Thread: 5.0 SMN: Increasing the skill gap

Hello, I wanted to make this post for a while, but scapped it a few times.
I do want to put out my opinions now, so I will try to make it brief (relatively).

I think that going from SB to SHB, Summoner has become considerably harder to play.

The first thing you would notice is a significant increase in CPM. An increase I don't mind as much, actually during leveling, it was very enjoyable, and it does spice up the gameplay at lower levels, but I do notice it draws attention away from the fight, with practice this shouldn't be as bad.

Secondly, we now have a lot more timers to track, that each can drift apart individually. The aetherflow system is separate from trances, so you need to look at cooldowns for both. We then have an increased importance of DoT management, a slight mistiming can cost you a "festerruin" later on. We also have to keep our eyes on egi-assaults, not just looking if it's available, but actually plan ahead with them so it doesn't cap out during demi-summons or downtime.

When considering your DoTs, the current tri-disaster reset combined with the new trance system makes it very inflexible, clunky and punishing. Trying to align your dots with raid buffs additionally forces you to cut down your DWT, reducing your mobility in the process.

Considering mobility: Phoenix is a bitch. Unlike 4.x bahamut, you can't lock his movement by using off-gcds as you move around, which can end up costing you Scarlet Flame procs. The increased potency loss for using Ruin 2 also makes the job less mobile (this last change I support).

As a conclusion: The new summoner has a lot of different systems that don't really work together, and sometimes actively fight each other. We need to plan around more and hit more buttons. Meanwhile we have reduced mobility and a reduced flexibility to deal with downtime and adds. All that can be overwhelming, not just for new players, but even experienced players from SB.

Finally, something already addressed in http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ck-at-level-80. The nature of Energy Drain and Energy Syphon requiring a target hurts your ability to deal with downtime, and together with the new trance system, nerfs SMN's ability to take advantage of AoE situations in an opportunistic way without sacrificing the rest of your cycle. This is different now, thus fights with downtime would be tighter on execution and rotations can start to deviate drastically depending on downtime, composition and kill time, where gains can be pretty marginal due to the tradeoffs and execution factors. This makes it harder to plan around fights, and is no doubt frustrating when things turn out slightly different and you lose a lot of potency.

Having covered the issues with difficulty. Here are the main things I want to see addressed with the current summoner:
- DoT and tri-disaster reset jank. Please consider desyncing the resets from the trance cycle, or changing the trance cycle to not be exactly 60s apart. Ideally make it so it is optimal to place a hardcast dots before phoenix, since those gcds aren't affected by ruination.
- Festerruins. They make SMN weak against new targets and can be a major source of frustration, they also cause weird rotation stuff where triple weaves, hard clipping and even waiting around doing nothing for a bit can end up optimal. (and they also completely gut your dps in situations where you have a lot of players, as your dots won't apply)
- Phoenix rigidity and lack of mobility. I don't really like summoning phoenix, firebird trance by itself (pre-80) felt more satisfying to use, with the opportunities to use egi-assaults in that window. It also fights against devotion. Heck, I barely even see phoenix since it's big, spawns behind you and gets culled off the screen a lot (where is the /phoenixsize small?).
- Bahamut feels weak now it no longer interacts with off-gcds.

I have several ideas on how the issues can be fixed, but those I'll leave for another time.

EDIT: I posted some suggestions later on, here a TL;DR of that post:

Originally Posted by Vulcwen

1. Reduce timers to track and downtime issues by putting trances behind the aetherflow cycle again. Energy Drain -> Energy Syphon as alternating skills every 30s, where energy drain grants a buff that allows you to enter a trance.
2. Reduce some pet clunk by making demis proc ww/sf right away again, reducing devotion's cooldown to 2m (at potential cost to the buff's potency) and normalize pet damage/potency to equal that of a player.
3. Fix DoT issues by bringing back the back-to-back tri-disaster reset by moving it from FBT to Summon Bahamut at level 72.
4. #deletefesterruins

before fixing these major flaw, i hope they give us an option to lock bahamut and phoenix down in one place first, and only come to us whenever we use Heel

i don't ask for gap closer for SMN but atleast give us this option, do innocent ex fight with SMN is such a pain, sometime i receive like 4 or 5 sword mechanic in the round, other time i get none, so i techniquely have to delay demi summon to see if i get sword or not, if i use demi summon and get sword to the face mean that summon is waste since both bahamut and phoenix just panic and spin around as i move to avoid that mechanic

There are only a few things I personally think need to be done to the class that can reasonably be done with the class to make it feel good immediately without a complete rework:

• Reduce overall oGCD count, especially any of the 6 oGCDs on 30s timers, preferably by flat out removing energy drain, energy siphon, fester, and painflare, but keeping EA1 and 2. Consider merging Fester and Painflare with DWT so that DWT is a DPS increase like it has been in the past but without making DoTs ridiculous during this time.
• Make ruination easier to work with, castable innately on Miasma or Bio, or seriously consider just deleting it because, at 75% uptime, the natural rotation places 20 of 90 seconds of that during a window when you flat out cannot maintain it, and it's a lot of DPS over the course of a fight that I'd rather just have innately and not have to fight to keep. If Ruination is kept, consider dropping the 70+ traits to be acquired when ruination is acquired, at 52 when you get tri-disaster, and make it such that this is when Miasma/Bio can be hardcast to give ruination.
• Extend DoT times or reduce cooldown time of Trance to make it easier to flow and allow for minor amounts of clipping (3-6s) without screwing you out of 1-3 GCDs worth of +damage on ruin.
• Merge Demi-Bahamut into DWT, increase DWT duration to 20s post 70; summoning DB separately worked really well in SB, it feels very weird in ShB.
• Make it so demi summons will cast their Wyrmwaves and Scarlet Flames immediately instead of moving first. Movement shouldn't kill DPS because of bad pet AI.
• Make devotion cast regardless of which pet is out, including demi-summons. Having demi-summons forcibly delay Devotion is bad design, and the rotation naturally has Devotion come off cooldown during demi-phoenix, when it cannot be used. Better yet, just fix devotion to not be cast by the pet.

These aren't trivial changes, but the big thing to work on are fixing Summoner so that it has fewer things to keep track of, making DB not a stupid summon, and a couple quality of life changes here and there. Trances having awkward timing is okay. Not ideal, but okay. However, the way everything is awkward around trances also being awkward makes for a disjointed mess of a class that clashes heavily with itself, and the above should smooth it out until the devs can give SMN a major rework to make it the summoner that it's so close to being.

Originally Posted by ShariusTC

before fixing these major flaw, i hope they give us an option to lock bahamut and phoenix down in one place first, and only come to us whenever we use Heel

i don't ask for gap closer for SMN but atleast give us this option, do innocent ex fight with SMN is such a pain, sometime i receive like 4 or 5 sword mechanic in the round, other time i get none, so i techniquely have to delay demi summon to see if i get sword or not, if i use demi summon and get sword to the face mean that summon is waste since both bahamut and phoenix just panic and spin around as i move to avoid that mechanic

You'd think 2 years is enough to fix a problem with moving demi summons... guess not
Doubt they'll fix it ever

It's harder to play now and has less mobility for no reward.

Currently even BLM has more mobility while being more consistent to play. BLM's entire damage justification was that they had to drop casts to do mechanics so it had to be higher. But now "Not RDM" doesn't get that same privilege at all.

Right now "Not RDM's" biggest problems are:

• Egi Assaults cost too much to weave. At certain points level wise it's a dps loss to even use them. That's a problem. Even aoe at higher levels is a dps loss to clip Outbursts for Garuda skills.

• Dreadwyrm Trance's Tri Disaster timing is flawed and can't be used right in practice without being able to be used on whim like SB's was. You don't ever gain your cooldown Tri and your Trance Tri, you will always lose part of one or drop your DoTs. This DOESN'T COMPLIMENT the new DoT requirement for your GCD at all. On top of just being awful in practice to do optimially.

• Various other clunky issues. Energy Drain timings. Phoenix dropping Scarlets. Firebird Trance 9th gcd dropping. A few more I can't remember right now.