5.0 Summoner combat has been fundamentally changed for the worse

[Myon88]

I'd like to draw attention to the most important change that summoner received in Shadowbringers - the removal of aetherflow - and why this change has serious ramifications on how the job will be played in battle content going forward.

As you know, aetherflow has a 1 minute cooldown and grants 3 aetherflow charges. Spending them is how you activate dreadwyrm trance (and in turn gain bahamut charges). In order to build up to bahamut, it is important to use them every minute before you hit aetherflow again.

In 5.0, dreadwyrm trance will now be the button you want to hit on schedule every minute, it still grants bahamut/phoenix charges after use, and is now a simple 1 minute cooldown not requiring aetherflow charges to be spent to unlock it. This move from aetherflow to dreadywrm trance as the bottleneck of the rotation dramatically changes for the worse how downtime affects summoners.

The strength of aetherflow lies in the fact that activating it to gain charges is seperate from spending those charges. Even if aetherflow coincided with a break in combat, you could press it anyway to start the cooldown and wait till the enemy returned to spend them. Regardless of the length of downtime, the overall flow of the rotation was unchanged as the only bottleneck was aetherflow, and you were able to keep its cooldown cycling on schedule.

Dreadwyrm trance is different as unlike granting you 'ammo' like aetherflow, it activates a buff that starts immediately. As the cooldown will not begin until you actually use it, this means that if you run into the situation above, you will be forced to either use it now and waste it, or wait till combat restarts. Firebird trance is even worse as 'summon phoenix' is combined with it too. Even if you are forced to waste dreadwyrm trance, you can at least still summon bahamut at a different time when convenient, but not with phoenix.

Both cases result in lost damage. Either immediately, or by delaying your demi summoning cycle permanently for the rest of the fight, reducing the total number of demis you can summon. This will happen in all settings, be it raids, trials, or dungeons. Even solo and outdoor content.

Conclusion:
The nature of aetherflow meant that till now, summoner has been well equipped to adapt to downtime. It rewards knowledge of the game and gives you the agency to plan ahead. With dreadwyrm trance taking its place, we are losing all these advantages. This is very disappointing in an expansion where the dev team has started to take downtime into account in job design. New additions like the charge system allow cooldowns to 'overflow' without penalty, and jobs like monk and black mage are getting improved tools to carry over resources through downtime.

Summoner in contrast is going backwards in design several years. Instead of being able to bank resources and sync up burst phases with opportune moments of an encounter, our trances and demi summons are going to turn into 'use it or lose it' static cooldowns like the infamous wildfire.

[Myon88]

Some examples of how this can be fixed,

1. Revert us to using aetherflow instead of energy drain and tie it to dreadwyrm trance again, and split dreadwyrm trance and firebird trance into separate skills. I feel like this is unlikely however seeing as they've already given aetherflow away to scholars in Shadowbringers. The only issue with aetherflow was the stress of needing to accumulate it before combat for optimal results, and they've already found a solution to this by making aetherflow generate no resources when pressed outside of combat.

2. Incorporate dreadwyrm trance into the new charge system they've added and give it 1 extra charge, so it will stack to 2 total. This will not change the overall rotation much as you still only gain 1 charge per minute, however it will allow you to delay subsequent recasts after the first by up to 1 minute before the charges 'overflow', giving you the freedom to activate it when you want.

3. Make 'summon phoenix' a separate button from firebird trance, similar to bahamut. This would not fix the problem entirely like the above two, however it would at least make it less evident in the phoenix phase, where it is magnified because phoenix is tied to the mandatory firebird trance cast. Dreadwyrm trance and summon bahamut being separate buttons is a strength, and there is nothing to be gained by combining skills like this.

[Vulcwen]

One addendum to this is the way the trances are spaced 60s apart also has serious ramifications to how your dots will work. It enforces, without any flexibility, that you will align your dots around your trance uses (after one cycle). And if you do that, you'll get at most a dot uptime of 118s out of your 120s rotation. Since downtime affects when you can use your trances, it'll force a misalignment of your dots with raid buffs, with no way to fix it but to either throw away a DWT or delay even more (neither of which are likely worth it).

Flexibility and the ability to adjust to how the fight works has always been one of the most attractive parts of the SMN playstyle, these changes remove a lot of that flexibility in favor of a rigid design closer to MCH (with fixed cooldowns) also including a lot of double weaving which can be an issue for players with high latency.

[WandererintheDark]

It really feels like two separate people were assigned to deal with aetherflow being used pre-pull and removing dreadwyrm aethers, but they never discuss their solutions with each other. So, now we get a system that is worse in almost every respect.

[Len]

All this doom and gloom makes me sad when at first I thought we were headed to a good place.

[Myon88]

Let me also show a simple example to illustrate how gating demis behind dreadwyrm trance instead of aetherflow will change the way you approach fights.

Consider a case where you're 80 seconds from the end of the fight. Dreadwyrm trance/firebird trance has just come off cooldown, and the boss is currently untargetable and returning in 20 seconds.

• With how dreadwyrm trance works in 5.0, you'll likely opt to wait till the enemy reappears to activate it, when there are 60 seconds left in the fight. This means it will sit ready and unused for 20 seconds. You'll enter firebird trance then, and only then will dreadwyrm trance resume its cooldown. What will happen now is the fight will end at the same moment dreadwyrm trance becomes usable again, just a bit too quickly for you to use it one last time.
  
  If you know ahead of time that this will happen, and there is a significant combination of player buffs happening in the last 20 seconds, you may even choose to waste firebird trance on purpose by using it early even though there is nothing to hit, just so that the demi summon after that happens on time in the last 20 seconds. You're getting the same number of demi summons in either case (1), so why not?

• When the flow of your trances and demi summons was determined by aetherflow on the other hand. You were free to hit and restart the timer of aetherflow on schedule even with no target on the field, and defer the demi summon to the reappearance of the target with no penalty. 20s before the fight ends, aetherflow becomes available again, and you could quickly burn through it to activate another trance and demi summon to finish off the fight.

If you're already comfortably killing the boss, you may just lament the lost damage from the fight ending at an unlucky time. In the worst case, you may be staring at an enrage knowing that extra damage is slightly out of your reach. Now that this option will no longer exist, we stand to lose 2000-3000 potency worth of damage every time delays cause us to lose a demi summon opportunity.

This example is obviously a worst case scenario that shows the weakness of the toolkit. However it will happen eventually given the sheer diversity of fights in the game. When you're waiting for chaos to return after dark crystal, when midgardsomnr vanishes to cast exaflares after the fire orbs, etc. Instead of rewarding foresight, it will just be a game of luck hoping that downtime doesn't sync up with dreadwyrm trance's cooldown.

As time lost to a cooldown not being used can't be regained, these delays are cumulative and permanent over the length of a fight. Regardless of how much that potency is worth in context of Shadowbringers, it's still a needless waste that does not occur now.

[Myon88]

All this doom and gloom makes me sad when at first I thought we were headed to a good place.

I should note that it's possible for a job to feel bad to play and still be in a 'good' place despite all this. There are many people who dislike how simple red mage is, and how there are few ways to display player skill on it. But in spite of that it's still highly sought after by even top groups when learning a new fight. Conversely, there could be jobs with smooth rotations and high skill ceilings that people enjoy, that are still shunned by the overall community because of other factors (e.g other melees being less welcome than dragoon due to bard synergy). It all comes down to what your definition of good is.

Most of my concerns have to do with the skill ceiling of the job and the number of options it has in principle. It's possible our potency numbers could be so high (by accident or otherwise) that summoner remains a popular job anyway. It can resurrect people unlike black mage, and will likely do more damage than red mage, so there is a good chance it will remain popular just for that reason. The job would certainly be 'fine' if that were the case, but the players who understand the job will be disappointed when they compare their experiences of it to summoner in Stormblood.

[Gallus]

I agree with some of you points.

However, you should think about this also:

1 - You don't have the problem of DWT being tied to aetherflow stacks anymore. This is good because you are no longer forced to force your DWT sooner, instantly cast deathflare and aetherflow again, Sorry but that was just a mess.

Now you can just go DWT and leave your stacks exclusively for fester usage in single target fights, and you can even cast them inside your DWT or whenever you want given DWT no longer increases damage.

2 - AOE during DWT in SB was terrible and most of the times it translated into an instant deathflare. Now you can use Painflare inside DWT. And bane. And instant outbursts...

3 - No more...should I use bane or painflare drama? Oh here...let's use bane, *the blm next to you triplecasts 2 consecutive fouls".

4 - Egis can't be targetted. Hear me out. This is good. Nothing more irritating than an EGI dying and having to rez them, or an EGI paralyzed. Or a poison dot on an EGI you know it's going to kill them. Sustain? Thanks but no, you're a DPS, not a babysitter.

5 - Bahamut isn't the beginning and everything of your rotation anymore. In SB it was. You aligned contagion, with your 3 aetherflow stacks, with virus, and even with tridisaster, then proceeded to summon bahamut and make a HUGE dps peak. Anything screwing or disrupting that resulted in a brutal DPS loss. This is no longer the case. DPS is more like a straight line and shared among DWT, Bahamut and Phoenix. Bahamut and Phoenix seem to have the exactly same potencies so this further proves my point.

6 - All indicates that your filler phases will have a little bit more damage now and the DPS difference between them and your DWT, Bahamut and Phoenix won't be as dramatic. Fester is now 400 potency, it's no longer 300, that's pretty huge. Then, you have the fact that it's 4 festers every minute because energy drain is on a 30 sec CD (unlike your 3 from back then, which most of the time weren't festers but festers mixed with painflare to force phases sooner, all in all terrible). Your ruin potencies have been increased too. And this time around it's going to be fester or fester single target speaking because you won't have the need to force your DWT sooner by unleashing EG, Fester and Painflare all at the same time so that you can preemptively enter into the phase where the SMN did the real damage back then in SB.


You are right about the fact that if the boss goes immune and we have our energy drain ready and our two stacks are empty we will remain there staring at the screen like idiots, but at the same time, DWT/FT will keep ticking so once the boss comes back you'll be able to DWT/FT sooner than normal, so downtimes will most likely help you more than actually screw you.

[Myon88]

Re: #1. Remember, this is only possible because of the flexibility that the aetherflow system gives you in the first place.

Suppose you press aetherflow and then the boss disappears for 50 seconds, when it returns you now have 10 seconds to get those charges + DWT out of the way before hitting aetherflow again. The thing is though, the alternative is not getting to use it in the first place if it worked like how it will in 5.0. Because you've delayed it for so long you're going to lose one at the end of the fight anyway. What you're comparing is a rushed DWT vs getting to use the full duration somehow, when what really happens is a rushed DWT vs no DWT.

2. I don't really follow what you mean by instant deathflares. Currently in 4.0 you have more freedom to cast DWT where you want to every minute, the only reason you would be forced to end it prematurely would be if you forgot to use it until the end of the minute (personal error), or you had a situation like the above in which case you're still gaining something you would have lost otherwise.

3,4. Yes I agree it's nice that bane is free now, but it doesn't have anything to do with what I've said so far. There's no reason you can't implement some of these solutions and still keep bane free. Likewise for their egi changes. Our pets have certainly received some nice quality of life buffs this expansion, I've never suggested for that to be reverted. Job adjustments are not a package deal, just because some portions of the toolkit aren't up the mark, doesn't mean you have to roll the whole job back to Stormblood.

5,6. Besides the fact that we shouldn't really assume to know what the dev team really intended, we actually have access to even more burst around trick than before. Where before you had bahamut in minute 1 and then only dreadwyrm trance in minute 2, now you have an additional phoenix flavoured 'bahamut' in the trick window of the alternate minute as well. Ninjas are going to be our best friend again.

Anyway, stuff like that isn't really related to what I'm suggesting. I'm not as concerned about numbers (they are subject to change until next month anyway). If they wanted to reduce our damage for whatever reason, they could just tune those numbers directly without changing the rotation for the worse. Even if demi summons comprise a smaller portion of our total damage, it's still going to feel bad to waste it, especially when they are the most gameplay changing sections of the rotation.

Also, I just outlined why DWT runs into that issue as well (and aetherflow does not). Aetherflow right now will "keep ticking" too, so what's wrong with that? With DWT on the other hand, if the boss disappears when it's off cooldown, you will certainly be forced to "remain there staring at the screen", because whether you press it anyway like aetherflow or you wait, both options have downsides which puts you in a dilemma.

[Gallus]

I understand what you mean but at the same time I don't feel like it's going to be a major issue. Yes they could've kept Aetherflow instead of Energy Drain/Syphon and that way we could've used Aetherflow during downtimes even if no targets were available. Would've been better? Yeah...but no biggie...

As for you other concern, which I believe is DWT and FT being tied to a 60 sec shared CD, yes, I'm not particularly fond of that too, but again, I'm not too worried either. You'll most likely end up using DWT and FT whenever available, unless you know a downtime is coming (if it's a very long downtime, you may want to burn DWT to have both Bahamut and Phoenix ready when the boss arrives, cool huh? ).

Regarding Bahamut, you have a little bit more freedom there, given FT won't be ready for the next 45 seconds after your DWT, and Bahamut stays for 20 seconds, you can delay Bahamut for up to 25 seconds without incurring in any DPS loss if the situation requires it.

They've increased the potency of ruins and festers, Demis no longer attack on OGCDs, both of these things result in SMN's dps being a lot more stable and less spiky (which is always good). Bahamut's phase in SB was an extremely delicate moment that could entirely ruin your DPS if anything wrong happened, because most of his potential relied on those 20 seconds every 2 minutes...

They've given us the option to use Painflare and fester on any phase, bane is no longer tied to aetherflow stacks. Garuda is your aoe pet and ifrit is your single target pet. I feel like everything is better and makes more sense now. So this is why I disagree with the statement that SMN has been fundamentally changed for the worse.

But I'm afraid we will still have to wait and see to make a final verdict.