Thread: Fix Summoner Once and For All in 6.0 Please!

Let me start by saying I in no way know how to play current SMN. It's to complicated for my brain. That said, I think SMN's clunkyness comes from what it started out as to what it became. First it was a arcanist that that had to share what it had at lvl 30 with scholar. I think they need to untimatly and finally fully seperate the two. So that archanist becomes summoner and scholar is just and advanced job unlocked at lvl 30 the same way they have been doing since HW.

Next, you have poisons and summons. Starting out you have a pet and you place poisons on a mob. This was how you did damage. You get more pets but your sole damage source is your poisons and ways to deal damage around them. Such as Fester and Painflare. Then comes the trance where you get to insta cast some spells and at the end explode for big damage. 2 of those gives you access to Bahamut. Now your damage sources are split between poisons, trance, and bahamut. Then comes pheonix which is a trance / demi mode all on it's own. Often times when I play smn my dots fall off a lot cause I'm trying to focus on Bahamut trance, summoning bahamut, and then Pheonix Trance. That's on top of trying to keep up with enkindle and when to use pet actions.

I think one way to fix this would be to remove poisons altogether and make it more about the pets. For example you could make it so Carbuncle is your pet that is always out. You have Ruin spells but you do most of your damage from Carby. Then when you get access to Ifrit, Titan and Garuda, they are more demi summons that replace Carby and last for say 15 or 20 secs where your Carby attacks become new attacks. Perhaps these new attacks fill up a gauge that lets you summon bigger demi summons like Bahamut and Pheonix who work like they do now. Or perhaps the order you summon Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda in, similar to mudras, lets you summon one over the other, Bahamut or Pheonix. Maybe for single target vs AoE.

This would put the focus on pets and allow you to focus on one thing over trying to both manage poisons and it's damaging abilities like Fester and your trances.

I'm not sure I care enough for a rework anymore, as much as a desired refinement.

I agree that SB Summoner felt fluid. ShB summoner does too much, without really feeling like it's all connected. Aetherflow as it is now, just doesn't belong. It's just a filler to do things with. Before Aetherflow truly was part of the rotation. Aetherflow > Trance > Aetherflow > Trance > Bahamut. I had a reason to use Aetherflow, and I had flexibility within the rotation. In ShB, outside of huge DPS loss, if I didn't use Aetherflow I could still get through my rotation as is.

I want 6.x SMN to feel like everything connects again. I want Aetherflow to actually flow in the rotation or be removed. I want the Egi's to be properly responsive. Maybe for Fester and Painflare, just like how, eventually Egi Assualts provide further ruin for Ruin 4, EA's could provide another ammo system for fester/painflare uses. Maybe even instead of a button, Aetherflow stacks are generated from EA usage as the ammo. Of course this is all banking off Egi performance improvements.

I also really dislike how one demi-primal is a summon and the other is part of Trance. This bothers me and causes yet another strange desync. I say it to my friends all the time, I feel like ShB was a playground to get a feel for the direction they want to take SMN in. Because ShB summoner has Aetherflow, Trance, Demi-Summon, Trance+Demi, Egi-Pet / Egi Assaults. All of which barely work together. It will never make sense to me why they have a trance that has a demi-primal and a trace that doesn't. In that way I want one or the other. Not both.

FFXIV SMN grew on me. I like having a pet. I also like demi-primials and making them do big attacks, this makes me feel like classic FF SMN while also fulfilling that "summoner is never alone" kinda vibe. I don't think I want a rework anywhere near as much as I used to. I don't want BLM 2.0. I just want what we have refined and cleaned up. We have too many tools that are trying to get us to the same place I feel.

All that aside, I would LOVE variety. Whether that's more egi glam or demi glam. Part of the fun and love of SMN for me throughout FF were the different summons and roles they could play. I know that as a system FFXIV can't really give that to me, but cmon gimme my egi Ramuh!! I need a grumpy chibi old man following me around looking like he's gonna whack me for doing/saying something stupid!

I think they just need to improve the response time for Egi commands. I think the biggest problem is Egis and Demis outright ignoring your commands sometimes.

What if, and hear me out, they made SMN like MCH and DRK? Here's how it would work.

As a arcanist you get carbuncle. It stays with you always. Sure you can have red, blue or yellow carby but it is your pokemon through and through. At lvl 30 you get SMN and Ifrit but, he's just a oGCD that works like DRK's summon. He does a set rotation of abilities and them ends with a big attack like MCH does. Kinda like how summons work in FF7R. All the while Carby is STILL out. So you have 2 summons going at the same time. Now Ifrit, Titan and Garuda can't all be out at the same time, but you as they attack they fill a gauge, one that your pet actions that tell carby to do things also fills. Once that gauge is full you can then summon Demi Bahamut first, who does his own rotation, again like DRK, and ends with a big attack, again like MCH. Making you able to have 3!! summons out at the same time. Then once Bahmut is out of the way then you summon Phoenix the next time the gauge is full.

While the SMN doesn't "need" a complete rework, I wouldn't be opposed to it.

At the bare minimum just align the mechanics on the current SMN so that it doesn't feel like a Frankenstein of stapled-on mechanics anymore, which funnily enough isn't that much work.

• Align the way Bahamut and Phoenix work. Condense both of them into a Trance and have Bahamut also replace Ruin 3 and Outburst with something fancy like Phoenix does.
• Solve the demi-puppy behavior and the egi-ghosting.
• Replace Deathflare with Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix once unlocked.
• Increase the cooldown from Trance into 1 minute.

Voila, current iteration is fixed and behaves like the beloved HW SMN again, except DWT is now updated to have Bahamut at 70 and Phoenix at 80.

Some further improvements would include (but these would be personal requests and not really fixes)

• Decouple Wyrmwave/Scarlet Flame from the SMN GCD. Just have the demi do it automatically each GCD.
• Have Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix work like Pilebunker from MCH. Have the Demi do it automatically when leaving the battlefield, or leave when you press it yourself. Increase potency to match this.
• Return Shadowflare

When people first complained about SMN in 2.0 all those years ago, others responded to let the job be unique (dot based) and not like FFXI. I personally disagreed, but fine. However its 2021 and the job still feels like a mess between dots, egis and the limited super egis. At this point why not just try and make it more like FFXI and see how it goes?

Instead of weaving through these abilities and the minor egi input mixed in, why not weave through summons and have them attack for you? Garuda applies dots, Ifrit does damage, Titan supplies some utilities and super Balmung maximum for burst?

I'm still confused though on why we don't have egi glam the size of Bah or the Phoenix. We clearly don't mind a giant dragon or oversized bird for a good chunk of these fights just flying around, just be done with it and give other players the option to turn the graphic off.

Also, maybe this is way too much wishful thinking, but could we update egis with new versions based on the eden raids? Like, I hate saying the current egis are ugly, cause you know some people put work into trying to make them look thematic, but there's never not been a day where they've been collectively despised regardless of how SMN plays. Just updating the egis with a slightly larger form based on their eden versions would be really nice, including alternate versions for Ramuh, Leviathan, and Shiva.

I hope we get an ability “Summon Primal” Summons a random elder primal to use their attack. Hehe I’d love that.