Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[CecMiller]

i noticed that if you use Topaz/Titan. Egi assault 1 will never give you Ruin 4. You have to rely on Egi assault 2. I guess i can state that is a problem. But i admit that Egi assault 2 always seems to give Ruin 4 procs with titan/topaz. I am not sure how its like with emerald/Garuda or Ruby/Ifrit But even if Topaz does not hit anything with EA2 You still seem to be guaranteed the ruin 4. I am happy losing Ruin 4 procs on EA1 with topaz because of this. But it seems it only goes off if you deal damage with the other summons. Kinda annoying

Yeah this appears to be the case - however I will note that ifrit can still "flaming crush" and also generates you an R4 proc even if flaming crush hits nothing aka the target dies before ifrit executed it.

*snip*
These types of problems are not uncommon or unheard of, especially when you do a revision of the class. The devs aren't going to be perfect and they genuinely are trying to make the class better, they just got overzealous and missed the mark because the class keeps getting revised.

I also think their heart is in the right place and they try to do what is best, but somehow things escape them or their understanding of how great abilities like the old Aetherflow were, stress point or not. It enabled player skill to be expressed whilst making the rotational tools that are a part of it, flexible and it allowed the cycle to continue flowing even during downtime where you could speed it up. It was a great system and I hope they realise this!

Its clear they wanted to improve SMN, but they ended up missing the mark! To quote Yoshida again:

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 has undeniably been comprimised in many ways flexibility being just one aspect. Their solution for Aetherflow no longer being a stress point was to make DWT the exact same thing whilst somehow still making Aetherflow/Energy Drain even more stressful even after it has become detached from the cycle.

If they wanted to reduce the wait time before pulls in raids, the solution was simply to give Summoners full stacks after every wipe similar to how "charged" actions retain full stacks after every wipe. I'm disappointed that they have not done this, but even if you started at 0 stacks, the system with the old Aetherflow dictating the our cycle was far better.

I hope they're able to go back to the drawing board and see where they made erred with the design of the new Summoner. The new "busy work" or Egi Assault OGCDs combined with the 30s Aetherflow has been highly polarizing. I myself definately prefer having 4 stacks every 60s as opposed to 2 stacks every 30 as it allowed us far more downtime power. The Egi Assault OGCDs I don't mind as much but I'm well aware others dislike them. I wish they were more potent and more meaningful even if they had a longer cooldown to compensate.

The only thing we can do really is discuss and hopefully our voices are heard and hope for the best. I trust the team to fix our problems!

[SchrodingersWaffle]

The current system has undeniably been comprimised in many ways flexibility being just one aspect. Their solution for Aetherflow no longer being a stress point was to make DWT the exact same thing whilst somehow still making Aetherflow/Energy Drain even more stressful even after it has become detached from the cycle.

If they wanted to reduce the wait time before pulls in raids, the solution was simply to give Summoners full stacks after every wipe similar to how "charged" actions retain full stacks after every wipe. I'm disappointed that they have not done this, but even if you started at 0 stacks, the system with the old Aetherflow dictating the our cycle was far better.

I hope they're able to go back to the drawing board and see where they made erred with the design of the new Summoner. The new "busy work" or Egi Assault OGCDs combined with the 30s Aetherflow has been highly polarizing. I myself definately prefer having 4 stacks every 60s as opposed to 2 stacks every 30 as it allowed us far more downtime power. The Egi Assault OGCDs I don't mind as much but I'm well aware others dislike them. I wish they were more potent and more meaningful even if they had a longer cooldown to compensate.

The only thing we can do really is discuss and hopefully our voices are heard and hope for the best. I trust the team to fix our problems!

Ultimately what I think they need to do is just get rid of DoTs and Aetherflow entirely. Put in an ability that enables Trance instead of it being it's own CD and just rip the damage from DoTs and Ruin potency increase right out and put it into DWT, most likely by making Deathflare have mutliple uses during DWT, 4-5 by my calculations, with a new "Trance ender" with potency on par with or higher than Xenoglossy (Megaflare anyone?). And potentially upping the number of Enkindle Demi-Primal per phase from 2 to 3.

[Incision93]

Also, hoping that ACT is broken more than i see, SMN got the short stick on the dps side. Is clunkier, i can deal with it. Still unforgiving on death, a bit less. We were at the 3rd spot before when played proberly, also conserving A LOT of utility. Now we have res and devotion, a BAD devotion. If you want to go asap for trances, you will Ruin3/ruin2 tridisaster DWT and ED devotion at best. Which means what? Devotion is up again in phoenix and it won't align ever again with other buffs. Also 5%, not counting burst phases or buffs, on a 180s windows with 15s duration means that you will bring:

- 0,416666666 % RaidDps contribution

Just leaving contagion was better than this. We lost utility and dps, buff won't align or you will lose even more dps. You hardly can align dots in buff windows, Bahamut rotation is turret mode to get 8WW and:

- Sb combined damage from garuda + bahamut was like 27%. Now, with phoenix, sicfrit+bahamut+phoenix is just 28%

Pet damage is ridiculously low, like you crit 25k and ifrit crits 3k at best. Inferno is horrible, if the initial it does 50 your total dot does 25. There is no autoattack, just a spammed low damage ability that "seems" an autoattack.

i will still play it, BUT i am pretty pissed that with perfect rotation and food and dancer i can hardly mantain a mch or drg dps. I would be MUCH MORE pissed in reaching an enrage just cause i could do 3k more with blm.
NO, THE RES IS NOT WORTH 3K DPS AS THE ACTUAL ONLY UTILITY WE HAVE NOW!
Smn is the new selfish dps job, that doesn't do selfish dps standards

[Taranok]

i will still play it, BUT i am pretty that with perfect rotation and food and dancer i can hardly mantain a mch or drg dps. I would be MUCH MORE pissed in reaching an enrage just cause i could do 3k more with blm.
NO, THE RES IS NOT WORTH 3K DPS AS THE ACTUAL ONLY UTILITY WE HAVE NOW!
Smn is the new selfish dps job, that doesn't do selfish dps standards

You shouldn't be matching a Machinist. MCH is a selfish DPS and should enjoy all the perks of being a selfish DPS, including being one of the top 3 DPS in the game (it's not). DRG, on the other hand, you can and should get mad about.

Ultimately what I think they need to do is just get rid of DoTs and Aetherflow entirely. Put in an ability that enables Trance instead of it being it's own CD and just rip the damage from DoTs and Ruin potency increase right out and put it into DWT, most likely by making Deathflare have mutliple uses during DWT, 4-5 by my calculations, with a new "Trance ender" with potency on par with or higher than Xenoglossy (Megaflare anyone?). And potentially upping the number of Enkindle Demi-Primal per phase from 2 to 3.

At this point, Summoner reasonably could have its DoTs and Aetherflow mechanic removed, but unfortunately that constitutes a minor-major rework by itself and won't happen until the next expansion most likely. That said, getting one of the mechanics removed is likely possible, since Aetherflow itself is flat out standalone and not tied into other mechanics in any meaningful way. Reworking how Aetherflow works is also possible, as well as possibly merging EA1/2 since that's minor by minor standards.

Any changes that we as a community push for should likely be focused on EA1/2 and ED/ES/Fester/Painflare specifically otherwise there's no hope of it being done before whatever expansion comes next.

[Incision93]

You shouldn't be matching a Machinist. MCH is a selfish DPS and should enjoy all the perks of being a selfish DPS, including being one of the top 3 DPS in the game (it's not). DRG, on the other hand, you can and should get mad about.

Drg is broken and will be fixed.
Cannot agree in the slightest with mch. Mch, aside old vuln, was already selfish enough. Now it is more? fine.
We were number 3 in savages: https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/25#dataset=99
We were more mobile, with more utility, and probably is still hard to die as it was before, the 30sec aether won't change much (enjoy dying at 1 min from the pull, rip phoenix).

SMN is so selfish now that even the shield of the BLM is broken compared to devotion, and they have addle too. The res is just cause others fckup. Is not prevention utility, is just because of the other dying. If that means we loose 3k they can remove res for what i care. We are a turret, and mch bard can move totally free. You can preposition, but moving is still a huge potency loss, especially if you are forced to stop your ruin3 cast cause you get unlucky rng aoes on you.

Mch can be punishing from dying too, we still mantain a 2 min rotation, that to be honest is really strict and makes a difference between orange and grey summoners.
It was soooooooooooooo hard for a dps to go toe to toe with a perfect SB SMN, unless played the same perfect way, that now is just embarassing to see that a full 10 min fight where you adapt your rotation to every scenario makes you barely pass 10k in bis with no buffs.

I may just say that monk should be slightly over us, but after i just think they still have some utility that is not just pure glamour

[Zyneste]

Also, hoping that ACT is broken more than i see, SMN got the short stick on the dps side. Is clunkier, i can deal with it. Still unforgiving on death, a bit less. We were at the 3rd spot before when played proberly, also conserving A LOT of utility. Now we have res and devotion, a BAD devotion. If you want to go asap for trances, you will Ruin3/ruin2 tridisaster DWT and ED devotion at best. Which means what? Devotion is up again in phoenix and it won't align ever again with other buffs. Also 5%, not counting burst phases or buffs, on a 180s windows with 15s duration means that you will bring:

- 0,416666666 % RaidDps contribution

Just leaving contagion was better than this. We lost utility and dps, buff won't align or you will lose even more dps. You hardly can align dots in buff windows, Bahamut rotation is turret mode to get 8WW and:

- Sb combined damage from garuda + bahamut was like 27%. Now, with phoenix, sicfrit+bahamut+phoenix is just 28%

Pet damage is ridiculously low, like you crit 25k and ifrit crits 3k at best. Inferno is horrible, if the initial it does 50 your total dot does 25. There is no autoattack, just a spammed low damage ability that "seems" an autoattack.

i will still play it, BUT i am pretty pissed that with perfect rotation and food and dancer i can hardly mantain a mch or drg dps. I would be MUCH MORE pissed in reaching an enrage just cause i could do 3k more with blm.
NO, THE RES IS NOT WORTH 3K DPS AS THE ACTUAL ONLY UTILITY WE HAVE NOW!
Smn is the new selfish dps job, that doesn't do selfish dps standards

As a RDM player, with the severe limitations from placed on MP for both SMN/RDM, they should both have similar DPS. We both have similar raise sustain. Embolden vs Devotion have the same cool down 2 mins vs 3, but are near equal in dps utility as is. Embolden averaging a 6% physical dps only gain, while only affecting 80% of RDMS damage for 20 seconds, vs 15 seconds of affecting everyone. SMN has no party lockout with BLM, but RDM does [with smn too for that matter. ] SMN should be on top, but not by much. They should be right next to each other.

Rezzers are just on the mid bottom of the totem pole. We wont be near the low utility classes or even most melee.

Edit: imma actually math it out, but you're right its 3 mins vs 2.

[Taranok]

Embolden is a 2m Cooldown, Devotion 3m. Devotion is 5% flat, Embolden 6% average over 20 seconds (but obviously it's more complicated). Embolden only does physical damage and personal, devotion is all damage. And obviously Embolden is 20 seconds, Devotion 15.

Embolden is flat out the better buff unless you're running more than 1 caster DPS right now, and the fact that embolden is still physical only for support is kind of a problem due to how it enforces group composition.

So no, Summoner should not be equivalent to rdm on damage, because smn has vastly lower group utility.