Arcanist and Summoner: a possible solution

[Dahlinea]

As far as the rest is concerned, I feel like forcing the Ruin III vs. Ruin II dynamic on every Primal summon might not be the best idea. I understand you are putting it there to replicate the "damage vs. mobility" situation, but this once again feels like porting onto the new SMN things that worked with the old one.

That's not my reason to "force it" into new SMN. My thing is that I absolutely hate the idea that I'm restricted to use casted spell a certain number of times and then have to move to next summon and that one will have the boring insta cast one. You see? We don't have freedom over our spells like before. That's what I absolutely hate about this new SMN. Why am I forced to change from casted spell to a insta cast spell when it's not needed? And since we're forced into this cycle of limited number of spells per summon without casted or insta cast alternatives they probably decided to give to 2/3 summons only insta cast spells to "alleviate the pressure", which resulted into what it is now. That's the only reason I put that line of changes for Gemshine spells.
Another thing that I don't agree with in new SMN is the summons not producing any effect that would benefit SMN somehow, like you used to get Further Ruin stacks to increase damage during Bahamut. That's why I proposed the Aetherflow change.

The rest I agree. Summon skills definitely needs to come from the summons and not the summoner.

[5trange]

x

Ah, I see now what you were trying to say about Ruin II/III and understand your point. I'm still unsure about it though. I mean, yeah it might be beneficial to have that kind of option on every Primal summon, but at that point you should find even more ways to differentiate them, since everyone would have both a cast and an instant Spell option available 100% of the time. What I had in mind was forcing some decision-making by having the player plan when to use a Summon for movement by considering it a sort of limited resource, not unlike BLM's Triplecast which is often but not always available.
At the end of the day, I feel like both approaches have pros and cons and — though in different measure — both would still require a big big expansion of the Primal summons effects and interactions.

It seems like we agree that summons should stick around after being called out, but at that point it becomes necessary to solve a problem of time. If we assume every Primal stays out for 15s like the current Demi-Summons, we end up filling a whole 60s per cycle and once again there would be no room to move things about. A possible solution would be to make the Recast time of Summon Bahamut/Phoenix 90s (preferable but unlikely, since SE seems obtusely obsessed with the 2-minutes burst window) or 120s.
Assuming therefore one Demi-Summon every 2 minutes, it's possible to increase the duration of each summon to 20s — like it was in ShB — which makes it easier to have things like double use of Akh Morn/Revelation (with 10s recast). We'd then have:

• Demi-Summon: 20s
• Primal 1: 20s
• Primal 2: 20s
• Primal 3: 20s
• "Filler": 40s

A 40s filler might seem slightly too long, but it's still only half the time you spend in the "summoning-phases" (80s vs. 40s). It should also be noted that those 40s wouldn't necessarily need to come all together, since the point of the filler is to allow you to spread apart the timing of Primal summons if needed.

Now, let us assume your solution of keeping a Ruin II/III option on every Primal. Let's also suppose that Aetherflow is gone and a new mechanic is added to the Filler-phase which allows you to build a resource you can use to weave/move during the Primal phases without losing DPS (sort of like a Primal-themed Ruin IV)... I think it's already starting to be more interesting overall if we also add the things you and I have suggest before (new damage oGCD with 2 charges and a short recharge timer; passive effects on every Primal; Astral Flow coming from the Primal; an extra "Enkindle primal" button which is used twice; old ShB combo on Pheonix).
Do you think that could be any good?

On a side note: I've edited my first post to cut out a bunch of unnecessary sentences and to reflect my improved stance on the Arcanist Job, as I still fully believe that separating the two is the most plausible option and would be the best to please the highest number of people. I don't know, maybe I've just become too obsessed with Heavensward Summoner... I really want something like that to be back but at the same time I don't want to rob the people who like EW Summoner of their Job ç__ç

[tearagion]

snip, but I like what you're saying

EW SMN seems to be the most obvious symptom of misguided design from the devs atm. They *seem* to completely blind themselves with the idea that everything must operate on a pristine 2 minute cycle. Frankly the easiest way to make SMN feel like you have substantial choice is to have more summons than are possible to summon in that cycle, with negligible potency differences between them, but preferable use-cases and varied durations. Not every summon needs to be a giant (not)Primal either, people love Carbuncles and already wish that the one SMN has now did more. Maybe it's just my opinion, but constant giant summons just cheapens them and I would prefer some more modest summons to choose from for a given filler period. The contrast between Egis and Demis before helped to emphasize the spectacle of Bahamut especially.

If the next caster, whether it's a separated arcanist or not, doesn't fill the void preEW SMN left behind then it had better be the greatest caster they've ever put together. Anything else would be extremely disappointing.