My Thoughts on the 5.0 Media Tour Build of SMN

[CecMiller]

Hey there guys!

I was pretty hyped watching the new SMN abilities in the 5.0 live letter - they look great with the addition of another demi summon (lets face it, we got the better, new & shiny fire animations over BLM). I like the direction its headed in and can only hope for more demi-summons down the line. However, I have grievances over certain mechanical aspects of the new SMN cycle which I feel have changed for the worse. Also there will be some fluff so I'll get the main points out of the way soon.

This will be about the current SMN we saw in the Shadowbringers Media Tour build. I am aware that things are always subject to change – especially from the Media Tour build. But nevertheless, this is my feedback on the current look of EVERYTHING about SMN going into 5.0. This might be a long post so here is a TL;DR of the most important bits:

• Dreadwyrm Trance (DWT)/Firebird Trance (FBT) – Now inflexible. We MUST use it immediately to maintain alignment with raid buffs and not delay the summon cycle possibly even during downtime aka wasting some of our “burst” periods (if the right conditions were to occur). Worse than current AF as a “stress point” as we had time to decide when to use the 3 stacks before AF was up again in 60s meaning it was flexible as we could enter DWT whenever we wanted. Importantly, doesn’t solve the waiting for SMN’s AF problem currently as you can use it outside of combat so you could end up waiting for SMN regardless if they want to start with Bahamut if it was optimal to do so
  
  
• Aetherflow (AF) – Can no longer be used outside of combat. Still a “stress point”, but certainly not as important as before when it was linked to our SMN cycle. It is still a barrier for important damage OGCDs. Downtimes will now feel worse as a result in conjunction with the changes to DWT in all content. Losing up to 900 potency single target if a boss decides to fly away a bit faster for your team compared to others is not fun and a step backwards when compared to newly introduced abilities or gauge elements for other classes which improves their pooling of resources during downtime.
  
  
• Ruin 4 Stacking out of Combat – Currently achievable by swapping between Ifrit and Titan Egi. Can be stacked up to 4 through clever use of Egi Assault actions. This is not fun. I hope to see a change so that we are unable to do this as it would be optimal to do otherwise and would add additional wait time pre-pull if the Summoner was to play “optimally”.

TL;DR ends here.

These are the most important topics I will cover. The rest will mostly be fluff or my general thoughts on the class as a whole. In addition, I will be making use of the following interviews conducted with Yoshida:

Famitsu's Shadowbringers Media Tour Interview

Game Watch Media Tour Interview

I think the above interviews are certainly worth a read.

On deep diving into the new SMN’s mechanical changes I saw a lot of, what I feel are, regressive changes when I compared it to the current iteration of SMN. I play SMN in all pieces of content, but I have lots of experience with it in a raiding environment and so I’ll be offering a window into how many of these changes either negatively impact SMN, aren’t fun or don’t serve the purpose the designers were intending. The latter is important as we can gleam information from recent interviews about SE’s intention with SMN and how the new mechanical changes incorporate that. I’m aware their answers could be born out of a result of misunderstandings or breakdowns in communication, but I found their answers to be very interesting regardless. I hope you will come to see why I think their answers, and why what we have seen so far, does not match with the current SMN iteration in 5.0.

The Important Points:

Aetherflow, Dreadwyrm Trance and Firebird Trance:

A major change was introduced where DWT/FBT are now soley responsible for advancing our SMN cycle when previously it was Aetherflow in conjunction with DWT. On the surface it may seem innocuous, however when compared to the 4.1+ implementation of SMN, I see it has caused a few problems to occur.

DWT/FBT has now become very inflexible compared to 4.1+ implementation of DWT and re-introduced the reportedly “solved” issue of not waiting for Summoners pre-pull. Given certain situations were to occur with regards to fight length of raids, DWT pre-pull may be a reality SMN has to contend with.

Previously:

• Aetherflow to be used on cooldown for 60s. The ability to wait and decide how we wanted to use those stacks optimally for up to 60s (realistically more like 45s). Holding 3 stacks, and not expending them instantly, did not cause you to drift your cycle.
  
  
• DWT could be NOT used on cooldown. We could wait to see when the most appropriate time was to use it (i.e. for mobility reasons, deathflare timing for adds). Drifting only occured if you held it for too long.

Changes in 5.0:

• Energy Drain (Old AF) now on CD for 30s. Can be used on cooldown only if you have a target. Very easy to now lose uses over the course of a fight via downtime if no target is present.
  
  
• DWT/FBT MUST be used on cooldown every 60s for the sake of the SMN cycle. Holding it, and not using it instantly, causes drift to the cycle. Removed the ability to wait and use it at the most appropriate time(for mobility or other reasons) as a result of the impending drift and so has become inflexible.

You could argue the changes itself just means Summoner now is extremely strict with regards to timings than 4.1+ and that it is "intended". However, for me, the flexibility was a very popular aspect as I not only enjoyed the freedom, but feel it was parts of the SMN kit where you could express your “player skill”.

The changes overall speak for themselves. You are now forced into doing things when you previously weren’t. It eliminates player choice due to the penalty that now comes along with it (drifting of the cycle). If it isn’t immediately obvious, drifting of the cycle is bad. You could lose demi-summon usage (bad) and fall out of raid buffs permanently (bad) if you now hold DWT/FBT. This would result in similar issues in all areas of content besides raids i.e.. Dungeons. This doesn’t happen in the current system if you held Aetherflow stacks and expended it and the proceeding DWT within 60s. It is why the old system was really nice to play with.

The other problem, and arguably more important problem, with the new DWT is the fact that you can use it pre-pull.

In the 5.0 build, we see that Summoner cannot use Aetherflow/Energy Drain outside of combat. However, with DWT/FBT now being a 60s CD and being responsible on its own for our cycle, we could have the scenario of waiting 60s for the SMN pre-combat to use DWT to get Bahamut for the opener and so... nothing really changed. In certain situations, this would be the optimal play for the Summoner.

Yoshida has gone on record in an interview linked earlier to specifically say:

“We removed the annoying part of stacking your “Aetherflow” pre-pull as well.

If DWT/FBT can be used out of combat in this way, the problem would still exist as a requirement but for DWT/FBT instead of the old Aetherflow.

Personally speaking, I don’t see why they just did not start SMN with 3 Aetherflow stacks from the start or give them a “Hide” like ability like ninja so we could have Aetherflow ready to go after we used it the first time. This also would have “solved” the problem without introducing entirely new ones such as “AF/Energy Drain cannot be used outside of combat” and for DWT now also requiring the same tag of “cannot be used outside of combat” to avoid waiting for Summoners for 60s (as was the intended goal).

Such a change would have obvious knock-on effects in other pieces of content such as dungeons which will now just feel worse as there are now multiple things you must be in combat for when compared to 4.1+ SMN. In addition to this, changes would have to be made to the coding for Aetherflow stacks to disable them from "persisting on zone change” as covered in Nemekh’s post. The solution of simply giving SMN’s 3 stacks after wipes or entering an instance or even a “hide” ability from ninja would have been a more elegant solution and not cause further issues with other abilities now requiring to be changed so that they feel worse in all other aspects of the game.

Possible solutions:

• Allow AF/Energy Drain to be usable without a target (sacrificing the damage portion of the ability). Further, just start SMN with 2 stacks when they enter an instance and after every wipe. If you specifically want the SMN to start with 0 stacks, just tag the words "during combat only". This solves the problem pre-pull whilst allowing for AF refresh during long downtimes in raids. That said the latter option would be worse for dungeons as you won't be regarded as being in combat in the space between pulls. DWT would also remain inflexible.
  
  
• Further implement a charge system for DWT to retain its flexibility. If you could have DWT stack up to 2 charges after first use, you would gain an extra potential 60s to use DWT/FBT and not "delay" the SMN cycle.
  
  
• Reverting entirely to the old system AF/DWT system. This includes the reliance on Aetherflow/Energy Drain in conjuction with DWT. Changing cooldowns and timers would probably be necessary. Further, give Summoners maximum stacks at the start of battle whilst making it usable without a target. Starts SMN with max stacks, no need to change any rules regarding zoning into areas. Solves downtime issues, makes DWT flexible again. In effect it would feel the same as 4.1+ Summoner does now with everything else sprinkled on. I feel this would have been easier and better than the current 5.0 implementation. However, this is unlikely to be a solution realistically, but hey, I can't say I didnt try.

Whilst the first option would still mean DWT is inflexiblem I personally would want it to be flexible over it being a necessity to be used on CD all for the sake of not drifting our SMN cycle.

Ruin 4 Stacking pre-combat

This will be an extremely short topic. Simply don’t allow it to stack before combat. It wouldn't be fun and would take more time than waiting for AF ever did. It would be a bad joke to supposedly solve the issues of not waiting for SMN’s Aetherflow before combat and introduce something optimal which is far worse in regards to wait time.

Through clever usage of Egi actions and since Earthen Armour (EA1) from Titan and Flaming Crush (EA2) from Ifrit do not share a cooldown, Summoners can effectively gain 4 stacks of Ruin 4 pre-pull.

Example:

1. Use Ifrit's Egi Assault 2 in quick succession. It is on cooldown for 60s now (to get 2 charges) and you have 2x Ruin 4 stacks @30s.
   
2. Swap to Titan and use Egi Assault 1 immediately. 3x Ruin 4 @ 30s stack. Ruin 4 has 1-2s left use it again to have 4x Ruin 4 @30s. You should already have 1 of each Egi Assault back, and be charging the 2nd charge.
   
3. Start countdown timer whenever necessary to have Ruin 4 and have all Egi Assault charges back too (Expending 1 Ruin 4 and using another EA quickly would refresh the entire stack to 30s so you can hold the ruin 4 stacks for later weaving).

I hope I don’t have to explain how silly this sounds, but it would be “optimal” to do so. Please change this.

Possible solutions:

• You can longer gain Ruin 4 Stacks outside of combat.
  
  
• Egi Assault actions are "unable to be used outside of combat".
  
  

I am disappointed that so many of SMN’s skills could now possibly include the text “cannot be usable outside of combat” to cover the design flaws of the new implementation of SMN.

Final Thoughts:

The nature of restricting the use of Aetherflow takes a lot of the “player skill” away with regards to planning the usage of your AF stacks. Pushing phases of bosses before you can refresh AF undeniably worse than the current implementation.

• There exists a situation where a kill time difference of 1-2s could result in at least 1 less ED usage (900 potency) for one player compared to another all because the boss a boss was pushed into their downtime phase a second faster for one player. If the downtimes were in such a way that the boss jumped away frequently in similar intervals (See UCOB), the effect would be magnified as you could lose many usages. I'd rather keep the number of AF charges each player uses consistant with respect to downtime (and ofcourse, pressing the button on CD)

When and how we should also use DWT was also an expression of “player skill” i.e. keeping the ability for upcoming movment.

In addition to this, it strikes me as strange that many classes improved in their ability to “keep their power” during downtimes and SMN effectively lost it. BLM gained additional polygot stacks which require them to do nothing besides press transpose every now and then and the addition of umbral hearts which can be stacked to 3 during downtime very easily. Monk gained additional ways to keep GL4, Ninja gained a way to build charges on Kissatsu and more. I personally would like for us to retain our AF stacks during downtimes, even if potency numbers would have to be tuned to enable this again, and I am disappointed that SMN was taken a step back in this regard whereas others moved forwards.

I also just want to draw attention to Yoshida’s interview answers regarding Summoner. I don’t understand why some issues exist in their current form when every indication has been given to remove them. They said they wanted to remove AF wait pre-pull, but now you can still DWT pre-pull for the same 60s wait. Additionally, there exists a method where we can also stack Ruin 4’s pre-pull which would be considered “optimal” play. I hope this disconnect, whether it is in the form of communication from the balance team to Yoshida or just failing to understand the knock-on effects these changes have is remedied in the near future/future patches or preferably has already been dealt with before 5.0.

This covers what I feel to be the main issues hurting the current iteration of 5.0 SMN. I will now go over my thoughts on other aspects of SMN

[CecMiller]

Stuff that isn't too important and my thoughts on them:

Energy Siphon (AOE form of Energy Drain):

Why does this exist?

It shares a cooldown with Energy Siphon and has the exact same requirements as Energy Drain. The only difference is that it offers AOE damage whilst also giving you 2 Aetherflow stacks.

Could you not have simple wrote on Energy Drain the following?:

Deals unaspected damage to a target and all enemies around it with a potency of 100 for the first target and 50% less for all other remaining enemies nearby it.

You now have Energy Drain perform the function of Energy Siphon. Energy Siphon is button bloat and could have existed in the form of additional text on Energy Drain. I don’t understand why this ability took form as an actual individual spell available to Summoners when the solution was obvious.

Physick/New Everlasting flight “Heal”:

It is my wish that SMN to become a class which does not have access to healing spells in any form. We are a DPS class. We do not need heals. RDM has white magic and is more appropriate for them. We are SUMMONERS, not scholars.

To begin, why in an expansion which details so many changes to 5.0 SCH and includes several of their abilities pre-30 to be SCH only, does physick still exists as a tool for SMN?

More spells than ever before have become segmented between SMN and SCH. Our Bio/Bio2 differ in potency. Miasma has been outright removed from Scholar. Yet, we were unable to remove physick from SMN or at least make it accessible to only ACN (Arcanists) and SCH. This would have preserved it for low level scholars to use as a form of healing pre-30 whilst removing it from SMN’s toolkit. The addition of Earthen Armour from titan egi (a better form of mana-ward, at the cost of a dps loss) exists for SMN as a defensive measure now.

Everlasting flight is a new “Medica 2” type affect attached to FBT/Summoning Phoenix. This surely has to be purely for flavour. The heal also scales off INT with a small cure potency at 20 meaning its effectiveness is miniscule (2.4k hp was recovered over the entire duration it was active on a 71k hp SMN). There is NO situation I would want to be in as a SMN where a healer asks me to “Delay my phoenix for heals” nor would I want other summoners to think this was a good idea given the consequences with regards to the SMN cycle. Further, whilst not important, it would be the only regen type effect that was not a multiple of 3 as Phoenix lasts 20s and not 21s.

Heals and/or mitigation that comes from summoning Phoenix isn’t ideal as FBT isn’t a planned affair with regards to mechanics whereas heals and mitigation can be, and optimally should be. It is instead pressed on cooldown to make sure you do not drift from your summoner cycle. Whilst there is “no need” to make everlasting flight do something meaningful/effective, I think there are things that could be more flavourful whilst also serving a more meaningful non-healing related purpose.

Examples of what could be useful/more flavourful:

• Give it the old DWT Magical Bonus whilst Phoenix is out – 10% magic increase (or whatever %) for the duration of phoenix. This would be like the Phoenix blessing you get for golden if you meet the DPS check on Bahamut. This would be both flavourful and useful in comparison to a heal or mitigation as you would ALWAYS make use of the benefit.
  
  
• Make Phoenix apply Contagion onto the target as soon as you use a targeted spell. Contagion is removed in 5.0 and was the ONLY source of a magical DPS boost to the party. As current the timing of FBT is strict, this would result in probably less than optimal contagion placement for other magic users and probably the first idea would be the smarter one to implement. I will miss contagion, however.

Demi Summons and Wyrmwaves(WW)/Scarlet Flames(SF):

I’m part of the crowd that liked the WW/SF interaction with our Aetherflow abilities and even Tri-disaster (but not addle). I feel as if it has become a bit more boring without this interaction going into 5.0. I didn’t think it was overly complex, but I would have been all for removing addle to trigger a WW. Now you just spam ruin 3’s which will be the majority of our “interaction” with it.

Egi’s and Egi Assaults::

I think Egi Assaults and their guarantee of generating a Ruin 4 proc is one of the best ideas for 5.0 SMN - It's great!

I like the introduction of the Ruin 4 stack mechanic otherwise the abilities themselves are not overly powerful nor interesting. The abilities also look more responsive which is welcome news. The only comment I will add now is that it did introduce more buttons for the summoner to press as many summoners were content with leaving the Egi’s on “Sic”. For them, "pet management" may have increased (even if you argue that they are now “Summoner actions", they still correspond to pets performing them). Without the Ruin 4 trait, I would not have enjoyed using the Egi Assault actions unless they were more meaningful. It is important to remember this point going forward as I think that the removal of Egi Assaults generating Ruin 4’s would instantly make the moves boring and might as well be able to be automated under “Sic” without the Ruin 4 mechanic.

Egi Roles:

The actual decision making required for which pet is more appropriate is as simple as:

• Do you need to AOE and dont have a demi summon? Use Garuda
  
  
• Do you want to deal the most damage to a single target? Use Ifrit.
  

There is no other incentive for pet swapping, and this alone can be good enough. I feel it does leaves Titan Egi in an awkward place where it does neither of the two well and infact loses damage via Egi Assaults as one of its moves has no potency (the shield).

Overall, I think the decision-making regarding pet swaps is not too different to what many summoners were doing now. Garuda was preferred when there were frequent downtimes to take full advantage of our burst inside Contagion (10% magic vulnerability for 15s) with Ifrit closing the gap on high uptime fights. Instantly pet swapping is a welcome addition along with its mana cost removal, though I am a bit sad that the magical and physical debuffs from Garuda and Ifrit have been removed with special mention for Contagion being the only source of a magic-only “party buff” in the game.

Titan Egi:

Titan Egi deserves his own mini segment. He has been changed and his use cases have delightfully improved from before (as far as raiding is concerned). To preface all of this, I honestly don’t think he needs additional changes or any, but further uses for him would be more than welcome.

For raiding, Ifrit is strictly better for single target DPS, Garuda strictly better for AOE cleave situations/add phases. On the other hand, Titan Egi can be defined by one move only:

• Earthen armour – A 20% shield of your maximum HP that lasts 30s has a 30s CD and has 2 charges.

This is the only reason to use this Egi.

This move does have certain caveats – you must have an Egi Assault available to use it and you are forced to use titan for at least 10s (as you cannot swap to another Egi for at least 10s after you summon one) which further results in DPS loss besides the Egi Assault having no potency. That said though, having a 20% shield of your Maximum HP every 30s is extremely strong. The only thing negative I have to say about it is that it’s the only notable purpose of Titan Egi as the other two Egi’s have well defined roles.

Titan, in its current state, would see only niche use. During raids, perhaps during prog fights, but ultimately only see use during “downtime” unless the player had the presence of mind to save an action specifically for an upcoming mechanic or just incase something went wrong with healing.

For solo play, the good news is that he will still be the best tank pet as he does allow the SMN to get “tankier” and Ifrit’s “Crimson Cyclone” has lost its stun. I honestly think titan is now fine as he is, even if he will still see minimal use. His worth has gone up assuredly. I just feel an opportunity has been lost here to have him be defined by strong Egi Assault actions.

Some suggestions:

• His second move could enhance solo capability such as making his second move do an AOE stun furthering his defensive utility.
  
  
• His second ability could "Enhance your next Ruin cast potency by 100/Tri-bind by 50". To balance this, the Egi action would have its potency removed. He already is the best Egi for downtime so maybe a second ability could amplify this even if not really needed.

I guess the only complaints I have now is that, if you could remove the entire pet and simply have Earthen Armour from Titan, you would not be missing anything from losing Titan Egi. If you did this, solo play would improve as you would do more damage, whether it be AOE or Single Target, and it would have almost no effect on all other pieces of content as Titan’s role seems relegated to “Downtime Egi” due to, arguably, the strongest Egi Assault action in the game. Ifrit and Garuda are strong in their clearly defined roles despite their abilities whereas Titan Egi is defined by one of his.

Player Skill and Complexity with regards to Summoner:

“Job effectiveness is dependant on player skill”

An obvious statement in retrospect, but one I want to discuss. I do believe SMN did effectively make the DPS gap larger between good and average summoners than can be seen in 4.1+ SMN's iteration. I actually will enjoy this personally speaking. But I did want to note how this seemed to almost be in contrast to a lot of the other classes which received simply quality of life or had their classes become “easier” or had the gap shrink in some way or form.

First, the benefits of casting a Ruin 3(150) vs. a Ruin 2(80) is now a 70 potency gain instead of 20 and Ruin 4(200) is now a 120 potency gain over Ruin 2. This alone is a big change. Many average SMN's over-used Ruin 2 and will now do less DPS as a result. I am a big fan of this change as I felt ruin 2 for mobility should always come with a bigger draw back. We have become a bit more like blackmage, but this could also alienate some players.

Secondly, having dots maintained on the target was very important for Summoner and they, sometimes, failed to even do this simple task. Dots themselves have gone down by 10 potency each resulting in a net 200 potency decrease, but the need for maintaining our dots has actually increased as all your Ruins will be doing 50 potency more per dot on the target (totalling 100).

Overall, this is not an issue for good SMN's who were already hardcasting Ruin 3 when possible and maintaining dots. but I'd argue this will result in the gap between an average SMN's DPS and a good one's growing instead of shrinking. The removal of demi-summons interacting with OGCDS for WW/SF which good SMN's made use of has been removed and now almost all SMN's will do the same amount. Whilst you can argue the WW change will make the gap “smaller”, the changes to our Ruin spell potencies and their interactions with our dots have widened the gap more in more ways extra WW’s ever did.

Actual Final Words:

The 5.0 iteration of SMN has some obvious design implementation issues in the system (AF vs. DWT pre-pull, Ruin 4 stacking pre-pull) and I personally don’t like some of the changes with regards to how “strict” the rotation/cycle has become or our newly created downtime weakness. That said, I’m still super looking forward to the new 5.0 SMN. I love the new direction and just hope some of the major issues with it are remedied in some way. I liked the older more flexible playstyle in all areas of content (not just raiding) and I’ve been pretty vocal on still having it. I made this thread in the hopes I would be able to steer SMN in a direction which is fun for me. The new SMN is arguably more complex to maximize now than it ever was in 4.x. But hell, it sure looks fun. I hope you have as much fun with it as I will : d

[XenabelleS]

Stuff that isn't too important and my thoughts on them:

For solo play, the good news is that he will still be the best tank pet as he does allow the SMN to get “tankier” and Ifrit’s “Crimson Cyclone” has lost its stun. I honestly think titan is now fine as he is, even if he will still see minimal use. His worth has gone up assuredly. I just feel an opportunity has been lost here to have him be defined by strong Egi Assault actions.

Some suggestions:

• His second move could enhance solo capability such as making his second move do an AOE stun furthering his defensive utility.
  
  
• His second ability could "Enhance your next Ruin cast potency by 100/Tri-bind by 50". To balance this, the Egi action would have its potency removed. He already is the best Egi for downtime so maybe a second ability could amplify this even if not really needed.

I guess the only complaints I have now is that, if you could remove the entire pet and simply have Earthen Armour from Titan, you would not be missing anything from losing Titan Egi. If you did this, solo play would improve as you would do more damage, whether it be AOE or Single Target, and it would have almost no effect on all other pieces of content as Titan’s role seems relegated to “Downtime Egi” due to, arguably, the strongest Egi Assault action in the game. Ifrit and Garuda are strong in their clearly defined roles despite their abilities whereas Titan Egi is defined by one of his.

In every other MMO I've played the benefit of the pet class is that something else had the mob in its face that it was hitting allowing the character to be at range. A 20% shield does not do the same.

So - no - it's not going to be the case in 5.0 or maybe ever again. I certainly am really going to miss Titan and I was going to use SMN to go through the MSQ with. Now though, I guess it will be RDM with my chocobo as at least I'll have access to a reasonable heal if mobs are punching my toon in the face.

[Elgeron]

Thanks for these post, the information is very well presented. While sadly I don't have really anything to add to the discussion due to my inexperience with SMN, as I'm quite average, I plan to main it for ShB. Let's hope either that SE had fixed the class on release (doubtful) or atleast listen to this and the other topics on SMN's issues and fix it in a foreseeable future.

[Len]

Thanks for the observations. I hope the developers are paying attention to the community when they make their revisions.

[CecMiller]

Just wanted to throw some ideas on what could be done to spice up Enkindle damage (2 min cd), Phoenix Demi-Summon and DWT by trading it with, otherwise boring, damage elsewhere.

First off, I would like DWT/FBT to be given the charge system to be flexible. This would make the following ideas feel better:

In 5.0, we currently gain +100 potency bonus to all ruin’s whilst dots affect our targets. We can trim potency from here and add it to other areas which I’ll show in a moment. It’s the most “boring” form of potency increase and so I would reduce it from here as it keeps the gap from Ruin 4, Ruin 3 and Ruin 2 intact.

If we assume a SMN could get around 21 GCD’s a minute, dropping the dot Ruin bonus potency by 30 (meaning we get a 35 potency bonus from both dots instead for a total of 70) means we would lose 30*21 = 630 potency/min which ignores the FBT GCD’s. If I was to factor in FBT GCD's not relying on dots, we would only lose (630 + 630*4/6)/2 = 525p/min (As FBT would be in use for 2/6th of the 2nd minute of our cycle).

Total Loss: 525p/min

With 525p/min potency a min to be gained elsewhere, we could do the following:

Enkindle:

Garuda Enkindle is currently 350 pet potency. With our most approximate pet multiplier values for garuda at 0.8, this comes out to 280 player potency.
I would simply double the damage to 700 pet potency (or alternatively 1.75x it to around 600 pet potency). This results in extra 280 potency per 2 minutes (2 min cooldown). So over 1 minutes its 140 potency per min. You can make similar calculations for the other pets, but I’m lazy so I’ll just use this and say its in the region of 120-140 with Ifrit being 120p/min (but potentially greater with Spellspeed due to dot scaling). If our potency/min was too strong, this is the first area I would trim over the other two.

Total Gain: 120-140p/min

DWT:

In its current incarnation, it no longer provides the magical bonus from using abilities inside it and we can use it every 2 minutes. I would have it retain its old 10% magical bonus.

Assuming 6 R3 and 0R4, this would result in the following gain (Every 2 mins):

6*150*0.1 (6R3) + 400*0.1(Deathflare) + 800*0.1(Dots) + (800*0.1) (2 Festers) = 290 potency per 2 minutes aka 145 potency/min.

This gives more meaning to DWT as we would stand to “lose” dps by ending it early. Right now, provided you can still hard cast ruin 3 and have done your weaves, you would be losing nothing if you instantly did DWT->Deathflare.

Total Gain: 145p/min (Assumes Dots + Fester and 0 R4)

FBT:

Currently provides a “heal” like effect when summoned. Why not a magical bonus again? Except it would be stronger because it lasts 20s as opposed to 15s and the abilities you can use are stronger inside it. I feel its more flavourful for phoenix to provide a DPS buff. Lets give it a 10% magical bonus like DWT.
Note:
Phoenix Enkindle follows Garuda pet potency so 680*0.8 = 544 (approx.). Likewise, Scarlet Flame does the same so 150*0.8 = 120 (Approx).
These are just our best estimates. FoF = Fountain of Fire, BoP = Brand of Purgatory.

Assuming 8 Scarlet Flames per Phoenix, this would result in the following gain (Every 2 mins):

8*120*0.1(Scarlet Flames) + 544*2*0.1 (Phoenix Enkindle) + 250*4*0.1 (FoF) + 300*4*0.1 (BoP) + 800*0.1 (Dots) + 800*0.1 (Festers) = 584.8 potency every 2 mins

Total Gain: 292.4 potency ever min.

With these changes We have the following:

(120p to 140p) + 145p + 292.4 = 557.4p/min to 577.4p/min (Ifrit and Garuda Enkindle respectively)

With a 20p base potency nerf of FoF (to 230 to keep it in line with Ruin 3), and a nerf of 30p to the base potency BoP (270 so its still 297 which is close to 300 after accounting for the magical buff(+27)) we would have a gain of 282.4 potency/min in phoenix, provided we had everything inside it (subtracting 20*4*0.1/2 and 30*4*0.1/2 from 292.4p/min). This would decrease the potency gained from the changes to about 547.4p/min to 567p/min. (Ifrit and Garuda Enkindle respectively). We would be losing 525p/min (with 21GCD/min), but gaining 547.4p/min and so we would gain 22.4p/min with Ifrit as an example. If it was too strong, I would just mess with enkindles potency instead so it would be more in line with the 525p/min requirement. Example: 1.75 multiplier instead on the Enkindles so it would be 180 to 210 potency gained per 2 mins aka 90 to 105 per 1 min. This would drop the 557.4p/min (without the phoenix GCD changes) to 527.4p/min. which is more in line with the 525p/min.

We would have to fulfil the following requirements for max benefit:

1. Full GCD usage in DWT with Festers and Dots
2. Enkindle on CD with full duration of Ifrit dot
3. Full duration of GCD & Enkindle usage inside Phoenix with Festers and dots aswell as maximum Scarlet Flame use.

Personally, I would like these changes for the following reasons:

1. Retains the DPS discrepancy of using Ruin 3 vs. Ruin 2.
2. Makes our Enkindle worthy of being a 2 min CD
3. DWT more meaningful as you can make use of the magic bonus with Festers and Dots and you would lose more than just instant casts/weave opportunities by ending it early/provides more opportunities for smart play.
4. FBT have a more appropriate “buff” during its 20s its out and is solidified as our new “burst” window