Thread: Summoner changes that should happen onto 7.0

Originally Posted by Kaedys

I'll grant you that Pepsis is largely useless, but some of the others are a bit questionable of objections. Pneuma isn't a HoT, it directly heals the entire 600p on cast. Not sure where you got the idea that it's a HoT, but go lob it at a striking dummy. Instant ~12-13k heal.

For Haima/Panhaima, the latter (the AoE version) often does end up healing with some of the stacks, but I've almost never had Haima expire naturally. Tanks get auto'd plenty often enough to consume the stacks. It's remarkably effective against trash pulls in dungeons, since it effectively gives a total of ~30k in shielding over the 5 stacks. And Panhaima is basically cheat mode against party DoT damage, ~20k in shielding on everyone in the party. It can often just straight negate the DoT effect entirely.

As for Kardia, yes it requires a weave window to swap, but Sages have plenty of weave windows (all healers do now, tbh), and unlike Selene/Eos, that lets you pick your passive healing target. I still see it as a superior design. Holos is a bit strange. Personally, I'd prefer it have an Excog-like effect, but that might actually make it too strong. Still, a 10% DR that stacks with Kerachole is hard to say no to, even if the healing ends up largely wasted (though I guess it helps top people off before the AoE hit).

Do Scholars actually use Dissipation? Last I heard it was more of a joke ability than anything else, since it locks you out of all of the fairy-based abilities for the duration and only buffs GCD healing (despite granting full stacks for your oGCDs). It's 30s of no fairy healing at all, in exchange for a 20% buff to the heals you really don't want to be using if you can avoid it and essentially a bonus set of 3 Aetherflow. Also not sure how much decision-making really exists for Aetherpact. There's only one use for that gauge, and the income for it is pretty fixed (30 per minute, unless you use Dissipation and then sit on the Aetherflow stacks until it's over). It's just another healing cooldown with a bit more flexible timing.

Also, probably my main gripe with Scholar is the fact that Energy Drain exists, because it means every single usage of an Aetherflow stack on a heal is -100p of damage. It adds a certain element of decision-making to usage, but it also just feels bad when I have to blow Aetherflow on healing instead of more deeps. Sage doesn't have that problem. In fact, they have if anything the opposite. Their entire MP model is built around using those Addersgall charges, so they sometimes find themselves in a situation of dropping an Addersgall on Druochole on a full or near-full target just to burn a charge so the recharge keeps rolling.

Pneuma is designed as a one tick massive HOT, it’s why it tends to hit people at slightly different times (making it terrible for clutch healing) and the fact that it cannot proc divine veil like a normal GCD heal would

Kardia swapping is fine but it’s just pointless busywork for what eos does for free, like a raidwide goes out, fey blessing heals half the damage then eos just heals the rest naturally rather than forcing you to swap to each target, plus if you need to heal someone specifically with eos aetherpact is far superior to soteria

Dissipation is actually one of the strongest abilities in SCH’s kit and that’s because it buffs deployment tactics, the aetherflow you get from dissipation are meant to be a refund for using a GCD shield to deploy, the additional shield the dissipation buff gives over the normal shield size is stronger than any shield SGE provides outside of Zoe, plus SCH can buff it with protraction, fey illumination and other party single target buffs, that shield can straight up ignore savage mechanics

And yeah aetherflow discouraging healing is good to me, I’d rather have to make decisions on my healing and organise my resources (like how can I maximise my fairy skills) rather than dump over 60% of my addersgall into druachole to maintain a mana economy I really don’t need to maintain anyway because SGE’s mana economy is so strong even without druachole mana management. SGE just having endless free healing with no decisions attached (AST and WHM are the same) is one of my biggest problems with current healer design

I think that you might be conflating coherent and complete, which is a fair thing to do. Paladin is a good point, it'd be nice to see some magic introduced a bit earlier, however they do have the majority of their physical/dot rotation established by that point. White mage was gutted reworked in shadowbringers which is where a lot of the current issues seemingly started to manifest. I disagree on dragoon - while it doesn't have wheeling/fc, it does have the basic dot/stab/stab/stab rotation, which develops into dot/stab/stab and finally dot/stab as you level, similarly black mage has the underlying concept of the job there (fire for damage, ice for recovery), with fire 4 being exactly the kind of simple yet interesting change to the rotation that more jobs need. Bard, yep wanderer's should be the 50 skill and battle voice 52, but it is what it is.

Most of the jobs you call out as being good - mch and ast excluded - are from earlier than shadowbringers, and haven't been reworked extensively. Mch despite having a lot of its kit, doesn't really cement its identity until drill shows up, and let's not pretend there's no issues with having a selfish physical ranged. I think the card system is probably ast's saving grace, allowing it to have more involvement at lower levels because it can't really be introduced piecemeal. Again, though this is a heavensward job which means it has to level from 30 rather than 60 or 70.

Sage being scholar2 completely removes it from the discussion because it is very much from the "can I copy your homework/sure but change it up a little" school. I don't really understand why the voidsent stuff is limited to being so late either, it's pretty much the core theme of the job. If they didn't want to give the full potency attacks or bother with rarely seen animations, an "enhanced voidsent" trait would have been more than fine. I'd probably have stuck first enshroud at 60 if it were up to me with a greatly reduced ability to enter it. I'd probably also remove shadow of death, and have whorl apply a fall off, similar to expacion because there's a few parts of the reaper kit that just feel weirdly bloated.

Toxicon's a hard one - it does use the resources and depending on number of targets works out as a slightly better or worse art of war/movement tool, but setting it up for use is a bit of a faff because noone likes gcd healing. Phlegma is essentially an ogcd plenary medica baked into a glare, for a two minute cooldown it just felt a bit underwhelming. Since we're comparing it to scholar, I have to talk about expedient, which I prefer even if the sprint's now only 10s. Apples and oranges and all that. Haima/panhaima feel a bit like they're on the gimmicky side to me. I'd probably rather have fey union than haima, but I guess for akh morns panhaima is almost tailor-made. The skills emitting from the faerie are one of scholar's strengths, not a weakness. With the use of the place pet action you can extend the range of your healing actions noticeably, and it will continue healing in the event you do need to hardcast heals. Unless you already told the faerie to do a different faerie action. I mean personal preference will factor into it, and there's nothing wrong with liking sage more. I just can't help but feel we're discussing this in the wrong subforum that it doesn't quite do what it set out to.

Does the same not apply to alliance raids? Puppet's bunker had a lot more aoe in between bosses than algaia for example. Another thing worth noting is that (as with dungeons) they're not necessarily done for fun, but for glamour and the weekly coin. As a result jobs that enable netflix on another monitor may be chosen more frequently than others that are more involved.

Before everyone gets all on the DoT train, there was a technical reason SE was trying to limit the number of DoTs jobs have access to. There is a hard limit on the number of effects a monster is able to have on it at any given time. It was found out during Eureka and Hunts that this limit was being hit and players were left unable to land effects. For jobs like SMN this meant if you missed the window to get your DoTs in before the limit was hit, you were missing a large portion of your DPS. It is incredibly unlikely that regular content mobs will have this problem but still, jobs should be able to function in all content.

Originally Posted by SieyaM

Before everyone gets all on the DoT train, there was a technical reason SE was trying to limit the number of DoTs jobs have access to. There is a hard limit on the number of effects a monster is able to have on it at any given time. It was found out during Eureka and Hunts that this limit was being hit and players were left unable to land effects. For jobs like SMN this meant if you missed the window to get your DoTs in before the limit was hit, you were missing a large portion of your DPS. It is incredibly unlikely that regular content mobs will have this problem but still, jobs should be able to function in all content.

DOT limits on field content is a legit problem but that’s also because some jobs just have pointless residual DOT’s they don’t need, like do GNB and PLD both need 2 DOT’s, NIN still had wheeling thrust at the time, deaths design is just the generic melee 10% damage buff and really doesn’t need to be an enemy effect etc

There is totally room for SMN DOT’s back even in field content, they just need to stop giving other classes pointless DOT’s they don’t need

Originally Posted by SieyaM

Before everyone gets all on the DoT train, there was a technical reason SE was trying to limit the number of DoTs jobs have access to. There is a hard limit on the number of effects a monster is able to have on it at any given time. It was found out during Eureka and Hunts that this limit was being hit and players were left unable to land effects. For jobs like SMN this meant if you missed the window to get your DoTs in before the limit was hit, you were missing a large portion of your DPS. It is incredibly unlikely that regular content mobs will have this problem but still, jobs should be able to function in all content.

Both WoW and GW2 had issues with debuff limits at some point. It took some time but they were able to increase the limit. I don't see why FFXIV couldn't do the same, especially seeing how there's a lot less going on in FFXIV compared to those games in regards to debuffs. The alternative solution to this problem of removing an entire style of play from the game seems ridiculous to me.

Some of you are asking DOT to be brought back. I wonder how is DOT fun? I personally think the direction should be focusing more on summons.

1. Differentiate demis more - The phoenix combo in 5.x was very satisfying to use.

2. Remove everlasting flight. Change Rekindle to restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members.

3. Seperate Deathflare and Rekindle from Astral Flow. Make them a new button that we can use anytime even after demis have left. After you summon Bahamut, the button changes to Deathflare and you have 60 seconds to use it before Summoning Phoenix changes the button to Rekindle which lasts until Summoning Bahamut.

4. Change Crimson Strike whereby using Ruby Rite/Catastrophe wont break the combo.

5. Give each primal another big attack like deathflare to use (new button).

Originally Posted by Ayden

Some of you are asking DOT to be brought back. I wonder how is DOT fun? I personally think the direction should be focusing more on summons.

I'm not advocating for giving SMN dots here but why couldn't they have summon-related dots? Just a very rough example of how it could work that I think would be fun:

Say you have a cycle of 3 basic summons per minute with 5 basic summons to choose from (ignoring demis for this example). One of those summons can apply a minute long dot and besides that offers only utility and no damage. A second summon can extend the duration of said dot and has more damage options.

That alone would offer more depth than current SMN and the existence of the dot ability forces the use of different summons each cycle rather than always using the most powerful one as with old SMN or using all of them every cycle as with new SMN. The more complications you add (whether they be debuffs, buffs, or cds) the more interesting the job becomes, to a point.