Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[CecMiller]

EDIT 21/08/19:

A link to a more up to date post savage and after listening to the live letter from Yoshida about patch 5.08/5.1 potential changes: SMN Feedback after Savage Launch/Live Letter for 5.08/5.1

Hey there,

I made some preliminary comments on Summoner before release as seen in this thread: (Warning long read)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/392119-My-Thoughts-on-the-5.0-Media-Tour-Build-of-SMN

Now that I'm level 80 and have done a few EX fights with SMN, I feel like I need to highlight the issues I'm experiencing with Summoner. There are in no particular order of importance (except probably the first and second)

1) Energy Drain/Energy Siphon requires a target and is incredibly frustrating when there is any forced downtime.

This is a big one for me personally. I do not enjoy watching a pack of mobs die only for me to have 1s remaining on Energy Drain and that feeling is genuinely awful. Every fight a boss jumps away for an intermission feels awful. This is especially painful as we used to NOT suffer from this issue in 4.1 and the decision was made in 5.0 to change it to this. To add insult to injury, several jobs were made to have improved downtime performance, where as summoner was robbed of one of their tools which made downtimes feel good. I think this change is one of the worst changes and I would hope something is done to remedy it.

My personal suggestion is quoted at the bottom. Have Aetherflow be in control of our cycle again and have the same 60s cooldown. It would fix a LOT of the issues I'm about to talk about.

Just a Note: I am aware summoners asked for not having to wait 60s for aetherflow before fights, but I dont think the expectation ever was for Summoners to suddenly start at 0 stacks instead of 3 and for its new implementation to be as frustrating as it is. If there was a choice between one or the other, I'd gladly wait 60s and make my raid teams wait too. They already wait due to other pre-pull necessities regardless.


2) The removal of flexibility regarding trance timings and the current Aetherflow detachment from the cycle creates some frustrating gameplay experiences.

Previously, you could spend all 3 Aetherflow stacks and delay DWT as long as Aetherflow was still on cooldown and this would not result in a delay in your cycle.
Meaning: if you had 50s left on Aetheflow to comeback, you had the entire 50s duration to choose of when you wanted to enter DWT when it was more appropriate for you even if you were forced into cutting it short due to how long you held it.

This offered more player choice in how you wanted to use it: whether you wanted to rush DWT or hold it for a more movement heavy section or for upcoming ogcd weaves or wait until you got to a group of monsters to deathflare them down. I found this playstyle very rewarding and extremely fun as you would benefit greatly through smart play.

In 5.0, Aetherflow is detached from the cycle entirely and DWT/FBT is now extremely rigid at a hard 60s cooldown. The cost of flexibility is that it will delay your cycle which is ultimately a bad thing to do as the payoff from phoenix is too large to ignore. As a result, you will simply be using the abilities on cooldown for most cases. This removes all the strategic element of when to optimally use these trances which I felt was one of the most iconic portions of the summoners tool kit. The ability to hold your abilities and strategically use them when you wanted in a given time frame.

This change, in general, feels awful and is incredibly frustrating similar to Aetherflow when there is forced downtimes, whether its between add packs in a dungeon, or bosses phasing out. Previously you had a lot more lee way and if you knew a boss was going to disappear soon, you could "rush" a portion of your rotation so that you wouldn't be delaying the cycle anywhere near as much as you do now. Similarly, for add packs, you could spend all your aetheflow stacks and "hold" DWT for the next add pack so you could use AOE inside DWT which rewarded you. Now, any attempt to do so will simply delay your cycle and cause you to have wasted time that could have contributed to getting you to your phoenix burst phase just that much faster.

3) As a follow up to the changes to the trances, we are now forced to drop dots for a few ticks at some points due to the rigid 60s cooldown.

As previously we could enter DWT/FBT of our own accord (as long as we had spent Aetherflow stacks), we could make use of the tri-disaster resets to keep close to maximum uptime on our dots. With the current changes, it is inevitable that we now will have an occurence of lost dot ticks and so have the occassional unbuffed ruin. This is pretty annoying to deal with and consider the effect this has when there exists a debuff limit for fates, hunts and Eureka like content. SMN is unnecessarily gimped by the design.

4) Summoner is now much higher in the APM department than before.

With the removal of 2 60s OGCDs (Rouse and Shadowflare), we gained 4x 30s OGCDs from pets and 1 extra OGCD user per minute for Aetherflow/Energy drain than previously. As a result, the class now feels more busy than ever before.

This is hit or miss really. I could enjoy this higher APM playstyle, but currently, I find myself watching my bars more than I am watching the boss or whats going on around me. It could be just teething issues and the learning curve, but I don't believe I ever looked at my bars as much as I do now. Furthermore, the egi actions themselves are a tool to gain ruin 4 stacks than their resultant potency which is a bit sad. I would also note that in 4.0 we could use these egi assaults in obey mode whilst hardcasting ruin 3. This made them "nicer" to use as we werent forced to ruin 2 in order to use them. Personally, I could deal with the higher APM of egi actions if other issues were fixed, but they're not so I'm not a fan at this current time.

5) Ghosting of pet actions.

If a target dies whilst a pet is perfoming an egi assault action, the ability will "wiff" and you will not gain a ruin 4 stack. This is very annoying to deal with and I hope this gets fixed. Consider giving us the Ruin 4 immediately on button press than waiting for the action to execute and hit a target.

6) Bahamut feels awkward to use.

He has been robbed of his most interesting interaction during his summon. I understand that phoenix is a new summon and supposed to be the new "big payoff" at the end of the summon cycle, but does bahamut have to feel so bad? You stand around hard casting Ruin 3's as he no longer benefits from ogcds. If you move, he lumbers behind you. He looks like he is doing nothing for half the time he is with you. Why not give him his ogcd interaction back to differentiate him from Phoenix? In general, Bahamut feels feeble in comparison. I hope that at some point, bahamut gets more moves than akhmorn or pelvic thrusting the air at his enemies.

To add onto this, it seems his AI has been changed slightly. When before, you could summon him late into the ogcd and Ruin 2 -> Akhmorn and generate a wyrmwave before the akhmor, he now ignores this or cancels the wyrmwave and just akhmorns instead.

As a suggestion, maybe make his wyrmwaves AOE? Flarebreaths for example from UCOB with the same visual element. He just feels a lot worse when compared to phoenix.

7) Energy Siphon? Just... What?

I would argue this is one of the worst buttons in this game to be created. It is the worst form of creating an opportunity where a good player could excel over an average player. The ability to recognize that the using Energy Siphon when 3 or more targets are in close proximity to each other vs. using Energy Drain on 1 target. This is a sad excuse of a button gated behind a shared 30s cooldown. It is not even remotely interesting and offers nothing but additional AOE potency in the case of adds for generating Aetherflow.

If Energy Drain read:
"Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to the target and 40 to all enemies nearby it"

Energy Siphon would have no reason to exist. Somehow, it was decided that cutting that piece of text off from Energy Drain and making its own button made for an interesting ability. It will be one of the first abilities to be pruned I feel.

Instead, you could use this button as an opportunity to give SMN players the ability to generate Aetherflow during forced downtime aka it lets you generate Aetherflow without a target. Otherwise, this ability is honestly mindboggling

8) Everlasting Flight exists.

This has to be a purely flavour move, but I cant help but question why it even exists. No summoner worth their salt will ever delay phoenix to aoe heal their party. I hope that this move is changed into something more appropriate one day - or at least, its not counted as part of SMN's "utility". Whats funny is that it was made MORE potent from the media tour build. I personally dont believe Summoner should have access to any healing skills. The shield from our titan egi more than suffices. Red mage has mastery over magic, give vermedica to them if they want it. I dont believe summoners asked for this.

9) Slipstream on garuda.

While the animation is neat, damaging ground aoes have always been frustating. Whats more is that we cant even see the duration of the ability. Tanks in dungeons dont stand still and so usually mobs move out. A nice change would be that any enemies hit by the slipstream gain a dot immediately that deals 20 potency over 15s. This makes it more reliable.

10) The class arguable got more complex/harder.

With the addition of Ruin 4 stacks, and a larger potency loss of Ruin 2 vs. Ruin 3, you are incentivized to hardcast more and efficiently use ruin 4 stacks in trade of ruin 2s. Dots are far more important than they ever have been due to their 80-140 potency gain on your Ruin spells. This is a non-issue for me largely, but I felt the need to point it out.

That said, its my personal belief that complexity/difficulty should have some reward in terms of dps. If two jobs dealt the same or near the same dps, but the other was much easier to get into/play, the easier one would more attractive. If you opted for the harder/complex class, you would feel as if you were putting in a lot of work in to generate the same output.

11?) Let us have some control over our aggro.

Please return the "reduces emnity by half" text onto lucid dreaming or something. It is not enjoyable as a dps player to immediately die after the tanks do especially when you have a raise. It seems now that the aggro bar is a better indicator of dps than before, and as a result, the standout dps players usually get pummeled to the ground before the other dps which is something that I do not enjoy happening. Tanks do generate a lot of aggro now for sure, but the moment they die, the next highest on aggro (usually one of the better performing dps) is next on the boss's hit list. At least before I could make use of my aggro tools so that I could manipulate the other dps into dying first so I have time to rez healers or kill the boss if needed.

To conclude:

The ones that irk me the most are 1) and 2). We went from having this unique kit where we could freely strategically choose when to use trances and aetherflow charges, to now being more rushed into the decisions we make and further, removing all sense of strategicness to DWT/FBT use. This developed as we lost Aetherflow, whose stacks we could hold, as the cog in the rotation and traded it for DWT/FBT, which is used instantly in comparison. As a result, a lot of downtime now feels awful which is a complete 180 from 4.1+ SMN as it was one of our strengths. This is compounded by the fact that Energy Drain can not be used without a target and so we can not gain stacks during downtime.

Edit:

Something that could fix problems 1), 2), 3) and arguably 7) whilst iterating on the 4.1 design of SMN which gave us all this flexibility

Alternatively (assuming Aetherflow is back to its original state/60s), simply pressing the button could make the Trances "Active" instead of having to spend the stacks to activate DWT etc


Example:

1. Aetherflow (on use aka just to gain the stacks) gives us access to DWT aka button lights up and can be used whenever.(Can spend stacks inside).
Further, the next Aetherflow becomes "Enhanced" after DWT ends for its next use. This means we can use DWT however we want for the next 60s.
2. DWT gives us access to Bahamut as before.
3. Enhanced Aetherflow (on use aka just to gain the stacks) gives us access to FBT aka button lights up and can be used whenever. (You can spend stacks inside FBT).
Note: Enhanced AF cannot be used until you have used DWT as state prior. This avoids conflicting situations.
4. Aetherflow returns to normal for next use aka it would grant DWT again on refresh after FBT has ended.

We can be funny and call normal "Aetherflow" Energy Drain and "Enhanced Aetherflow" Energy Siphon. In effect, ending DWT upgrades Energy Drain to Energy Siphon whilst FBT ending changes Energy Siphon to Energy Drain. Also, I'd hope we can use both Energy Drain/Energy Siphon without a target in combat and preferablly between trash pulls in a dungeon if at all possible.

This avoids the aetherflow lockout in trances as was the case in 4.0+. You could also use the "enhanced" Aetherflow stacks inside bahamut as all it does is change DWT icon to FBT icon on use. Just be aware that the enkindles share times between the summons. I see no downside to this.

2nd Edit:

12) Its AOE capability has been severely hampered due to 1) and 2) and the large damage reductions on multiple targets. It has gone from being tied-best at AOE with BLM to almost rock bottom

This is due to the repeated nerfs to all of SMN AOE's capabilities with large % damage reductions which aren't as steep on other jobs (see Foul) or don't exist at all (see Nastrond). Akhmorn, Deathflare, Painflare, Dots, Bane (on 1-7 mobs) have all been nerfed. Further the effects of points 1) and 2) has drastically reduced the amount of demi summons, deathflares and painflares output over the course of a dungeon run. In addition, as tri-disaster is no longer available on demand via rushing trances, we require more setup in the form of hard casting dots to get our AOE up and running via bane. Further more, I just want to point out the level of preperation a SMN has to do for good AOE to rival other jobs as I did in this post:

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

13) The Devotion timing is a bit awkward as it comes up during our phoenix trance.

This restricts the timing of the buff and causes us to delay our spell usage as this spell is not usable during Bahamut or FBT. This means it is unusable for 40 seconds of our 120 second cycle as we have no pet available. Consider making this an actual spell the summoner casts instead?