Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[Horobi]

The biggest grip I got against SMN currently is the amount of double weaving you need to perform. The egis assaults system really looks like something which could be ignored in single target situations, without losing much.

What could be changed without too much work is to turn egis assaults into GCD with 1s casts (to weave something with it). Do not change the charges, do not change the 30s recharges, simply make it GCD and adjust the potencies to reflect it, like making crimson crush 150/200% the potency of current ruin or give ruin's potency to aerial slash.
This way the egis would feel both impactful (damage numbers) and useful (mobility without losing damage) AND there wouldn't be any problems of egis forgetting orders anymore since there would be 2.5s between them at least.

Remove Ruin2. This thing is awful since day one. With the egis changes above, it would become useless, good time to delete it into oblivion.
And make Ruin4 a 15s cooldown, at lvl80, with 4 charges while we're at it to separate it from egis assaults. Or keep it as is, I kind of like the idea of building ruin4 charges with egis, to use them in Bahamut phase.

Talking of Bahamut, this is agreed on by most peoples here, root him in place. He's got a 100y range seriously, he doesn't need to move. Same with phoenix, why do I have to stand still while casting instant cast spells?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[Madoka]

Liveletter mentioned SMN getting attention but the translation sounds like he wants to go harder on FesterRuins. F

[dinnertime]

Liveletter mentioned SMN getting attention but the translation sounds like he wants to go harder on FesterRuins. F

When I read the official translation, I found that pretty ridiculous, but a few other translations actually said they're considering deleting Festerruins, but still testing out what's the best course of action.
They mentioned DoT cycle problems and will also adjust the job to be less busy which is good. However, there's no mention of any sort of damage increase, mobility problems, Egi and Demi clunkliness which are also problematic.

[Shougun]

Liveletter mentioned SMN getting attention but the translation sounds like he wants to go harder on FesterRuins. F

Whatever they do I hope it preserves or further enhances primal aspect of the job. But am totally okay with them smoothing things out of course lol, that they're testing things out is cool. Not that fester can't be primal related (say if they re-theme'd the arcanist toolkit to the primal you had out or something).

Just hoping they can take primal and mechanical fun / reasonable-ness as two parts of a whole, and either to add to or at least not take away from the primal / summoning aspect.

5.1 we wait .

[Dyvid]

Whatever they do I hope it preserves or further enhances primal aspect of the job. But am totally okay with them smoothing things out of course lol, that they're testing things out is cool. Not that fester can't be primal related (say if they re-theme'd the arcanist toolkit to the primal you had out or something).

Just hoping they can take primal and mechanical fun / reasonable-ness as two parts of a whole, and either to add to or at least not take away from the primal / summoning aspect.

5.1 we wait .

SE needs to root summoner in the old while embracing the new. Aetherflow was a good system to get to Demi phase. FBT/Demi-Phoenix is a solid design for demi phase. Now we just need all the skills we have married into those two core concepts. I feel Egi Assaults are the perfect mechanism for Aetherflow and I feel Ruin IV and Painflare are the right fit for DWT/Demi-Bahamut. I think Energy Drain is a good idea to build AF but need to be modified to make it user friendly. I posted this about 10 pages back but I'll repost to all the new comers to the thread:

• Energy drain/siphon (should we just combine them?) has max of 2 charges and Aetherflow Gauge stacks up to four rather than two. This should provide flexibility to the player without punishing them.

• Aetherflow builds up the Trance gauge with 4 unlocking Trance.

• Egi Assault will use Aetherflow stacks as it's resource. It will no longer grant Ruin IV and have a 7s recast timer. Egi Damage will now be based off of the Summoners spell damage modifiers so we all know what is what. SE can adjust potency only after that is fixed. Remove DoT effect from Ruin and add them to EA.

• Dreadwyrm Trance will change Ruin III to Ruin IV and Outburst to Painflare. At 70 DWT will summon Demi-Bahamut.

• Deathflare will be remove and it's damage will be added to Enkindle. At 50 Enkindle will be just a straight 300 potency AoE attack with 120s recast. At 60, Enhance Enkindle will make it a 500 potency AoE with 50% drop off and 60s recast. This should make it on average with Deathflare and make it easy for Devs to add new Egi Glamour and animate the attack rather than using DoTs and Ground Target Effects.

• Fester is going to be a 20s recast timer and extends DoTs by 10s. If you hit the mark on all Festers this should extend DoT by 60s, right when Tri-D is ready again.

• Add a gap close to Crimson Cyclone and change Flaming Crush to single target with DoT. Add pushback and slow to Mountain Buster.

These ideas should make the job feel familiar but also make the flow of rotation feel better.

[Dyvid]

As for my thoughts going forward into a new Expansion and single cast summons which I'm dubbing Tempus, latin for Time. It would be a channeled attack in which the SMN animation is writing in the book and places a AoE Damage DoT debuff to signify draw aether from the all targets in the area. The longer the SMN stand still the more powerful the Tempus Primal attack will be. Give a max duration of 7 or 10 seconds and a way to use it early similar to Wildfire. Obviously is a rough concept with a lot to mold but it would provide the addition of more summons along with a new dimension to SMN. It would still need to fit somewhere into the rotation and design of whatever the final 5.XX SMN build.

[Mansion]

I guess the 5.08 fix could be a band aid to one side of the problem, which currently is SMN being a complex rotation (due to design and small bugs) to end up with a lower side pDPS. Buffing the 3 Ruin spells and Festers (which I believe are easily more than a third of our damage) would address that. It would be the same if they added potency to the DoT ticking.

I think we'll have to wait 5.1 to see bigger scale changes on SMN.

[Myon88]

Unfortunately there's no indication that any of the planned solutions for SMN brought up during the last Live Letter are going to make a meaningful difference. Changing ruins to not require dots to deal full damage is more of a quality of life change than a buff, really. If ruin3 still does 200 potency, then nothing has changed. Well, you might gain a tiny bit of potency from the occasional instance where due to inflexible dot timers, you have to fire off a dotless ruin for a gcd right now, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the bigger problems.

What summoner also needs is a plain potency buff. We could gain damage as a side effect of some other changes planned for the job (like if our trances worked better around downtime), but in the absence of those it just needs to do more damage, period. It needs to be doing as much damage as dragoon and monk are right now, that or dragoon and monk should be down with summoner.

[Gallus]

Actually, I'd welcome the removal of festeruins. They could consider making outburst an instant cast too, SMN's aoe is clunky as hell atm, there's no way to weave your OGCDs between your outbursts without turning your gameplay into a disgusting clipping fest.

[Atamis]

Honestly i was surprised outburst didn't gain a ruin3 stype buff for aoe packs. i can use egi assault to build stacks but can only use them on single targets?
Jone of the casters even have a ground target AoE anymore, would be a nice niche to fill with a long casted summon aoe.