Summoner is a Final Fantasy 14 summoner (not a warlock wow clone)

It gets more interesting at 86 but that's because we get a third button. Most people complained about the previous filler Ruin phase in the ShB rotation, but currently that's all SMN is. We're using nothing but ruin or elemental ruin the whole time. Most of them are instant now but we lost the weaves that needed use to have instant casts in the first place.
So at 86 Ifrit gains the gap closer combo, 2 more gcds that don't use the existing 2 charges. Garuda gets the GCD slipstream, shadowflare with a big initial hit and doesn't consume a charge. Titan gets a chaser weave that actually feels interesting if only because you press it 4 whole times for the infusion and gives you something to weave with your instant casts. The 3 new GCDs in ifrit and garuda also happen to fill in the gap after all 3 infusions are done so that you only have 1-2 GCDs to fill in before Bahamut or Phoenix come back up, so you can cast a ruin 3, burn your ruin 4 and pop searing light. If you have enough sps searing will drift if you don't add in more filler ruins and I'm not sure what's better. I'll leave that to the math grinders.

Overall once a minute you summon 4 times, use Energy drain once, get 2 festers and otherwise cast ruin or infused ruin. or outburst and infused outburst. It's extremely simple and easy so anybody who doesn't main SMN but just wants to try it sometimes will probably love the shit out of it. They don't have to think about what to do or try too hard to learn and get rewarded for it, but anybody who enjoyed old versions of SMN will get bored very quickly and probably feel unengaged by it. I've already cleared the current extremes and the only active choice I've had to make is whether I do ifrit or Garuda first and the boss mechanics decide that for me and I've figured that out within 3 pulls.

I can totally see the potential in the reworked SMN, but the problem is we don't know if they're going to add anything in the future because job design in general has mostly been basic things like adding ONE extra button to your rotation or upgrading skills.

Right now it definitely looks like an empty husk and there's plenty of room to add more depth to the job, especially with the amount of instant casts we have. Either we get more ogcds to play with, or get a new or improved mechanic to micro-manage.

Speaking of micro-manage, it's what made the job pretty fun for me in the first place. I feel accomplished managing my DoTs (which some of us don't miss), Aetherflow, pet skills, making sure my phases were timed right etc. back in Heavensward and Stormblood, then getting rewarded for it with high numbers. You don't really get that anymore because everything is just straightforward.

Even then, they usually only add extra buttons and things during expansions, which means we're stuck with what we have now for all of Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by ArcaneCarbuncle

To be fair, if the people already at cap are to be believed, it's gets somewhat more interesting around 86, but at that point the question becomes: Why does it take that long? It's not like the jobs beats you over the head with complexity. Which is fine in itself, but having to wait for the bits of complexity that are there just makes the Job feel stale.
And why is it only that one ability anyway? Why was Aetherflow left hanging in that disconnected space instead of being adjusted to function like a low level Astral Flow, if not as an additional Primal Spell altogether. Not like the Job suffers from button bloat

Leaving the job to sit there and get stale from 22 to 86 is just objectively bad design.

It's like they wanted to rework it but we're afraid to put actual effort into it in case it gets badly received; and now most of the bad reception comes from players that feel like SE didn't even try.

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The bare minimum that they could do is split Elemental Mastery into 3 separate traits. You learn Titan's Astral Flow at level 66, Ifrit's at level 76 and Garuda's at level 86 or wherever they want to put them. At least then it wouldn't all be front loaded into level 86 when levels 60 to 80 is what really needs help. Lower the potencies of them and then at 86 increase the potencies, just do something.

It's like they reworked the job with only being level 90 in mind and gave no thought to the the job's leveling progression.

My overall feeling with the summoner is that it looks like half a job, the concept itself is really the best, it lacks mechanics to make it really interesting to play,
total boredom below level 86, already I would like them to solve some problems since the carbuncles are no longer used for nothing,
made that the summoner can use his own shields and his team buff and not have a block during a summon
they should also make the buff usable out of combat .

he will probably not have a major change before 7.0 and that's a shame because the summoner deserves better, the job need to be buffed only for the single target dps, aoe is decent .

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Originally Posted by remiff

My overall feeling with the summoner is that it looks like half a job, the concept itself is really the best, it lacks mechanics to make it really interesting to play,
total boredom below level 86, already I would like them to solve some problems since the carbuncles are no longer used for nothing,
made that the summoner can use his own shields and his team buff and not have a block during a summon
they should also make the buff usable out of combat .

he will probably not have a major change before 7.0 and that's a shame because the summoner deserves better, the job need to be buffed only for the single target dps, aoe is decent .

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Judging by the insane amount of shallow praise and the fact the last reduction rework was followed up by zero changes, it’s safe to say SMN won’t change what so ever in 7.0 maybe a aoe or a gcd but nothing more.

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Originally Posted by ArcaneCarbuncle

To be fair, if the people already at cap are to be believed, it's gets somewhat more interesting around 86, but at that point the question becomes: Why does it take that long? It's not like the jobs beats you over the head with complexity. Which is fine in itself, but having to wait for the bits of complexity that are there just makes the Job feel stale.
And why is it only that one ability anyway? Why was Aetherflow left hanging in that disconnected space instead of being adjusted to function like a low level Astral Flow, if not as an additional Primal Spell altogether. Not like the Job suffers from button bloat

Leaving the job to sit there and get stale from 22 to 86 is just objectively bad design.

It's like they wanted to rework it but we're afraid to put actual effort into it in case it gets badly received; and now most of the bad reception comes from players that feel like SE didn't even try.

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It doesn’t get more interesting because it suffers from the same one-button issues. You already use Rekindle and Deathflare, the 86 trait isn’t much different from that.

Honestly I would rather keep the ShB iteration because the pet improvements they implemented actually work well for a change and would be so much more satisfying knowing you could EA into Bahamut/Phoenix and have it actually work.

Ideally in the short term they would shove that iteration and this one together by making the Summons oGCD, giving back DoTs/Bane/Tri-Disaster, and adjusting Aetherflow and Ruin IV to fit. That would actually work for now.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

It doesn’t get more interesting because it suffers from the same one-button issues. You already use Rekindle and Deathflare, the 86 trait isn’t much different from that.

Honestly I would rather keep the ShB iteration because the pet improvements they implemented actually work well for a change and would be so much more satisfying knowing you could EA into Bahamut/Phoenix and have it actually work.

Ideally in the short term they would shove that iteration and this one together by making the Summons oGCD, giving back DoTs/Bane/Tri-Disaster, and adjusting Aetherflow and Ruin IV to fit. That would actually work for now.

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I'm not the biggest fan of this iteration either, but I'll have to disagree with this on principle, sorry.
I've never been a fan of having buttons for the sake of having buttons, and arguing that a set of skills is bad because they share a button, even though the skills have fairly different use cases, at best seems just as problematic to me as plugging ones ears ignoring any issues that are being pointed out because the jobs is pretty to look at. It's just feels like two extremes, neither of which help solve any issues, so I have no interest aligning with either.

And even if I agreed with you, being realistic I highly doubt they're going to change much going forward so I'd rather at least make sure the job gets its actual issues fixed instead of blindly suggesting they move back to gameplay style they clearly weren't willing to support anymore.
Maybe if enough people complain or SMN ends up dramatically underplayed they'll look into it by the next expansion, but I'm not going to hold my breath for this one.
I'd rather work with what we have and make it at least bearable for as big of a level range as possible, and in this case the biggest issue to me is that the whatever complexity the job has (wether people think ist enough or not), comes in way to late, so that's mainly what I want them to fix, anything else is just a bonus.

I've gotten the job to level 87 (mostly through Scholar), and I've played around with it a bit in a few of the EW dungeons and the first EW trial and I'm not sure I like how "on-the-rails" it is, especially before you get Elemental Mastery at level 86. That really feels like something that should be available way earlier, and that there should be more to manage this far into it. I didn't play enough of ShB SMN because I enjoy the aesthetic of Scholar more, so I can't speak of any expertise to there, but it doesn't feel like it will be a particularly rewarding job to play at level 90 and it seems like there's less going on, animations aside. In general I think it feels a lot more like Scholar than it did in ShB, which is weird because I had thought that they were trying to separate the two and yet Summoner now seems to have been brought in line with the 1 button spam of Scholar. Somehow, I don't think this is what people meant when they said that Scholar should be more in line with Arcanist again...

I don't necessarily think "Summoner should get it's DoTs back!" either but as it stands I also really don't see why they felt the need to remove them as a gameplay mechanic, because there's very little to manage on the job otherwise. SMN seems to me like they cut a bunch of stuff out too and then realized it'd look pretty bad having really barren bars at level 90, so they kept in things like Energy Siphon and Painflare instead of just rolling that into Energy Drain and Fester and giving them an AoE drop off like a lot of skills got this expac. Is there any reason for these to exist? There's certainly no reason SMN should have Physick anymore, it's absolutely worthless. I'm not sure why they felt like that was a button worth saving too when you get absolutely no use out of it. If SCH is still losing stuff from ACN when it turns level 30, I don't see any issue with SMN losing one of the vestigal aspects of SCH still left in it's kit when it reaches level 30. SCH's version of Physick is even a different skill! Why is this still in the game?!

Probably just my general uneducated opinion as I'm not done with EW and haven't been able to take it into any level 90 EXs yet, so I don't think there's much to regard with my post but just that I was kind of hoping there would be more thought in the general gameplay from one of the two jobs that uses a book as a weapon. I'm not a fan of "It's a solid framework to move forward in the future with" defense as well because we're level 90, you shouldn't be getting a "solid framework" that late, this should be a full, feature complete job that you can spend the next two years playing with full satisfaction, and not thinking "well hopefully 7.0 fleshes it out more."

At this point I'll even take DoTs back on SMN to add an extra layer to the gameplay again but I know they don't want DoTs anymore, even on Bard.

I understand why they removed DoTs because a lot of people complained that the aesthetic of it doesn't belong in Summoner but honestly they could've gotten away with making them Primal-themed to please the "FFXIV Summoner is not a real Summoner" crowd, or kept it in the rework now that we have the big, flashy and powerful summons, you'll barely notice you have DoTs. I mean, Summoner stopped being a DoT-based job in Shadowbringers anyway.

In a technical sense I liked having DoTs. It was pretty satisfying to see mobs melt away while the tank rushes to the next pull. Aesthetically though, Bio and Miasma didn't belong on Summoner.

Next best thing though? Add a second button for an Astral Flow 2nd skill.