Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[NovaBismarck]

Honestly, I was really excited about Shadowbringers, but what was done to summoner made the whole experience a let down for me. Let's put damage aside, because they can buff the numbers there. The two biggest issues for me is the stupidity of the way the egi functions work in conjunction with our rotation. However the biggest issue is flow. The flow of the class does not feel good, which is depressing considering we came from SB where at the very least the class had fluidity. The rotation is so rigid and slightly clunky. It does not easily allow for holding for phase changes and there is very little flexibilty.

I've seen a handful of people who do like the busyness of smn now but overall it's just too much for most people, especially considering the payoff. At least from what I'm reading from the Balance discord, the forums, and a reddit thread for 5.0 FFLogs DPS, which I won't post since it deals with parsing.

I've played smn since 2005, I've seen it in many iterations. I'm imploring SE to really think about what can be done to fix this unpleasant experience. I may not play savage and cannot comment to the extent of how it plays there, but as a dedicated casual player, there are huge gaps.

[xicious]

Reducing Trance cool downs(slightly)and having bahamut auto summoned(losing a button would be so nice) when DWT is active so ruin 3 is instacasted would be enough of a fix for me personally. Granted there's a whole boat load more of fixes needed but that's a start.

[HeulGDarian]

iit's pheonix a ress effect would be busted so a hot should do no pun intended, summoners are not healers i agree but summoning different creatures for different situations was and forever will be the appeal of it . they could make it instead of automatic it's own button during the firebird trance after all smn has ogcd space there. though even like it is currently if they go through with the promise of more aoe dmg then it could be a factor the healers would think about like ok smn is about to do pheonix here so i don't need to heal . i agree about everything else though, we really got riped off.

[Angry_Evil]

I personally don't mind busyness after I beat both EX trials. It's kinda fine tho I guess doing everything perfect with no clipping and proper r4 alignments will be pretty difficult. My brain is overheating as it is... Tho on the "good part" it seems that EA damage is like ~3% so it literally doesn't matter...
Strongly agree on ES literally pointless skill, dunno why just not make ED AOE like OP described.
I think it'd be cool if they change bahamut to be morel iek phoenix too lol and give us something like R4 during it. Not sure if it make SMN a little overpowerd but would be cool nuking enemies just like with phoenix.
Also funny thing - I survived getting agro on titania cause I used titan's shield prior to phase change. Who knew it'll be useful literally 1 time I decided to use it for lols

PS
It's not that important or anything, but I think they should also add some proper indication that ifrit or garuda are summoned - return them to party list or add icon for gauges (kinda surprised it wasn't done tbh. Also surprising that they didn't add R4 stacks on a gauge too...)

[loreleidiangelo]

I'm cool with Physick being deleted from SMN for good but if we're being real here and all talking about "origins of the job" and stuff, SMNs in traditional FFs did have access to heal and support summons as well, not just damage ones. In that respect, Phoenix is a neat addition, just perhaps the heal is a bit poorly implemented ATM.

[Taranok]

I'm cool with Physick being deleted from SMN for good but if we're being real here and all talking about "origins of the job" and stuff, SMNs in traditional FFs did have access to heal and support summons as well, not just damage ones. In that respect, Phoenix is a neat addition, just perhaps the heal is a bit poorly implemented ATM.

The heal itself is "very" strong, its uptime is 20 of 120 seconds (approx) or 16% of the time, so it's not exactly the kind of thing that won't help on some party busters.

Its major failing, however, is that healing is so tightly tuned that either healers already have the ability to handle the fight in terms of the class design, or they literally shouldn't be in the fight, period. This happened to AST in HW until they buffed it so much that it could heal fights without WHM's or SCH's massive bag of tricks relatively speaking.

So it's a really strong heal that is literally useless because of how healers and encounters are both designed and interact with each other. It will be nice for struggling healers occasionally when it shows up in your rotation, but otherwise it's a flavor ability with no purpose.

[loreleidiangelo]

The heal itself is "very" strong, its uptime is 20 of 120 seconds (approx) or 16% of the time, so it's not exactly the kind of thing that won't help on some party busters.

Its major failing, however, is that healing is so tightly tuned that either healers already have the ability to handle the fight in terms of the class design, or they literally shouldn't be in the fight, period. This happened to AST in HW until they buffed it so much that it could heal fights without WHM's or SCH's massive bag of tricks relatively speaking.

So it's a really strong heal that is literally useless because of how healers and encounters are both designed and interact with each other. It will be nice for struggling healers occasionally when it shows up in your rotation, but otherwise it's a flavor ability with no purpose.

DNC's heal doesn't disrupt their DPS rotation, so even if it's not turbo strong a lot of players still use it (myself included). If Phoenix heal is/was designed the same way it would be a similar case, IMO. Abilities like that do have a niche in content where everyone doesn't perform 100% up to par, I think. Well, some won't like that I suppose, but I think it's a fair bit more interesting than just, "oh look, another raid DPS buff again". Maybe it would be more practical if it were a healing up buff like Nature's Minne on BRD, idk.

[Myon88]

Wellllllll..... if summon phoenix was separate to FBT like dreadwyrm trance is, or we still used the old aetherflow > trance > demi system where only aetherflow had a set timing, we might have been able to use it that way, as we'd have more freedom as to where we wanted to summon phoenix.

So yeah, what a shame because the old system was much better at accommodating use cases like that and letting you adapt. Sadly, there's no shortage of people who claim to prefer 5.0 summoner over 4.0, some of them even want DWT and bahamut combined like phoenix (you can see above why that's a bad idea). I hope these people are happy, because they've certainly lost the right to complain now. The super rigid gameplay of Shadowbringers summoner is directly a result of these changes, as I and others warned as early as a month ago during the media tour.

[Corosar]

I admit i am a summoner that likes having the ability to do other things should things go south. Just last night we were dealing with a trial and lost both our healers. The tanks can't res. and the DPS were bards or dancers. Me being the sole resser of the party immediately stopped my DPS to raise one of the healers and I doubt that we would have been able to get through it if it was not for that. It would have gone much smoother if i was just 1 level higher at the time for my pheonix or if i could have used physick while the healer was dealing with gaining their mana back to begin raising their co-healer. This is the kinda thing that i love that summoner and red mage are able to do. and why i am so for Physick actually being useful on the summoner grid. For those times where shit just hits the fan and you need to heal more than DPS. A safety net in my eyes. especially if the party is full of new players that have no idea what they are doing at the time and are trying to learn mechanics. I pride myself in catching onto them pretty quickly but i know alot of people have that issue.

Besides... if they do make it useful... its not like summoners are gonna HAVE to use it. Just like how Redmages out there NEVER touch Vercure. Its just another thing to change your style a bit more.

[Dyvid]

So I'm wondering it two changes would help with the flow of combat.

1) Make Energy Drain 60s recast time but give you all 4 Aetherflow at once. You would still have the same resources but wouldn't have to keep such a close eye on it.

2) Would decreasing the recast timer of Trance to 45s fix this downtime issues? Alternatively you could separate Demi-Phoenix from FBT but that would also mean you separate FBT fire spells from DPhoenix as well. Is that okay?

3) Lower Enkindle to 90s would place it right after Demi-Phoenix phase.

As for Everlasting Flight, congrats to everyone complaining about physick. You now have a potent heal for solo'ing.