Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Taranok]

Yeah, I'll pass. I've waited years for them to finally make Summoner feel like a Summoner, and actually getting to command my Egis is a big part of that. From where I stand, Flavour is just as important to a job than functionality is - especially in this game where every role tends to be homogenized to a point. I'd rather they try to make changes that keep the class fantasy than turn Summoners into mere Ruin Mages again.
Besides, Aetherflow is a worse offender when it comes to "busywork" than EA is, so if any cuts should happen, I'd prefer they start there.

Considering that the Egis are the least summoner aspect of summoner, I fail to see your point. I'd seriously delete the Egis and all their associated abilities and completely rework how low level summoner works. To the point where the carbuncles are your low level summons, weak and frail. Then by 50 you would instead summon Demi-Ifrit and Demi-'Ruda, possibly Demi-Titan, and by 80 you'd do Bahamut and Phoenix, and possibly a third summon.

I would then take abilities like enkindle or Egi-Assault and turn those into "Let's summon old summons to attack either for a singular attack or for longer priods of time, but we purely summon them." So you could have demi-bahamut and Phoenix as your primary summons, and when you enkindle you summon Ifrit/Garuda/Titan, either individually (random rotation) or all 3.

That would make me feel more like a summoner than having to tell the carbuncle to do a left-handed attack instead of a right handed attack every 30 seconds, and DB/DP make me feel more like a summoner than the egis ever can or ever will.

Like I think SE is moving on the right path but I think they missed their mark.
I like being so active, it's not that I have too much to do, it's that I have too many (separate) things/timers to keep track of that my brainmeats get so cluttered.
It's like I'm frantically playing catch-up with my cooldowns @@

It does eventually start to move into a flow, but my issue is that in addition to tunnel visioning, I spend so much time trying to get out all of the oGCDs that I literally don't have time for something as basic as casting outburst, our filler aoe spell, except during DWT specifically where everything's instant cast. The class is just not set up to handle this many oGCDs this often and this quickly, and pretty much no class likes repeatedly and consistently double weaving.

If this were Red Mage, it would at least make some sense because RDM has every other GCD being instant cast as a guarantee, but SMN is not and it can't handle the sheer bulk of abilities flying out, so it clashes heavily with the actual abilities of the class.