Concerns Regarding DPS Balance: Physical Ranged, Red Mage, and Summoner

[Lorika]

RDM should have batter DPS, and by a lot more.

Right now, RDM is the less mobile and the most fragile Magical DPS.
Picto and BLM have a Dash and 95% of the SMN skills are insta, making him more closer to a Physical Ranged than to a Magical.
SMN, Picto and BLM all have a personal shield... RDM doesn't have.
RDM party buff are meh to bad.

Its ironical since the RDM is the Magical DPS that take the most risk by going into melee range for a whole 3 GCD.

Right now risk vs reward for the RDM is utterly bad.... The job is still one of the most fun and is the one with the best verStyle (), but still it's DPS should be way more higher than it is actually.
And it's raise is not an excuse anymore since you really don't use it often.(it's more of an insurance than a real utility)

[Carighan]

RDM should have batter DPS, and by a lot more.

I agree. And Pictomancers should be able to paint the finished goods, like muffins or waffles or cake.

[Sunako]

I have good solution.

Remove raise from SMN and RDM. Buff SMN/RDM dps to PCT/BLM level.

Raise become physical ranged role skill 60 sec cd ogcd skill then physical ranged can feel more like support role.

[BabyYoda]

I have good solution.

Remove raise from SMN and RDM. Buff SMN/RDM dps to PCT/BLM level.

Raise become physical ranged role skill 60 sec cd ogcd skill then physical ranged can feel more like support role.

So how to solve movement tax for summoner?

[Sylvain]

So how to solve movement tax for summoner?

There are three options
- Reworking burst phase
- Reworking Titans
- Adding new summons


Additionnally
- Make RuinIV a cast
- Make summon a cast

The current issue is that, beside Titan to some extent, turning any "instant" to "cast" makes the SMN much less mobile than people realize. For real just try. Play summoner but do something like "I cannot move at all during this ability as if you were casting. You'll be shocked to see how fast your mobility goes down. (It's fun tho). Therefor, simply turning instant to cast is tricky and can swiftly turn SMN from a "range" to a "BLM from HW"

Reworking burst phase
Basically, make Pheonix/Baha/Sol not full of instant but rather a mix of cast and instant. This could also be an interesting way to make each of the 3 burst phase more differant than "the visual changes".

Reworking Titan
Basically making that his emerald rite is a 1.5s cast instead of an instant.
Because the recast is 2.5s, this still leaves amples time for weaving and basically turns it into a PIC doing light painting for a few gcd.
This wouldn't work on Garuda as 1.5s makes for a weird and unpleasant slide cast. Also, Garuda already has slipstream as a cast. (even if we use swift cast, that's irrelevant)

Adding more summons
By adding more summon, you can have a broader range of "static summons" and "free like the wind" summons. Assuming a "mobility level". 0 being "100% cast" and 5 being "100% instant", what we currently have is :
5: Titan
3~4 : Garuda
1~2 : Ifrit
0 : none

By adding Levi Shiva (We become icy white!) and Ramuh, we can have 6 clear level of mobility. 0 being "0 instant" and feeling the gap between all those.

Summon become available only after all 6 have been used. So every 2 mins a SMN would need to summon all 6.
With 6 levels of mobility, the player has agency on which usmmon to use where and can thus save all the movement one (Garuda/Titan) for specific moment and dump the turret summon else where.

This would be the most welcomed one and have the greatest impact as the intended design "choose where you put the difficult summon (ifrit)" would feel more alive.

From a UI pov it could simply be done by adding 3 new buttons or a single one which swaps the summon. For instance.
You have [Ifrit, Titan, Garuda]. when you press "Alternate summon, 10s ogcd".
They turn to [Shiva, Leviathan, Ramuh]. Which would be only a single button.

*As a side preference for the lolz*
I would see
4: Shiva - You turn to ShivaMode (since she's more of a phase change) and you have a melee combo with positional which you finish with a spell finisher. Everything is instant but you have the melee requirement.
1 : Leviathan - Raise the Tide! Each subsequent cast the cast and recast are longer. 0s/1s -> 1.5s/2.0s -> 2.5/3s -> 3.5/4.0s . Additionnally you have whirlpool, a forward dash ogcd dealing no damage. 2 charges.
0: Ramuh - First it works like a Ten-Chi-Jin. Any movement stops the phase.
When entering Ramuh mode, you gain 1-3 "electric charge". You have 2 spells, "Charge" instant-1.5 recast, and "Convert" instant-1s recast. Convert consumes the electric charge. Each consummed charge creates a floating lightning orb around you.
Charge grants you 1-5 "electric charges". However they don't stack so f you use "charge" before you've converted all the one you had, they're lost. You will always be able to reach 7 charges no matter what you start with. You have 3 sources of electric charge. 1-3 from the initial cast and 4-6 from the 2 casts of "charge". The rest is you converting those charges. Once you reach 7 charges or if you move. Charge becomes "Discharge" and deal X potency per floating orb. Discharging at 7 grants a small bonus. Discharge is always a Crit DH
Due to the rapid recast, this requires sharp focus but specifically because you cannot move, this is meant to be done while the boss is doing absolutely nothing and thus you can direct all your focus on the fast paced mechanic. Ramuh has effectively 0 movement. You're a turret for 10s and 10s worth of DPS results in some very spiky damage visually.

This would result in
0: Ramuh (Ten-Chi-Jin fast paced)
1: Leviathan (100% cast but you can move and dash around)
2: Ifrit (2 big cast 2 movement, in melee)
3: Garuda (1 very big cast and instants)
4: Shiva (all instant but melee)
5: Titan (full instant)

With this, you wouldn't be able to spend 90% of time with instant because you'd have to choose moment where you wouldn't be able to move much. Basically, on top of ifrit you also have to place Ramuh and Leviathan which are much worse. Shiva has great mobility but isn't suited for all moment as you want to hit positionals. Recklessly using Garuda Shiva and Titan in a row would result in a very rough min after your major summon. And vice versa.


Additionnally
RuinIV could be made a cast... not much but that's still a thing

Summoning could be a 2.5-3s cast. The issue with that would be that summoning occur at fixed moment. This would make SMN the only caster with very restrictive cast every 15s. While it would adress the issue I believe this to be something that should NOT be done.

The most reasonable first step would be to make Titan spell a 1.5s cast.
1.5s is short enough to allow for a decent mobility like a PIC or Healer. Not good enough if you need to zoom around, but good enough for most regular movement.

However I insist, people understestimate how "even that" can make for a rather strict gameplay. Unlike RDM, BLM and PIC, you never have "on demand" instant. You have on demand "phase". IT's a bit like AST with light speed. Sometime you just need a single spell, like a xeno/miracle in white, not a full blown 15s worth of instant.

[Lorika]

By adding Levi Shiva (We become icy white!) and Ramuh, we can have 6 clear level of mobility. 0 being "0 instant" and feeling the gap between all those.

Did you read your job quest and the lore of the job?
Because this imply you didn't.

The summoning process was created by Allagan, and everything you learn is based on it, and they mostly studied Bahamut.... At this point Ramuh and Shiva didn't exist.
But that aside :
- Shiva is impossible since it was created by ysaile and inhabited her soul. Shiva disapeared with her death
- Ramuh don't trust human, and he even consider them the reason of all the existing problem. When you beat it, it barelly acknowledge you and it's clear that at the first thing it consider mistake, it will take back the little trust it put in you.... And to begin with Ramuh is a protector, it protect the forest and it "childs", he doesn't care about going outside of it or anything else.

So no, bear with it : all you'll ever got are Bahamut, on which Allagan made experiment to create summoning magic before they empire collapse.

[Carighan]

Did you read your job quest and the lore of the job?
Because this imply you didn't.

~snip~

Not the person you replied to, but I'll add: It frankly doesn't matter. Much of the job design makes no sense in the context of the world lore. Nevermind does our overall power level vs what we do make any sense. At all.

There's no issue adding new summons to a SUMMONER job. We just use tiny bits of their power and it'd be trivial to add story elements for why we get one, buuuuuut, it's not like modern lore requires us to:

* The recent expansions no longer give abilities from quests. You just get them. No story, no lore, no nothing, poof, new power. Dragoon now makes dragon erupt from the earth. Scholar now goes angel-form.
* We randomly activate job stones in more modern jobs, without any work being done to inheriting it. I would argue any form of lore-justification for job elements if entirely out of the design space by now.

Also, it'd just be cool to get more summons that aren't just Bahamut having paid €20 for a legendary skin in his cash shop.

[BabyYoda]

Adding more summons
By adding more summon, you can have a broader range of "static summons" and "free like the wind" summons. Assuming a "mobility level". 0 being "100% cast" and 5 being "100% instant", what we currently have is :
5: Titan
3~4 : Garuda
1~2 : Ifrit
0 : none

Good idea and I would suggest such a system could use MP instead of another gauge

[Sunako]

So how to solve movement tax for summoner?

I already have solution for that in another thread. Make them "caster" again.

- Every summon become OGCD, every summon would trigger ruin 4 instant cast

- Remove all basic gem attacks and bring back 2,5sec ruin 3 cast as basic filler. Just keep special gem attacks, but change all of them to become ogcd. Garuda have one strong aoe dot, titan have one strong initial attack, ifrit gap closer

[Rika007]

So how to solve movement tax for summoner?

By removing the movement tax entirely from the game, as it serves no purpose whatsoever but to piss off players of jobs that weren't arbitrarily decided to be subject to it.