[ Dev Requests ] Player Suggestions for Future Summoner Reworks

[CKNovel]

Hmmm, I don't play SMN anymore, so I will give my feedback about what would make me come back to this job:

I. Pet Overhaul
The pets are wrongly behaving and should not be a hassle to deal with and I see 3 ways:
-Pets are completely automatic and just attack like the old auto-turret. Sad to say, but summon and forget.
-Pets are completely SMN dependant and don't have their own attacks. SMN cast devotion? The pet obey the order within half a second.
-Or pets are recoded for a mix of the solution above, they still attack but obey the orders way faster.

That goes for Egi and Demi, so no more Bleeding GCDs.


II. Reconnect the rotation and reduce filler phases
SMN rotation is kind of a mess but also seems to be a good start something good. Trance Bahamut is in a weird spot where it's just to prepare Ahk Morn.
In my opinion, without going in details, SMN should look like a bit BRD.

Different phases, that starts/end with a dot refresh through Tri Disaster.
If we take the actual rotation, SMN has massive filler phases between Demi on a 120s rotation.
With a (maybe) 3rd Demi, the global rotation could shorten the filler phases.

[Sairys]

I kinda like the idea of some of the SMN spells pivoting to be more of a coordinated attack style thing.

Not so much in the style of Wyrmwave/Scarlet Flame but instead more like merging the egi assaults/enkindle with other stuff so that when you use certain spells or abilities each Egi summon has an ability that is triggered. Maybe shift away from the, kinda, single target/aoe/support split to something else possibly like... Greedy DPS/Magic Buff/Physical Buff with the demi-summon trances being an extension of that and being based on which Egi you have active when you go into the trance. Kinda making them more of a stance I guess.

[JisKing98]

Me personally I would it if they actually make the Demi's permanent at level 90 or 100.
keep like 1 DoT but instead its a combination of miasma and bio now.
make ruin 4 like a trait at 88 or something.
Make trances longer like 30 seconds tops now.

[Recon1o6]

As much as yoshi-p hates pets, pets are kinda core to the concept of a pet class. This means they should actually put some damn effort in and fix the ai, preferably the SB Sch ai as a base.

I want to play summoner but the rotation is just too fiddly for lack of a better term during its burst and feels too much like a "waiting for Akh morn", plus there's the small problem of being easy to lose gcds or weaves due to ping

I'd want smn to have two halves to its rotation so to speak. Pet based, then demi based. The dots can go back to sch who badly needs and deserves it.

[RicaRuin]

I'm against taking away the DoTs.

Wouldn't mind a more fleshed out Demi concept though.

[Rika007]

Excellent topic. I'll break my ways to address how I would prefer to see summoner reworked as well, keeping in mind that with how every time SE has reworked a job, they like to keep current assets and thematics. As much as I'd love to pull a Yuna from dissidia or start looking like the mc from XVI and use dynamic attacks that bring about the summons arm to smack an opponent with each strike, I don't see that as a realistic hope for the dev team to pull off. Instead my proposed rework aims at keeping current assets, keeping the same feel that summoner has of fast paced mid to high APM play, and fixing the leveling and learning curve of the job for newbies, all while removing current frustrations that upper level players have, and primarily focusing on what brings the most hype factor to the job, the Demi Summons.

Egi's:
-I know many will disagree but I would like to see Egi's removed from the top level summoner rotation. Flat out, having played summoner as my primary caster since 2.0, I've seen every Egi rework done, and not a single one of them were ever able to address the issues I had with the pet AI in this game. Many of them actually just made it flat out worse. So I would like to see them removed from the soon to be level 90 rotation that is coming in 6.0. While I would love to see the dev team find a way to make pet actions work in this game PROPERLY, after 8 years and 4 different reworks, I have lost faith in them pulling it off. I DO NOT however want the Egi's axed entirely, as there is lore reasons and purely aesthetic purposes to keeping them around. I will touch on how to keep them around in my next part. The loss of egi-assaults and their generation of Further Ruin will also need to be addressed which I will put my thoughts on later.

Leveling experience:
-Let's face it. Leveling summoner from the ground up is an absolute mess for a new player. Heck even starting at 70 doesn't feel great. From step level 1 to 30 to 60 to 70 to 80, you are essentially playing a different job. This creates a very disjointed experience for new players, and also makes getting level synced down a miserable experience for veterans. This is where my idea on removing egis' from the upper level rotation but still keeping them comes into play. Make the egi's the mini versions of the demi's and have them summoned in a similar way, where a player brings them out during their burst rotation, rips off an enkindle or two, then lets them go. As you level up to 70, 80 and soon to be 90, each Egi will be upgraded to a demi. Ifrit becomes Bahamut, Garuda becomes Pheonix, Titan becomes.... whatever the heck they plan on adding (Alexander or Shiva would be my wishes). I also would then say for pure aesthetics, you would be able to still summon your egi outside of combat like a minion. I want my carbuncle still following me around the city. I'm just done with it ghosting actions in combat.

Trances:
-With the likely inclusion of a new summon (this section can be completely ignored if a new summon isn't getting added, as could probably every post in this thread, as we pretty much all expect a new Demi), the length of the summoner rotation once again must be addressed. My proposal for that is to tighten the trance cycle in time overall down to 12 or 15 seconds (changing enkindle to a 10 sec cool down to ensure you are still getting 2 off in a trance), and lessen the time between trances to either 25 or 40 seconds. This will either keep the summoner on their current minute long burst cycle, or move them to the 90 second burst cycle that monk and Warrior (and Bard kinda) share. Obviously potency's and tri-disaster/DoT timings will need to be addressed to keep this balanced. Also, to make the opener more seamless and due to the egi-assault loss, it's time to merge Dreadwyrm Trance into Bahamut, much like Firebird Trance works with Pheonix. So we don't miss out on the awesome Deathflare animation, I would also love to see Deathflare turned into a GCD replacement much like Brand of Purgatory does for Phoenix. I don't want to see DWT become TOO much like FBT though, so maybe instead of Pheonix's 1-2-1-2-1-2 cycle, Make it a 1-1-1-2? Or heck maybe just let us spam Deathflare over and over again since this hypothetical would be a shortened trance cycle anyway, it would give a really amazing feeling to the summoner to slam death flares into their opponent while bahamut hit's em with two akh morns, it would have the same feel of Savage Shiva or Nidhogg where they just hit you over and over again with Ala Morhns.

Demi's:
-Since we are merging Dreadwyrm into Bahamut and losing egi-assaults, mobility becomes very important. And while everyone and their mother sees all those free GCD's summoner has, any good summoner knows that your mobility is very much hindered by the Demi's constant need to follow the player like a lost puppy. So please, un-teather the freaking Demi from the player. This should be the one suggested change that shows up on everyones list. Make it so wherever I bring Bahamut of Phoenix out, that sucker stays right there and goes to work, allowing me to then move around the arena and handle mechanics with no fear that I'm missing out on vital wyrmwaves or scarlet flames.

Further Ruin:
-Under this rework, we obviously lose egi-assaults, and therefore our primary way of granting Further Ruin stacks for use of Ruin 4. While I also believe that Ruin 3 is due for a visual upgrade, I don't think it's time for 4 to go away, and because of that, I think we need a new passive trait that grants Further Ruin so you still have free GCD's during your down time phases between trances. My current thinking is either you build one for every two or three successive Ruin uses, with a max of 4 to 6 possible, or instead, place it on a timer, similar to how White Mage lilies work. The exact amount or timing of these is up in the air, as I would think the player base would need to get a feel for the job first to know how fast they should generate without it being too much of a crutch, but also generates just enough that a truly skilled player would always have as much as she or he needs.

DoT's/AetherFlow:
-I will also diverge from the opinion of several here and say I do not want to see DoTs leave summoner. XIV is already preciously slim on DoT classes as it is, with Bard and Summoner being the only two currently with more then one DoT to keep up, and that should stay. Forking those DoTs over to another new job somewhere down the line does not work either. How we interact with those DoTs though is certainly something that could be reworked, and I feel like it's best to instead look at the Aetherflow actions generated from Energy Drain/Energy Siphon and how those really gate our play. Summoner already suffers from extraneous button bloat, and XIV has a much better way of handling multiple actions with different applications for AOE/ST in charged actions. So I vote to remove both ED and ES, and put Fester and Pain Flare on a charged action system with a shared cool down, with the amount of charges and cool down keyed to insure that the job will get the same amount of oGCD actions in per minute as they do now with the current 1, 2, 3 of Energy Drain into Fester x2. Tri-Disaster resetting upon each summon is something I like, and would prefer to seen remain, with the application that it lasts long enough to just make it so that if a player is keeping up with their trance rotation properly and not dying, manual dot casting will be at a minimum.

Extra Bits:
-Make devotion cast from the player, not the summon.
-Upgrade the animations for fester and pain flare

[Payadopa]

I want actual pets. With HP bars and everything. A SMN's main source of power should be their summons. And the big ones shouldn't be on a static rotation.
It's not fun if your party needs a bit of healing but your rotation says you must summon it before it was useful. That's such a waste.

[LeonKeyh]

I'll preface this so it can be ignored from an endgame game play standpoint; I leveled Summoner to 80 jumping between SCH and SMN every other level (then SMN almost exclusively through trusts 71-80) and then I shelved it and moved on to the next class I wanted to level.

It needs is an identity. It needs to be a DoT class OR a Pet Class OR a Trance class. Trying to do all of those things, it doesn't do any of them well and I feel like if it focused on one of them it would create something that is good.

SMN as a DoT class hits its peak at level 18. I'd argue that you have all of the DoT management stuff at that point (Tri-Disaster is more a tool to remove DoT management entirely from the class especially with the Trance rotations resetting it) and that it's just not really a fulfilling part of the class. BRD's systems aren't great, but they're closer to what I would expect a DoT class to look like. If the intention is for the class to be a DoT class, there are definitely some things that can be done to make it more interesting. Abilities that consume the DoTs to do things (damage, debuffs, give aetherflow, give your pet a buff or fill a pet gauge, etc), temp buffs that lower the duration of your DoTs (but still do the same amount of damage over the course of the DoT), etc. Arguably though, it's not a "real" DoT class.

SMN as a Pet class leaves a lot to be desired as well. Pet system's issues are known by basically everyone and it seems like they shy away from actually using the system at all. On the flip side though, they feel the need to implement at least SOME of the pet system and what it results in is them using a "bare minimum" amount of the pet system required to continue to act like the SMN is a pet class. Without a rework of the pet system as a whole (which, who knows, might happen), adding more pet related abilities/commands would ultimately piss off the people who are still playing. If they want it to be a pet class, I feel like there has to be a lot more to it other than it basically being another DoT (egi auto attack) and a couple of instant cast abilities. There should be some play between the abilities that you're using and the power of your pet. Something that is not exactly like, but similar in concept to the RDM system. As a SMN you use certain abilities (e.g. keep your DoTs up for so long, use a fester with DoTs up, use an ability that removes your DoTs) and add to a gauge for your pet. That gauge makes your pets attacks more powerful, or unlocks certain special attacks that can be used (like Enkindle but bigger, flashier). Something closer to SCH basically, but handled...better.

Trance system is cool, but seems really punishing if you make a mistake or die. The overall idea seems solid, but could use a lot of work (and it sounds like if they moved to a trance system, some people would be mad that they lost their "pet"). I don't know how you would make the existing egis "trances" without half of them not being used though.

[darcstar62]

I'm in the "don't get rid of the egi's" camp, but I do understand the issues that they have (SMN is the dps I play when I'm playing dps). Here's my suggestions:

Egis: egis do their AA as normal. However, the Egi Assault skills are simply abilities they they grant the summoner, not commands to the egis. (Probably doesn't fit, lore-wise, but looking for compromises here.) Hopefully, this will help with the ghosting.

Demi-summons: Treat these more like the MCH's Automation queen. Once summoned, they go through their rotation on their own. Like queen, we can still command an early finishers in case of boss jumps, but hopefully will help remove the "following" issues as well as needing perfect timing.

A demi alternative would be to use the AST "pet", Earthly Star. Put them out at a spot, they stay there, and if the boss moves out of range, too bad -- that's part of the challenge (tbh, I'd probably hate this in practice -- just throwing out options that I know they have the ability to implement).

[ReynTime]

I guess I'm in the minority. Cause I like the idea that the SMN focuses on DoTs, buffs and trance while the summons do the burst damage. But I really wish summons had more OGCD actions so it doesn't feel like I'm being stopped in my tracks every time I cast one.