Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[ShadowNyx3]

We didn’t have time to take a look at Red Mage or Summoner, please tell us more about them

Yoshida: It difficult to describe the new Summoner just using words. All pet summons will be instant, so you can swap between your pets depending on the situation. It feels a lot more like a “Summoner”. After you used “Summon Bahamut” it felt like the rotation got too boring, so now you can summon Phoenix. You will have one of them at each time by your side to fight along with you. We removed the annoying part of stacking your “Aetherflow” pre-pull as well. Pet will execute actions on command as well now, so the confusing parts of Summoner changed and it will feel a lot more like a *true* summoner

I hadn't read this but I knew this was likely the real goal behind it all. Wanting to feel more like a Summoner is a never-ending source of strife for this job and it honestly makes me wish they'd just remap current Summoner onto a new job like Beastmaster and reincarnate SMN as something else entirely so people can live out their Yuna and Rydia fantasies and stop complaining about the egis. Because it seriously feels like they want to remove the pets but just won't. I thought they were actually going to try and make them more unique with the instant cast change, but they made them worse! Could you imagine being able to instant swap old Ifrit and Garuda as needed, having Contagion and Radiant Shield whenever you needed them? But nope, they made them all extremely similar with even less nuance than it originally appeared with the unexpected low potency of Ifrit.


But yeah, the message is clear what they wanted to do, it's just laughable that they piled on so many issues by making unnecessary fundamental changes and faux "improvements" to existing mechanics, when it could have been made better with simple quality of life changes that so many other jobs got.

Aetherflow making people wait too long? Fill them up after a wipe. It's unbelievable that this couldn't have been done.

Not able to control Ruin IV usage reliably? Just add the stack feature to the old procs...now you can still use them to weave your oGCDs (goodbye four pet actions) but also have some for movement too so that minimizing Ruin II is optimization and not just an unavoidable punishment.

Rotation too boring after Bahamut phase? Well, they did come up with a good order, DWT -> Bahamut -> Phoenix, but why force the 60s Cooldown between trances? They made an even longer gap that completely ruined the fluidity of the Tri->Tri->Hardcast DoT application rotation and tried to fill it with oGCD weaving hell to make it more entertaining.

Doesn't feel like a Summoner? Make Bahamut feel like Phoenix and give the individual egis distinct, optimal features that incentivize summon swapping (example: Ifrit has the highest auto damage, Garuda has a magic buff, and Titan has the strongest Enkindle ability).


I never imagined that so many bad design decisions could be made, implemented and touted as the improvements they were intended to be. I am and forever will be utterly baffled until a developer explains their reasoning in detail.

[NovaBismarck]

Honestly, I was really excited about Shadowbringers, but what was done to summoner made the whole experience a let down for me. Let's put damage aside, because they can buff the numbers there. The two biggest issues for me is the stupidity of the way the egi functions work in conjunction with our rotation. However the biggest issue is flow. The flow of the class does not feel good, which is depressing considering we came from SB where at the very least the class had fluidity. The rotation is so rigid and slightly clunky. It does not easily allow for holding for phase changes and there is very little flexibilty.

I've seen a handful of people who do like the busyness of smn now but overall it's just too much for most people, especially considering the payoff. At least from what I'm reading from the Balance discord, the forums, and a reddit thread for 5.0 FFLogs DPS, which I won't post since it deals with parsing.

I've played smn since 2005, I've seen it in many iterations. I'm imploring SE to really think about what can be done to fix this unpleasant experience. I may not play savage and cannot comment to the extent of how it plays there, but as a dedicated casual player, there are huge gaps.

[Angry_Evil]

Rotation too boring after Bahamut is just insanity... literally usually DWT is ready after bahamut and then it goes to the usual stuff. Tho if r2 weaving spam was not intended rotation during bahamut then it was boring even during it LOL Literally mind blown, they should just fire SMN job designers and try to actually play it more... Tho NOT GONNA LIE in dungeons egis feel more involved than ever cause you need to change them for pulls\bosses. It feel nice but ultimately it's nothing special.

[CecMiller]

Yeah, we're in quite the predicament.

I always felt our AOE rotation was more involved, but ultimately more fun in 4.0. Right now, its still more involved, more the reward for executing it to maximum effect is pitiful. The current BLM AOE rotation flows very nicely with alternating with Freeze -> Filler if any 2x Flare. SMN is an entirely different beast and works very differenly to most AOE rotations from other jobs. Most other jobs usually have 1-2 combos for their AOE rotation and a bigger cooldown finisher. Summoner is a bit more complex (Dot management, Pet management, Trance and Demi-Summons, GCD usage, Aetherflow) but previously you rewarded for it when the stars aligned and you had all the tools at your disposal for maximum AOE damage.

Now however, we have sunk to a big low in our AOE dps as is demonstrated by this link:

https://imgur.com/a/URKizDW

I just wish that there was a bigger reward for the work we have to put in. Frankly, the fact that a 1-2 button combo for AOE rotation and 1 button for a finisher outperfoms us in AOE dps is a bit insulting. We have to do a lot more to maximize our AOE dps than most jobs which I cover in an earlier post:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5060718

With regards to other posts: At the top level you did more pet swapping than you current do. In EX primals, there are no adds within cleave range and so Garuda is pretty useless as this is the only situation garuda is made for: cleavable adds. Ifrit barely beats Garuda in a single target situation too (approximately 1.2x the power in single target). Before, when there were downtimes, you would swap to garuda for contagion, and then unleash whatever burst you have with your demi-summons and aetherflow before swapping back to ifrit at more raid dps gain (and pdps gain) than you lost via having to swap back later. That said, garuda was stronger in general after the nerfs to ifrit so instead of the pet swap opener, we were using garuda full time. Its why I'm a bit sad that contagion is gone and wasn't made more responsive and usable because it was a good reason to swap pets (provided ifrit dealt higher single target damage). I wish there were more reasons to swap pets for sure.

But yes, I wish there was a bit more reason to swap pets than there currently is. I have a lot of ideas myself but most of my posts and comments are about our current problems and fixes that I feel are the most feasible with regards to speed and ease of implementation. But the general ideas on display inside these SMN threads could all work!

[Rakith]

I hadn't read this but I knew this was likely the real goal behind it all. Wanting to feel more like a Summoner is a never-ending source of strife for this job and it honestly makes me wish they'd just remap current Summoner onto a new job like Beastmaster and reincarnate SMN as something else entirely so people can live out their Yuna and Rydia fantasies and stop complaining about the egis. Because it seriously feels like they want to remove the pets but just won't. I thought they were actually going to try and make them more unique with the instant cast change, but they made them worse! Could you imagine being able to instant swap old Ifrit and Garuda as needed, having Contagion and Radiant Shield whenever you needed them? But nope, they made them all extremely similar with even less nuance than it originally appeared with the unexpected low potency of Ifrit.


But yeah, the message is clear what they wanted to do, it's just laughable that they piled on so many issues by making unnecessary fundamental changes and faux "improvements" to existing mechanics, when it could have been made better with simple quality of life changes that so many other jobs got.

Aetherflow making people wait too long? Fill them up after a wipe. It's unbelievable that this couldn't have been done.

Not able to control Ruin IV usage reliably? Just add the stack feature to the old procs...now you can still use them to weave your oGCDs (goodbye four pet actions) but also have some for movement too so that minimizing Ruin II is optimization and not just an unavoidable punishment.

Rotation too boring after Bahamut phase? Well, they did come up with a good order, DWT -> Bahamut -> Phoenix, but why force the 60s Cooldown between trances? They made an even longer gap that completely ruined the fluidity of the Tri->Tri->Hardcast DoT application rotation and tried to fill it with oGCD weaving hell to make it more entertaining.

Doesn't feel like a Summoner? Make Bahamut feel like Phoenix and give the individual egis distinct, optimal features that incentivize summon swapping (example: Ifrit has the highest auto damage, Garuda has a magic buff, and Titan has the strongest Enkindle ability).


I never imagined that so many bad design decisions could be made, implemented and touted as the improvements they were intended to be. I am and forever will be utterly baffled until a developer explains their reasoning in detail.

I fully agree with you and all that's being written in this post. I like your idea of pet management/swapping for different effects depending on situation.
Hope SE sees this and do smth about our job quick.

[NovaBismarck]

If I had to describe the two SMNs to someone, I would say 4.0 SMN was flexible and about maximizing gain, (rushing cycles and aetherflow when necessary, timing trances for movement and big AOE moves for add phases) where as 5.0 SMN was rigid and about minimizing loss (changes to Ruin vs. dots, minimizing R2 over R4, using trances immediately or risk losing dps from delaying). Yes, minimizing loss is maximizing gain, but the former allowed you to make the necessary decisions to maximize gain where as the latter is all about minimizing drift and unecessary ruin 2 casts over ruin 4. I personally found the former far more fun to do - I don't think I like this new "rigid" SMN.

Absolutely. I would say it's a step back not forward. I can deal with having to learn the crazy busyness of the class, but the rigidity has deflated the fun out it.

[Angry_Evil]

I never liked DWT skipping in 4.0. It always sounded like horrible design. They just could allow us to refresh aetherflow during dwt without allowing to actually use stacks during dwt. but nooo

[MagiusNecros]

Rotation too boring after Bahamut phase? Well, they did come up with a good order, DWT -> Bahamut -> Phoenix, but why force the 60s Cooldown between trances?

Yeah I find that part crap. So I end up delaying my Bahamut summon until Dreadwyrm/Firebird trance is off CD.

SO you have your initial Dreadwyrm burst but then you wait until you can do Bahamut and Phoenix back to back.

Some aspects they wanted to reduce that 2 minute buildup we had with Bahamut in 4.0 but it's still kinda there if you have to delay your double summon phase.

[dinnertime]

Yeah, they should've just went with simple QoL changes than give an overhaul. They could've improved upon the "annoying" parts instead of trying to fix with prevention, which unsurprisingly made things worse.

Like for Demi-Bahamut for example, we can't use ogcds to trigger Wyrmwaves now because they probably thought it was annoying to wait for Aetherflow before summoning him, and it was. What they could've done was make Demi-Bahamut give us the ability to use Aetherflow abilities without the need of Aetherflow stacks. Really anything that would promote using ogcds in Bahamut phase which made it fun, while making the process less annoying.

I'm not a pro SMN so I'm not too sure if it's a good idea but just throwing it out there.

[Angry_Evil]

Yeah, they should've just went with simple QoL changes than give an overhaul. They could've improved upon the "annoying" parts instead of trying to fix with prevention, which unsurprisingly made things worse.

Like for Demi-Bahamut for example, we can't use ogcds to trigger Wyrmwaves now because they probably thought it was annoying to wait for Aetherflow before summoning him, and it was. What they could've done was make Demi-Bahamut give us the ability to use Aetherflow abilities without the need of Aetherflow stacks. Really anything that would promote using ogcds in Bahamut phase which made it fun, while making the process less annoying.

I'm not a pro SMN so I'm not too sure if it's a good idea but just throwing it out there.

Really, turn R3 into some phoenix like nuke and fester into special weave attack (noodle code probably won't allow that) tho probably no need for double weaves or even making weave attack to trigger WW. I personally fine with double weaving cause my ping allows me to do it, but I understand why a lot of people prefer not to