6.0 Summoner: Thoughts on an Unsuccessful Rework After 1 Month of Gameplay

As the title states, my opinion of 6.0's iteration of SMN is entirely negative after living with it for a month. Not only is the job's damage (or firepower as they like to say in JP) underwhelming, it often feels like there is absolutely nothing one can do to actually improve it.

Additionally, with the help of a Japanese bug report, SMN's prog viability has been SIGNIFICANTLY reduced with the removal of the 2.5s cast time reduction from trances. SMN has gone from having raise parity with RDM to being entirely inferior, and in light of the damage situation I am not afraid to say that SMN in every way is now inferior to RDM.

I believe the primary issues with SMN are its damage, the fact that pet jank still exists and is a major problem for the job's raid buff, and the lack of decisionmaking one is capable of in the rotation. In typical illogical emotionally-charged rant form I am going to start with the third topic here as it is the one that is the most pressing.

Currently, the only decisions one makes as a SMN during normal gameplay are the order in which primals are done, which is firstly a question about movement and secondly a question about damage within raid buffs. Ifrit is ostensibly the least mobile primal, with Garuda a distant second, so most of this decisionmaking comes down to when you use Ifrit, and when you can gap close in Ifrit.

This is not enough. Period, full stop. Every single caster makes these sorts of rotation phase timing-movement decisions. The fact that this is the only decision SMN has to make about its rotation in full uptime (and honestly even around downtime this still is the case) really quite removes any form of accessible skill ceiling or optimization surface. In thinking about this problem, I have identified 2 issues that exacerbate it: the fact that all 3 of SMN's primals take roughly the same time to complete, and the fact that between demi summons, SMN basically just spends all the rites and favors they get from summoning the primals, removing any form of rotational timing decisions or other movement decisions from the job. These 2 issues effectively go hand in hand: together, they mean that SMN's rotation is entirely prescribed by the number of rites and favors you have to spend per primal phase, and the only difference between these primals is the amount you are able to move and the damage they end up doing.

This is simply poor job design. RDM has to make decisions about dualcast parity around OGCD timers, as well as banking melee combos and spending them either in buffs or for movement (not to mention accel charges and swiftcast for movement too). BLM gets instant paradoxes in ice phase, has procs that are instant and need to be timed properly, has a dot, has transpose lines to consider, etc. From my perspective as a longtime FFXIV player, SMN fails as a job because the skill ceiling is not there to keep high skill players interested.

I fail to see how having timers that line up nicely somehow makes the rework unsuccessful. Summoner as of now is the most popular caster in NA and EU according to the latest census. The caster beating it in JP is Red Mage, another job that isn’t all that complex and feels good to play. In any case now that it’s in line with the other jobs in game that I also see “high skill players” using I actually see myself and quite a lot of others sticking with the job long term now that’s been made approachable and loveable, even.

SMN needs a damage buff, but their mobility now means they wont have the high dps they used to have. That said, I love the way they play now. I hated how they were glorified dot class with lame looking egi's and titan egi was basically never used. Old SMN didn't feel like a SMN.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I fail to see how having timers that line up nicely somehow makes the rework unsuccessful. Summoner as of now is the most popular caster in NA and EU according to the latest census. The caster beating it in JP is Red Mage, another job that isn’t all that complex and feels good to play. In any case now that it’s in line with the other jobs in game that I also see “high skill players” using I actually see myself and quite a lot of others sticking with the job long term now that’s been made approachable and loveable, even.

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If you read my post you would see how RDM is more complicated than SMN is currently. The issue having timers that line up "nicely" (they don't actually, and fractions of seconds are lost between demi-primals at almost every reasonable speed tier, not to mention the fact that the demi timers themselves create an overly restrictive spell speed-ping problem in fitting 6 gcd's in the window, not to mention that every bahamut will have to be held to use searing light) is that the phases become entirely meaningless and are simply different flavors of pushing a button with slightly different timings, damage, and no meaningful gameplay changes. I do not think the approachability is an issue; rather, it's a good thing. The issue is that there is no optimization surface and that is because the entire rotation is scripted with little-to-no decisions required from the player. Irrespective of its popularity the job has glaring issues that have left a large number of players dissatisfied.

EDIT: I should clarify that the reason the rotation is 'scripted' with the so-called nice timers is because you don't really get to decide if you want to play out or cut short any given primal like you do in dungeons with downtime between trash pulls. I think that a good way to add this sort of depth to the job is to increase the number of elemental attunements each primal gives, and make Ifrit's the most rewarding to spend all of. This way, SMN is less mobile so it can be given more firepower, but also has the option for being more mobile while doing less firepower like it did before with Ruin II.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I fail to see how having timers that line up nicely somehow makes the rework unsuccessful. Summoner as of now is the most popular caster in NA and EU according to the latest census. The caster beating it in JP is Red Mage, another job that isn’t all that complex and feels good to play. In any case now that it’s in line with the other jobs in game that I also see “high skill players” using I actually see myself and quite a lot of others sticking with the job long term now that’s been made approachable and loveable, even.

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Again you and your awful arguments. Anyway, we all know WHM is the most popular healer. And we all know that it is full of problems. Why can't you say the same about Summoner in here too? We get it, you use this logic purely for your convenience.

Yeah, SMN's rotation is as straightforward as it gets. There's nothing to optimize, nothing really impactful to decide on. You have to be trolling to be bad at Summoner because the skill ceiling is literally an inch next to the floor.

Also it's the least flexible it has been. By the time you finish all three RGY summons, it's already time to use Bahamut/Phoenix. You're just always screwed during downtimes.
This is why I miss the old Aetherflow system because it lets you mess around and hold onto your skills during downtime and not get punished for it ever.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

SMN needs a damage buff, but their mobility now means they wont have the high dps they used to have. That said, I love the way they play now. I hated how they were glorified dot class with lame looking egi's and titan egi was basically never used. Old SMN didn't feel like a SMN.

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Again with the mobility tax when every job is as mobile as they can be, even BLM the antithesis of a mobile job. That simply doesn't hold up anymore. SMN needs a damage buff, period.

Also the glorified DoT job statement is simply wrong when DoTs became a minimal part of their kit since Stormblood. I swear, the people who say this are people who didn't bother to understand or play it after ARR/Heavensward.

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Originally Posted by Caduagm

Again you and your awful arguments. Anyway, we all know WHM is the most popular healer. And we all know that it is full of problems. Why can't you say the same about Summoner in here too? We get it, you use this logic purely for your convenience.

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What's funny is that the only reason why SMN is being played at the moment is because it's completely reworked like the expansion's 3rd new job, so people are obviously going to try it out.
But then it has the lowest pick rate out of all the casters in Savage meanwhile.

I find it funny that for such a "successful and most popular class", complaint threads about SMN keep popping one after the other.

Huh, go figure.

Because the people that like it are playing it, and not complaining on the forums. The people that don't like it are here.

This thread title is just troll bait. Some clearly do not like it, but that doesn't make the rework "unsuccessful". Seems that plenty of people actually do like it. Clearly, it was a very divisive rework, but calling it unsuccessful is just hyperbole.

Yup. For every person who comes on here to complain about "complexity!" there are 1000 players in game who don't care about what's going on in the forums and just want to see the remaining summons added. Red mage might be able to switch things up on the fly but we're not going to pretend like that class has ever been complex or anywhere near as punishing as old SMN. When the player numbers of SMN tank and hit rock bottom then we can call the rework unsuccessful.

But nowadays when there are more summoners than ever? Yeah I don't think so. There are some things that could improve but people are otherwise better off now than they ever were before.

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it often feels like there is absolutely nothing one can do to actually improve [damage output as SMN].

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The issue is that there is no optimization surface and that is because the entire rotation is scripted with little-to-no decisions required from the player.

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That right there is the main reason I'm no longer interested in the job. Having lots of opportunities to improve is a big chunk of the fun for me. And it really wouldn't take much to make SMN more interesting, it has a lot of resources and mechanics that are barely being utilized.