Summoner changes that should happen onto 7.0

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

There you go. And for the last time, no poison magic does not belong on Summoner. If that's the sort of gameplay you're into then go ask for Time Mage or Necromancer. Leave us alone already.

---

I’m still wondering who died and made you grand arbiter of SMN, some of us have been SMN mains longer than you have even played the game for; why do we get no say in the direction of SMN

And like we’ve just been saying adding more effects to astral flow doesn’t change the rigid rotation adding the other three primals would induce nor does it change that picking a primal when a Demi leaves is not any sort of decision anyway because you are always in a Demi during movement heavy phases anyway also it doesn’t change the fact that Demi’s are brainless as well

Who died and made you the arbiter of what a summoner is; Why do you not acknoweldge that for the last 8 years summoner has had a coherent identity in FF14?

Why do you think that astral flow is the solution? So far all we have is a dot that you burn swiftcast on, a gap closer and busywork ogcds. They even removed the 1212 on demiphoenix so that every other minute we can cast a heal on the tank that goes to waste because the window to cast it and ability to move the window is so absurdly lacking.

Classic FF summon is either screen-clear type high cost spell you use sparingly, or in the newer games where it became technically feasible, a pet that fights alongside you. It certainly never was a non-stop chain summoning barrage that changed the summoner's spell flavor (except maybe in the games that didn't have an actual summoner class per se, like FF8, which I believe also "punished" your EXP rewards for overusing them). FF games with job systems or preset classes almost always made summoners multi-class for that exact reason.

Literally none of these summoner identity gatekeepers so far actually knows what they are talking about.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

...

---

And I've played and favored the class in every iteration its had across the entire franchise. Given that FFXIV is a theme park mmorpg, that carries a certain degree of weight. Lets also not pretend that SMN mains are in agreement with the return of poison magic - some of them were the most vocal opponents of it from the class's introduction. I've played the class for varying lengths of time across the expansions of FFXIV and each time I have found it wanting. At this point you don't need to be a chef to know that something was clearly going wrong in the kitchen, especially when ShB SMN exhausted the last of many people's patience with the job, myself included until EW's rework surprised us.

I have already told you that adding more than 3 gems to choose from and diversifying the spells they bring with them will give more agency and choice to the player. Give Summoner more summons so it can finally live up to its namesake. Let them do different things. This shouldn't be a concept I have to debate with people who play the class.

On that note, I'm done speaking to you directly as well. I don't believe we can have a productive discussion moving forward if you're going to ignore what I've said in previous posts or try and argue with me, whose been here since day 1 of ARR and played the job in every other game outside this one, that it was/is ok to even entertain the idea of reversions. What is obvious to those with my mindset has been explained to those with yours time and time again, and you have chosen to meet me in the middle with nothing but arguments that have led the Summoner discussion to continue in circles rather than coming up with a more concrete vision for the job.

This cannot continue. Until you figure out away to convince the people who think like me and have my experience, it is unlikely you will be able to convince the person who designed current Summoner to re-introduce dot gameplay and undermine the newfound thematic focus of the job. If this is something you truly want, I have already told you that it is better to ask for a new caster to fit that niche. Again, leave us Summoners alone. Forcing my group and yours into the same job hasn't created a happy environment for either of us, so in this case the divorce of these identities was for the best.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

And I've played and favored the class in every iteration its had across the entire franchise. Given that FFXIV is a theme park mmorpg, that carries a certain degree of weight. Lets also not pretend that SMN mains are in agreement with the return of poison magic - some of them were the most vocal opponents of it from the class's introduction. I've played the class for varying lengths of time across the expansions of FFXIV and each time I have found it wanting. At this point you don't need to be a chef to know that something was clearly going wrong in the kitchen, especially when ShB SMN exhausted the last of many people's patience with the job, myself included until EW's rework surprised us.

I have already told you that adding more than 3 gems to choose from and diversifying the spells they bring with them will give more agency and choice to the player. Give Summoner more summons so it can finally live up to its namesake. Let them do different things. This shouldn't be a concept I have to debate with people who play the class.

On that note, I'm done speaking to you directly as well. I don't believe we can have a productive discussion moving forward if you're going to ignore what I've said in previous posts or try and argue with me, whose been here since day 1 of ARR and played the job in every other game outside this one, that it was/is ok to even entertain the idea of reversions.

---

You literally have not explained your position at all all you have done is basically said “if you want poison magic go ask them for necromancer like 8 times”, I don’t care one way or another about poison magic, it can come back, be reintroduced stay dead it literally does not affect me, but adding 3 more primals after phoenix and expanding what astral flow does does what, Demi’s are still brain dead and somehow also still have pointless skills like phoenix’s heal, there is still far too much rigidity in the rotation for how simple it is, choice between primals is a false choice because there is never a reason to not use any of them astral flow affects the GCD for 2 of the three so it doesn’t really speed the job up, aetherflow is still residual and doesn’t do anything

None of this has been explained, all I’ve gotten from you is “this is what i want and if you don’t like it ask square to make a new class for you because I like current SMN”

You will be familiar with summoner gaining dots from scholar in ff11 then? Yeah it was introduced 8 years ago. It's had 8 years to cement this identity in this game. You are not owed a version of summoner that meets whichever bizzare criteria you deem necessary, particularly at the cost of one of the better designed jobs.

I believe you'll find that every time you've tried to claim that adding more crayons will improve the summoner exerience, people have patiently explained how fundamentally incorrect that is given the current and past combat design of this game.

Being here since day 1 of arr means nothing, there is no guarantee playing for a long time has any bearing on ability nor understanding. Additionally going off lodestone ID, the fenris pendragon character seems to date to some time after 2020, so I'm sure you'll forgive people for doubting.

So if this summoner was dead in arrival what do you guys want the devs to do with summoner? I’m confused. It seems very popular now so not sure if it’s dead on arrival.

Simple yes but I guess lots are enjoying the simplicity. I think the devs have really tried to give us the classic final fantasy summoner with primals one off attack with the flavour of mmo with the elemental attunements.

I’ve been reading these summoner threads for a while and all I see is “summoner sucks, the new rework is terrible etc” I haven’t seen a single post of how to rework it again or make it better other than give back dots and give back the depth it had before. Obviously Yoshi said he got sick of people calling it a knock off wow warlock. I think instead of attacking each other and trying to prove right and wrong. We should work together to help the devs to build on this current iteration of summoner because it looks like it’s here to stay.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SweetPete

So if this summoner was dead in arrival what do you guys want the devs to do with summoner? I’m confused. It seems very popular now so not sure if it’s dead on arrival.

Simple yes but I guess lots are enjoying the simplicity. I think the devs have really tried to give us the classic final fantasy summoner with primals one off attack with the flavour of mmo with the elemental attunements.

I’ve been reading these summoner threads for a while and all I see is “summoner sucks, the new rework is terrible etc” I haven’t seen a single post of how to rework it again or make it better other than give back dots and give back the depth it had before. Obviously Yoshi said he got sick of people calling it a knock off wow warlock. I think instead of attacking each other and trying to prove right and wrong. We should work together to help the devs to build on this current iteration of summoner because it looks like it’s here to stay.

---

We have offered ways to expand on SMN

-Sure there were complaints about knock off warlock but dots do at least present an interesting interaction with fester like they used to (tri disaster was also a good ability to refresh DOT’s and a pre-requisite for summoning Bahamut also avoiding hard casting DOT’s)
-both Demi’s need a more interesting rotation, single button spamming with all attacks being instacast is not enough for the core of the summons, nerfing astral impulse/fountain of fire and giving SMN more oGCD’s in the burst windows, you could even make it so order of those oGCD’s could buff or change the resulting primal forms after the Demi is released
-astral flow needs to be unlocked way earlier and it needs to have more than 1 effect per primal, AOE DOT, gap closer and like the single oGCD SMN has is not enough, you could add many more things to astral flow or even have it change the way a primal works like slipstream could get a duration extension from every Garuda attack you hit the boss with when it’s inside slipstream, other than that astral flow being the only ability that stops primals from just being gemshine spam is a problem
-the rotation is too rigid and all choice is false, your movement heavy phases (intemperance, act2 FOA) all occur primarily during a Demi phase, since all the Demi phases are full of instacasts the primal choice is pretty much false besides “slipstream has to be snapshotted in searing light”, if they want to make the primals an actual decision then give us difference reasons to pick them, like if you made each primal lock you into it for 45 seconds or so so you had to make a conscious decision which primal you wanted it would be better than “well it doesn’t matter what I pick because I get all three in the next minute anyway”
-carbuncle is useless and either needs to go or needs to do something to actually justify its existence
-square specifically removed Kaiten and forced all SAM Iijutsu to crit to remove damage variance and then gave us ark morhn and revelation, who decided that was a good idea

So overall it comes to a problem of the fact that level 90 SMN plays like a level 60 class, choice within its rotation is false and the fact that offered solutions in the form of “just summon shiva ramuh and leviathan” don’t change why the class is fundamentally unable to grow in any meaningful way

Do you actually have some numbers to show SMN has become more popular? Not that popularity means everything (which is the mistake SE does with every job except BLM). I mean, I still do my roulettes as a healer half the time not because I find healers well designed or fun 90% of the time, but because either I get to turn my brains off grinding or I luck out and score a trashfire party that is actually tricky to keep alive (which might actually become more interesting with level sync instead of it just neutering my rotation, since you don't have one in the first place lol).

Also, it's really, really not our job to design the game. While people make these day-dream threads about how they would design or redesign whichever job, not one has been been implemented by the devs so far. Clearly normal criticism is more effective than playing video game developer.

Aveyond has no idea what they're talking about, just posturing as some game design master and FF historian for some reason when they are obviously neither. They'll flip-flop between any given justification as it's convenient at the time in order to justify this utter disaster of a job SE has presented, while ignoring most of whatever you had to say that can't just be handwaved by calling you a toxic "revisionist" or some other similarly weak refutation. If they've said they won't talk to you directly anymore count yourself lucky, you won't have to be told the same thing another hundred times.

And people wonder why those of us in favor of the divorce of SMN from its warlock aspects want nothing to do with those who still long for the latter. Needless to say I remain unmoved by these discussions and maintain that Summoner should first and foremost live up to its namesake along with having a complete kit that is consistent with its thematic identity. The sooner that kit is completed, the better.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SweetPete

I’ve been reading these summoner threads for a while and all I see is “summoner sucks, the new rework is terrible etc” I haven’t seen a single post of how to rework it again or make it better other than give back dots and give back the depth it had before. Obviously Yoshi said he got sick of people calling it a knock off wow warlock. I think instead of attacking each other and trying to prove right and wrong. We should work together to help the devs to build on this current iteration of summoner because it looks like it’s here to stay.

---

The niche that summoner occupied prior to 6.0 is unfilled, what is wrong with reverting it back to the summoner identity and refilling that niche? Cutting off your nose to spite your face is nothing new, but shouldn't be the foundation for change - particularly one seemingly as rushed and unfulfiled as this. There is also the related point that - and I'm not sure how to word this more nicely - people are having doubts with the battle design team's ability to handle their ever-increasing workload. The charitable interpretation of this push for homogeneity is that they simply do not have enough hands or time to balance 19 jobs while retaining any meaningful sense of individuality. Take healers for example, in stormblood they had distinct identities, more involved rotations and come shadowbringers they were made near clones of one another - same for tanks. As of endwalker, this corruption is being spread into the dps roles and frankly the response of revulsion and concern is entirely warranted.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Do you actually have some numbers to show SMN has become more popular? Not that popularity means everything (which is the mistake SE does with every job except BLM). I mean, I still do my roulettes as a healer half the time not because I find healers well designed or fun 90% of the time, but because either I get to turn my brains off grinding or I luck out and score a trashfire party that is actually tricky to keep alive (which might actually become more interesting with level sync instead of it just neutering my rotation, since you don't have one in the first place lol).

Also, it's really, really not our job to design the game. While people make these day-dream threads about how they would design or redesign whichever job, not one has been been implemented by the devs so far. Clearly normal criticism is more effective than playing video game developer.

---

I can't speak for numbers, but I've definitely seen more summoners than ever before pretty much everywhere. It's my main, but I often have to go for something else in PF. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were more mad at that than the rework itself.

Love it or hate it, it's far more functional than it used to be and despite what some claim, it lines up more with the traditional summoner.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...83/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...36/unknown.png
I think this speaks for itself. The release of the second pandaemonium tier will of course make this data much more valuable (as the shiny newness of endwalker summoner will have likely worn off), however for a starting point it is probably not too bad. I have some very severe doubts about whether or not this slight increase in summoner frequency is sustainable.

Anecdotes are worthless. With that said every summoner I know is quitting for other jobs. The third eden tier was omitted due to the number of parses being 2 orders of magnitude lower across the board. What this data shows is probably not enough to say anything conclusively yet, even if you were to also factor in that chinese player survey that indicated summoner was liked the least by its mains, and considered to be the easiest across the board.

Uff just said i want dots back and there i see a nuclear meltdown.

Yes it is true that now SMN is more popular than before, even i think that now is better than before. What my problem is that once you get in the rotation the class GETS VERY BORING and still see skills with no synergy at all. Im very happy to got rid of spells like enkindle (which were just another cd push button), but still we have energy drain/fester, which.... there is no decision making, you just push them everytime they are available, it is the same for swiftcast, it is only used for resurrection becasuse everything is instant, why almost everything is instant?

Everytime i summon bahamuth/phoenix i have to press akh morn/revelation, why not make them use their main damage spell inmediatly when i summon them (same than egis II) and use that enkindle button into another usefull, new and fun spell?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bacillus

Uff just said i want dots back and there i see a nuclear meltdown.

Yes it is true that now SMN is more popular than before, even i think that now is better than before. What my problem is that once you get in the rotation the class GETS VERY BORING and still see skills with no synergy at all. Im very happy to got rid of spells like enkindle (which were just another cd push button), but still we have energy drain/fester, which.... there is no decision making, you just push them everytime they are available, it is the same for swiftcast, it is only used for resurrection becasuse everything is instant, why almost everything is instant?

Everytime i summon bahamuth/phoenix i have to press akh morn/revelation, why not make them use their main damage spell inmediatly when i summon them (same than egis II) and use that enkindle button into another usefull, new and fun spell?

---

While I would agree that making the demi's do a strong entry attack very much like we have with PvP. Doing this would create the impossible flow of fitting one of our currently most powerful abilities fit under raid buff windows since we have to pop Demi's on cd and that would be on the 0gcd on opener.

This just opens back up the argument that we would need to have it reworked to allow us access to the Arcanums from the word go and not after feeding Carbuncle to Bahamut so he can shit out some gems for us. Again not against this either, this would open up the impact of summoning Demis to feel powerful again if summoning to an extent was required to gaining access to demi's.

I would have the preference to making Energy Drain/Fester abilities that are only filling a useless void to be a mechanism that could be managed to do either of these things, but again that's another slight rework.

I'm so ecstatic for this game being 90% about waiting for the 120s cooldowns so you can spam everything at once. Can't fucking wait for Yoshi-P to finally cave in and make Flare and Despair 120s oGCDs too because everything must fit perfectly to the 2 minute meta. Does everything actually need to line up with the raid buffs perfectly for a job to have a fine DPS output? Demonstrably no, but who cares, every job must completely center around stacking resources for 2 minute windows because

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

I'm so ecstatic for this game being 90% about waiting for the 120s cooldowns so you can spam everything at once. Can't fucking wait for Yoshi-P to finally cave in and make Flare and Despair 120s oGCDs too because everything must fit perfectly to the 2 minute meta. Does everything actually need to line up with the raid buffs perfectly for a job to have a fine DPS output? Demonstrably no, but who cares, every job must completely center around stacking resources for 2 minute windows because

---

Isn’t it hilarious that pretty much the only job that doesn’t give a crap about the 2 minute burst window is BLM which is simultaneously the best designed job in the game and yoshi’s main

I don’t know why we settled on doing nothing for 1 minute 40 then doing finger gymnastics for 20 seconds but it certainly doesn’t feel great

There's also PLD, which people are already crying to be made into WAR 3.0 because it's, I quote, bad game design that it doesn't fit the 2 minute meta

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bacillus

Yes it is true that now SMN is more popular than before, even i think that now is better than before. What my problem is that once you get in the rotation the class GETS VERY BORING and still see skills with no synergy at all. Im very happy to got rid of spells like enkindle (which were just another cd push button), but still we have energy drain/fester, which.... there is no decision making, you just push them everytime they are available, it is the same for swiftcast, it is only used for resurrection becasuse everything is instant, why almost everything is instant?

---

Not by nearly as much as people would have you believe. If the cost for making an already fairly popular caster even more popular is every bit of fun that it used to offer, firstly the cost is way too high, secondly why bother and third why try and make summoner more popular when it’s black mage that has a disproportionately low user base? The cynic in me says this is sabotage because of its popularity - some bean counter has arbitrarily decided that to encourage people into jobs other than summoner, summoner must be killed. You will notice that all the jobs with lower play rates in Eden received more substantial reworks than the higher. Was a spreadsheet wizard expecting the disgruntled former summoner mains to flock to bard after they killed dot synergy on it? Only SE knows.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fulminating

Not by nearly as much as people would have you believe. If the cost for making an already fairly popular caster even more popular is every bit of fun that it used to offer, firstly the cost is way too high, secondly why bother and third why try and make summoner more popular when it’s black mage that has a disproportionately low user base? The cynic in me says this is sabotage because of its popularity - some bean counter has arbitrarily decided that to encourage people into jobs other than summoner, summoner must be killed. You will notice that all the jobs with lower play rates in Eden received more substantial reworks than the higher. Was a spreadsheet wizard expecting the disgruntled former summoner mains to flock to bard after they killed dot synergy on it? Only SE knows.

---

Last time I checked, we were playing Final Fantasy, not Eden raids. SMN might've done well in those 1v1s but it suffered elsewhere.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deveryn

Last time I checked, we were playing Final Fantasy, not Eden raids. SMN might've done well in those 1v1s but it suffered elsewhere.

---

14 is balanced around savage and it always has been even yoshi has never denied that or tried to argue otherwise, it’s why the classes are so badly balanced in AOE

a class balanced well for savage is a class well balanced

I cannot think of a more inaccurate manner to gauge class interest and satisfaction than by going off of savage alone. Doing that led to the gutting of Astrologian's cards in favor of only damage up buffs with everything else rendered "useless" despite how much players outside that content liked having that sort of variety of effects to play with.

People favoring Summoner in savage fights does not mean that the experience was a particularly good one for people outside of content where min-maxing damage is no longer an issue, such as dungeons, alliance raids, and Bozja. Shadowbringers Summoner demanded too much work and juggling compared to all other classes in the game, on top of its already punishing nature. I refused to take the class outside of normal content prior to my abandoning it, let alone anything harder than extremes. I did those on Red Mage and Dancer instead.

It didn't work. So it was changed. The few cannot be allowed to dictate over the many in this case, especially not the top players who demanded people get good when the class was suffering from more frequent glitches than it is now, as if that worked as a check on the player's skill. You can't ask me to get good when that is what we're dealing with. A handful of ex-WoW streamers have also cited numerous times that changing things to fit around high end raiders from anything to requirements to get into the raid to how abilities work also makes for an unfun experience for anyone outside that group.

I only hope that whatever future caster is added to FFXIV picks a theme and niche and stays with it rather than trying to be everything at once.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I cannot think of a more inaccurate manner to gauge class interest and satisfaction than by going off of savage alone. Doing that led to the gutting of Astrologian's cards in favor of only damage up buffs with everything else rendered "useless" despite how much players outside that content liked having that sort of variety of effects to play with.

People favoring Summoner in savage fights does not mean that the experience was a particularly good one for people outside of content where min-maxing damage is no longer an issue, such as dungeons, alliance raids, and Bozja. Shadowbringers Summoner demanded too much work and juggling compared to all other classes in the game, on top of its already punishing nature. I refused to take the class outside of normal content prior to my abandoning it, let alone anything harder than extremes. I did those on Red Mage and Dancer instead.

It didn't work. So it was changed. The few cannot be allowed to dictate over the many in this case, especially not the top players who demanded people get good when the class was suffering from more frequent glitches than it is now, as if that worked as a check on the player's skill. You can't ask me to get good when that is what we're dealing with. A handful of ex-WoW streamers have also cited numerous times that changing things to fit around high end raiders from anything to requirements to get into the raid to how abilities work also makes for an unfun experience for anyone outside that group.

I only hope that whatever future caster is added to FFXIV picks a theme and niche and stays with it rather than trying to be everything at once.

---

That’s not my point at all, you can dislike a class outside of savage but balancing decisions are based on savage (not below and not above classes aren’t designed for ultimate they are specifically balanced for savage), SMN wasn’t even the most complex class in ShB it was roughly middle of the pack (it just had a lot of Jank which they should have and did remove but there is a difference between Jank and complexity)

The AST example is moot and that’s because that wasn’t a change due to AST that was a wider decision to remove long pre-pull timers and preparation phases (see also changes in CD’s resetting on death, NIN combat mudra changes and outside of combat aetherflow generation) again because of their need to balance classes for savage

SMN was a class that needed its Jank removed, not to be completely lobotomised leaving a hole where the class identity used to be because they also lobotomised SCH for similar reasons 1 expansion ago

What I want for 7.0: the job getting reworked completely AGAIN. Right now it's absolute trash that makes you fall asleep, just cycle through your crayons and hope they crit.
No resource management, no intense phase, the two demis play the exact same, useless carbuncle.
Just redo it from scratch, I played one tier with the job and I'm done with it already, had I not taken a break since February I would have switched to another job.
I really hope YoshiP doesn't change other classes following the same philosophy used with SMN

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

People favoring Summoner in savage fights does not mean that the experience was a particularly good one for people outside of content where min-maxing damage is no longer an issue, such as dungeons, alliance raids, and Bozja. Shadowbringers Summoner demanded too much work and juggling compared to all other classes in the game, on top of its already punishing nature. I refused to take the class outside of normal content prior to my abandoning it, let alone anything harder than extremes. I did those on Red Mage and Dancer instead.

---

Are we talking about the same job? ShB SMN was probably one of the least punishing jobs from that expansion, even when considering Egi ghosting. You could do nothing but hit buttons on cooldown and still do adequate damage because the bulk of it came from Bahamut and Phoenix. Compared to the likes of pre-rework MNK with Greased Lightning, BLM, NIN or even DRG or BRD, SMN was quite forgiving.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

14 is balanced around savage and it always has been even yoshi has never denied that or tried to argue otherwise, it’s why the classes are so badly balanced in AOE

a class balanced well for savage is a class well balanced

---

What good is that if the class is broken in the areas leading up to that point?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deveryn

What good is that if the class is broken in the areas leading up to that point?

---

It was janky but it certainly wasn’t broken, and I never said we shouldn’t have gotten rid of the Jank, the class functionally played no better or worse than any other class did outside of savage especially since you can just roll your head across the keyboard and clear casual content anyway

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It was janky but it certainly wasn’t broken, and I never said we shouldn’t have gotten rid of the Jank, the class functionally played no better or worse than any other class did outside of savage especially since you can just roll your head across the keyboard and clear casual content anyway

---

Keep telling yourself that... Obviously, they saw things differently and had wanted to move out of that awful space for some time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deveryn

Keep telling yourself that... Obviously, they saw things differently and had wanted to move out of that awful space for some time.

---

And instead we got the worst class since the great healer lobotomy of 5.0, this alternative is nothing to be happy about, it plays like a level 60 class and removed a niche that old SMN and SCH both occupied that they removed from both of them

And that still doesn’t change that classes are designed for savage and that is how it’s always been

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And instead we got the worst class since the great healer lobotomy of 5.0, this alternative is nothing to be happy about, it plays like a level 60 class and removed a niche that old SMN and SCH both occupied that they removed from both of them

And that still doesn’t change that classes are designed for savage and that is how it’s always been

---

worst class? you mean the best class based of how many times i see people in dungeons run it and with no statistic to back this statement, only from what i seen /s

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And that still doesn’t change that classes are designed for savage and that is how it’s always been

---

I wasn't disagreeing with this.

I don't know why there's such a visceral reaction to using the savage raid job distribution, it is a pretty reasonable crosssection of the playerbase - unless you have reason to believe that for whatever reason summoner would be underrepresented there?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deveryn

What good is that if the class is broken in the areas leading up to that point?

---

They don't seem to mind that you have been able to one-man current dungeons (now featuring the first two normal raids) on warrior for the last two expansions. It took since 3.0 to fix living dead to usable in dungeons, dark knight still has by far the weakest sustain, the newest job reaper has absolutely nothing to do in the most common content for casual players (crystal tower and msq roulette). Dungeons do not seem to be focused on when jobs are being balanced, although with the addition of criterion dungeons that may well change.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Do you actually have some numbers to show SMN has become more popular?

---

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/44 - #1 job for parses across savage, 13.1% of all DPS parses
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/38#region=1 - 6th most popular DPS job, 10.5% of all DPS parses (and remember, there's 1 more DPS job to consume percentage in EW than in ShB)

We can also take a look at more casual content:

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/47 - #1 for number of parses across Aglaia, 14.0% of all DPS parses.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/40 - 7th for number of parses across Paradigm's Breach, 8.7% of all DPS parses.

So ya, statistically they are distinctly more popular than they were, especially in more casual content (which was, iirc, explicitly the intent, part of why they redesigned it was specifically because of the rotational complexity).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

On the other hand literally the only advantage of current SMN is that it is absolutely cracked in 70 ultimates to the point you are actively griefing if you don’t bring one

---

to be fair, Smn was always (very) gud / top at the 70 ultimates, atleast they kept that for smn..

actually, even on the lv 80 ultimate smn was strong, ..is smn still strong there?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaedys

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/44 - #1 job for parses across savage, 13.1% of all DPS parses
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/38#region=1 - 6th most popular DPS job, 10.5% of all DPS parses (and remember, there's 1 more DPS job to consume percentage in EW than in ShB)

We can also take a look at more casual content:

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/47 - #1 for number of parses across Aglaia, 14.0% of all DPS parses.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/40 - 7th for number of parses across Paradigm's Breach, 8.7% of all DPS parses.

So ya, statistically they are distinctly more popular than they were, especially in more casual content (which was, iirc, explicitly the intent, part of why they redesigned it was specifically because of the rotational complexity).

---

I know you are only answering her question and good on you for actually finding data but can we hold that for one extra savage patch, currently RPR and SGE are also more present than others in their role, SMN was changed so much it’s basically a different class, I think we need some extra time for these numbers to settle, because for example recent job satisfaction out of china shows it’s the least liked job by it’s mains so it may have a large fall off

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I know you are only answering her question and good on you for actually finding data but can we hold that for one extra savage patch, currently RPR and SGE are also more present than others in their role, SMN was changed so much it’s basically a different class, I think we need some extra time for these numbers to settle, because for example recent job satisfaction out of china shows it’s the least liked job by it’s mains so it may have a large fall off

---

I agree that first-tier vs. last-tier is a tough judge, but that's the data we've got to work with so far. and it's a substantial enough shift, and measured late enough in the tier, that I'm fairly comfortable running with it until we get new data from the next tier. If we were talking much earlier in this tier, sure, the "it's shiny and new" argument may hold sway, but we're ~9 months into this redesign of SMN, and barely a month before the next raid tier. The shiny-and-new has had plenty of time to wear off. Yet the data persists, especially in more casual content where the easing of the rotation is most apparent.

As for Reaper and Sage, that's somewhat explained by the fact that they're dang fun jobs to play. RPR was my initial main this expansion, before I swapped SMN because I remembered why I hated playing melee jobs (positionals, and mechanics forcing disconnects), though RDM would have also been on a table if my static at the time hadn't already had one. And Sage is easily my favorite of the healers. So I find it entirely unsurprising that those jobs are over-represented even this far into the expansion/raid tier. It's not just the "shiny and new" aspect of them, they're simply designed really well, imo.

I'm not sure how much stock to put in "least liked by mains" type surveys. SMN gets a lot of hatred from SMN mains from ShB and prior, and that was essentially inevitable given the scope of changes. Those surveys can easily be swayed by that type of sentiment, especially since "main" isn't exactly a rigorously-defined term, much less able to be validated. Heck, Monk gets the same thing from older Monk players due to the removal of so many of the positionals. But unlike Monk, Summoner is played quite heavily. Also, China and the US differ considerably on a very large number of aspects, socially and culturally. Their approach to gaming, much like Korea's, is much more hardcore than the average in the Americas or Europe. It's extremely unlikely that preference trends translate well between the regions.

Still, as you say, we'll see more next raid tier. But my money is on SMN continuing to hold strong in its popularity. It may slip during early progression, simply because RDM machine-gun rezes (and Magick Barrier) are so bloody useful, but give it a bit for the progression surge to wind down, and SMN will still be right there at or near the top for number of parses logged, I expect.

Cherrypicked datapoints mean nothing, get a full set. Given the relatively static use between tea and tea (14.10% to 14.89%, 14.10% to 10.64% for the expansion’s current ultimate), and the drop in use between endgame dungeons (14.99% to 14.22%), your two data points seem to be a bit of an oddity.

Edit: Sage is a copy paste of scholar and reaper is hollow, particularly in synced content. New is their only redeeming feature. The data is from the entire tier, which means it very much includes the shiny newness of the crayon eater.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fulminating

Cherrypicked datapoints mean nothing, get a full set. Given the relatively static use between tea and tea (14.10% to 14.89%, 14.10% to 10.64% for the expansion’s current ultimate), and the drop in use between endgame dungeons (14.99% to 14.22%), your two data points seem to be a bit of an oddity.

---

<tells me not to cherrypick data>
<cherrypicks very specific data that doesn't even really counter my point>

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fulminating

Edit: Sage is a copy paste of scholar and reaper is hollow, particularly in synced content. New is their only redeeming feature. The data is from the entire tier, which means it very much includes the shiny newness of the crayon eater.

---

Sage has a very similar kit to Scholar, yes, but with some pretty notable difference. They have a lot more oGCD options up their sleeves, and at least a slightly more interesting GCD kit. I find playing Sage much more engaging than playing Scholar, tbh. But opinions of jobs are inherently subjective.

Reaper sub 70 (arguably sub 80) is utter garbage, yes. But I wasn't talking about playing Reaper in that MSQ roulette. I was talking about end-game content. Frankly, most of the jobs in the game are hot garbage at level 50, because the FFXIV devs can't seem to understand that having only a third of your kit for 2/3rds+ of the leveling progression feels terrible. Reapers are, imo, one of the worst offenders (up there with Paladin and Black Mage), but they're far from unique in that respect (it's just extra offensive given that SMN, which is basically brand new in EW as well, has something like 75% of its kit and essentially the core if its end-game rotation at level 26). Of the melee at endgame, I still think Reapers are one of the best designed due to the flexibility in play granted by the dual-gauge system. And unlike Machinist, their 1.5s GCD "Hypercharge" window is quite a bit of fun.

If the data is from the entire tier, why are the current number of parses in Asphod an order of magnitude higher than it was for the final tier of Eden, and why does the site specifically state at the top "over a range of 2 weeks"? Do you really think there were less than total parses in Eden Promise across all of 5.4 than there were just Summoner parses in Asphod thus far in EW? Or is it rather more likely that there were less total parses in Eden Promise in the last two weeks of that patch than there were Summoner parses in Asphod in the last 2 weeks? Something tells me there were more than 28k total parses across Eden Promise across all of 5.4.

It’s less cherrypicked, and dungeons are a set of sets which should make the average more robust than a specifically chosen alliance raid that isn’t even the same position in the series - at least show copied factory and puppet’s bunker too to try and establish your trend.

As previously mentioned, the button that lets you view the entire tier didn’t seem to work on the Eden’s promise parses, which is why it was omitted. If you go and check verse or earlier then change that setting it shows a comparable amount.

I disagree. Edit:managed to highlight delete this paragraph sorry. There’s a dichotomy on whether jobs are coherent at 50, which largely seems defined by when they were introduced. As with a lot of issues, shadowbringers and onwards reworks or introductions seem to neglect all but the end game. Monk is a pretty notable exception to this, although it did have the opposite problem last expansion of feeling pretty complete at 50 with a few qol changes and a tacked on gauge system.

The way they went on about the damage to attack feature and how it is a less functional Selene/eos came across badly, the very copypasted nature of some heals also sat badly when they have the darkside mechanic that could have been used as a pseudo diurinal/nocturnal so ast wouldn’t have had to lose more of its identity. Even at 90 reaper just doesn’t feel good to me, I don’t think it’s a matter of familiarity but I’ll concede that it’s a possibility. There’s something that just feels a bit halfbaked about its rotation. Dunno least favourite melee, second least favourite dps, cool aesthetic though.