5.20 Patch Release: SMN

Hello everyone, Nemekh here with an update on the latest 5.20 Patch & Eden’s Verse Savage release!

Yoshida had mentioned in the Live Letter that Summoner was adjusted too far and needed toning down. This time the method was to reduce the baseline damage through DoTs to bring it more in line in 5.20.

5.20 Summoner Changes

DoTs

Bio III has it’s potency reduced from 50 to 45 per tick, while Miasma III also has been reduced from 50 to 45 for both the per tick and on hit damage.

Overall this total damage % loss comes to ~-1.5% to the total package for single target while having a bit more of an impact for two target sustain and AoE DoT spread with Bane.

Additional Ideas Moving Into 5.20

Now that we have had 5 months of the current iteration of Summoner since the 5.10 changes, we have more experience in how the job can play out.

Gone are the days of the super strict rotation where the only adjustment we could make was whether we delayed or held the first Firebird Trance.

Now it’s all about whether we choose to delay or use any of our Trances on cooldown.

After the release of The Epic of Alexander, we found ourselves to be using Trances on cooldown more in order to have more favourable alignment and Trances/Demi-Summons throughout the encounter leading all the way to the final phase, instead of opting exclusively for the standard 2 minute cycle alignment that we are more familiar with which made the latter phases feel clunkier.

With these experiences in mind, we’ve been in the process of updating our resources to have the following:

  • The 65+55s (120s) rotation, or 2 minute cycle as we know and practice
  • The 55+55s (110s) rotation, or Trances on cooldown.
  • Mixing these up and explaining on an encounter specific basis in the Optimisation pages

Interestingly enough this draws parallels to Red Mages having their own options of 110s vs 120s Manafication rotation cycles.

Afterthoughts

This update was a little later than I had planned as my plate was very full, however, now that we are in Week 2 of the patch and the new Savage tier release, we can definitely say with confidence that the new tier benefits from Trance rushes where sensible to do so, as well as mixing things up for encounters like E8S.

The damage nerf ended up being as slight as we anticipated and hasn’t changed our basis of play. We feel it a bit more in the multi-dotting of E7S, TEA and in dungeons with Bane, but it’s not something you readily notice unless you’re specifically looking out for it.

Meanwhile we still retain a competitive edge among DPS jobs, such that some players would proclaim Summoner as the best job in the game. Personal bias I believe that whether we’re in a fantastic or dire state, but certainly, Summoner is a powerful job even with its pet AI quirks.

Thanks for reading. Keep on summoning and have fun with the new raids!