Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Gallus]

Well, so far I like it, I'm 75, it seems like there's a lot of OGCDs to keep track of and it's a bit overwhelming, but it's a matter of practice I suppose. It doesn't feel easy that's for sure, and I can imagine the amount of OGCD weaving in the level 80 phase phoenix being pretty nasty.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Taranok]

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

As far as I can tell, the class is actually the busiest or near-busiest job in the game. I haven't done enough of the new Machinist to know for sure, and obviously Dancer is right out, but I'm tunnel visoning hard just trying to keep on top of the 50 billion cooldowns this class has to constantly fire off.

And I've come to find that the queue limit appears to just be a hard 2, because even if I just start with EAs, I've seen EAs frequently get dropped when I back to back cast them. Having Enkindle and Devotion under the same system exacerbates the issue, the pet is just flat out not fast enough for how quickly SMN needs to be able to pump out these oGCDs.

I actually am struggling to figure out how the devs didn't notice these issues. Every individual change is great, but the class as a whole basically is trying to play like a Bard on steroids but it's a caster and it's breaking at the seams.

[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.

[Rauderi]

Summon II still needs some crowd control and still would like to see Flaming Crush changed.

I find myself a little baffled by Ifrit being so AoE focused. We already have Garuda for that.
And I have a major gripe with Titan's Assault I not activating Ruin IV. Seems like it activates on Assault only if it damages an enemy, not when the summon's cast is finished.
As it is, if I'm going to lose pet sustain *and* have no way to heal, I may as well roll RDM and free myself from the complications of pet positioning. And yeah, not letting that Physick thing go until SMN gets *some* Mind to cast it with. Literally easiest solution. Half Int or even a third would be a huge boost over what we have now.

[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.

[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.