Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[NovaBismarck]

Honestly, the more I play summoner the more I hate the tie in to dots in casual content, I just wish they'd remove the whole dps-buff on ruin based on how many dots are up. Overall, if they can do something for dots and the busywork of the class, it'd be a big quality of life change.

I personally am bummed about where damage is. I see non rezzers argue that both smn and rdm should remain where they are on damage because of the rez. Honestly, I don't want them to remove rez (I know some do), but pretending it's some sort of boon to the smn or rdm themselves feels inaccurate to me. It's amazing to switch to a different class, melee or physical dps and not have to focus on the entire party to make sure they are up. Again, I get in savage people shouldn't be dying in content as often. However, those of us that are casual are literally having to watch it all the time in pug content because people die a lot overall. I get things like embolden and devotion counting against us on damage, but should we take a hit because we have the ability to bring people back up at a dps loss? I don't even mind a slight loss, but I don't get high dps classes like blm and mnk arguing that we are right where we belong, on the bottom, with a larger gap between.

[dinnertime]

Not too sure why they added more DoT dependency on SMN in the first place. Nobody asked for SMN to be more DoT-focused at all, and SMN became less DoT dependent as expansions go, but ShB reversed that for some odd reason.
And to be honest I never understood the Raise tax. Revived players already get temporarily penalized for getting raised, so I don't understand why RDM and SMN should be permanently penalized for just having it.

I don't even mind a slight loss, but I don't get high dps classes like blm and mnk arguing that we are right where we belong, on the bottom, with a larger gap between.

If that's true, I find that pretty hilarious because BLMs before ShB were complaining about having no utilities and demanded they should have Raise, while MNKs were going through things about being inconvenient to play. Now that BLM and MNK are in a good spot (MNK arguably being busted) as the highest DPS jobs in the game, you'd think they'll support the DPS jobs who are struggling right now for going through the same thing before.

[NovaBismarck]

Not too sure why they added more DoT dependency on SMN in the first place. Nobody asked for SMN to be more DoT-focused at all, and SMN became less DoT dependent as expansions go, but ShB reversed that for some odd reason.
And to be honest I never understood the Raise tax. Revived players already get temporarily penalized for getting raised, so I don't understand why RDM and SMN should be permanently penalized for just having it.



If that's true, I find that pretty hilarious because BLMs before ShB were complaining about having no utilities and demanded they should have Raise, while MNKs were going through things about being inconvenient to play. Now that BLM and MNK are in a good spot (MNK arguably being busted) as the highest DPS jobs in the game, you'd think they'll support the DPS jobs who are struggling right now for going through the same thing before.

Yeah I agree. Tying dots to ruin just makes us a ruin class. I thought they were wanting us to focus on pets. I understand pets are glitchy and they have trouble getting them to work the way they want, but the ruin thing feels like a step in the wrong direction. I am still hoping they remove the dependency there.

Raise tax feels so stupid. The only people who I see argue that we should have it are non rezzers. Devotion is a dps gain for the party. I see that counting against our overall dps. We give up a little damage to help everyone. Rez is a dps loss for us, a distraction from dps and a burden we carry for the sake of making sure the group succeeds. Feels dumb to count that against us.

I'm still hopeful that a rebalance is coming. I've played around with a lot of other classes, many feel easy to play and easy to do damage on. Even whm can do respectable dps even though they aren't supposed to be a damage class anymore. Meanwhile, I need a chart and graph to play smn, must pop foods and pots, and sacrifice a porxie to the dark lord Zodiark to not sit low in the dps pool. I've been leveling other classes and playing smn minimally so my muscle memory isn't so hard locked in that I have trouble changing when they update us.

[Flana]

Not too sure why they added more DoT dependency on SMN in the first place. Nobody asked for SMN to be more DoT-focused at all

I did. It shouldn't come as any surprise that I actually like this incarnation of Summoner. Far more than Stormblood's at any rate. I think it's a pretty good starting point but very obviously needs some work. Since this thread is already very established I'll just condense my feedback here to prevent cluttering up the forums any more than I already have in the past.


Trancing

Mechanically Firebird Trance is phenomenal. It has a great cadence to it of bouncing back and forth between single- and multi-target hits with great damage. The problem I have here is that it's rendered Dreadwyrm Trance and Summon Demi-Bahamut to be extremely bland. While they both boil down to a lot of ruin spam, Dreadwyrm Trance can at least be livened up a little bit by the Egi Assaults. Bahamut is just uninteresting now (which is still an improvement over him being massively frustrating) and there isnt anything you can really do to liven it up.

Personally I'd like to see them roll DWT and Demi into the same button and come up with a dreadwyrm gimmick for the trance. Firebird Trance has you going between Fountain of Fire and Brand of Purgatory. Maybe have some kind of ramp up phase for Bahamut to cast something. Give him gigaflares or flattens. Something to make the phase more engaging.

The real problem is that I find Dreadwyrm Trance un-engaging and kind of lacking after Firebird Trance. Combining DWT and Demi-Bahamut would also get rid of at least one unneeded button, so that's nice.

Egi-Assaults

Decent idea that doesn't have a lot of depth just yet. While the reclassification of the egis into niche's was great, I don't feel like they hit the mark with anyone except Garuda. Titan's shield is nice, but his other ability and enkindle just being aoe damage is rendered pretty irrelevant by Garuda. If they want this to continue to be a sort of personal pet then his other Egi Assault needs to be reworked into something more useful. Maybe a single target stun or some kind of push. His Enkindle needs to be... something, though what I couldn't say. Maybe give it the Slow from old shadowflare and a Heavy?

Ifrit has another problem of his kit being functional but very flat. Garuda you have to manage Slipstreams and have knowledge of incoming damage to get the most out of Titan's shields, Ifrit is a very static push button do damage. Nothing to track, nothing to really be aware of, very little room to optimize. I would like to see at least one of these skills reworked to be more engaging in some way. Personally I'd like to see some more DoT integration but I feel like I might be in the minority on that. Also I'd like to see his Enkindle get a small damage buff and be turned into a single target hit to better suit his niche.

To be honest my pipe dream here would have these be reworked to provide some kind of back and forth between pet and Summoner, and then have Egi Assaults be used to break up the 40 second downtime between trancing. Give them more of a purpose and tie back into the kit. So you'd go Trance -> Egi skills and management -> Trance -> Egi repeat. I personally think that would be a nice continuation of the base they've provided here.

Demi-Summons

These still clash hard with the egi's and result in some extremely frustrating moments. They also have the same problems from Stormblood. You can still lose Devotion to your pet dying, even though the ability goes on cooldown and the animation goes off and you will need have both firebird trance and devotion line up at least once a fight. They still incessantly follow you despite having four times your maximum range and they can still rarely have their commands gummed up by autos + moving. Despite not having a very deep toolkit they continue to have incredibly frustrating moments.

My ultimate pipedream would be the above and these things stop killing the egi's when they spawn. That solves half the problem and prevents them from interfering with normal pets ever again. If they're so afraid of the extra pet uptime just give the pet a damage down debuff while the demi is out, but please stop killing them. Demi's will continue to cause problems as long as this keeps happening.

Aetherflow

Do not let me use this out of combat. I do not want needlessly spammy openers again. What I want is just to be able to use it in combat but without a target so this ability isnt wasting time when it comes off cooldown during boss jumps or intermissions. That and Energy Siphon is extremely redundant. Those are my only two problems with Aetherflow.

As for the abilities, I would like to see Fester and Painflare reworked to better incorporate them into the kit. Despite needing your dots up to do damage, Fester doesn't actually do anything with them. It's just a dummy check to see if you forgot. I would like to see both Fester and Painflare to be reworked to better interact with either your DoTs or with the Egis. Perhaps having Fester extend the dots by so many seconds, or having a reworked egi ability debuff the boss and then allowing Fester to detonate the debuff for damage. Now that you don't need Aetherflow to actually force the job through its stages there is a lot of room for creative changes. Go wild, have fun.

The End

Those are my main problems with Summoner as it stands now. Overall I'm quite happy with the Shadowbringers changes to the job, but I still think there are a few areas that can be improved on.

[Atamis]

Using just the skills and abilities available to us right now. This is what I would do to see SMN reach 6.0 where an actual rework could be done realistically.

Allow Devotion to be cast with Demi Pheonix and Bahamut out. - Currently this spell wiffs quiet often when trying to weave in enkindle and the assaults and leads to some of the "busy work" when getting ready to summon Phoenix as you stand there waiting until the egi decides it wants to cast the spell. If the Demis could cast it it would be less of an issue of timing everything if it could just be weaved between being summoned.

Remove damage penalty from spreading dots via Bane and increase the chance of resetting dots to 100% (including on the original target) - This directly increases damage (probably not on par with BLM by any means) and makes dot management easier on AoE pulls and allows us a quick way to refresh dots on single target fights. Skilled SMNs can possibly keep ruination spreading indefinably in a dungeon, and there would be zero excuses when bad SMNs let dots fall off.

Aetherflow given 3 stacks again. Energy Siphon usable out of combat to give you three charges, when used in combat it preforms its usual duty. Alternatively give it a long (4s) cast time and it gives you 3 aether every time its used and has no cooldown, allowing the SMN to stack up out of combat and gain aether during transitions. Cooldown independent from energy drain so it would not supersede drain during normal rotations. - This opens up aether usage to be far more reliable, allowing pre pull preperations, and makes downtime in fight feel like a boon.

Egi Assaults should instantly refresh when a new egi is summoned. - This allows titan to actually be used as a defensive cooldown when needed, and allows 4 stacks of ruination to be built back up during that downpahse after Pheonix and before Bahamut trance is back up.

Deathflareshould be guaranteed Direct Critical Hit - This is a damage increase obviously, but makes Bahamut trance feel good again, as that huge number was one of the perks to pulling it off pre ShB.

Demi-Bahamut should be rooted in place to ensure wyrmwaves go off, and the duration increased 5seconds so three Ahk Mourns can be used again.

Physick, scale this off INT or make its potency worthwhile - This is the only defensive thing we have when titan isn't out or has charges. Increase its mana cost to 2400 if you must to avoid people actually using it in a meaningful way, but for the love of Menphina make it do something.

This is all I feel would be necessary to get SMN back on track. No i don't like the current summoner, No i don't think it can be salvaged with the current toolset. but this is atleast attainable with what we have now.

[Mansion]

Aetherflow given 3 stacks again. Energy Siphon usable out of combat to give you three charges, when used in combat it preforms its usual duty. Alternatively give it a long (4s) cast time and it gives you 3 aether every time its used and has no cooldown, allowing the SMN to stack up out of combat and gain aether during transitions. Cooldown independent from energy drain so it would not supersede drain during normal rotations. - This opens up aether usage to be far more reliable, allowing pre pull preperations, and makes downtime in fight feel like a boon.

I think the point of shifting Aetherflow that way was to avoid the lengthy pre-pull requirement (for both SCH and SMN), and we all agree that is was a bit annoying to wait one minute before each pull.
Couldn't we work around that by simply deleting Energy Drain / Siphon, and just making Fester and Painflare oGCDs with charges? Because Aetherflow is just an old charge system somehow.It would take care of the rigid timer on Energy Drain, but keep the freedom of using Festers whenever you have time (and resources) to weave them, while making sure we don't lose uses.

Similarly, I'd make Earthen Armor an oGCD with a longer CD, because it's clunky as you need to make sure you have a charge, summon Titan, use it, hope for not too much delay, summon back Ifrit, cry on that lost Ruin IV.

I agree that Deathflare is almost incidental now. For me it's almost just used as a "thing to weave before Summon Bahamut".

Devotion is better than nothing, while quite underwhelming (and as you say, we can lock ourselves out of it in Bahamut / Phoenix moments). Would it be OP to have an added effect to Bahamut, similar to Everlasting Flight for our team ? (Something like 2% dmg or 5% crit up).

[Atamis]

I think the point of shifting Aetherflow that way was to avoid the lengthy pre-pull requirement (for both SCH and SMN), and we all agree that is was a bit annoying to wait one minute before each pull.
Couldn't we work around that by simply deleting Energy Drain / Siphon, and just making Fester and Painflare oGCDs with charges? Because Aetherflow is just an old charge system somehow.It would take care of the rigid timer on Energy Drain, but keep the freedom of using Festers whenever you have time (and resources) to weave them, while making sure we don't lose uses.

Aetherflow can't be deleted right now as its a core mechanic of how SMN currently works. Yes i would like it to disappear, but until 6.x this isn't likely to happen. That is why i said just make it usable out of combat to give stacks, no waiting for it to cooldown, just cast it and go.

[Taranok]

Aetherflow can't be deleted right now as its a core mechanic of how SMN currently works. Yes i would like it to disappear, but until 6.x this isn't likely to happen. That is why i said just make it usable out of combat to give stacks, no waiting for it to cooldown, just cast it and go.

Aetherflow isn't core to Summoner right now. It's core to the damage but the mechanic itself has no interaction with any other mechanic short of how it applies damage.

What makes it "core" is class lore combined with it being 1400 potency every minute, which could easily be shifted to other mechanics while Aetherflow itself was disabled.

What you want would make the class worse, you'd exacerbate every problem the class currently has. When the biggest complaint generally falls into the category of "There's too much to do and too many oGCDs to press," adding more oGCDs won't fix the issue.

I have a laundry list of "easy to implement" changes to SMN that I'd like to see, but the change to Aetherflow I want to see would be buffing Fester to 470 or so potency, buffing Painflare to 215 or so, increasing the charges to 3, removing energy drain and energy siphon, and making it so the trances themselves gave you 3 charges. This is a net-neutral change to the opener, considerably thins out the mid downtime phase where the class can't spare instant casts to throw out more festers, and will help with the flow issues because of that. The potency values are to try to align Fester to about 1400 potency/minute, and Painflare to about 640/minute. The damage will be very bursty, but over a long fight it should even out.

Going back to SB's solution won't fix anything, it's better to anchor the mechanic to trances and even though you won't be able to cast it during downtime, it will also never desync slaving it this way.

[Atamis]

I have a laundry list of "easy to implement" changes to SMN that I'd like to see,

Then feel free to share. That is the point of this thread. I for one only feel busy on SMN when forcing the Egis to do things, the whole aetherflow thing doesn't bother me. I say it is core because its the resource we have to use, yea its as pointless as MCH's battery guage, but it is a core mechanic even if you don't like it. they will not get rid of it without a rework, so once again its not feasible to just get rid of it right now. Nevermind if theres something forcing it to be linked with SCH as well.

[MagiusNecros]

I feel like Demi summons should be fire and forget like Auto Turret/Queen and be more cinematic and deal huge bursts of damage. I'd love summons to get back on that massive attack status. Give appropriate cooldowns and watch your Dragon throw out 100k on the boss. Either that or make Megaflare/Revel Direct Crit.

Rooting the Demi summons in place would be A ok with me though.

Egi Assaults being separate per egi would be an amazing change since it offers versatility that way. AoE, ST or Utility on the fly. I'd say apply that to their Enkindles as well.

Make Titan's a strong AoE Raid Shield.