Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[HeulGDarian]

Well it is a caster, SMN has to cast something lol. Out of the 3 summoner is still the most mobile of the Magic DPS group.

Stormblood summoner

-) first on aoe with blm contesting it's place
-) not being punished heavily from ruin 2 thus being able to move whenever he wants and waving the other magic dpses kisses and sparkles while he did drifts around them
-) 3rd to 4th single target dps while bringing utility for physical and magical

Shadowbringers summoner

-) second to last in aoe in most cases from all the nerfs while the devs made blm aoe better and faster ensuring his dominance
-) using ruin 2 is so heavily punished that you simply Don't want to move at all cause obviously the devs forgot ruin 3 isn't fire 4
-) 6th single target dps with bard contesting while having all his utility removed except devotion which has double the cd of brotherhood same dps buff but ups the magic damage as well obviously the devs felt they gifted us with unlimited power when they changed that spell.

Yes I'm salty. while the blm is the caster you go to for dps with the motto I'm all about those casts . Rdm being the caster who took more notes from blm and smn than he did from his whm part disappointing all 3. Smn was the one job that had all High mobility arguably the best of the 3 since they had to either cast first or target someone else. king of the aoe who could surpass blm ,at times you could see 1k dps difference on aoe on fflogs statistics sure aoe doesn't matter that much in raids cause there are not so many trash but still a good way to differentiate those 2 jobs further than just "casts" and "has pet and doesn't cast that much" .We had good utility sure we couldn't rapidly quickcast rezzes nor heal in an oh fck moment and ifrit buff was a bit worse than embolden but we were more powerful ,devotion did more than just dps buff and we could buff magic as well if necessary. Smn was god tier for what he provided even if there were specialists who did those things better nobody did them at the same time .

i really hope that the devs indeed read forums and that they bring us back to what we were.

[WhimsicalPacifist]

I apologize if it has been said before, but regarding the Egi's: at level 62-73 you need to increase the buff bar to a ludicrous level (and ALL instances that you run in that range become very irritating with the RNG of Egi-Assault Further Ruins). Otherwise I wouldn't have known how many Ruin 4's I had at any given moment due to the random nature of it. Or maybe at level 80 an Egi assault whiffs; I'd assume I got it but when it comes to the Bahamut phase I'd be rather annoyed. Also regarding the pittance they deal, if it is going to be so low, I prefer having both SCH and SMN's egis/fairy abilities be castable while I'm doing my own long cast. Being able to cast a Titan shield while long casting a res would be really nice or the same thing with a fairy ability and hard casts.

This isn't really a problem with BLM (mine is only 56, but the UI looks fantastic) which has one single GUI display that encapsulates the information that they need to know about their rotation and a visual presentation of how much Fire/Ice they have built up with the fire/ice orbs. Also mobility with the teleports already seems far better than my 80 SMN. And looking at the AoE it isn't penalized for more targets like SMN's is.

[Taranok]

Well it is a caster, SMN has to cast something lol. Out of the 3 summoner is still the most mobile of the Magic DPS group.

It's also horrifically broken and needs to have quick, easy to implement changes to act as triage to get it to a functional state before they inevitably rework it in the next expansion. And as the others brought up, SMN is the least mobile caster now. BLM has enough mobility to handle mechanics as needed, RDM typically does but has trouble on extended movement, meanwhile SMN is heavily punished for movement at the wrong time, and its ability to move without penalty is limited and often eaten up by the SMN's other mechanics, so it almost never can move without actual penalty while the other 2 typically can move freely during mechanics provided they're smart about it.

This isn't really a problem with BLM (mine is only 56, but the UI looks fantastic) which has one single GUI display that encapsulates the information that they need to know about their rotation and a visual presentation of how much Fire/Ice they have built up with the fire/ice orbs. Also mobility with the teleports already seems far better than my 80 SMN. And looking at the AoE it isn't penalized for more targets like SMN's is.

The two are penalized about the same for aoe. SMN has damage drop off from DoTs, Akh Morns, Revelations, Fountain of Fire (or was it Brand of Purgatory?), and so on but not from pet abilities, outburst, and ES/PF, where BLM has damage drop off from Flare and Foul, but not Thunder 4 and Freeze (Fire 2 is never used in BLM's aoe rotation at cap, I've heard rumblings that it's even a DPS loss the second you get freeze as well). The issue with SMN's aoe is almost exclusively that it has so much crap to throw out that it basically can't do its job and it ends up stepping on its own toes trying to get all the oGCDs out that outburst may as well not exist outside of DWT. Then you have FBT and you mix a ST attack with an AoE attack that has dropoff and everything just goes caddywhompus from there...

[dinnertime]

lol at SMN 5.05 changes...

[Taranok]

lol at SMN 5.05 changes...

Indeed. The class was arguably more broken than AST but got basically nothing it actually needed. NIN is in the same boat in that 1 ability got a potency increase, but it still has massive flow problems because reasons. But, you know, obviously Summoner is fine, so what do I know?

[HeulGDarian]

lol at SMN 5.05 changes...

Scholar got energy drain . w8 for 5.1 I'm calling it now were getting the old aetherflow system back. it would be stupid for sch and smn to have the same ability do different stuff if they leaned towards letting the system remain they could just have sch energy drain renamed. therefore i believe that were getting the old aetherflow system back. Not to mention what they did sure didn't fix anything but all of them were issues from stormblood. We got nothing but what we got said alot .

[dinnertime]

Scholar got energy drain . w8 for 5.1 I'm calling it now were getting the old aetherflow system back. it would be stupid for sch and smn to have the same ability do different stuff if they leaned towards letting the system remain they could just have sch energy drain renamed. therefore i believe that were getting the old aetherflow system back. Not to mention what they did sure didn't fix anything but all of them were issues from stormblood. We got nothing but what we got said alot .

I kind of doubt it? But I'd rather have it back with QoL adjustments. The old Aetherflow was what kept SMN's mechanics together and gave the job a natural flow/rotation, but I don't think a lot of people liked it either.
What I see them doing though is removing Festerruins, adjust Egi's again (and the Egi Assaults) and making the job less busy because that's the common complaint of Japanese players.

[CecMiller]

The changes for SMN were basically non-existant. I have to admit, I found the increased APM incredibly annoying over playing for a long period of time (progression). I'm hoping for some significant changes to jobs to come in 5.1. The fact that devotion lines up whilst we have Phoenix summoned is incredibly annoying as you are forced to delay your burst so you can use your buff. Not sure why it is acceptable that you cannot use your devotion buff for 40 seconds out of 2 minutes every 2 minutes. I'm not aware of any other job with a lockout like this. The dots in particular were annoying for the final fight with regards to the healer jails as they had that awkward death time of being in that period where double dotting them felt bad (though you could bane off the boss for one of them)

I'm still in the camp of getting Aetherflow pre-pull and having it linked to our cycle - I'm grateful that tri-disaster and bio are instant but these are changes that should LONG have occured. If Scholar can get Energy Drain back I have hope that we can get our Aetherflow back especially when pre-pull waits still exist for other jobs (surprised other jobs did not get the "cannot be used out of combat" treatment)

I'm just hoping for a better flow for the rotation going forward from 5.1

[HeulGDarian]

I'm just hoping for a better flow for the rotation going forward from 5.1

ill be hoping with you sir cheers!

[NovaBismarck]

Summoner mobility doesn't particularly feel great to me. There's a lot of calculation involved on whether or not I have available R4 procs to cast. Overall, that wouldn't be terrible if we weren't tracking so much. I'm not sure if I'm just salty about the mobility loss from our previous incarnation to now. DWT is a moot mobility phase as we are pulling early deathflares outside of the very first one. I'm getting my R3 casts broken a lot in bahamut and R3 phase and then have to figure out how to deal with it. Compared to where blm and rdm are, it doesn't feel great to me. Overall, I do agree with the fact that if you do move at the wrong time, it can be a real problem.

I am praying to the twelve the reason we didn't get any noticeable changes this patch is they are planning something major that will improve things for us.

I get to play with other classes and a lot of fun and fairly easy to pickup again. I leave summoner for a couple days and come back and it's like a 15 car pileup on the freeway. Except the freeway is my damage.