Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Taranok]

The pet change accomplished one major thing: It made the act of controlling the pet not a stupid, frustrating mess. You press the button, and you quickly get the result. But there are a ton of things the pets do wrong as well, and the class is an uncoordinated, disjointed mess because of all of these reasons and more.

But all it really shows is that SMN needs a complete rework, not a partial rework. There are too many systems that are tied in to the old poison mage design instead of the new summoner design, and at this point everything remotely tied in to poison mage should probably just be gutted outright (DoTs, aetherflow, ruin scaling with dots being the big ones) in favor of pushing the demi-summon system.

All of the systems they designed for poison mage can be turned into its own class as well, it's not like it needs to be scrapped entirely, and the game can really use a DoT-focused class again. But it shouldn't be SMN.

[dinnertime]

Also I really hate how DWT works now with aetherflow. Everything just feels disjointed. I get they wanted to reduce how long our rotation lasted but they kind of threw the baby out with the bath water by just flat out removing it.

This bothered me the most and it's what made SMN less flexible especially with downtimes now. Before I can manipulate my cooldown timers, choosing when to use DWT without any penalties. Now I'm expected to use it whenever it's ready or else I'll delay the cycle and lose damage.

They need to bring back the old Aetherflow system and improve upon it. Currently it's a frustrating "only in combat" ability that does nothing but unlock more abilities. Before, it's what ties most of SMN's mechanics together.

[Nineball]

As a solo player, i really hate that Titan can no longer tank for you. I purchased the lvl70 stuff (so im using that lvl 70 gear) just to get into the new content and main quest mobs are kicking my teeth in. Some of the quest mobs i have to spam my one heal just to survive.

Maybe im doing something wrong but i think im going to completely dump the class.

EDIT: So whats the best solo class now? I hear RDM is pretty good.

[Trayes]

Just off the top of my head, here are some things I would like to see.

Dreadwyrm Trance, Deathflare, Summon Bahamut, and Enkindle Bahamut should be 1 button. (I already do this with a macro.)

/merror off
/macroicon "Dreadwyrm Trance"
/ac "Enkindle Bahamut"
/ac "Summon Bahamut"
/ac "Dreadwyrm Trance"
/ac "Deathflare"

Energy Drain and Energy Siphon become 1 button. Deals 100 Pot to the first enemy and 60% less to all remaining enemies.

Egi Assault 1 and 2 into 1 button. Egi Assult has 2 charges. Casting Egi Assult grants Egi Assault II Ready for 15 seconds. and becomes Egi Assault II. Egi Assault II does not cost a charge to cast.

[Hasrat]

Ok. So. My SMN is still sitting at 60 (well, 62 now). I still have a desire to level all the things. And since I sorta mained BLM through SB, and RDM was pretty simple, didn't change much, figured I'd finish off my casters with SMN.

But I feel like I'm really having trouble understanding the flow, priorities, etc here. Obviously I'm reading a lot of grumbling, maybe my issues are related to what many of you see more clearly with the job. I've seen the big 80 rotation image floating around, I can sorta work it back to what I have available to me, get an idea of what's going on. But for me, I find it helps more if I at least understand why I'm doing things that I ought to be doing. So I'mma use this here to get a little feedback so maybe it doesn't feel too terrible getting it to 70 so I can move on to something else.

For starters, I'm feeling that I need to get better about using Tri-Disaster pretty much always, right? Entirely completely better than hard casting both dots. Although, depending on how tanks are pulling dungeon packs, how fights are going, etc, obviously dots end before it's back up. So, some hard casting may be required? Better to use DWT to reset the cooldown just to keep it going one more time at least? And naturally Bane those dots around for trash packs (it is kinda nice that Bane doesn't take an aetherflow stack now). That kinda the basic idea of keeping dots going? Tri-Disaster as available, DWT to reset that cooldown, hard cast when both of those are on cooldown? (again, this is pre-Bahamut, I'll worry about incorporating that part of DWT usage later)
Speaking of Aetherflow, it seems to only be used for Fester/Painflare now? So, is this literally just Energy Drain on cooldown, once dots are applied, use Fester twice, repeat? Swap in Siphon/Painflare for big pack AoE? Not really any other thought to the usage there? Seems superfluous at this point.
Ok, so I've literally only just noticed that whole "Ruin is stronger when dots are applied thing." That is cruel. Guess I'll make sure I'm more focused on keeping dots up now.
Deathflare. Seems like something I ought to be making sure to try to use before DWT ends, right? Missing out on sorta free damage otherwise?

And finally, the part I'm most unsure of, egis. Seems like Garuda is still mostly AoE, Ifrit for single, Titan for chumps?
With this whole charge skill thing, I can't really tell if I should just be spamming out all my charges at once, use it all on cooldown, or what sort of thought I should be putting into their use. I'm supposing I really don't want to spam the ones that apply a dot (tho it would be helpful if the tooltips listed these, rather than having to dig through your skills list to check or just remember). Seems to just be Garuda's Egi-II. So do I just spam Egi-I and Enkindle on cooldown?
Is it worth trying to juggle summoning egis for, like, ok, big trash pull, Garuda's out.... ok now most of them are dead, switch to Ifrit? Boss fights seem like they probably wouldn't require that much consideration, unless there's considerable adds maybe. Seems like an excessive level of micromanaging min/maxing that I personally wouldn't likely bother with.

Actually, just had one extra thought, regarding dots and Bane, since it doesn't take aetherflow anymore, am I also expected maybe to spam that on cooldown, too? In theory, sorta, could be resetting the dot timers, keeping that Ruin potency up, although dot potency is down. If you spread dots around from one target, switch to a second target, and Bane off of that, does it take the 60% potency off of the dot that was already at 60%? Is Bane-ing around weaker dots (if the timer resets) better than hard casting just to stall until Tri-Disaster comes back maybe?

Again, this is all pre-70, not worried about how Bahamut (and then Phoenix) will change things yet. Just looking to understand whatever this job is now. Seems like maybe it's just "dots, spam all your oGCDs, try to weave in some Ruins"? (see, that's a joke, because, should be weaving the other stuff around the Ruins, but damn, there's a lot of other stuff.)

Also, for laughs, go back and run a squad mission with an ACN in your group, and watch as they flaunt their Shadow Flare. With tanks using Convalescence. Something tells me squadrons didn't get the memo about all the changes.

[Ryskim]

You never mentionned one of the most disastrous and important changes:

Egis are not physical anymore. They can't be targeted by enemies, they can't tank for you at all. Bye bye to tanking with Titan when soloing. What an utter disappointment. The class is a hot mess. It was my main before.

[Neela]

You never mentionned one of the most disastrous and important changes:

Egis are not physical anymore. They can't be targeted by enemies, they can't tank for you at all. Bye bye to tanking with Titan when soloing. What an utter disappointment. The class is a hot mess. It was my main before.

titans shield is even better than his tanking in solo play tho - he couldn't overmob anyway without losing aggro to your aoe burst. the shield is way more flexible for solo play. but I guess u didn't even tried it hm?

[Nyoraii]

titans shield is even better than his tanking in solo play tho - he couldn't overmob anyway without losing aggro to your aoe burst. the shield is way more flexible for solo play. but I guess u didn't even tried it hm?

Sorry but this is COMPLETELY BS, 100%, at least in my leveling experience.

With pets having some sort of physical appearance they could at least tank some hits before the mobs came to you, giving you time to put all of your dots and start casting some nukes.
As it is right now, you're obligated to use the worst pet that has less dps than a 2.0 PLD, use EAI which doesn't even proc R4 and even then the shield will be down in one to two hits max.

[Neela]

Sorry but this is COMPLETELY BS, 100%, at least in my leveling experience.

With pets having some sort of physical appearance they could at least tank some hits before the mobs came to you, giving you time to put all of your dots and start casting some nukes.
As it is right now, you're obligated to use the worst pet that has less dps than a 2.0 PLD, use EAI which doesn't even proc R4 and even then the shield will be down in one to two hits max.

i fate with titan solo all the time dunno why u got that much problems - if u are just used to cast turret like without moving at all its not the pets fault : /

old titan couldnt tank mobs which were hit by dbl pf or deahtflare at all so if u went big titan always was BS – dont act like u lost something worthful lol... even your chocobo is a better tank than titan ever was.

[Len]

You never mentionned one of the most disastrous and important changes:

Egis are not physical anymore. They can't be targeted by enemies, they can't tank for you at all. Bye bye to tanking with Titan when soloing. What an utter disappointment. The class is a hot mess. It was my main before.

???

I leveled Summoner to 80 and never once thought, "Wow, I wish Titan-egi was a quasi-tank again." Summon your chocobo to tank or heal. Problem solved.