Quote Originally Posted by dinnertime View Post
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.