Quote Originally Posted by Anvaire View Post
Honestly i think the intention for the rework was for summoner to be fast and flashy, with a lot of optimisation to fit everything in. But it came at the cost of any meaningful mechanics. Honestly i think they plain ran out of time with it. Each primal should mechanically feel distinct and you can see this with how they work ... Bahamut and Phoenix aside. Garuda is fast, but slowed with slipstream. Ifrit is Slow but powerful strikes, Titan is fast 1-2 rotation that actively limits OGCDS.

Its like they got the bones in place but forgot to account of sinnew and flesh. The design approach isnt the problem on a whole. Rotating though the summons and using them to change the spells cast is a neat design, but the implementation is where they went wrong. Too few OGCD's, and rotations that are overly simple. Heck if they had gone with 1-2 rotations for phoenix and Titan a, 1,1,1,1,2 for Garuda and maybe a 1-2-3 for Ifrit with some OCGD's to weave, it would make the job feel more active.

Honestly though, even if they made bahamut spells casted rather than instants, it would balance out the variance and give more to consider. Its why i dont think its wholly bad, it just needs small nudges here and there to fullly complete.

The biggest challenge they face, if they ever think to address it is to make Arcanum summons feel more like summons. I suspect they land and then imediately vanish because they wanted to differentiate them from the demi's.

Once adjustment they could make is to give the arcanums a chargable bar that mean they only do the enkindle ability if you manage to weave in all abilities ... but i dont really know how that would work in practice.

Carbuncle im not really sure what the philosophy behind him is other than a means to give Egi-Gamour without worrying about attack animations. i guess.
What is there to optimize to fit everything in lol

If anything the optimization on SMN is to figure out what to NOT fit in. It's routine for SMN to drop rites for optimal damage in the presence of downtime.