Smn Rework Suggestions After LL

I'm missing something? I thought the PLL demo was merely to show the skills superficially, I wonder how a lot of people are getting a lof of conclusions out of that...

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

I don't get where this "the Egis give you the same three spells just glammed elementally" comes from. Would someone care to explain to me which Ifrit spells duplicate which Titan spells and which Garuda spells? Maybe I was too awestruck by the pretty colours.

Edit: it is also possible that I miss interpreted the argument.

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They are not duplicates. Some people are just tripping and upset about the changes. Losing dots and the attacking pet.

People are definitely making premature judgment. We know the basic flow of combat and we won't know more until the embargo is up from the media tour.

Personally, as a SMN main since 2.0 I'm interested in the turn we're taking. I enjoy current SMN but this new design also looks fun and functional.

I'm just too used to being hurt from x.0 patches lmao.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

They are not duplicates. Some people are just tripping and upset about the changes. Losing dots and the attacking pet.

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Never said they're duplicates. I think I explained my point fairly decently in my post. If people want to be blinded by shiny animations and ignore how 90% of playstyle got nuked, so be it.

The dot argument is pretty silly, we just happened to have dots, there's more to smn than dots.

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

I don't get where this "the Egis give you the same three spells just glammed elementally" comes from. Would someone care to explain to me which Ifrit spells duplicate which Titan spells and which Garuda spells? Maybe I was too awestruck by the pretty colours.

Edit: it is also possible that I miss interpreted the argument.

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https://i.imgur.com/ntIHgTT.png
I think the issue is more about how smn is going to be 1-2 job now

Red circle spells (Ruin 3 and Tri-Disaster) Are modified by bahamut and phoenix phase.
Green circle spells are ones modified by titan, garuda, ifrit.

When you have phoenix/bahamut, you will spam ruin3/tridisaster reskins.

When you have other primals, you will spam green skills. Those dont seem like they are very interesting to press either. In garuda, you use right green skill to put dot below enemy and then press left one until effects are gone. In titan you spam left and weave right. In ifrit you use left one 2 times, use right 2 times.

In the end you still use 2 buttons for your main rotation regardless of your state. And there isnt much to weave inbetween majority of those spells (its like only one of ifrit's and garuda's spell actually have cast times, everything else is instant)

Thats seemingly the entirety of smn "complexity" as of now, which is an issue, at least for me. That said i overall like the idea of what they were going for.

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Originally Posted by MyakotApelsia

https://i.imgur.com/ntIHgTT.png
I think the issue is more about how smn is going to be 1-2 job now

Red circle spells (Ruin 3 and Tri-Disaster) Are modified by bahamut and phoenix phase.
Green circle spells are ones modified by titan, garuda, ifrit.

When you have phoenix/bahamut, you will spam ruin3/tridisaster reskins.

When you have other primals, you will spam green skills. Those dont seem like they are very interesting to press either. In garuda, you use right green skill to put dot below enemy and then press left one until effects are gone. In titan you spam left and weave right. In ifrit you use left one 2 times, use right 2 times.

In the end you still use 2 buttons for your main rotation regardless of your state. And there isnt much to weave inbetween majority of those spells (its like only one of ifrit's and garuda's spell actually have cast times, everything else is instant)

Thats seemingly the entirety of smn "complexity" as of now, which is an issue, at least for me. That said i overall like the idea of what they were going for.

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So just an incredibly nitpicky correction the "left green button" is designated as being an "aetherically augmented AoE spell." Implying there will be a ST variant. (backed up by the trailer having 1 unknown spell in each primal demo. That one spell is probably not gonna add a lick of complexity to what we've seen, but there's precedent for features and nuances to be left out. And here's hoping.

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Originally Posted by Roda

So just an incredibly nitpicky correction the "left green button" is designated as being an "aetherically augmented AoE spell." Implying there will be a ST variant. (backed up by the trailer having 1 unknown spell in each primal demo. That one spell is probably not gonna add a lick of complexity to what we've seen, but there's precedent for features and nuances to be left out. And here's hoping.

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true but as you've said, that single-target spell won't add much, it will still be same rotation for that part

Well I guess SE will find out if completely reworking a popular job was a smart decision by how many people continue playing it after 6.1

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Originally Posted by MercuryD

People are definitely making premature judgment. We know the basic flow of combat and we won't know more until the embargo is up from the media tour.

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We are discussing exactly what they showed us, and they showed enough for us to have a general idea and even theorize about a possible rotation.

It's more likely that what they showed us is what we’ll get, to me it’s unlikely that they're so behind in development they didn't have half the spell book ready to show us, or that they intentionally choose not to show half the spells available. They can change cooldowns or potencies, but adding more spells? No, if that happens it's going to be in 6.1.

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Originally Posted by MyakotApelsia

true but as you've said, that single-target spell won't add much, it will still be same rotation for that part

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Yes, exactly, thank God I'm not crazy.

6.0 has no cast timers save for 4 GCDs. 1.5s casts with nothing to weave is concerning, there’s no reason to be this mobile with so few oGCDs. (and current SMN already is mobile, but with resource management.) Cooldowns feel like nothing, just free damage to spam... and with that mobility + utility I can assure you, dmg will be rightfully nerfed.

6.0 looks like it has the least amount of buttons on any DPS job. A concerning amount for a lvl 90 job kit, it looks like the easiest job the game has ever had. If this is a lvl 90 job, how’s leveling going to be like? For a lvl 50 job it would be absolutely great, but a lvl 90? Very lacking.


The primals and animations are great, but pretty animations is not what keeps people interested. Doing nothing but pressing 1- 2 in slightly different orders won’t keep people interested. Ofc by “people” I mean SMN mains.

This is literally easier/less busy than a DNC, and at least DNC has procs. Nothing against DNCs, what I’m trying to say is that if we wanted that kind of playstyle, we wouldn’t be maining SMN/Caster. We need jobs like Dancer, but not every job has to be like Dancer. A caster shouldn't play like a Physical Ranged. There should be jobs for everybody. Want something more complex or busy? Play SAM. Want something more easy and less busy? Play RDM. I play other jobs besides SMN, but there are reasons why I chose to main SMN, and they're removing those reasons. It hurts.

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Originally Posted by Miemi

We are discussing exactly what they showed us, and they showed enough for us to have a general idea and even theorize about a possible rotation.

It's more likely that what they showed us is what we’ll get, to me it’s unlikely that they're so behind in development they didn't have half the spell book ready to show us, or that they intentionally choose not to show half the spells available. They can change cooldowns or potencies, but adding more spells? No, if that happens it's going to be in 6.1.



Yes, exactly, thank God I'm not crazy.

6.0 has no cast timers save for 4 GCDs. 1.5s casts with nothing to weave is concerning, there’s no reason to be this mobile with so few oGCDs. (and current SMN already is mobile, but with resource management.)

6.0 looks like it has the least amount of buttons on any DPS job. A concerning amount for a lvl 90 job kit, it looks like the easiest job the game has ever had. If this is a lvl 90 job, how’s leveling going to be like? For a lvl 50 job it would be absolutely great, but a lvl 90? Very lacking.


The primals and animations are great, but pretty animations is not what keeps people interested. Doing nothing but pressing 1- 2 in slightly different orders won’t keep people interested. Ofc by “people” I mean SMN mains.

This is literally easier/less busy than a DNC, and at least DNC has procs. Nothing against DNCs, what I’m trying to say is that if we wanted that kind of playstyle, we wouldn’t be maining SMN/Caster. We need jobs like Dancer, but not every job has to be like Dancer. A caster shouldn't play like a Physical Ranged. There should be jobs for everybody. Want something more complex or busy? Play SAM. Want something more easy and less busy? Play RDM. I play other jobs besides SMN, but there are reasons why I chose to main SMN, and they're removing those reasons.

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Yeah, it's a shame. The foundation of the job is good, but it's empty. It's dangerously close to healers DPS "complexity". The bulk of the rotation is literally four buttons.

I suspect the intended complexity is of the "Know the fight" sort. Each summon has a different role based on what you need at the time. Looking at the Live Letter demonstration, from activation of Demi Bahamut, there is about a one minute cooldown. Each of the summons has a 30 second duration. Minus the 15 seconds of Demi, you're only using one and a half summons if you want to get Phoenix up as soon as possible. One of the summons isn't getting used, and the other is only getting partial use.

I understand a lot of the gripe over SMN changes but honestly for the most part, this is how SMN works in almost every other iteration of Final Fantasy, save for FFX. The summoned entity always shows up for a short burst then disappears, leaving the summoner alone on screen for 99% of the time. But FFXIV summoner was never going to be like Yuna summoning the Aeons in FFX. They gave us some pet autonomy, which was nice, and they gave us the ability to tweak our big summon size (bahamut) and egi glams to get cute carby back but it looks like they are finally ripping the bandaid off in Endwalker. Being an old school FF player, I enjoy seeing the full renders for the big attacks, like it used to be. It would have been cool to see egis of some of the other primals but with the way jobs have been handled, I feel like the 5 summons (or summon states now) that summoner has is pretty much all the job can really support, both action and lore wise. In any case, I'll reserve judgement until I get my hands on the job after the expansion goes live. I was good at smn during Stormblood but couldnt quite get the hang of it during Shadowbringers. Hopefully I can reconnect with Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

I suspect the intended complexity is of the "Know the fight" sort. Each summon has a different role based on what you need at the time. Looking at the Live Letter demonstration, from activation of Demi Bahamut, there is about a one minute cooldown. Each of the summons has a 30 second duration. Minus the 15 seconds of Demi, you're only using one and a half summons if you want to get Phoenix up as soon as possible. One of the summons isn't getting used, and the other is only getting partial use.

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The semidemis and their skills aren't being used for 30 seconds. They each have 2 or 4 charges (ifrit/garuda&titan) of their special gem skills and then you're done with those phases. That 30 second timer is just to light a fire under your butt so you actually use the skills instead of just ooh and ah at the pretty spell effect of summoning while ruin IIIing or whatever. You're expected to have been in all 3 before your demi phase. There is no pick and choose.

https://youtu.be/WSGdMv72ghI?t=14143

Hmm... That's good. I was worried that there'd be a prefered summon like how almost nobody uses Titan now. You'd still want to choose when to use which summon in the order, but it's good that you use each of them.

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Originally Posted by Ursa_Vonfiebryd

I understand a lot of the gripe over SMN changes but honestly for the most part, this is how SMN works in almost every other iteration of Final Fantasy, save for FFX. The summoned entity always shows up for a short burst then disappears, leaving the summoner alone on screen for 99% of the time. But FFXIV summoner was never going to be like Yuna summoning the Aeons in FFX. They gave us some pet autonomy, which was nice, and they gave us the ability to tweak our big summon size (bahamut) and egi glams to get cute carby back but it looks like they are finally ripping the bandaid off in Endwalker. Being an old school FF player, I enjoy seeing the full renders for the big attacks, like it used to be. It would have been cool to see egis of some of the other primals but with the way jobs have been handled, I feel like the 5 summons (or summon states now) that summoner has is pretty much all the job can really support, both action and lore wise. In any case, I'll reserve judgement until I get my hands on the job after the expansion goes live. I was good at smn during Stormblood but couldnt quite get the hang of it during Shadowbringers. Hopefully I can reconnect with Endwalker.

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How Summoners work in FF is irrelevant because this is a MMO and you can't copy and paste big summons that cast their ultimate and go away and call it a day. Black Mages in FF don't work alternating an ice and a fire phase, yet no one is asking them to rework the job, for example.

This is not the problem, either. The problem is that the job now is completely devoided of depth and complexity. Or anything remotely engaging, really. It looks even easier and boring than 5.X MCH. Almost healers level of complexity, who at least have to worry about health bars.

The bulk of your rotation is composed of four buttons: Ruin III, Tridisaster and the two pet actions. Demi-summons are SMN's inner release with their 11111 spam, primals seems to be different combinations of 1-2. On top of that, you have no DoTs, or debuffs, or buffs to mantain. Movement is braindead because almost everything is instant. There is no resource management.

If this is really how a DPS job will play, I see a panic 6.1 rework to be inevitable. Much like NIN in 5.1 and to a lesser degree SMN itself.

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Originally Posted by Miemi

Never said they're duplicates. I think I explained my point fairly decently in my post. If people want to be blinded by shiny animations and ignore how 90% of playstyle got nuked, so be it.

The dot argument is pretty silly, we just happened to have dots, there's more to smn than dots.

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You people are never satisfied. They tried for years to make summoner better and the pet AI sucked and needed to be fixed. When you try for so long sometimes you gotta take another route. Ffxiv summoner was not a true summoner. We know what final fantasy summoner is known for. What we had was a knock off wow dot warlock. The pet was horrible with ghosting. If you wanna ignore that then that’s your problem. Yoshi said he wanted to bring the fantasy of jobs back and the devs definitely nailed it with summoner. Even if the big primals stay out for 2 seconds they do their ultimate attack as they are suppose to, it’s what summoner is known for. I’m sorry but you people need to get over yourselves.

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Originally Posted by MyakotApelsia

https://i.imgur.com/ntIHgTT.png
I think the issue is more about how smn is going to be 1-2 job now

Red circle spells (Ruin 3 and Tri-Disaster) Are modified by bahamut and phoenix phase.
Green circle spells are ones modified by titan, garuda, ifrit.

When you have phoenix/bahamut, you will spam ruin3/tridisaster reskins.

When you have other primals, you will spam green skills. Those dont seem like they are very interesting to press either. In garuda, you use right green skill to put dot below enemy and then press left one until effects are gone. In titan you spam left and weave right. In ifrit you use left one 2 times, use right 2 times.

In the end you still use 2 buttons for your main rotation regardless of your state. And there isnt much to weave inbetween majority of those spells (its like only one of ifrit's and garuda's spell actually have cast times, everything else is instant)

Thats seemingly the entirety of smn "complexity" as of now, which is an issue, at least for me. That said i overall like the idea of what they were going for.

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Looks pretty fun to me. Plenty of other summoner mains think so too. The devs won’t please everyone so it’s fine if a few don’t like the changes. There are other guys that might appeal to you. Hopefully you stick with us though.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Looks pretty fun to me. Plenty of other summoner mains think so too. The devs won’t please everyone so it’s fine if a few don’t like the changes. There are other guys that might appeal to you. Hopefully you stick with us though.

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Sorry but I don't want to play a half baked Geomancer.

https://c.tenor.com/hbDp6cjAL_EAAAAC...er-tv-land.gif

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Originally Posted by rewd

How Summoners work in FF is irrelevant because this is a MMO and you can't copy and paste big summons that cast their ultimate and go away and call it a day. Black Mages in FF don't work alternating an ice and a fire phase, yet no one is asking them to rework the job, for example.

This is not the problem, either. The problem is that the job now is completely devoided of depth and complexity. Or anything remotely engaging, really. It looks even easier and boring than 5.X MCH. Almost healers level of complexity, who at least have to worry about health bars.

The bulk of your rotation is composed of four buttons: Ruin III, Tridisaster and the two pet actions. Demi-summons are SMN's inner release with their 11111 spam, primals seems to be different combinations of 1-2. On top of that, you have no DoTs, or debuffs, or buffs to mantain. Movement is braindead because almost everything is instant. There is no resource management.

If this is really how a DPS job will play, I see a panic 6.1 rework to be inevitable. Much like NIN in 5.1 and to a lesser degree SMN itself.

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A 6.1 rework? Lol I don’t think so. They aren’t gonna rework the job because very few people saying there is no complex. If you expect a rework then you will be sadly waiting for that. This is the route they are going. It sets up for more primals to be added in the next expansion. They may tweak the damage if it lacks behind the other jobs but that’s all they will do. This will be summoner. Gotta adapt. This job is about to get very popular.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Sorry but I don't want to play a half baked Geomancer.

https://c.tenor.com/hbDp6cjAL_EAAAAC...er-tv-land.gif

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That’s your choice. There’s a allot of jobs in the game.

To be fair, Miemi's point was that the class doesn't have depth. I'm sure if they gave us the big summons and the summon phases had weaving or something, they'd have less to complain about.

I disagree with their assessment, but "I think the class is hollow" and "this is more on keeping with the power fantasy" are not contradictory arguments.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

You people are never satisfied. They tried for years to make summoner better and the pet AI sucked and needed to be fixed. When you try for so long sometimes you gotta take another route. Ffxiv summoner was not a true summoner. We know what final fantasy summoner is known for.

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And everybody likes the changes, which I already mentioned. What we don't like is how lacking and unfinished 6.0 smn looks.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

What we had was a knock off wow dot warlock.

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You’re focusing too much about dots. Removing just the dots would barely affect the depth of the job as it currently is.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

The pet was horrible with ghosting. If you wanna ignore that then that’s your problem.

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This is an argument I see less experienced smns use. It doesn’t justify giving us a job that feels unfinished.. Pet AI is wonky and not perfect, but it’s not as bad as people make you think, you come to learn this after playing smn for a while.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Yoshi said he wanted to bring the fantasy of jobs back and the devs definitely nailed it with summoner. Even if the big primals stay out for 2 seconds they do their ultimate attack as they are suppose to, it’s what summoner is known for. I’m sorry but you people need to get over yourselves.

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I guess I’ll have to repeat myself. Thematically they’re going in an amazing direction, but for a 90lvl job this feels unfinished.

People are worried for their main class. Some of us mained SMN for years and it’s completely changing. How do you think we’re gonna feel? “Just play something else?” lol.
If this is what we’re getting, guess we’ll have no other choice.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Looks pretty fun to me. Plenty of other summoner mains think so too. The devs won’t please everyone so it’s fine if a few don’t like the changes. There are other guys that might appeal to you. Hopefully you stick with us though.

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I agree we're not the demographic they're aiming for. Sad but fair.

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

To be fair, Miemi's point was that the class doesn't have depth. I'm sure if they gave us the big summons and the summon phases had weaving or something, they'd have less to complain about.

I disagree with their assessment, but "I think the class is hollow" and "this is more on keeping with the power fantasy" are not contradictory arguments.

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Yes, 100% agree. I'm only focusing on the 6.0 version of this class since it's all the info we have. Of course it's only gonna get better from this point.

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

I'm sure if they gave us the big summons and the summon phases had weaving or something

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Wouldn't take much, a couple of examples: Lower ED cd, more ED stacks, a bigger range of primal abilities to choose from/to manage, primal oGCDs, less unnecessary movement/longer casts... darn even 1 dot back? There's room for literally anything you can think of

So...
Distracting from the argument over who deserves to be happy with the game....

Is it just me, or does the flow from phase to phase feel... off? Like the progression is backwards?

Big ELDER PRIMAL Bahamut is just a cooldown that we use and go through that phase to unlock the 3 smaller semidemis? And those 3 semidemis have the most variance in how they influence our gameplay feel? (Yes I AM pushing semidemis) And in the same vein, phoenix is a slightly different bahamut now (just trade a ogcd nuke for an ogcd heal, and add on a passive, instead of totally different casting behaviors), just to start the cycle over again. I guess they gave us the big cool thing first to line up with openers? But idk, I have the same problem with the rotation now. It's weird that we just have to wait for bahamut and phoenix to show up to grant us access to the other summons, instead of having those other summon mechanics support, or feed into, those big showstopping demi summon phases.

And like aetherflow.. What are you even here for anymore?
(You too ruin IV, you are like 100% here because they wanted us to weave into something but they lined up our rotation so that we didn't have an instant cast handy aren't you?)

Like I know it's WAAAAAAAY too late to change anything, so i'm just indulging in a bit of fantasy here, but I'd appreciate it, thematically, if the flow looked less like this
https://i.imgur.com/HoJ7ket.png


And more like this
https://i.imgur.com/V9CLXpg.png
I'm sure there could be buff timers and "persists through incapacitation" effects, to ease the harshness that early-sb resource cohesion would cause.

Not a complaint, but something that feels weird to me. Why is Titan the damage weaving highly mobile mode? I get that traditionally Titan was an offensive summon and Golem and Carbuncle were the defensive ones, so maybe losing the defensive move was reasonable, but it seems odd that Earth is the element of moving about and attack spamming.

Edit: Maybe it's an avalanche thing.

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

Not a complaint, but something that feels weird to me. Why is Titan the damage weaving highly mobile mode? I get that traditionally Titan was an offensive summon and Golem and Carbuncle were the defensive ones, so maybe losing the defensive move was reasonable, but it seems odd that Earth is the element of moving about and attack spamming.

Edit: Maybe it's an avalanche thing.

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Yeah, I would've expected ifrit to be the crazy mobile one, especially with the ifrit dashes being pretty iconic, and titan to be more.. well... grounded.

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Originally Posted by Roda

So...
Distracting from the argument over who deserves to be happy with the game....

Is it just me, or does the flow from phase to phase feel... off? Like the progression is backwards?

Big ELDER PRIMAL Bahamut is just a cooldown that we use and go through that phase to unlock the 3 smaller semidemis? And those 3 semidemis have the most variance in how they influence our gameplay feel? (Yes I AM pushing semidemis) And in the same vein, phoenix is a slightly different bahamut now (just trade a ogcd nuke for an ogcd heal, and add on a passive, instead of totally different casting behaviors), just to start the cycle over again. I guess they gave us the big cool thing first to line up with openers? But idk, I have the same problem with the rotation now. It's weird that we just have to wait for bahamut and phoenix to show up to grant us access to the other summons, instead of having those other summon mechanics support, or feed into, those big showstopping demi summon phases.

And like aetherflow.. What are you even here for anymore?
(You too ruin IV, you are like 100% here because they wanted us to weave into something but they lined up our rotation so that we didn't have an instant cast handy aren't you?)

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Basically this seems to be correct. Demi's act as Aetherflow on a 45 second timer that refresh semidemis, I'll just call them Wind, Earth, and Fire Stance. Demi Bahamut seems to add the elements of DWT to it replace 1 and 2 with ??? and deathflare. It seems you just pick whatever stance you like then summon Phoenix to repeat the process giving you a 60s rotation. Based on the gameplay shown; you'll use Wind Stance for AoE, Earth Stance for heavy movement situations, and Fire Stance for non movement heavy dps situations.

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Originally Posted by Miemi

And everybody likes the changes, which I already mentioned. What we don't like is how lacking and unfinished 6.0 smn looks.




You’re focusing too much about dots. Removing just the dots would barely affect the depth of the job as it currently is.



This is an argument I see less experienced smns use. It doesn’t justify giving us a job that feels unfinished.. Pet AI is wonky and not perfect, but it’s not as bad as people make you think, you come to learn this after playing smn for a while.



I guess I’ll have to repeat myself. Thematically they’re going in an amazing direction, but for a 90lvl job this feels unfinished.

People are worried for their main class. Some of us mained SMN for years and it’s completely changing. How do you think we’re gonna feel? “Just play something else?” lol.
If this is what we’re getting, guess we’ll have no other choice.


I agree we're not the demographic they're aiming for. Sad but fair.

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I can agree with you on some of the things you said 100%. However, I am not in the less experienced summoners dear. Just letting you know. I been playing this game since 1.0 before it was remade. I main summoner and the healers since the relaunch.

I personally don’t like dots at all so that’s just me. So was glad to see them go and hope they never return. So I apologize if I got overzealous with you and the others who were just expressing their opinions.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

A 6.1 rework? Lol I don’t think so. They aren’t gonna rework the job because very few people saying there is no complex. If you expect a rework then you will be sadly waiting for that. This is the route they are going. It sets up for more primals to be added in the next expansion. They may tweak the damage if it lacks behind the other jobs but that’s all they will do. This will be summoner. Gotta adapt. This job is about to get very popular.

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A rework doesn't necessarily mean they are going to scrap 6.0 SMN and come up with another version entirely, and it was already clear when I specifically mentioned 5.1's NIN and SMN. Or AST and the changes it got in 5.1 and 5.3.

It's also very weird how defensive you are getting, especially as you are failing once again (or just pretending) to understand what people are complaining about.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Basically this seems to be correct. Demi's act as Aetherflow on a 45 second timer that refresh semidemis, I'll just call them Wind, Earth, and Fire Stance. Demi Bahamut seems to add the elements of DWT to it replace 1 and 2 with ??? and deathflare. It seems you just pick whatever stance you like then summon Phoenix to repeat the process giving you a 60s rotation. Based on the gameplay shown; you'll use Wind Stance for AoE, Earth Stance for heavy movement situations, and Fire Stance for non movement heavy dps situations.

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No you're expected to cycle through all three stances because the charges (you get access to 13 gcds between them + the three summon gcds themselves). You get to pick the order you use them in, but you're going to be using them all. (They all seem to have 1 ST gcd and 1 AoE gcd that consumes a charge on use, like a cherry/lime/lemon flavored aetherflow with gcds, and 1 "signature move" that can be either a 2 part gcd chain, a gcd cast, or an ogcd granted by the ST/aoe skill. No clue if the signature skill is aoe or st, tho. Slipstream is probably aoe tho.) Using all of the charges and those signature moves, I think you have like ~1 gcd more before you go into another demi phase? (depends on if the tooltip is final for demibahamut's duration, or if the gameplay timer is final.)

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Originally Posted by Rika007

this new XIV summoner fits in perfectly with how FF summoners have been. Let's look at two of FF's most iconic Summoners (if not THE most iconic ones) Yuna and Rydia. Yuna is a primarily summoner/healer who brings out a big ass summon who does some big power attacks then leaves if it is defeated. The summons are very similar to demi's in that way, the only difference being the summoner takes the place of the party. Rydia on the other hand just calls on a summon, it comes in, does a super move and leaves. This is very simmilar to the new summon gems.

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Oh yeah and let’s not forget those famous parts where Yuna and Rydia started using meteor strike and dashing into melee range with their fire charge for the next 30 seconds after summoning ifrit to do his one move.

That is my issue with this new design. The thing I’ve hated most about SMN since HW has been trance. It was a bandaid fix for the janky pet AI to put all the focus on the caster. They started to move away from that with demi summons and I was happy with that, we started having decent sized pets using powerful attacks while also attacking in tandem with their summoner casting filler ruin spells with egi assaults (more pet attacks) between demi summons. Trance started to feel like the bandaid was starting to peel off and I was hopeful that for endwalker it would be gone entirely and replaced with more demi summons.

But the rework has gone in the complete opposite direction and put all the focus back on the caster. The pet is only there for a second followed by the summoner doing all the work while his carbuncle literally sits and watches.

Why couldn’t these new primals just work similar to demi primals? Just stay out and when you press the next attack button, instead of the spell coming out of YOU it comes out of the summon? There would be absolutely no change to how the job functions, it would be a purely aesthetic change that would make the summoner into a summoner rather than a discount black mage. And if screen clutter from the big primals is a concern, make it so they elementally enhance carbuncle and do the same thing with him.

In the end my issue is one of aesthetics and you can argue that it’s a minor gripe, but aesthetics are important. If they made black mage into a melee job that mainly attacks with their staff and casts one spell every 5 minutes, it doesn’t matter how fun to play the job is, or how viable it’s rotation is, any real black mage player would not be happy with it, because that’s not a black mage.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Roda

So...
Distracting from the argument over who deserves to be happy with the game....

Is it just me, or does the flow from phase to phase feel... off? Like the progression is backwards?

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This did cross my mind but we’ll just have to wait and see on that front. When I have some spare downtime in endwalker I’ll probably start a new character and see how the job progresses from level 1 AND see how/if they changed the SMN job quests around the rework.

Aesthetically and thematically, the changes look great.

Mechanically, I am fearing the worst about what's going to happen to the job that I've mained and prog'd with since ARR.

Every expansion, there seems to be even less pet management, which is the same complaint SCH's had in ShB. Long gone are the days of lining up Contagion with your raid buffs/debuffs. It's like they heard our complaints about how janky pet actions were, and instead of improving them, they just started gutting them. The job trailer and gameplay video we saw makes it seem like Carbuncle is now going to be nothing more than a perma-Robot Queen turret, with very little interaction between SMN and pet.

And I get DoT's were not everyone's cup of tea, but a lot of players who DID main SMN played it because we enjoyed DoT management. Otherwise we would've played another job. Yeah, ShB DoT management became braindead easy with all the Tri-disaster resets, but it was still another resource we had to track and monitor to maintain 100% uptime. They also added subtle nuances/changes to our gameplay whenever we dealt with boss phase transitions or dual/triple-target adds that we could DoT up.

Now from the looks of it, this class is just going to faceroll over its 5-button rotation on a single target, and appears much less busy than in the past. I hope I'm wrong, but I went from excited by the Job trailer, to totally deflated once Yoshi-P started going into detail on the SMN changes.

Honestly this is a big step in the right direction in regards to flavor, visuals and core mechanics, and I whole heartedly approve of getting rid of the Egi system as it existed, but I feel like it just needs a couple more things.

1)There needs to be more buttons to press. I feel like with the amount of buttons that this rework is removing, having Ruin III and Outburst transform into different skills was the wrong way to go, even though I understand that they're trying to reduce button bloat. Rather have a set of like 3-4 buttons that do different things while each Summon is active and mess around with the order and type of activation of those buttons in order to make it feel different between the different Summons.

1a) We need more weaves. With the sheer amount of Instant cast GCD abilities, we need *something* to do between those casts, otherwise it's gonna get Dancer levels of boring. There's just not enough depth to what we're seeing so far, very few optimization points for gameplay, even more so than the step down from StB SMN to ShB SMN.

2) We need some kind of buff or timer management, though it seems like they're getting rid of that as a mechanic, as it's going away for pretty much every class except Bard and Reaper, but there needs to be something to keep track of outside of just how many charges you have on your Summon abilities.

3) Removing the differentiation between Bahamut mode and Phoenix mode is a mistake in my opinion, since prior to EW there was at least some difference between how they played. Maybe keep Fountain of Fire->Brand of Puragtory gameplay, and add something similar to Bahamut like a 1->2->3?

I just miss being able to tank through my pet...I hate the robbed us of that.

What I got from Yoshi's demonstration was that I really hope this job is unfinished because there are some really suspect things upon initial inspection.

It appears as if the goal for redesigning Summoner was to keep the burst phases, remove DoT management, and replace Ruin spam with more interesting filler phases that contain the flashy Summon attacks people have been clamouring for, but what I saw from some of the Gem Summons was extremely underwhelming.

First off, the only Summon that appears to function is Titan, which clearly offers a lot of mobility while adding high-damaging weaved abilities when executing the main GCD. A little basic but I can't really say much about this.

Next we have Garuda who offers a 3s cast of a ground AOE and four GCDs with the rare 1.5s recast timer. Upon first glance we see that the purpose of this ground AOE is to be able to cast this when we know the boss will stand within it for the full duration, which is fine, it's almost like bringing back Shadow Flare. However, the potency of this attack is about the same as a cast of Ruin III which really begs the question why we should even bother with it. As for those 1.5s GCDs...what is the purpose of them being 1.5s long? They don't appear to do anything or interact with any other mechanics of the job. Machinist's Heat Blast has the purpose of fitting into Wildfire and lowering the cooldown on Gauss Round and Ricochet for a fast paced segment of weaving in the rotation. But these don't appear to do anything but go fast for a few seconds and there certainly won't be anything to weave between them with only two Festers that will have been long used up by this point.

And lastly there's Ifrit who just makes no sense whatsoever. There's really not much to say about the gap-closer and melee attack besides just being a weird thing to add. I suppose the player will have to plan this around mechanics that keep you out of melee range when this is available, which I guess is fine because Red Mages deal with that too. But the real abomination here is the two charges of the elemental GCD. In what is essentially two casts of Fire IV, we have two spells that deal that same pitiful damage that's less than just casting (a shorter) Ruin III. Seriously, that cannot be the correct potency of this attack. Given that it appears you can summon Bahamut or Phoenix even while you have charges on a Gem, you would never bother casting these Fire IVs if you could just use Ifrit last, spam the more potent Ruin III, and wait until your Demi was off cooldown to refresh your Gems.

I'm very much looking forward to what kind of build they send out for the media tour because this looks like a real mess upon first glance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ShadowNyx3

...you would never bother casting these Fire IVs if you could just use Ifrit last, spam the more potent Ruin III...

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You would if it was aoe, because he was using the aoe spell of the ifrit phase. It's a slightly more potent outburst, now tridisaster (~5 more potency per second of cast). Ifrit would have another single target "fire IV" that yoshi p didn't show us. (Animation here)

And once again I repeat:
There is confirmed at least one skill that yoshi p didn't have on his bar. We 100% do not know all the tools.
This doesn't change the flow of the rotation from what we can gather, but I wouldn't be too worried about potencies when he was deliberately using the AoE part of the kit. (and also because numbers aren't real right now)

Well Summoner is going to have...

Ruin series of spells
Outburst (AoE damage skill) upgrade
Carbuncle support skills ( Some kind of shield as well as a Carbuncle version of devotion)
5 summons with their own elemental themed attacks/actions for the Summoner
Aetherflow generator skills that proc a buff for a single use of Ruin 4
Fester and Painflare
Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix
Physick and Resurrection
Deathflare as an action under Bahamut
New active buff under Phoenix

What Summoner seems to have lost...

All DoTs
Tridisaster
Dreadwyrm/Phoenix Trance
Use of standard Egi's and their skills.
Egi Assaults

Everything revolves completely around summoning now.

Which makes you wonder how the leveling progress will be for new players.

It's really looking at endgame that there is going to be a gameplay loop of a 5 summon system with Bahamut/Phoenix refreshing Ifrit/Titan/Garuda.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Well Summoner is going to have...

Ruin series of spells
Outburst (AoE damage skill) upgrade
Carbuncle support skills ( Some kind of shield as well as a Carbuncle version of devotion)
5 summons with their own elemental themed attacks/actions for the Summoner
Aetherflow generator skills that proc a buff for a single use of Ruin 4
Fester and Painflare
Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix
Physick and Resurrection
Deathflare as an action under Bahamut
New active buff under Phoenix

What Summoner seems to have lost...

All DoTs
Tridisaster
Dreadwyrm/Phoenix Trance
Use of standard Egi's and their skills.
Egi Assaults

Everything revolves completely around summoning now.

Which makes you wonder how the leveling progress will be for new players.

It's really looking at endgame that there is going to be a gameplay loop of a 5 summon system with Bahamut/Phoenix refreshing Ifrit/Titan/Garuda.

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This is a good breakdown. My only (possible) correction is we won't be LOSING DWT/FBT we will learn it which gives us access to new skills/a finisher (like they already do before you get demis) and when we get the demi it will be summoned along with trance.

Also, Tridisaster is still there, it's a straight damage aoe attack. It upgrades to Astral Impact under DWT just like Outburst changes to Flames of purgatory under FBT

So we have 2 summon trances, 3 elemental phases.

They should replace Phoenix with Alexander.

Why do we need a fire bird, when we got Ifrit already?