Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[Kyohei]

There is a fair amount of optimisation compared to the other jobs, and likewise if you can't see that i can't help you either. I'm glad i can appreciate smn again and have fun with it anyway.

[SchrodingersWaffle]

There is a fair amount of optimisation compared to the other jobs, and likewise if you can't see that i can't help you either. I'm glad i can appreciate smn again and have fun with it anyway.

Where? Where is the optimization? Because it certainly isn't in Aetherflow usage, that's pretty much blow on CD, since being a 30sec CD doesn't really line it up with anything of note and with the uses combined with the 5sec CD means that we can't line it up for an explosive burst with Trick Attack, which would be cool. It's not in Egi Assault as those do pretty much no damage and are very heavily prone to clipping and erroring in such a way that makes actually optimizing their use next to impossible. It's not in Trance/Bahamut usage for reasons that pretty much everyone else gone over. Ruin II versus Ruin III usage? Maybe? Because that's pretty much it. Now if you would deign to point out where the optimization points that you're seeing are, I'd be glad to give them a test.

[CecMiller]

Okay, there is a lot I want to comment on so this might be a bit large

*snip*

1) It did feel annoying the first hour i played but then was okay.

For me - its an absolutely clear regression from 4.0 SMN. It will continue to be "annoying" for me all expansion long.

In 4.0 you didnt have to have a target to refresh AF and now you do. Improving this is simply beneficial for Summoners in general. I'm sure no-one finds it fun that we CAN'T refresh AF if we have no target or we have 1s left on the cooldown but the mob pack just dies. This is not fun and feels unnecessarily punishing.

Further down the line, we will have a set rotation for raids, and we become at the mercy of fight design AND kill speed which is dependant on groups.

Imagine this scenario: You are fighting a boss and your team is doing good dps which makes the boss trigger its mechanic early or jump away early. As a result, you no longer can refresh your Aetherflow as you previously could. Its unnecessary and simply evens the playing field across all scenarios. This was just a raid example.

But like I said, I don't think anyone genuinely enjoys not being able to refresh aetherflow without a target as its a net negative and feels bad when compared to 4.0 and the changes I'm hoping for is purely beneficial and fun.

2) I haven't experienced any frustration regarding this matter yet because i'm constantly busy thanks to the new design the job that's including a 3 layer rotation rather than one big rotation.

If I'm honest, this tells me one of two things.

You have not done the ex fights using an optimal rotation or you weren't as well versed in 4.0+ SMN as I was. The reason I say this is that in Titania EX, you are immediately blocked from doing Phoenix trance on the 3 mobs that spawn as it is only available as the final mob is dying or with faster teams - not even up yet. As a result, the boss goes untargetable whilst its summoning the bigger versions of the adds. Unless you aren't playing optimally, you will have phoenix trance be delayed here and as a result, forcefully have your cycle delayed.

So whats the difference from 4.0+?

Previously, you were soley dependant on Aetherflow meaning you could spend all your stacks and "rush" a use of a DWT or Bahamut. As a result, in the above Titania EX example, we wouldnt have had to "wait" until FBT came back up. We could have rushed it and got its full use without delaying our cycle. Furthermore, our Aetherflow would never have been delayed in such a manner as we simply pressed it to generate stacks and keep our cycle ticking. This gave us incredible flexibility and choice that demonstrated player skill via having the knowledge of knowing that you could rush Phoenix and get its full duration off without delaying your summoner cycle.

With the current iteration of Summoner, we are at the mercy of fight design when we previously were incredibly strong regardless of fight design (our downtime power was arguably the strongest)

4.0 SMN had incredibly versatility in when it wanted to deploy its trances and summons vs. the current design.

To demonstrate it, assume we use 3 Festers

00:00 - Aetherflow + Dots
00:12 - DWT active after having used all 3 Festers
00:28 - DWT Ends and Bahamut active
01:00 - Aetherflow

Lets assume it takes anywhere from 12-15s to use 3 stacks (it can be rushed to be faster). As DWT previously restriced the use of Aetherflow in 4.0+, we had to use these stacks before using DWT. DWT lasted 16 seconds (?). Our Aetherflow was back in exactly 1 minutes time. This means we had 1:00 - 00:16 - 00:15(assume worst case) = 00:39 seconds of leeway to use DWT whenever we wanted without disrupting our cycle.

The current system forces us to use DWT on CD if we want to maintain our cycle. This is a regression from 4.0 where we had far more leeway for optimal use of our abilities.

In dungeons, this is undoubtedly worse too.

Previously, you just pressed aetherflow on CD if it was up as a pack of mobs died and you continued your cycle. I was well versed in abusing summoner in dungeons due to this fact. This means you could DWT whenever you spent your stacks and when you thought it was optimal.

Currently, if a pack of mobs are dead, you cannot simply press FBT/DWT and continue you cycle. This forces you to wait until the next pack of mobs and thus delays your cycle for however long that takes (including gathering all the mobs into a big pull). This is just straight worse in general and is hopefully self-explanitory. But incase it isn't: you lose uses of demi summons and aetherflow uses with 5.0 more than you ever did with 4.0+ SMN.

I raid a hell of a lot so I'm very knowledgable in how this was best used and why our current iteration is so much worse comparitively in a multitude of ways beyond being flexible. Further, the old system could have easily accomodated using Aetherflow stacks inside trances as explained at the bottom of my opening post.

To end, I will just quote Yoshida again with what he said:

Q: Aetherflow was also separated from the Dreadwyrm Trance/Summon Bahamut cycle.

Yoshida: Regaining Aetherflow was also a stress point, and now we're focusing on the actual act of summoning. Up until now, there was a bit of downtime after summoning Bahamut, so now you can continue on with summoning Firebird, doing a large summon whenever the recast time rolls around. This mechanical change was simply a result of addressing a major cause of stress

The current system is, as demonstrated above, worse off with regards to stress points and its clear that judging from this answer that this was not the intended design.

10) This is the reason why I like playing SMN again actually i actually now feel like i'm not bored compared to all the other jobs except NIN. However i can understand why some might not like it, but it's still nice that some jobs are more complex than others so there's for all tastes.

I'm glad to hear!

The reason I mentioned it is that the change is highly divisive. We have about the CPM (casts per minute) as a bard does but nothing comes close to Ninja.

My only issue with complexity is when we compare DPS of other jobs against one another whilst ignoring complexity. If a job was very hard to master, had several nuances that you had to become accustomed to and account for whilst another job was straight forward and did near equivalent dps, would you be happy?

For me? Personally thats a big no. If a job is pretty complex to play optimally, and depending on how hard the pitfalls are for losing dps, it would be incredibly unfair if they offered equivalent dps than a job that does the same dps but is much easier to execute and didnt have the equivalent pitfalls.

I'm all for complexity and difficulty and opportunities for players to flex their mastery of a job (ie. 4.1+ SMN when DWT/AF usage was more flexible) - I just want it to have some semblence of reflection in my dps when compared to other jobs vs. only other players of my job. This is because, the easier one with less harsh pitfalls would prove to be the more popular choice for a variety of reasons besides its ease of play that results in equivalent dps. This is probably a more nuanced discussion however so I'll stop there as its besides the point.

In the end, this style of play is VERY different to 4.0 SMN and is something I'm already accustomed too, but it still needs to be iterated on via instant feedback for generating Ruin 4s on button press rather than on pet execution etc. My only concern is that when a job gets too complex and too difficult, there is a gulf in class between the players who know hot to execute it vs. those that dont and when we compare them to "easier to play" jobs that offer the same dps, the harder/more complex class serves to be less popular as the effort to reward isn't really there. Most jobs were made easier or given more tools to make their jobs easier in general in 5.0. SMN was sent in the other direction and made harder and was one of the few jobs that this happened to.

I will have a read of the other posts in a while!

[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.

[Dyvid]

I guess since I've been a summoner since '13 I have the luxury of watching the job evolve and change over the year. With every change came hardships. 4.XX came with a well defined rotation but also introduced Aetherflow lockout which people hate to this day. The problem isn't Aetherflow because it is just a resource to use Fester and Painflare again. Trance on the other hand is making it feel off due to Demi-Phoenix being tied to FBT while Demi-Bahamut can be cast anytime.

So in 4.0 the rotation was as follows (Please note this is the basic outline and doesn't involve optimization):
Aetherflow > Fester > Fester > Fester > DWT, Aetherflow > Fester > Fester > Fester > DWT, Demi-Bahamut
(The rotation was clear but also had it's faults. If the mob jumped prior to casting DWT you would be stuck waiting to start rebuilding AF. You could also use DWT right after a jump wasting the dps. True you could save your DWT but that would also put off casting Demi-Bahamut. Also Demi-Bahamut was tied to Aetherflow requiring you to wait until it was ready for maximum output. As in all things, the fight design dictated the flow of rotation and DPS output).

In 5.0 The basic rotation is (Note I added sub rotations due to the nature of the design):
DWT > Demi-Bahamut > FBT/Demi-Phoenix
-Energy Drain > Fester > Fester > Energy Drain > Fester > Fester
--Egi Enkindle > Egi A1 > Egi A2 > Egi A1 > Egi A2

(It is clear the devs intent here by making it a simple rotation and add freedom with sub rotations. The problem is things just aren't lining up right. You have short gaps in some spots and long gaps in other. It seems you want to try and keep the base rotation from 4.0 but also free Aetherflow from that system.)

My proposal would be simply this:
Make Trance a continuing flow; Dreadwyrm Trance would unlock Dreadwyrm II that summons Demi-Bahamut which would unlock Firebird Trance that summons Demi-Phoenix. Make it a 40s recast time and the trance last for 20s giving you a 2 minute rotation.

[CecMiller]

We're at the saddest timeline folks.

We're bad in EX fights relative to the other jobs, but let me draw your attention to more casual content:

Summoner in Stormblood:

https://imgur.com/a/KKfJMHZ

Summoner in Shadowbringers:

https://imgur.com/a/TD0S7n5

When you do less AOE dps than a red mage whilst having to jump through more hoops! Look at that fall from grace. I don't think I've ever seen such a big drop before. Thankfully, Dancer and Ninja are there to break our fall. God bless.

If it wasn't already clear, my points in 1) and 2) are two of the main reasons this has happened besides obvious number issues. We're weak relatively speaking to the other jobs.

[Dyvid]

K, but a lot change between 4.5 and 5.0 in terms of Dungeons. A lot of the DPS finally got good AoE to deal with trash mobs. DPS are no longer restricted by TP to use their AoE. Besides, the true measuring stick for DPS has always been trial and raids, not dungeons.

[CecMiller]

K, but a lot change between 4.5 and 5.0 in terms of Dungeons. A lot of the DPS finally got good AoE to deal with trash mobs. DPS are no longer restricted by TP to use their AoE. Besides, the true measuring stick for DPS has always been trial and raids, not dungeons.

You can check the EX raid statistics too. This is Titania.

That said, I would like an explanation as to why a class who was previously stronger or equal to that of Blackmage's AOE prowess is now almost rock bottom? Its the biggest drop I have observed to date. There is FAR more setup required to deal good aoe dps on SMN than is required for other jobs who simply press 1-2 button combos for MORE dps. This should be a genuine concern.

https://imgur.com/a/hPKAwBx

I'll also make it clear that these EX fights are not kind to melee. They lose uptime in a myriad of ways. So their DPS will just get better if they are allowed full uptime.

[Gallus]

Yeah no, I don't care how they do it at this point, but they need to do two things with SMN asap:

1 - Buff their damage (those numbers are atrocious and devotion doesn't make up for bs).

2 - Make the class more simple and straightforward to play.

[Dyvid]

That said, I would like an explanation as to why a class who was previously stronger or equal to that of Blackmage's AOE prowess is now almost rock bottom? Its the biggest drop I have observed to date. There is FAR more setup required to deal good aoe dps on SMN than is required for other jobs who simply press 1-2 button combos for MORE dps. This should be a genuine concern.

Okay, then start digging into the numbers. Like I said, they buff all AoE in 5.0 so SMN isn't the king anymore. The jobs at the top have strong AoE skills now which is placing them higher. But putting all that aside, use this data to figure out what part of SMN is lacking and what needs to be buffed for 5.1