Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Taranok]

To be fair, Summoner is now one of the weakest support jobs in the game. a 3 minute cooldown for only 15 seconds of + damage both puts the devotion during Phoenix (and then during bahamut the next time around because why not) and it also just is way too low uptime.

It's effectively around 40-60% the power of Embolden just with the power to help healers and other casters instead of just physical.

And giving the advice to "just clip the GCD" is bad advice pretty much always. It's 200 potency+ per GCD to hit with ruin 2 (assuming ruination), and while that's technically a DPS loss, every single oGCD you clip into the GCD timer is costing you ~40 potency, and that number goes technically is worse if you do it when clipping outbursts (starting at 54 potency per GCD). The fact that it's even a problem is the bigger issue, since summoner as a caster is not designed around throwing around this many oGCDs even with ruin 2 factored in, the aoe rotation is flat out broken.

[Len]

Could anyone tell me if I'm doing this right? This is generally what I follow.

Dreadwyrm Trance: Energy Drain, Ruin 3's while weaving Egi Assault till all charges have been spent, as well as egi Enkindle, Devotion between, etc.

Summon Bahamut: Ruin 4, Fester, Enkindle, and then weave any of the Ruin 4's I have between R3 casts, final enkindle with 3 secs left.

Phoenix Trance: Enter with 2 Aetherflow. Fountain of Fire, Fester, Brand of Purgatory, Enkindle, rinse and repeat.

[Dyvid]

Could anyone tell me if I'm doing this right? This is generally what I follow.

Dreadwyrm Trance: Energy Drain, Ruin 3's while weaving Egi Assault till all charges have been spent, as well as egi Enkindle, Devotion between, etc.

Summon Bahamut: Ruin 4, Fester, Enkindle, and then weave any of the Ruin 4's I have between R3 casts, final enkindle with 3 secs left.

Phoenix Trance: Enter with 2 Aetherflow. Fountain of Fire, Fester, Brand of Purgatory, Enkindle, rinse and repeat.

I'm trying R4 during DBaha phase but it seem like you have a switch from instances cast to R3 2.5 casting slows me down during this phase. Also I used TD before DWT and then wait till it's up again to use in conjunction with DBaha. Hard cast DoTs before DPhoenix so TD is ready after that.

[xXAzurePrimeXx]

Could anyone tell me if I'm doing this right? This is generally what I follow.

Dreadwyrm Trance: Energy Drain, Ruin 3's while weaving Egi Assault till all charges have been spent, as well as egi Enkindle, Devotion between, etc.

Summon Bahamut: Ruin 4, Fester, Enkindle, and then weave any of the Ruin 4's I have between R3 casts, final enkindle with 3 secs left.

Phoenix Trance: Enter with 2 Aetherflow. Fountain of Fire, Fester, Brand of Purgatory, Enkindle, rinse and repeat.

More or less what I've been doing but you're going to have to fit revelation in the Phoenix trance phase as well when you're weaving. The timing to maximize all of that while getting all 8 fountain of fire and brand of purgatory casts are pretty right. The thing about 5.0 summoner is that we arent locked to one be all end all rotation. We have a lot more flexibility and choice to how we want to use our ogcds.

[Daethir]

I just want to say that it's nice to read that other more experience SMN also have trouble keeping up with the timer / CD and oGCD, I was starting to feel like a scrub with the new rotation giving me headache.

[Nobuyuki_Sanada]

I think what scares me the most with summoner is that it is so attention consuming just to use your skills properly. In these early level dungeons and trials its not so bad because you don't get punished for looking at your hotbar, but when I go to try extreme and later raids/savage I feel it will be next to impossible for me to keep up with everything while doing mechanics.

[Roda]

I think what scares me the most with summoner is that it is so attention consuming just to use your skills properly. In these early level dungeons and trials its not so bad because you don't get punished for looking at your hotbar, but when I go to try extreme and later raids/savage I feel it will be next to impossible for me to keep up with everything while doing mechanics.

This is what is really worrying me. I don't know how I'm going to keep track of 10~14 different counters, telegraphs/environmental hazards, the boss's cast bar, my positioning, my mana levels (since we don't get mp on aetherflow) and calling for my raid all at the same time. I'm desperately trying to find some way of ripping my eyes away from the seemingly required full-time vigil on my hotbars so I can actually enjoy these cool fights. >.<
(SE, please.. Sound effects for when AE1&2 are up)

Also has anyone else notice ifrit-egi doesn't give a single solitary H*ck if anything gets hit by AE2? I've been focusing on a target, another target dies, ifrit decides it's a great idea to come back to me, stop, and then use flaming crush.

[Jikillia]

Got to 80 and played for a bit I would like to add in my thought

1. Pets

I actually like the change more than dislike it. Now we are able to change pets in mid-battle and are encouraged with Garuda AOE and Ifrit single target. I find this far more interactive than summon and forget. While changing pets was a thing even before, it was a matter of squeezing out the most out of our dps and mostly was not something people would do a lot. (The question of whether we should or not is irrelevant) However, EA seems a bit too blend. Garuda has a bit more reason to have 2 different actions (flat AOE dmg + AOE dmg with aoe DOT groud) but ifrit could use minor adjustment like applying DoT on a single target rather then simple aoe or single. They made distinction between two pets and adjusting skills according to that makes more sense in my opinion.

Titan-egi is a bit of a different issue altogether. I can see the direction that devs took with our nugget and I like the direction, but the execution is questionable. During any encounter, we would spend them as soon as we can I would imagine (at least I have been doing that) and that means my EA1 stack is burnt pretty quickly. That means I see a dangerous dmg coming my way and I summon Titan-egi only to realize that my EA1 is on CD and I've lost my dmg and ate the damage that I was trying to protect myself from. Plus Earth shield not giving us ruin 4 stack is another huge problem. Ruin 4 stack and it's management became quite important in my opinion in optimizing our damage and spending our EA1 but not getting our stack simply makes titan-egi that much less appealing to even summon in the first place. The only time I summoned Titan-egi and successfully used shield was against Titania's big attack and I somehow had 1 EA1 available.
On that, I believe Titan-egi should have a passive effect along the line of smn suffering less dmg as long as Titan is out (or something else that is defensive) so our EA stack(?) is not used for our defense. EA1 on Titan-egi can be another attacking skill.

The real issue with our egi change is that we are completely devoid of any control capacity. Before, pets were different entities with their own controlling ability (Garuda's knockback - everyone's favourite - and stun on ifrit and titan). I believe it was mentioned before and I see this as a problem. BLM has sleep (AOE at that) and RDM can heal for a descent amount instead of control. While it does not go beyond niche mechanic in smn's kit, I think we stand to gain more to have a minor control ability and Titan-egi seems a perfect candidate for that. i.e. - EA1 single target stun/interrupt, EA2 aoe slow, enkindle aoe dmg + puddle with DoT and heavy

[Jikillia]

Continuing


2. oGCD

I can agree that its a too much. We have 4 from EA, 1 from ED/S, 2 from painflare/fester, Tri-D, dreadwyrm trance, demi-bahamut & ark morn, phoenix & revelation, 3 egi summons, 1 devotion and 1 egi's enkindle. While firebird trance and dreadwyrm trance reduces our spellcasting time to 0 across the board (except rez) it quickly overwhelms as the fight escalates. Not to mention every caster dps or healer are pretty flashy with out smn at the top with our giant demi summons, you are under much bigger pressure in and out. The fact that our oGCD management is crucial part in our dps makes this problem even bigger.

I've seen a lot of people questioning the necessity to have ED/ES and I agree as well. Making fester and painflare 15sec CD (which I believe it was suggested on the forum, can't remember exactly where) would lift up a lot of pressure off our shoulder. Also EA doesn't need to be our oGCD I feel. While pet is faaaaar more responsive (and yes they are so much more responsive), rather than have them act off our oGCD make those skills to operate independent to our actions would again life off the pressure. Phoenix feels slight less responsive than bahamut but it didn't feel too much of a problem. Not sure that was just me though.

A lot of people also said that egis forget the actions that we commanded them to do, but I never felt that. Times when pet's action was ignored happen and I've only seen them happen when mobs die after I give the command but die before egi executes it. So if fix is to happen than either make our skill not go on CD or like I suggested, make them independent to our actions therefore it goes on CD not on our action but egi's action.

[Miskatonic]

I must say I agree with how crazy the job feels. Especially coming from playing RDM throughout Stormblood, the amount of pressure there is for OGCD and how bad it feels compared to the smoothness of RDM has been very tricky to adjust to. I've been mostly playing by ear and really have no idea if I'm even doing it right.

The other issue is that the lack of pet tanking made the lvl 60-70 SMN job quests extremely difficult. It required chocobo companion, titan shields, and potions to complete and I still died a couple times. I'm not sure if they retuned these quests to compensate for the lack of a meatshield Titan.

Overall, I'm tempted to go back to RDM but I told myself I'd get to 80 on SMN and main it this expansion and I'm sticking to my guns for now.