Arcanist and Summoner: a possible solution

[SweetPete]

Honestly I’m more bored of dot-less classes, jobs with temporary/cooldown dots, or ones that just fit into their combo rotation. It’s boring design now because every job is headed that way… just kinda want variety. I hope you understand my point of view.

As for the AST comment… I don’t remember them saying they’d rework AST? They already did in 6.0 why would they do it in 6.2? Perhaps cite a source on that?

Yeah I’ll go look for that comment. It was during an interview he had and he said AST will receive major adjustments and he wants us to tell them if they went to far. He also said DRG is being looked at as well.

[SweetPete]

Being excited for the potential misery of others getting something they loved taken away from them is totally normal and well adjusted behavior. Just my opinion.

It is. People overreact to every little change that happens.

[SweetPete]

I really don't get people. It's as if they see "Summoner" in the title and assume this is just another useless complaint thread about Endwalker SMN xD I've said it already and I'll say it again if I have to: we're NOT here to say "delete new Summoner and go back", nor "forget old Summoner and accept the new one". I know it sounds like a cheap political slogan, but I really wish to find a solution that makes most players happy. You don't like DoTs and love Endwalker Job design? Good for you — and I'm 100% serious, no sarcasm whatsoever. However my point — and the point of this thread — is: how can we make the rest of the people happy to play as well? The mental scheme should not be "give-and-take" but "give-and-give".

Also, as many other comments have pointed out in this thread and in the other ones, liking new SMN doesn't mean being blind to its very obvious imperfections. Keep in mind that likes and dislikes are ultimately a subjective thing and constitute no argument at all. In respecting everyone's tastes we should also recognize that different people have different preferences and this discussion is not directly about that — rather it's about finding the solution which is objectively better for the majority. And that solution is to keep, preserve and perfect both styles of play.

The problem is SE will never satisfy everyone. You know this and so does SE. I’m sure they spent allot of money on new summoner and they aren’t going back to add old skills they removed. There has not been a huge outcry for dots returning so SE will not. It doesn’t benefit new summoner at all. Plus summoner still has one dot during Garuda phase. New summoner has its issues like all the other jobs but they need to build on this new summoner. Look forward not backwards.

I sympathize with the lot of you who miss the dots but at the end of the day and Yoshi himself said it. People complained that dots were not a part of what made summoners who they were. They summoned gods. Hopefully the next new job will be a mostly for job to satisfy those who enjoy dot oriented jobs. Bard also has dots but those maybe going away in 7.0 since they play no role in the game play anymore.

[LauraAdalena]

Yeah I’ll go look for that comment. It was during an interview he had and he said AST will receive major adjustments and he wants us to tell them if they went to far. He also said DRG is being looked at as well.

“Major adjustments” is key to reworking abilities. They only say that when they are going to adjust multiple abilities. There’s a specific phrase/term they use to indicate reworks and I forget it off the top of my head. “Minor adjustments” would be stuff like changing potencies and durations. That isn’t to say this isn’t the case just that it’s unlikely to be a rework. And by the sounds of it they know it might not be received well, my guess is it’s another cards rework by the sounds of it if I’m hearing it right.

[rewd]

Honestly I’m more bored of dot-less classes, jobs with temporary/cooldown dots, or ones that just fit into their combo rotation. It’s boring design now because every job is headed that way… just kinda want variety. I hope you understand my point of view.

As for the AST comment… I don’t remember them saying they’d rework AST? They already did in 6.0 why would they do it in 6.2? Perhaps cite a source on that?

It was mentioned in the last patch notes reading that devs were thinking about major changes for DRG and AST in 6.2 because they are considered too busy. There's plenty of discussion in the healer and DPS forum about it.

[5trange]

The problem is SE will never satisfy everyone. You know this and so does SE. I’m sure they spent allot of money on new summoner and they aren’t going back to add old skills they removed. There has not been a huge outcry for dots returning so SE will not. It doesn’t benefit new summoner at all. Plus summoner still has one dot during Garuda phase. New summoner has its issues like all the other jobs but they need to build on this new summoner. Look forward not backwards.

I sympathize with the lot of you who miss the dots but at the end of the day and Yoshi himself said it. People complained that dots were not a part of what made summoners who they were. They summoned gods. Hopefully the next new job will be a mostly for job to satisfy those who enjoy dot oriented jobs. Bard also has dots but those maybe going away in 7.0 since they play no role in the game play anymore.

I'm sorry, I really don't want to sound rude and perhaps I am misunderstanding something but... did you in good faith read any one of my posts? The point of this was NEVER to implement back old things like DoTs to the new EW Summoner. The new Summoner should stay the way it is and receive improvements according to the new design the devs have created and many people seem to love very much. So, saying things like "it will not benefit new Summoner" makes no sense: otherwise, why would I repeatedly ask people who like it to suggest much needed thematically meaningful improvements?
The point of the thread is instead to SEPARATE — in a sense, FREE — this new Summoner from its old Arcanist roots, in order to salvage an almost fully-fledged kit that was liked by many and was discarded for no reason whatsoever. To put it in a another way: we are no longer dealing with one Job, but two. If you want to argue that this would take the spotlight away from EW Summoner, then you really must not have much faith in its worth design-wise.

Honestly, I can understand people who are cynical about this idea (I am not at all optimistic myself), I can understand people who find flaws with the specifics of my solution and welcome suggestions with open arms, I can understand you calling out my utopian idealism. But why go off topic with comments that disregard the point of the thread itself? Once again: this is not meant to be a generic complaint thread that advocates for SMN to be reverted back to ShB or before, nor to propose a bad mixture of old and new.

You saying: "Hopefully the next new job will be mostly to satisfy those who enjoy dot oriented jobs" is just another way to express what I was trying to do here.

[5trange]

Sorry if I'm bringing this up again, but I've recently been done with my uni business and I was able to get back to this topic which is very dear to me. Lately I've been particularly depressed with EW Summoner and, since I'm a masochist, I've been going over old footage from Heavensward and I've been reading the 3.x Summoner guides. I thought I had a pretty good grasp of old SMN, but I discovered I had much and more to learn — it was even cooler than I thought.

So, I feel the need to point out that, due to my new knowledge, I'd make changes to my proposed "Arcanist Job" skills and traits to reflect some of the things I feel made Heavensward Summoner a real treat, which are the following:

1) Having pet actions on their own GCD really gave a sense of cooperating with an ally.
I know the pet GCD is never coming back, but in my list I ended up putting the Egi-Assaults as Spells, like they were from 5.1 onwards — which I think was a bad idea. Especially since the Ruin filler spell is now 1.5s and always gives you weaving windows, it would only make sense for all Egi-Assaults to be oGCDs just like they were on ShB release, which is the next best way to mimic the old pet GCD. They also should more closely resemble old pet actions in the form of recast times and lack of charges. I especially think charges should be gone — I mean, have you ever seen an opener from early ShB Summoner? It looks like the poor guy is having a seizure with all those fast-paced hand-swings for Egi-Assaults+Enkindle+Devotion x') This would of course limit the movement options of the Job but... you know, this is a Caster Job, that's how things are supposed to be. Also, the Ruin IV mechanic would stille be there as a limited source of free movement you actually have to manage.

2) The interaction between DoTs, damage buffs and Contagion was beyond cool.
So, when I first thought of Contagion extending DoTs it appeared to me as a pretty average thing. Turns out it was amazing to line up Contagion with Raging Strikes (20% dmg. buff), Dreadwyrm Trance (10% magic dmg. buff at the time) and Try-Disaster, so you could have 5 extra ticks of super-buffed DoTs — which actually made even Miasma II better than your filler spell. In my ignorance, I salvaged the StB Contagion which is just plain worse and generic. Contagion should really ultimately be a shared pet-Action amongst all Carbuncles that is identical to Heavensward. For the same reason, having the 3 standard DoTs would really make A LOT of sense... but even I am not delusional enough to think this is ever coming back.

3) The build-up to Dreadwyrm Trance made the skill more meaningful for all the things it provided.
One big issue with EW Summoner is the lack of resource building: everything is just handed to you with a button press. Sure, building up 3 stacks of Aethertrail Attunement was probably far from hard, but it was something, and it gave you a dmg. buff, access to a stronger version of you filler spell by reducing its enormous MP cost, and ofc access to Deathflare. Therefore I think this Arcanist Job should have its old Aetherflow button with 3 stacks that actually serve a similar purpose, just for a different skill since Dreadwyrm Trance belongs with EW Summoner.

Hopefully if I don't lose motivation I'll be working out the details of all these changes in the next days and I also plan to trim down and update my humongous first post to make it less scary in case some kind souls decide they want to read it ç__ç Once again, any sort of feedback on the specifics of the solution would be much appreciated.

[Ibbers]

People are too focused on old SMN. Your proposal looks eerily similar to it. Pets and DoTs are never coming back.

On the other hand of the spectrum, some defenders of EW SMN have this bizarre argument that it’s okay for EW SMN to be devoid of interesting job mechanics because ‘at least it is better than being clunky’. No previous clunkiness should justify such low standards for job design, and it is a false dilemma to assume we can only choose between either old SMN or EW SMN, which I personally feel is more of a dead end than an actually workable base of a job. If I were unrealistically optimistic, I could even imagine yet another rework of the job, with brand new systems that are completely different from both old SMN and EW SMN and yet more fun.

On an unrelated note, I thought of a basic SMN concept where you summoned Garuda periodically to maintain a haste buff, Titan to obtain stacks that you can use to buff a spell, and Ifrit as the hard-hitting aspected spell phase once you got your haste and damage buff stacks sorted out. But then I realised I had just recreated Samurai, with Kaiten even, and stopped thinking about designing a job.

I still want summons to feel like you summon them for a purpose other than getting rid of your gems though.

[stellahawke]

I still want summons to feel like you summon them for a purpose other than getting rid of your gems though.

totaly agree with this
both versions of smn have good points but also obvious bad points that both sides overlook or say its its a good thing about the class.
- old smn was the clunkyness of everything( i prefer the cunkyness cause it make the class fun)
- current smn class does not fit caster mold (lack of hard casts) and ridged rotation(that also does not fit the caster mold)

i totaly agree with you that wanting summons to have purpose which i would feel like the best option would be another rework. 1 summon per full loop then its locked out till ya use all 3.
- summon 1 > bahamut > phoenix > summon 2 bahamut > phoenix > summon 3 > bahamut > phoenix

this would get rid of the gem spam and also made it so you are not using just 1 summon like old smn. and make summon choice that more important per fight.

[5trange]

*Breathes*

-snip-

and it is a false dilemma to assume we can only choose between either old SMN or EW SMN

That is precisely why the objective of this thread, as I've said multiple times, is NOT to force this choice but to remove it at its root by separating Arcanist and Summoner into TWO Jobs, each with its own identity and toolkit. So there's nothing "eerie" about the fact that the things I say feel like HW Summoner: that's intentional and it's the point of this thread. I will once again take the blame for this misunderstanding because my first post is too long and has not been trimmed yet.

That point aside, the other purpose of this thread is to suggest genuine improvements for an EW Summoner finally free from the bonds of its past incarnations and you and Stellahawke are the first to actually suggest something in this respect, which makes me very happy and thankful. It cannot be denied most other popular suggestions on the various threads really do not offer any kind improvement for Summoner. I'll add my take and discuss your points.

Summoner has two main issues right now and I would start by working on them. They are:

1) Extremely rigid and inflexible "rotation" (lol).
Some people have recently advocated to bring the Elemental Mastery Trait to lower levels, but I believe it doesn't really solve the problem of EW Summoner and actually ends up making it more apparent much earlier while leveling. The issue with lvl. 90 SMN currently is that the rotation is 100% inflexible since you only have 2 filler spell slots (Ruin III + Ruin IV) while the rest is literally "hardcoded", which makes delaying, holding or anticipating anything feel really terrible. If you bring Elemental Mastery to, say, the 50-60 range, you end up locking your rotation even earlier — at lvl. 80, as soon as you unlock Phoenix. The problem is that, with SMN as it currently is, you gradually move from having infinite segments of filler "standard" Ruin spam to zero segments of it at lvl. cap.
The only positive aspect of bringing this Trait at around 50-60 is to make SMN "slightly more enjoyable" at lower levels but it does not offer any chance of improving the Job as you'll still end up with auto-pilot 2 button spam rotation. I feel like what's needed is some breathing room, so you have more control of WHEN to use stuff (provided you don't lose uses in the fight) and you have room to actually add complexity and not merely another recolor of Ruin.

2) Too many leftovers from old ACN which don't fit with anything.
Ruin, Ruin IV, Carbuncle, ED, Fester etc. They just have no business in the new Summoner toolkit and actually provide additional jank (see Radiant Aegis usage tied to Carby). They should all of them be removed to free space for actual mechanics which are more in line with the new Job and interact with its current iteration.

Some things I believe should be addressed:

• Remove Ruin and Outburst and just have an ordinary form of Gemshine and Precious Brilliance as your filler GCDs. Having four buttons for what is essentially the same thing is ridiculous and it only has a purpose before lvl. 72, when you still want to use standard Ruin III in place of Emerald Ruin. Instead, adjust Garuda-Egi attack potencies to make them stronger. This way, the filler GCD of Summoner no longer ties to that of Arcanist.

• Remove Aetherflow and Aetherflow-related skills. Also remove the Ruin IV mechanic, since there is no Ruin anymore. In their place, new oGCDs that will work in tandem with Summoning magick.

• A given, but: put Carbuncle out of its misery and turn Radian Aegis into a personal oGCD which you can maybe use on allies like in PvP (if you really want to include a Carbuncle in its animation, in honor of FF tradition, I guess that's fine).

With those basic changes, there's a lot of room to add buttons. We removed 8 buttons in total (Ruin, Outburst, Ruin IV, Summon Carbuncle, Energy Drain, Energy Siphon, Fester, Painflare). But in itself this solves nothing: the rotation would still be the same, which means it's still inflexible without room for anything new. I would propose the following changes, some more simple than others:

• Titan, Ifrit and Garuda stay around for about 15s after being summoned (maybe they auto-attack a bit?). You also get something like an "Enkindle Primal" button which works like and oGCD that orders the Summon to do something. You have ample chances to weave this during every Primal: Titan and Garuda have instants all over the place, Ifrit has Crimson Cyclone/Strike which give you potentially 4 weaves. "Enkindle Primal" can work as "Enkindle Egi" at lower levels and you weave the Ifrit one with your standard 1.5s filler Spell. After all, the only way the Summoner can interact with its kit is for summons to stay out a bit, like Bahamut and Phoenix.

• Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix are split into 2 uses like they were in ShB — lower their recast time according the duration of the summon, which was 20s before and is 15s now. That's an extra oGCD to use during those 100% instant-cast phases. You also get to see a cool animation more often

• Return the alternating GCDs during Phoenix phase. A little thing certainly, but many people liked it. If it creates issues with AoE in Dungeon pulls, just make the single target hit an AoE with fall-off damage.

That said, I think the idea of Primal Summons giving you certain special buffs is pretty neat (it could even be AoE like Everlasting Flight, but Primal-themed and with different effects), as is the idea of shortening the Primal-phase of each cycle — which you can achieve also by cutting in half the Attunement stacks if you still want to Summon all 3 Primals every cycle. Of course, doing that means you need to fill the remaining space with meaningful things, otherwise you'd have created space for nothing x') I don't think forcing the summoning of Bahamut and Phoenix more often is a good thing... they are already TOO accessible which makes them feel less impactful.