard I flat out cannot see bosses and their mechanics, and it makes me want to play a multitasking class that's easier like bard, there's a serious problem with the class design.

The issue comes down to a few specific points.

• The class has too many oGCDs
• Devotion, EA 1+2, ED, Fester, ES, Painflare, Bane are the oGCDs that cause major problems.
• The Pet oGCDs have a high chance of clipping each other and throwing away their effects either in part or entirely, including wasting the cooldown itself.
• The rotation outside of those specific problem oGCDs seems fine aside from having nothing to do on the back half of the rotaiton.
• Bane is an ability wanting for purpose, and exacerbates the oGCD issue, albeit only in dungeons against trash mobs typically. It's bar bloat, oGCD density, and just serves no purpose for an ability that I wish I could just set to autofire and pretend it doesn't exist (okay, not literally, but seriously the ability has no reason to exist).

Any change done should try to find a way to slow down the oGCD usage probably to about SB levels, especially in the opener (without micro-managing Contagion) and then find a way to distribute the abilities over more parts of the rotation more evenly.

The class needs work. It's not far, most of the changes need to be potency+cooldown changes, some can be resolved by deleting abilities and augmenting others, and others can be solved by just having one ability turn into another at a higher level. The class should not be a bard though, and it should not be more involved/harder than a bard to execute what is fundamentally the same style.

It shouldn't be too hard to fix, but I have a feeling if Summoner is not changed early, the class is going to end up with something akin to Machinist syndrome from SB where very few people actually play it because it has that many problems.

[Gallus]

I'm thinking it's not directly related to "going ham," so much as it's related to server tics. Even the best opener rotations I've seen would inherently put the egi at risk of dropping abilities, and it's basically impossible to account for without pacing out the oGCDs to be further apart.

And when designing these classes, you should basically expect that the player is going to fire off every oGCD in any order possible as fast as possible, I'm trying to find an optimal rotation but when I'm in a dungeon having gotten my 15th "Your pet cannot execute this action" error, in addition to tunnel visioning so hard I flat out cannot see bosses and their mechanics, and it makes me want to play a multitasking class that's easier like bard, there's a serious problem with the class design.

The issue comes down to a few specific points.

• The class has too many oGCDs
• Devotion, EA 1+2, ED, Fester, ES, Painflare, Bane are the oGCDs that cause major problems.
• The Pet oGCDs have a high chance of clipping each other and throwing away their effects either in part or entirely, including wasting the cooldown itself.
• The rotation outside of those specific problem oGCDs seems fine aside from having nothing to do on the back half of the rotaiton.
• Bane is an ability wanting for purpose, and exacerbates the oGCD issue, albeit only in dungeons against trash mobs typically. It's bar bloat, oGCD density, and just serves no purpose for an ability that I wish I could just set to autofire and pretend it doesn't exist (okay, not literally, but seriously the ability has no reason to exist).

Any change done should try to find a way to slow down the oGCD usage probably to about SB levels, especially in the opener (without micro-managing Contagion) and then find a way to distribute the abilities over more parts of the rotation more evenly.

The class needs work. It's not far, most of the changes need to be potency+cooldown changes, some can be resolved by deleting abilities and augmenting others, and others can be solved by just having one ability turn into another at a higher level. The class should not be a bard though, and it should not be more involved/harder than a bard to execute what is fundamentally the same style.

It shouldn't be too hard to fix, but I have a feeling if Summoner is not changed early, the class is going to end up with something akin to Machinist syndrome from SB where very few people actually play it because it has that many problems.

What Kyuxel has actually suggested isn't a bad idea. Just allow the Egi to automatically do the assaults and net us Ruin IVs. That would substantially solve this OGCD bloat mess...

[NovaBismarck]

...egi at risk of dropping abilities, and it's basically impossible to account for without pacing out the oGCDs to be further apart. ...

• The class has too many oGCDs
• Devotion, EA 1+2, ED, Fester, ES, Painflare, Bane are the oGCDs that cause major problems.
• The Pet oGCDs have a high chance of clipping each other and throwing away their effects either in part or entirely, including wasting the cooldown itself.
• The rotation outside of those specific problem oGCDs seems fine aside from having nothing to do on the back half of the rotaiton.
• Bane is an ability wanting for purpose, and exacerbates the oGCD issue, albeit only in dungeons against trash mobs typically. It's bar bloat, oGCD density, and just serves no purpose for an ability that I wish I could just set to autofire and pretend it doesn't exist (okay, not literally, but seriously the ability has no reason to exist).

Any change done should try to find a way to slow down the oGCD usage probably to about SB levels, especially in the opener (without micro-managing Contagion) and then find a way to distribute the abilities over more parts of the rotation more evenly.

The class needs work. It's not far, most of the changes need to be potency+cooldown changes, some can be resolved by deleting abilities and augmenting others, and others can be solved by just having one ability turn into another at a higher level. The class should not be a bard though, and it should not be more involved/harder than a bard to execute what is fundamentally the same style.

It shouldn't be too hard to fix, but I have a feeling if Summoner is not changed early, the class is going to end up with something akin to Machinist syndrome from SB where very few people actually play it because it has that many problems.

I hope devs are thinking about this already. I was going to avoid saying much since I'm only 76 at the moment and wanted to wait until I hit 80 and could try to play more with the rotation. (I have studied some of the plausible rotation options). But I have played enough to feel out the class. When I heard about the changes before the early release, overall I was happy by the sound of a lot of things they'd thought about. Getting it into practice however, there are still some concerns and like Taranok says I hope it's considered sooner rather than later. The pet abilities overriding will be a source of pain unless the rotation is balanced. Shoving that many ogcds into a 15 sec timeframe within DWT, well I'm not looking forward to it. Weaving is hard enough, doing it with pets that can glitch, not ideal. Overall, bahamut feels ok, phx ok. DWT with so many ogcds and then spending so much time with r3 spam. I'm still on the fence about how I feel about the R3 spam timeframe, but DWT with ogcds will be my biggest disdain if the rotation shapes up the way I see it possibly going. (I'm not saying that many ogcds is too hard, but the way they are laid out, that's my personal issue).

[Rauderi]

Y'know, it's not just that SMN, based off of Arcanist and thus having a heal spell, gets the shaft on Physick, but it seems like more classes are getting supplementary cures. When the friggin' Gunbreaker gets a better heal than a job that has it innately, there's something very wrong. I'm not even asking that it be as great as Vercure, but ffs something above 700hp at level 70 needs to happen. Seriously, a simple trait at level 30 that takes *a portion of Intelligence* into Physick would be fine.

[Dyvid]

It's definitely a very busy job now. Summon II still needs some crowd control and still would like to see Flaming Crush changed.