Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[CecMiller]

*snip*
However the SB smn seemed like a rough and clunky sketch of what it's become now. ShB according to me made a clearer design for smn job. All i can say it that for now i find this new design more fun to play and a lot less clunky than its SB iteration.

Its seems SchrodingersWaffle has covered most of what I would have said, but I was hoping you could elaborate on a few bits.

In what way did you find Stormblood Summoner "Clunky" and why do you feel the design has made clearer? Could you specify the design changes that occured that achieved this clearer design? If you are speaking of the direction the job is headed towards demi summons, then I can understand you and I like that too, but the mechanics behind how we approach the summons in our rotation is what I take issue with.

I can understand if its your personally opinion, but looking back at 4.0 SMN, the stuff that was clunky there was mostly due to pets and their responsiveness i.e. Garuda Contagion. Pets were reworkeed and made to be more responsive and is a welcome change. I'm more concerned about what happened outside of the pets. I'm trying to think about what else was clunky.

1. Aetherflow was straight forward as was DWT. I don't think these were clunky. If you found not being able to use AF inside DWT clunky, then there is a solution which allows us to use AF inside DWT as stated at the bottom of my opening post. It gives us the same flexibility of 4.0 and maintains our current CPM playstyle but with more player choice/expression for how and when we want to use said trances.

2. Bahamut interacted with OGCDs - is this what you found clunky? I honestly prefer that to what he is now. He is a shadow of his former self and his "clunkyness" remains there to be seen. By clunkyness, I'm referring to how he follows you around and doesnt to want to stay put and how if you move around too much, he can "ghost" his abilities long after you've given the command for him to enkindle for example.

3. Bane was tied to Aetherflow stacks back then but is changed now - and it is a very welcome one. Not clunky either.

4. Pets and abilities such as contagion. Admittedly, pet responsiveness was a very polarizing topic and whilst I miss contagion personally, I am happy to see the improved pet responsiveness but it needs to be even more responsive than it is now. However, pets were a much smaller part and it seems you take issue with the actual rotation in itself.

5. Ruin 4 generating at a 15% chance on pet action vs. how they do now vs. Egi actions. I wouldn't call this clunky and simply a change in design. I don't mind either, but again, it was not something awfully important to the rotation.

This was by no means an exhaustive list, but I'm having trouble understanding what exactly has changed that you do not find clunky anymore.

If its simply the Ruin 4 change or pets changing, then you should have no issue if Aetherflow and DWT were reworked to be as they were in 4.0 as they were never clunky to begin with.

I don't think one really ever "choose" to use dreadwyrm trance or summon bahamut. Maybe there was an illusion of choice and flexibility but once bahamut was ready, one would summon it. Using dreadwyrm instead of bahamut would be a waste a dreadwyrm and postpone the ability to summon bahamut again. The system how it's designed now remove this possibility to "waste" anything. It's just a matter of getting used to the whole thing and seeing it differently.

There was no illusion of flexibility. This is just a fact of 4.0+ SMN. The moment you spent Aetherflow stacks was the moment DWT became active and when you were free to use it to your hearts content ie. for planned movement phases for example.

If you are referring to optimal play, I would say I have a lot of experience with this as its the most fun I have when raiding or doing any content, even dungeons. The reason why this "flexibility" was great for me was that you could easily express your player skill with smart usage of your abilities like timing bahamut summons for Add phases or saving DWT for movement phases. Its true that when you consider the case of playing optimally, there never really is a "flexible" option in that regard. You can literally spreadsheet the entire fight and, provided everything goes as planned, follow this set rotation.

However - the players and jobs you play with can affect your rotation Some teams kill stuff faster, push stuff fast, others kill stuff slow, and push stuff slow. Others use their party buffs optimally, others dont. As a result, you have different timings based on how your group performs. You cannot spreadsheet every possibility which means that this flexibility was incredibly useful when you knew how to use it regardless of how your team was to perform.

Also still the beginning of the new expansion so no one can say they understand all of its content and gotten used to/mastered all of them.
Not liking the new smn because they were experienced with SB one? Maybe, because most of the time the more experienced you are with a job, the less easy it is to accept/understand changes and adapt. The brain being wired into the previous iteration makes it so, and it often takes more than a week to adapt to new things. Especially if it's one's main job and they've been doing the same thing for all these years.

Whilst its true there is a learning curve and player will need to beat old habits (I myself was used to pressing ruin 4 on cooldown) players have already begin to understand the workings of the job (some kind souls have made us an entire rotation spreadsheet to play with!). Playing the job in actual extreme fights and dungeons plainly shows that the current 5.0 SMN kit was changed to have considerably worse management over Aetherflow and having it re-linked to the cycle would only benefit us. Its because of our experience with 4.0+ SMN that the problems with 5.0 SMN are so glaring as we are able to immediately identify the scenarios in which the 4.0 SMN wouldn't suffer from.

When you go from being able to consistantly refresh aetherflow and the only barrier being your own attention span, to now requiring to be in combat AND having a target, its clear as day to see which system was plainly speaking - better.

When I was previously able to go from pack to pack in a dungeon without a pause in my summoner cycle in 4.0 to now being forced to pause the cycle and lose uses of DWT/FBT/Bahamut over the course of the dungeon at the mercy of the tank and/or team, it is clear as day to see which system was better.

Regardless of what system is being used, I am absolutely using it as optimally as I think I should at this current point in time. Without statstics and logs to back me up on this front, I will have to wait a while to present the data.

But my main point is, it is due to our extensive experience with 4.0 SMN that we understand where it lacks when compared to 5.0 SMN.

*snip*
In fact, I think you will find that the more experienced someone is with summoner, the more they tend to dislike the 5.0 changes because they have a full understanding of all the liabilities the new design contains.

I am in agreement with this personally.

]However it's inaccurate and certainly not a fact to link disliking and fully understanding the new design.

They were commenting on the liabilities in particular, but besides that, a lot of work has gone into understanding the rotation of the new summoner and those well versed in 4.0 will understand the nuances of where this new job is strong and where it is weak. They were stating that our experience with 4.0 SMN allows us to see the situations in which the design of the 4.0 SMN systems are superior to that of 5.0 SMN as I've already mentioned above with Aetherflow and DWT and previously in my other post. I'm not sure what more I can say on this topic.

I'm glad you're enjoying the new summoner, but I hope you can see that there are areas in which it can absolutely be improved.

If you are opposed to these changes, please could you explain why you are opposed to them in more detail as I only see benefits from the change with regards to my change suggested at the bottom of my opening post.