Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Nemekh]

To be fair, in a lot of cases you'll probably want that Ruin II every now and then for double-weaves rather than single. For instance, you can double-weave that Painflare with one of the Egi Assaults/Enkindle for added aoe, or you may need to refresh DoTs with Tri-Disaster and Bane. I know it's not overly important in an average dungeon with trash pulls, but it's definitely a consideration.

This is better advice than the whole notion of "just clip" while AoEing. Be efficient with your weaves, make it count. Yes doubles suck if you clip from latency already, but it's always going to be better than clipping hardcast outbursts with the sole exception being if the small sliver of time is the difference between actions landing and not being overkill.

[ErzaScarlet77]

give me back 4.x SMN

the new one is too much and we'll probably get out dpsed by blm that doesnt have to move anyway and their rotation is like 6 buttons

[Shurrikhan]

give me back 4.x SMN

the new one is too much and [we'll probably get out dpsed by blm that doesnt have to move anyway and their rotation is like 6 buttons

Isn't that kind of the point of a zero-utility / pure-DPS turret job?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[NovaBismarck]

...egi at risk of dropping abilities, and it's basically impossible to account for without pacing out the oGCDs to be further apart. ...

• The class has too many oGCDs
• Devotion, EA 1+2, ED, Fester, ES, Painflare, Bane are the oGCDs that cause major problems.
• The Pet oGCDs have a high chance of clipping each other and throwing away their effects either in part or entirely, including wasting the cooldown itself.
• The rotation outside of those specific problem oGCDs seems fine aside from having nothing to do on the back half of the rotaiton.
• Bane is an ability wanting for purpose, and exacerbates the oGCD issue, albeit only in dungeons against trash mobs typically. It's bar bloat, oGCD density, and just serves no purpose for an ability that I wish I could just set to autofire and pretend it doesn't exist (okay, not literally, but seriously the ability has no reason to exist).

Any change done should try to find a way to slow down the oGCD usage probably to about SB levels, especially in the opener (without micro-managing Contagion) and then find a way to distribute the abilities over more parts of the rotation more evenly.

The class needs work. It's not far, most of the changes need to be potency+cooldown changes, some can be resolved by deleting abilities and augmenting others, and others can be solved by just having one ability turn into another at a higher level. The class should not be a bard though, and it should not be more involved/harder than a bard to execute what is fundamentally the same style.

It shouldn't be too hard to fix, but I have a feeling if Summoner is not changed early, the class is going to end up with something akin to Machinist syndrome from SB where very few people actually play it because it has that many problems.

I hope devs are thinking about this already. I was going to avoid saying much since I'm only 76 at the moment and wanted to wait until I hit 80 and could try to play more with the rotation. (I have studied some of the plausible rotation options). But I have played enough to feel out the class. When I heard about the changes before the early release, overall I was happy by the sound of a lot of things they'd thought about. Getting it into practice however, there are still some concerns and like Taranok says I hope it's considered sooner rather than later. The pet abilities overriding will be a source of pain unless the rotation is balanced. Shoving that many ogcds into a 15 sec timeframe within DWT, well I'm not looking forward to it. Weaving is hard enough, doing it with pets that can glitch, not ideal. Overall, bahamut feels ok, phx ok. DWT with so many ogcds and then spending so much time with r3 spam. I'm still on the fence about how I feel about the R3 spam timeframe, but DWT with ogcds will be my biggest disdain if the rotation shapes up the way I see it possibly going. (I'm not saying that many ogcds is too hard, but the way they are laid out, that's my personal issue).

[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.

[Gallus]

This is better advice than the whole notion of "just clip" while AoEing. Be efficient with your weaves, make it count. Yes doubles suck if you clip from latency already, but it's always going to be better than clipping hardcast outbursts with the sole exception being if the small sliver of time is the difference between actions landing and not being overkill.

Gotta cast that Ruin II when tank chain pulls 9 mobs, it's sure as hell going to make a lot of difference (actually no, you are being inefficient and losing out on a lot of DPS). An outburst with the ruination effect hitting say 5 mobs accounts for 450 potency. You don't want to waste an entire GCD that could be doing 450 potency for one that will do 180 potency just so that you can weave your painflares or EAs. But whatever, you can keep casting your Ruin IIs against 5+ mobs.

[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.