Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Taranok]

I just don't like Aetherflow as a mechanic. It's somewhat archaic and redundant since it's a cooldown to gate other cooldowns which gate other cooldowns (in SB's case).

In reality, the class is at its best when it's directly controlling demi-summons, and I mean more than "The demi-summon copies our GCDs to do its own GCDs." Which is bad design for other reasons. If you took the concept of Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix, and stretched that into a rotation all to its own you ran during the summon itself, mixed in with your own personal GCDs that changed a little depending on which summon was out, and then expanded the number of demi-summons, that captures the essence of summoner better overall.

Each summon can also have some sort of party utility. Phoenix can offer light healing utility mixed with perhaps some bonus healing, Bahamut can increase damage done by the party, you could have Ifrit which gives GCDs by the party a chance to proc extra damage attacks (Eruptions, of course), and Titan, which can pulse out a barrier on the party to slightly reduce incoming damage.

Then just delete Aetherflow outright and pace the rotation to be like, Ifrit->Titan->Bahamut->Phoenix on a 2m or so total cycle time and bring the numbers to a realm of sanity and boom, done.

You take abilities like Egi-Assault, Enkindle, and your standard ruins and adjust rotations based on what pet is out. An example of possibilities is looking at DWT's rotation (if you combined it with DB) versus FBT's rotation. FBT is 1-2-1-2 whereas DWT is 1-1-1-1. You can add oGCDs such as a 20s cooldown 2 charge ability for a bit of burst, or a 5s cooldown and mix it in with a 10s cooldown such as enkindle.

Completely get rid of things like Wyrmwave and make it so the pet exclusively acts from oGCDs or GCD commands. You could even go so far as to make it so Brand of Purgatory and Fountain of Fire directly commands the pet to do that specific attack, and the summoner does nothing personally so it comes exclusively from the pet. Then as long as pet movement isn't an issue, boom, summoner. You can just trance on a 30s cooldown to enter it at this point.

Possibly finish this off with a "The pet will always finish all executed commands before leaving, but you cannot execute any more commands after X seconds." to fix early jumps killing the pet (in other words, make the command to leave an action queued up automatically by the pet that is cast right as thhe timer ends, but is executed after it finishes its queue).