Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Len]

I believe there's been a critical mistake in the changes to summoner by shifting the 'gate' in the rotation from aetherflow to dreadwyrm/firebird trance. Its actually become far more punishing than before because we have much less agency over intelligent use of dreadwyrm trance in a fight.

Similar to aetherflow now, dwt will be critical to use on cooldown to ensure you get the maximum number of demi summons possible. The thing is, aetherflow was a much better skill for this purpose. The disjointed nature of aetherflow charges (which function like ammo you can hold onto) meant that you could generate them now but only use them later, and you would be none the worse off for it. Even if a target wasn't present, you could hit aetherflow to put it on cooldown, and only spend the charges when combat resumed. As long as you used them up before the next aetherflow 59s later (a trivial task) the rotation was unchanged by downtime.

Dwt functions differently to aetherflow as it grants a timed buff instead (firebird trance is even worse as it has the summon phoenix portion combined with it too). Like aetherflow, you'll still be pressured to hit these abilities on cooldown, but if no target is present you will be forced to waste them and let the timer run out, as their usage is intrinsically tied to the cast and can't be deferred to a more useful time in the fight.

I think that they've created a far bigger problem as a result, this is a step backwards and a major liability in the gameplay mechanics of shadowbringer's iteration of summoner.

Now that you’ve spelled out our doom, what’s the way out?

The Lv.80 trait that summons Phoenix on FB trance being removed/modified seems to be a good start.